Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

CHAPTER XXVII

MRS. KINNEY MAKES A CONFESSION

ANTHONY TRENT looked about his well-furnished rooms with a certain merited affection. In a week he would know them no more. Already arrangements had been made to send the furniture to his camp on Kennebago. A great deal of the furniture Weems had gathered there was distressfully bad. Weems ran to gilt and brocade mainly.

As Trent surveyed his apartment it amused him to think that never was a flat in a house such as this furnished so well and at so great a cost. The things might seem modest enough at first glance. There was, for example, a steel engraving, after Stuart, of George Washington. A fitting and a worthy picture for any American’s room but hardly one which required a large amount of money to obtain.

None save Anthony Trent knew that behind the print was concealed one of the most beautiful examples of that flower of the Venetian Renaissance, Giorgione. A few months before the Scribblers’ Club had invited motion picture magnates to its monthly dinner. Only a few of these moulders of public taste had accepted. There were good enough reasons for declination. The subject incensed those who held that writers had no grudge against the “movies.” Others lacked speech-making ability in the English tongue. And there were some high-stomached producers who feared the Scribblers’ fare might be unworthy.

One big man consented to speak. He was glib with that oratory which comes from successful selling. Before he had sprung into notoriety he had been a salesman in a Seventh Avenue store, one of those persuasive gentlemen who waylay passersby. His speech was, of course, absurd. It was interesting mainly as an example that intelligence is not always necessary in the making of big money.

It was when he began to speak of the material rewards that his acumen had garnered, that Anthony Trent awoke to interest. The producer told his hearers that they had assuredly read of the sale to an unnamed purchaser of a Giorgione. “I am that purchaser!” said the great man. “I give more money for it than – ” his shrewd appraising eye went around the table. He saw eager unsuccessful writers, starveling associate editors and a motley company of the unarrived. There were a few who had gained recognition but in the main it was not a prosperous gathering as commerce reckons success. “I give more money for it,” he declared, “than all this bunch will make in their lifetime. It’ll be on view at the Metropolitan Museum next week when you boys can take an eyefull. It’s on my desk at this present moment in a plain wooden case. It ain’t a big picture; this Giorgione" – his “G” was wrongly pronounced – “didn’t paint ’em big. My wife don’t know anything about it but she’s got the art bug and she’ll get it to-morrow morning as her birthday present.”

However, the lady was disappointed. The wooden case was brought to the table and the magnate unwrapped it with his own fat fingers. Instead of the canvas representing a Venetian fête and undraped ladies, was the comic sheet of a Sunday paper. The motion picture magnate used his weekly news-sheet (produced in innumerable theatres) to advertise his loss by a production of the missing picture. It was good advertising and made the Venetian master widely known. But it still reposed behind the sphinx-like Washington.

The Benares lamp was naturally his pièce de résistance. Never in history had such value been gathered together in a lamp. Trent remembered seeing once in the British Museum a lamp from the Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem on which was inscribed, “The Painter is the poor and humble Mustafa.” As he looked at his own lantern he thought, “The Decorator is the unknown Anthony Trent.”

Collectors of china would have sneered at a single vase on the top of a bookcase. It was white enameled and had a few flowers painted on it. And the inscription told the curious that it was a souvenir of Watch Hill, R. I.

In reality it was the celebrated vase of King Senwosri who had gazed on it twenty-five centuries before Christ. Senator Scrivener had bought it at a great price in Cairo. Some day the white enamel which Trent had painted over the imperishable glass would be carefully removed and it would gladden his eyes in Maine where visitors would be infrequent.

There were a dozen curious things Trent looked at, things hidden from all eyes but his, which aroused exciting memories of a career he fully believed had drawn to a close. He doubted if ever a man in all the history of crime had taken what he had taken and was yet personally unknown. Some day, if possible, he might be able to learn from the police what mental estimate they had formed of him. He must loom large in their eyes. They must invest him with a skill and courage that would be flattering indeed were he to learn of it. The occasional mentions of him he read in daily papers were too distorted to be interesting and McWalsh’s tribute to the unknown master was his only reward so far.

The life that was coming, was to be the life he desired. Leisure, the possession of books, the opportunity to wander as he chose through far countries when the war was over. And he liked to think that later he might find love. Often he had envied men with children. Well, he could offer the woman that he might find comforts that fiction would never have brought him. He was getting to have fewer qualms of conscience now. He often assured himself that he was honest by comparison with war profiteers. He had taken from the rich and had not withheld from the poor.

His immunity from arrest, the growing certainty that his cleverness had saved him from detection led him on this particular night to speculate upon his new life with an easy mind. He had been wise to avoid the dangers of friendship. He had been astute in selecting a woman like Mrs. Kinney who distrusted strangers. She believed in him absolutely. She looked to his comforts and cared for his health admirably. She would assuredly be happy in Maine.

And then he remembered that during the last week or so she had been strangely moody. She had sighed frequently. She had looked at him constantly and gazed away when he met her eye. She was old, and the old were fanciful as he knew. Perhaps, after all she regretted leaving the New York which filled her with exquisite tremblings and fear. In Maine she would be lonely. She should have a younger woman to aid her with the house work. A physician should look her over. Trent was genuinely fond of the old woman.

He was thinking of her when she came into the room. Undoubtedly there was something unusual about her. There was no longer the pleasant smile on her face. He was almost certain she wore a look of fear. Instantly he sensed some danger impending.

“There’s a man been here three times to-day,” she began.

“What of it?” he demanded. So far as she could judge the news did not disconcert him.

“Is there anybody you might want to avoid?” she asked, and did not look at him as she spoke.

“A thousand,” he smiled. “Who was it?”

“He wouldn’t leave his name.”

“What was he like?”

“A man,” she told him, “sixty. Well dressed and polite but I didn’t trust him. He’ll be back at ten.”

It was now almost half past nine.

“I don’t see everybody who calls,” he reminded her.

“You must see him,” she said seriously.

“Why?” he demanded.

“He said you would regret it if you did not.”

“Probably an enterprising salesman,” he returned with an appearance almost of boredom.

“No, he isn’t,” she said quickly.

There was no doubt that Mrs. Kinney was terribly in earnest. He affected the air of composure he did not feel.

“Who then?” Anthony Trent demanded.

“I think it’s the police,” she whispered.

Then suddenly she fell to weeping.

“Oh, Mr. Trent,” she said brokenly, “I know.”

“What?” he cried sharply, suddenly alert to danger, turned in that moment from the debonair careless idler to one in imminent risk of capture.

“About you,” she said.

“What about me?” he exclaimed impatiently.

“I know how you make your living. I didn’t spy on you, sir, believe me, I just happened on it.” Timidly she looked over to the Benares lamp gracefully swinging in its dim corner. “I know about that.”

For a moment Anthony Trent said nothing. A few minutes ago he had sat in the same chair as he now occupied congratulating himself on a new life that seemed so near and so desirable. Now he was learning that the little, shrinking woman, who so violently denounced crime and criminals, had found him out. What compromise could he effect with her? Was it likely that she was instrumental in denouncing him to the authorities, tempted perhaps by the rewards his capture would bring? For the moment it was useless to ask how she had discovered the lamp’s secret.

“What are you going to do?” he demanded. He was assuredly not going to wait for the police to arrest him if escape were possible. He might have to shut the old woman in a closet and make his hurried exit. He always had a large sum of money about him. Of late the banks had been aiding the government by disclosing the names of those depositors who invested sums of a size that seemed incompatible with their positions and ways of living. He feared to make such deposits that might lead to investigation and of late had secreted what money his professional gains had brought him.

“What am I going to do?” she echoed. “Why help you if I can.”

He looked at her, suspicion in his gaze. Her manner convinced him that by some means or other she had indeed stumbled upon what he had hoped was hidden. It was not a moment to ask her by what means she had done so. And, equally, it was no moment for denial.

“Why should you help me?” he demanded. He could not afford blindly to trust any one. “If you think you have found something irregular about me why do you offer aid? In effect you have accused me of being a criminal. Don’t you know there’s a law against helping one?”

“I’m one, too,” she said, to his amazement.

“Nonsense!” he snapped. He was too keen a judge of character to believe that this meek old creature had fallen into evil ways.

“Do you remember,” she said steadily – and he could see she was intensely nervous – “that I told you I had no children when I applied for this place?”

“Yes, yes,” he answered impatiently. It seemed so trivial a matter now.

“Well, I lied,” she returned, “I had a daughter at the point of death. I needed the position and I heard you telling other applicants you wanted some one with no ties.”

“That’s hardly criminal,” Anthony Trent declared.

“Wait,” she wailed, “I did worse. You remember when you furnished this place you sent me to pay for some rugs – nearly two hundred dollars it was?”

“And you had your pocket picked. I remember.”

“I took the money,” she confessed. “If I had not my girl would have been buried with the nameless dead.”

He looked at the sobbing woman kindly.

“Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Kinney. If only you had told me you could have had it.”

“I know that now,” she returned, “but then I was afraid.”

“You’ll stand by me notwithstanding that?” he pointed to the jeweled lamp.

“Why of course,” she said simply, and he knew she was genuine.

Almost as she spoke the bell rang.

“Go to the head of the stairs,” he commanded, “and I will let him in. Be certain to see how many there are. If there are two or more, call out that some men are coming. If it is the one who called before, say ‘the gentleman is here.’ Listen carefully. If there are two or more I shall get out by the roof. Meet me to-morrow by Grant’s Tomb at ten o’clock in the morning. You’ve got that?”

Mrs. Kinney was perfectly calm now and he was certain that her loyalty could be depended upon. Presently she called out, “The gentleman is here.”

Anthony Trent rose slowly from his chair by the window as his visitor entered. It was a heavily built man of sixty or so dressed very well. At a glance the stranger displayed distinguished urbanity.

“What a charming retreat you have here, Mr. Trent,” he observed.

“It is convenient,” said Anthony Trent shortly. The word “retreat” sounded unpleasantly in his ear. It had a sound of enforced seclusion. He continued to study the elder man. There was an inflection in his voice which we are pleased to term an “English accent.” And yet he did not seem, somehow, to be an Englishman. His accent reminded Trent of a man he had met casually two years before. It was at a Park riding school where he kept a saddle horse that he encountered him. From his accent he believed him to be English and was surprised when he was informed that it was Captain von Papen he had taken to be British. He learned afterwards that the Germans of good birth generally learned their English among England’s upper classes and acquired thereby that inflection which does not soothe the average American. This stranger had just such a speaking voice. Obviously then he was German and one highly connected. And at a day when German plots and intrigue engaged public attention what was he doing here?

“Mine is a business call,” said the stranger.

“You do not ask if this is a convenient hour,” Trent reminded him.

“My dear sir,” the other said smiling, “you must understand that it is a matter in which my convenience is to be consulted rather than yours.” The eyes that gleamed through the thick glasses were fixed on Trent’s face with a trace of amusement in them. The stranger had the look of one who holds the whiphand over another.

“I don’t admit that,” Anthony Trent retorted. “I don’t know your name or your errand and I’m not sure that I want to.”

“Wait,” said the other. “As for my name – let it be Kaufmann. As for my errand, let us say I am interested in a history of crime and want you to be a collaborator.”

“What qualifications have I for such an honor?”

Anthony Trent rammed his pipe full of Hankey and lit it with a hand that did not tremble. Instinctively he knew the other watched for signs of nervousness.

“You have written remarkable stories of crime,” Mr. Kaufmann reminded him. “I regret that the death of an Australian uncle permitted you to retire.”

“You will not think it rude, I hope,” Trent said with a show of politeness, “if I say that you seem to be much more interested in my business than I am in yours.”

“I admire your national trait of frankness,” Kaufmann smiled, “and will copy it. I am a merchant of Zurich, at Bahnhof street, the largest dyer of silk in Switzerland. This much you may find through your State Department if you choose.”

“And owing to lack of business have taken up a study of crime?” Trent commented. “Your frankness impresses me favorably, Mr. Kaufmann. I still do not see why you visit me at this hour.”

“We shall make it plain,” Mr. Kaufmann assured him cordially. “First let me tell you that my business is in danger. This dye situation is likely to ruin me. I have, or had, the formulae of the dyes I used. They were my property.”

“German formulae!” Trent exclaimed.

“Swiss,” Kaufmann corrected, “bought by me, and my property. They have been stolen from my partner by an officious amateur detective – one of your allies – and brought here. The ship should be in shortly. He will stay in New York a day or so before going to Washington. When he goes he will take with him my property, my dye formulae. He will enrich American dyers at my expense.”

“You can’t expect me to feel grieved about that,” Anthony Trent said bluntly.

“I do not,” said Kaufmann. “But I must have those formulae.” He leaned forward and touched Trent on the arm. “You must get them.”

Trent knocked the gray ashes from his pipe. The merchant of Zurich gazed into a face which wore amusement only. He was not to know the dismay into which his covert threat had thrown the younger man. Without doubt, Trent told himself, this stranger must have stumbled upon something which made this odd visit a logical one, some discovery which would be a sword over his head.

“In your own country,” said Trent politely, “I have no doubt you pass for a wit. To me your humor seems strained.”

Kaufmann smiled urbanely.

“I had hoped,” he asserted, “that you would not have compelled me to say again that you must get them. I fancied perhaps that you would be sensitive to any mention of, shall we say, your past?”

“My past?” queried Trent blandly. He did not propose to be bluffed. Too often he had played that game himself. It might still be that this man, a German without question, had only guessed at his avocation and hoped to frighten him.

“Your past,” repeated the merchant. “The phrase has possibly too vague a sound for you. Let me say rather your professional activities.”

“I see,” Trent smiled, “you are interested in the writing of stories. My profession is that of a fiction writer.”

“You fence well,” Kaufmann admitted, “but I have a longer and sharper foil. I can wound you and receive never a scratch in return. You speak of fiction. Permit me to offer you a plot. Although a Swiss I have, or had, many German friends. We are still neutral, we of Switzerland, and you cannot expect us to feel the enmities this war has stirred up as keenly as you and your allies do.”