Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST STEP

AUSTIN the butler gave his evidence in a straightforward fashion. He was a man slightly below middle height, inclined to portliness, but bore himself with the dignity of one who had been likened to an archbishop.

Although he had been examined by a number of minor officials, hectored by them, threatened or cajoled as they interpreted their duty, his testimony remained the same. And when he hoped this tedious business was all over, he was brought before Inspector McWalsh and compelled to begin all over again. It was McWalsh’s theory that a man may be startled into telling the truth that will convict him. He had a habit of leaning forward, chin thrust out, great fists clenched, and hurling accusations at suspects.

He disliked Austin at sight. The feeling was not wholly of national origin. McWalsh liked witnesses, no less than criminals, to exhibit some indications of the terrors his name had inspired to the guilty. Austin gazed about him as though the surroundings were not to his taste. His attitude was one of deferential boredom. He recognized the inspector as one representing justly constituted authority to be accepted with respect in everything but a social sense.

Inspector McWalsh permitted himself to make jocose remarks as to Austin’s personal appearance. McWalsh passed for a wit among his inferiors.

“At half past twelve on Tuesday I came into the library,” the butler repeated patiently, “and asked Mr. Warren if he wanted anything before I went to bed.”

“What did he say?” demanded the inspector.

“That he did not want anything and that I could go to bed.”

“And you did?”

“Naturally,” the butler returned.

“What duties have you the last thing before retiring?”

“I see that the doors and windows are fastened.”

The inspector sneered. The small black eyes set in his heavy red face regarded the smaller man malevolently.

“And you did it so damn well that within an hour or so, ten thousand dollars’ worth of valuables was walked off with by a crook! How do you account for that?”

“I don’t try to,” the butler answered suavely, “that’s for you gentlemen of the police. I have my duties and I attend to them as my testimonials show. I don’t presume to give you advice but I should say it was because the crook was cleverer than your men.”

“Don’t get funny,” snapped McWalsh. He had on the table before him Austin’s modest life history which consisted mainly in terms of service to wealthy families in England and the United States. These proved him to be efficient and trustworthy. “I want answers to my questions and not comments from you.”

Austin’s manner nettled him. It was that slightly superior air, the servants’ mark of contempt. And never before had the inspector been referred to as “a gentleman of the police;” he suspected a slight.

“Let’s get this thing straight,” he went on. “You went to bed when your services were no longer required. Your employer said to you, ‘You can go to bed, Austin, I don’t want anything,’ so you locked up and retired. You didn’t know anything about the burglary until half past six o’clock on Wednesday morning – this morning – You aroused your employer who sent for the police. That’s correct?”

“Absolutely,” Austin returned. He was, plainly, not much interested.

“And you still stick to it that Mr. Warren made that remark?”

Austin looked at the inspector quickly. His bored manner was gone.

“Yes,” he said deliberately. “To the best of my knowledge those were his words. I may have made a mistake in the phrasing but that is what he meant.”

“What’s the good of your coming here and lying to me?” The inspector spoke in an aggrieved tone.

“I was brought here against my will,” Austin reminded him, “and I have not lied, although your manner has been most offensive. You see, sir, I’m accustomed to gentlefolk.”

McWalsh motioned him to be silent.

“That’ll do,” he commanded, “I’m not interested in what you think. Now answer this carefully. What clothes was Mr. Warren wearing?”

“Evening dress,” said the butler, “but a claret-colored velvet smoking jacket instead of a black coat.”

“How was he looking?”

“Do you mean in what direction?”

“You know I don’t. I mean was he looking as usual? Was there anything unusual in his look?”

“Nothing that I noticed,” Austin told him, “but then his back was to me so I am not competent to judge.”

“When you speak to any one don’t you go up and look ’em in the face like a man same as I’m talking and looking at you?”

Austin permitted himself to smile.

“Do you suggest I should look at Mr. Warren as you are looking at me? Pardon me, sir, but I should lose my place if I did.”

McWalsh flushed a darker red.

“Why didn’t you look at him in your own way then?”

“It’s very clear,” Austin answered with dignity, “that you know very little of the ways of an establishment like ours. I stood at the door as I usually do, asked a question I have done hundreds of times and received the same answer I do as a rule. If I’d known I was to have to answer all these questions I might have recollected more about it.”

“What was Mr. Warren doing?”

“Reading a paper and smoking.”

“He was alone?”

“Yes.”

“And all the other servants had gone to bed?”

“Yes.”

“You heard no unusual sounds that night?”

“If I had I should have investigated them.”

“No doubt,” sneered the other, “you look like a man who would enjoy running into a crook with a gun.”

“I should not enjoy it,” Austin returned seriously.

Inspector McWalsh beckoned to one of his inferiors.

“Keep this man outside till I send for him and see he don’t speak to his boss who’s waiting. Send Mr. Warren right in.”

Conington Warren, one of the most popular men in society, member of the desirable clubs, millionaire owner of thoroughbreds, came briskly in. He was now about fifty, handsome still, but his florid face was marked by the convivial years. Inspector McWalsh had long followed the Warren colors famous on the big race courses. His manner showed his respect for the owner of his favorite stable.

“I asked you to come here,” he began, “because you told my secretary over the phone that you had some new light on this burglary. So far it seems just an ordinary case without any unusual angles.”

“It’s not as ordinary as you think,” said Conington Warren. He offered McWalsh one of his famous cigars. “Incidentally it does not show me up very favorably as I’m bound to admit.”

McWalsh regarded his cigar reverently. Warren smoked nothing but these superb things. What a man! What a man!

“I can’t believe that, Mr. Warren,” he returned.

“Are you interested in the thoroughbreds, McWalsh?”

“Am I?” cried the other enthusiastically. “Why when I couldn’t spend a few hours at old Sheepshead Bay I nearly resigned. Why, Mr. Warren, I made enough on Conington when he won the Brooklyn Handicap to pay the mortgage off on my home!”

“Then you’ll understand,” the sportsman said graciously. “It’s like this. Last year I bought a number of yearlings at the Newmarket sales in England. There’s one of them – a chestnut colt named Saint Beau – who did a most remarkable trial a day or two since. In confidence, inspector, it was better than Conington’s best. Make a note of that but keep it under your hat.”

“I surely will, sir,” cried the ecstatic McWalsh.

“When I heard the time of the trial I gave a little dinner to a number of good pals at Voisin’s.”

The names he mentioned were all of them prominently known in the fashionable world of sport.

“We had more champagne than was good for us and when the dinner was over we all went to Reggie Camplyn’s rooms where he invented the Saint Beau cocktail. I give you my word, inspector, the thing has a thoro’bred kick to it. It’s one of those damned insidious cocktails wrapped up in cream to make you think it’s innocent. After I’d had a few I said to Camplyn, ‘You’ve made me what I am to-night; I insist on sleeping here.”

“But you didn’t!” cried McWalsh.

“Until four in the morning. The Saint Beau cocktail made me so ill at four that I got up and walked down to my house.”

“What time did you get there?”

“Exactly at five. I felt the need of the cool air, so I took a long walk first.”

“Then at half past twelve you were at – ”

“Voisin’s as a score of people can prove. I had a table in the balcony and saw all the people I ever knew it seemed to me.”

“But this morning you told the officers who made an investigation of the robbery a totally different story. You corroborated your butler’s evidence that you were at home at half past twelve and told him to go to bed because you didn’t want anything else. How do you account for that?”

The inspector was troubled. His only consolation was that he would have another session soon with the supercilious Austin. He licked his lips at the thought. But he did not wish to involve the horseman in any difficulties if he could avoid it.

Conington Warren laughed easily.

“You know how it is, inspector. You can understand that sometimes a man suddenly waked out of heavy sleep can forget what happened the night before for the time being. That’s what happened with me. I clean forgot the dinner, Camplyn’s Saint Beau cocktail, everything. I only knew I had the devil of a head. I always rely on Austin.”

“When did you remember?” McWalsh demanded.

“When Camplyn came in to see me and ask for the ingredients of the cocktail which he claims I invented. Then I recollected everything and telephoned to you.”

“I knew that damned fellow was lying,” McWalsh cried. “He thought he was clever. He’ll find out just how smart he is! Tell me, Mr. Warren, what did he want to put up that fiction for?”

Warren put a hot hand to a head which still ached.

“I can’t imagine,” he answered. “I’ve never found him out in a lie yet. He’s too damn conceited to descend to one. I don’t think you should suspect Austin.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Warren, but I’ve got to. He lied to you and he lied to me and – ten thousand dollars’ worth of stuff was stolen. He’s in the outer room now. I’ll have him brought in.”

Austin entered with his precise and measured tread and bowed with respectful affection to his employer. He liked Conington Warren better than any American with whom he had taken service. The hearty, horse-loving type was one which appealed to Austin. He had several times been obliged to throw up lucrative jobs because employers persisted in treating him as an equal.

“This is a bad mix-up,” his master began. “The inspector seems to think you have been deceiving him.”

“He has and he knows it,” cried McWalsh.

“He’s inclined to be hasty, sir,” said Austin tolerantly.

“See here,” snapped the inspector, “you say you found Mr. Warren in his library at half past twelve. Did you hear him enter the house?”

“No,” the butler returned, “he has his key.”

“The thing we want to clear up,” interrupted Mr. Warren in a kindly tone, “is simply this. What did I say to you when you spoke to me?”

Austin looked uncomfortable.

“It was a gesture, sir, rather than a word. You waved your arm and I knew what you meant.”

“You are one prize liar!” roared the inspector. “You said something quite different when I asked you.”

“I don’t see that it matters much,” Austin returned acidly. “On Monday night Mr. Warren may have said for me to go to bed. On Tuesday he may have waved his hand impatient like. On Wednesday he may have asked for cigars or the evening papers. I remember only that on this occasion I was not asked for anything.” He turned to his employer, “I should like to remind you, sir, that we are giving a dinner party to-night and I ought to be seeing after it now. Can I go, sir?”

“You cannot,” cried Inspector McWalsh, “you’re under arrest!”

“I told you he was hasty, sir,” said Austin without emotion. “What for may I ask?”

“Let me answer him please, inspector,” begged Conington Warren. “You told the police that you saw me sitting in my library. Are you prepared to swear to that, Austin?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the man. “You were in the big turkish rocker, smoking one of the cigars you are smoking now and reading the Sporting Times.”

“I’d give a thousand dollars to know who that was!” Warren commented. “It wasn’t I at all. I was dining at Voisin’s at that hour.”

For the first time Austin was acutely disturbed.

“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “It looked like you, sir, it did indeed.”

“And if you’d only gone up like a man and looked in his face you’d have seen the burglar,” McWalsh said scowling.

Austin looked at the speaker coldly.

“It is not my business to suspect my employer of being a crook. If it’s crime to be deceived then I’m guilty. I admit I didn’t look very closely. I was sleepy and wanting to get to bed, but I did notice that whoever it was wore a claret colored velvet smoking jacket.”

“I’ve a list here,” said McWalsh, “given my men by the footman of the people who called at Mr. Warren’s house yesterday. Look it over and see if you can supplement it.”

“There was one other visitor,” Austin said slowly, “an intimate friend of Mr. Warren’s, but I don’t know his name. I didn’t admit him.”

“That’s curious,” said his employer. “I thought you knew every one who was intimate enough to come to my home. What was he like?”

“I didn’t see him full face,” the other admitted, “but he was tall, about your height, but dark in coloring with a rather large nose. It struck me he was a trifle in liquor if I may say so.”

“I don’t remember any one like that,” Warren asserted.

“The gentleman,” said Austin anxious to establish his point, “who bet you ten thousand dollars that his filly could beat your Saint Beau at five furlongs.”

“This is all damned nonsense,” returned Conington Warren a little crossly, “I’m in possession of my full senses now at all events. I made no such wager.”

“I told you he was a crook, Mr. Warren,” cried McWalsh gleefully. “See what he’s trying to put over on you now!”

“Surely, sir,” said the butler anxiously, “you remember asking a gentleman to come into your dressing room?”

“You’re crazy,” his master declared, “I asked nobody. Why should I?”

“He was standing just inside the room as I passed by. He was very merry. He was calling you ‘Connie’ like only your very intimate friends do.”

“And what was I saying?” Warren returned, impressed with the earnestness of one in whom he believed.

“I didn’t listen, sir,” the butler answered. “I was just passing along the hall.”

“Did you hear Mr. Warren’s voice?” McWalsh demanded suddenly.

Austin reflected.

“I wouldn’t swear to it,” he decided.

“What time was it?” Warren asked.

“A little after ten,” said Austin.

“I left the house at eight, so you are not likely to have heard me. I was at Voisin’s from half past eight until nearly one. When did you first see this supposed friend?”

“I was going up the main stairway as he was about to come down toward me. Almost directly I saw him – and I didn’t at the time think he saw me – he turned back as if you had called him from your room. He said, ‘What is it, Connie?’ then he walked down the corridor and stood half way in your room talking to you as I supposed. He looked like a gentleman who might belong to your clubs, sir, and spoke like one. What was I to think?”

“I’m not blaming you,” said Conington Warren. “I’m as puzzled as you are. Didn’t Yogotama see him when he went to my room to get my smoking jacket which you say he wore? What was Yogotama doing to allow that sort of thing?”

“You forget, sir,” explained Austin, “that Yogotama wasn’t there.”

“Why wasn’t he?”

“Directly he got your note he went off to the camp.”

“This gets worse and worse,” Warren asserted. “I sent him no note.”

“He got one in your writing apparently written on the stationery of the Knickerbocker Club. I saw it. You told him to go instantly to your camp and prepare it for immediate occupancy. He was to take Evans and one of the touring cars. He got the note about half past eight.”

“Just after you’d left the house,” McWalsh commented.

“It didn’t take Yogotama a half hour to prepare,” added Austin.

“What do you make of it, inspector?” Warren demanded.

“A clever crook, that’s all,” said the other, “but he can’t pull anything like that in this town and get away with it.”

Austin made a polite gesture implying doubt. It incensed the official.

“You don’t think so, eh?”

“Not from what I’ve seen of your methods. I’ve no doubt you can deal with the common ruck of criminals, but this man is different. It may be easy enough for a man to deceive you people by pretending to be a gentleman but we can see through them. Frankly,” said Austin growing bolder, “I don’t think you gentlemen of the police have the native wit for the higher kind of work.”

Warren looked from one to the other of them. This was a new and rebellious Austin, a man chafing under a personal grievance, a belligerent butler.

“You mustn’t speak like that to Inspector McWalsh,” he commanded. “He is doing his duty.”

“That may be sir,” Austin remarked, “but how would you like to be called ‘Little Lancelot from Lunnon’?”

“You look it,” McWalsh said roughly. “Anyway I’ve no time to argue with house servants. What you’ve got to do is to look through our collection of pictures and see if you can identify any of ’em with the man you say you saw.”

Austin surveyed the faces with open aversion.

“He’s not here,” said Austin decisively. “He was not this criminal type at all. I tell you I mistook him for a member of Mr. Warren’s clubs, the kind of gentleman who dines at the house. These,” and he pointed derisively to the pillories of crime. “You wouldn’t be likely to see any of these at our house. They are just common.”

McWalsh sneered.

“I see. Look more like policemen I suppose?”

Austin smiled blandly.

“The very thing that was in my mind.”

CHAPTER II

NTHONY TRENT TALKS ON CRIME

ANTHONY TRENTwas working his typewriter at top speed when there came a sudden, peremptory knocking at his door.

“Lord!” he grumbled, rising, “it must be old Lund to say I’m keeping him awake.”

He threw open his door to find a small, choleric and elderly man clad in a faded dressing gown. It was a man with a just grievance and a desire to express it.

“This is no time to hammer on your typewriter,” said Mr. Lund fiercely. “This is a boarding house and not a private residence. Do you realize that you generally begin work at midnight?”

“Come in,” said Anthony Trent genially. With friendly force he dragged the smaller man along and placed him in a morris chair. “Come in and give me your opinion of the kind of cigar smoked by the president of the publishing house for whose magazines I work noisily at midnight.”

Mr. Lund found himself a few seconds later sitting by an open window, an excellent cigar between his teeth, and the lights of New York spread before him. And he found his petulance vanishing. He wondered why it was that although he had before this come raging to Anthony Trent’s door, he always suffered himself to be talked out of his ill humors. It was something magnetic and engaging that surrounded this young writer of short stories.

“I can’t smoke a cigar when I’m working,” said Trent, lighting a pipe.

“Surely,” said Mr. Lund, not willing so soon to be robbed of his grievance, “you choose the wrong hours to work. Mrs. Clarke says you hardly ever touch your typewriter till late.”

“That’s because you don’t appreciate the kind of story I write,” Anthony Trent told him. “If I wrote the conventional story of love or matrimony I could work so many hours a day and begin at nine like any business man. But I don’t. I begin to write just when the world I write of begins to live. My men and women are waking into life now, just when the other folks are climbing into their suburban beds.”

“I understood you wrote detective stories,” Mr. Lund remarked. His grievances were vanishing. His opinion of the president of Trent’s magazine was a high one.

“Crook stories,” Anthony Trent confided. “Not the professional doings of thoughtless thugs. They don’t interest me a tinker’s curse. I like subtlety in crime. I could take you now into the great restaurants on Broadway or Fifth Avenue and point out to you some of the kings of crime – men who are clever enough to protect themselves from the police. Men who play the game as a good chess player does against a poorer one, with the certainty of being a move ahead.”

Mr. Lund conjured up a vision of such a restaurant peopled by such a festive crowd. He felt in that moment that an early manhood spent in Somerville had perhaps robbed him of a chance to live.

“They all get caught sooner or later,” asserted the little man in the morris chair.

“Because they get careless or because they trust another. If you want to be a successful crook, Mr. Lund, you’ll have to map out your plan of life as carefully as an athlete trains for a specific event. Now if you went in for crime you’d have to examine your weaknesses.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Lund a little huffily, “I am not going in for a life of crime. I am perfectly content with my own line.” This, with unconscious sarcasm for Mr. Lund, pursued what he always told the borders was “the advertising.”

“There are degrees in crime I admit,” said Anthony Trent, “but I am perfectly serious in what I say. The ordinary crook has a low mental capacity. He generally gets caught in the end as all such clumsy asses should. The really big man in crime often gets caught because he is not aware of his weaknesses. Drink often brings out an incautious boasting side of a man. If you are going in for crime, Mr. Lund, cut out drink I beg of you.”

“I do not need your advice,” Mr. Lund returned with some dignity. “I have tasted rum once only in my life.”

Trent looked at him interested.

“It would probably make you want to fight,” he said.

“I don’t care to think of it,” said Mr. Lund.

“And the curious part of it is,” mused Trent, “that in the sort of crowd these high class crooks mix with it is most unusual not to drink, and the man who doesn’t is almost always under suspicion. The great thing is to be able to take your share and stop before the danger mark is reached. Did you ever hear of Captain Despard?”

“I think not,” Lund answered.

“A boyhood idol of mine,” Anthony Trent admitted. “One of the few gentleman crooks. Most of the so-called gentlemen criminals have been anything but gentlemen born. Despard was. I was in Devonshire on my last trip to the other side and I made a pilgrimage to the place where he was born. Funny to think that a man brought up in one of the ‘stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand,’ should come to what he was.”

“Woman, I suppose,” said Lund, as one man of the world to another.

“Not in the beginning,” Anthony Trent answered. “He was a cavalry officer in India – Kipling type you know – and had a craze for precious stones. Began to collect them honestly enough and found his pay and private fortune insufficient. He got kicked out of his regiment anyway and went to Cape Town. One night a very large diamond was stolen from a bedroom of the Mount Nelson hotel and he was suspected. They couldn’t prove anything, but he came over here to New York and sold it, under another name, and with a different history, to one of the Pierpoints. The trouble with Captain Despard was that he used to drink heavily when he had pulled a big thing off. While he was planning a coup he was temperate and he never touched a drop while he was working.”

“Started to boast, I suppose?” Lund suggested.

“No,” said Anthony Trent. “Not that sort at all. He lived at a pretty fair sort of club here in the forties and was well enough liked until the drink was in him. It was then that he began to think of his former mode of life and the kind he was now living. He used to think the other members were trying to slight him or avoid him. He laboriously picked quarrels with some of them. He beat up one of them in a fist fight in the club billiard room. This fellow brooded over his licking for a long time and then with another man, also inflamed with cocktails, went up to Despard’s room to beat him up. Despard was out, so they broke his furniture. They found that the legs of chairs and tables had been hollowed so as to conceal what Despard stole. It was in one of the chairs that they found the Crediton pearls which had been missing for a year. They waited for him and he was sent to Sing Sing but escaped. He shot a man later in Denver and was executed. He might have been living comfortably but for getting suspicious when he had been drinking.”