_THE MAN IN THE DARK_
One day late in October when the Allies were moving with such speed
against the enemy Private Trent had been struck with a piece of
shrapnel. There was the recognized noise of the flying fragments and
then a sudden flaming pain in his left arm followed by black
unconsciousness.
He came back very slowly to the realization that he was not seriously
hurt. His wounded arm was bandaged. He was still rather weak and lay
back for some moments before opening his eyes. Then he opened them to
meet only a wall of unrelieved night. "I'm blind!" he thought.
Groping about him he felt dank earth, the earth he had been accustomed
to in the trenches, slimy, sweating clay. With his undamaged hand he
felt the bandages that were about his head. There was no wound near his
eyes; but that would not be necessary, for he had seen so many cases of
blindness due to the bursting of high explosives. It might be temporary
blindness or it might be permanent.
There was a great silence about him. Gone were the myriad sounds of war
that had enveloped him before his injury. Perhaps he was deaf, too. "My
God!" he groaned thinking of this new infliction and then grew a little
less miserable when he recognized the sound of his own voice. Well,
blindness was enough! Never again to see the green earth or the morning
sun stealing down the lake where his home was. At a little past thirty
to see only through the eyes of others. No more golf, no more hunting
and fishing trips, and of course no more of those taut-nerved nights
when he, a single human being, pitted his strength and intelligence
against the forces of organized society--and won. There was small
consolation in thinking that now, at all events, Anthony Trent, master
criminal would not be caught. He would go down in police history as the
most mysterious of those criminals who have set the detectives by the
heels.
A little later he told himself he would rather be caught, sentenced to a
term of life imprisonment if only he might see a tiny ribbon of blue sky
from his cell window, than condemned to this eternal blackness.
Then the miracle happened. A few yards from him came a scratching sound
and then a sudden flame. And in that moment he could see the profile of
a man bending over a cigarette. He was not blind!
"Who are you?" Anthony Trent cried not yet able to comprehend this
lifting of what he felt was a sentence imposed. "Where am I?"
The man who answered spoke with one of those cultivated English voices
which Trent had once believed to be the mark of decadence or
effeminacy, a belief the bloody fields of France had swept from him.
"Well," said the man slowly, "I really don't see that it matters much
now to anyone what my name may be."
"The only thing that matters to me," Trent cried with almost hysterical
fervor, "is that I'm not blind as I thought I was."
The answer of the unknown man was singular; but Trent, who was not far
from hysteria on account of bodily pain and the mental anguish through
which he had been, did not take note of it.
"I don't think that matters much either," the voice of the man in the
dark commented.
"Then where are we?" Trent demanded.
"There again I can't help you much," the unknown answered. "This _was_ a
common or garden dug-out."
"_Was_," Trent repeated, "What is it now?"
"A tomb," the stranger told him puffing at his cigarette. "I found you
bleeding to death and I bandaged your arm. I was knocked out myself and
your men and mine had gone on and there was never a Red Cross man or
anyone else in sight so I carried you into this dug-out. All of a sudden
some damned H. E. blocked up the opening. When the dust settled I
explored with my few matches. Our tomb is sealed up--absolutely. I've
often heard of it happening before. It looks as if a house had been
lifted up and planted right on this dug-out."
"So that's why you said it didn't matter much if I could see or not?"
"Does it?" the man asked shortly.
"Have you another match?" Trent asked presently. "I'd like to explore."
"No good," the other retorted. "I've been all round the damned place and
there isn't a chance, except that the thing may collapse and bury us."
"Then we are to starve to death without an effort?"
"We shall asphyxiate, we shan't starve. Don't you notice how heavy the
air is? Presently we shall get drowsy. Already I feel light headed and
inclined to talk."
"Then talk," Trent said, "Anything is better than sitting here and
waiting. The air is heavy; I notice it now. I suppose I'm going to be
delirious. Talk, damn you, talk. Why not tell me your name? What
difference can it make to you now? Are you afraid? Have you done things
you're ashamed of? Why let that worry you since it only proves you're
human."
"I'm not ashamed of what I've done," the other drawled, "it's my family
which persists in saying I've disgraced it."
Anthony Trent was in a strange mood. Ordinarily secretive to a degree
and fearful always of dropping a hint that might draw suspicion to his
ways of life, he found himself laughing in a good humored way that this
English soldier should imagine he must conceal his name for fear of
disgrace. Why the man was a child, a pigmy compared with Anthony Trent.
He had perhaps disobeyed an autocrat father or possibly married a chorus
girl instead of a blue blooded maiden.
"You've probably done nothing," said Trent. "It may be you were expelled
from school or university and that makes you think you are a desperate
character."
There was silence for a moment or so.
"As it happens," the unknown said, "I was expelled from Harrow and
kicked out of Trinity but it isn't for that. I'm known in the army as
Private William Smith of the 78th Battalion, City of London Regiment."
"I thought you were an officer," Trent said. Private Smith had the kind
of voice which Trent associated with the aristocracy.
"I'm just a plain private like you," Smith said, "although the lowly
rank is mine for probably far different reasons."
"I'm not so sure of that," Trent said, a trifle nettled. "I could have
had a commission if I wanted it."
"I did have one," Smith returned, "but I didn't mean what I said
offensively. I meant only that I dare not accept a commission."
Anthony Trent waited a moment before he answered.
"I'm not so sure of that," he said again.
The reasons for which Trent declined his commission and thereby endured
certain hardships not unconnected with sleeping quarters and noisy
companionship were entirely to his credit. Always with the fear of
exposure before his eyes he did not want to place odium on the status of
the American officer as he would have done had screaming headlines in
the papers spoken of the capture by police authorities of Lieutenant
Anthony Trent the cleverest of modern crooks. But he could not bring
himself to speak of this even in his present unusual mood.
"It doesn't matter now very much," Smith said laughing a little, "we
shall both be called missing and the prison camps will be searched for
us. In the end my family may revere my memory and yours call you its
chief glory."
"I haven't a family," Trent said. "I used to be sorry for it. I'm glad
now." He stopped suddenly. "Do you know," he said later, "you were
laughing just now. You're either crazy or else you must have your nerve
with you still."
"I may be crazy," returned Private Smith, "but I usually make my living
by having my nerve with me as you call it. It has been my downfall. If I
had been a good, moral child, amenable to discipline I might have
commanded a regiment instead of being a 'tommy' and I might be repenting
now. By the way you don't seem as depressed as one might expect. Why?"
"After a year of this war one doesn't easily lose the habit of laughing
at death."
"I've had four years of it," Smith said. "I was a ranker when it broke
out and saw the whole show from August 1914. On the whole what is
coming will be a rest. I don't know how they manage these things in
your country but in England when a man has been, well call it unwise,
there is always a chance of feeling a heavy hand on one's shoulder and
hearing a voice saying in one's ear, 'I arrest you in the King's name!'
Very dramatic and impressive and all that sort of thing, but wearing on
the nerves--very." Private Smith laughed gently, "I'm afraid you are
dying in rather bad company."
"We have something in common perhaps," Trent said. He grinned to himself
in the covering blackness as he said it. "Tell me, did you ever hear of
Anthony Trent?"
"Never," Private Smith returned quickly. "Sorry! I suppose I ought to
know all about him. What has he done?"
"He wrote stories of super-crookdom for one thing."
"That explains it," Smith asserted, "You see those stories rather bore
me. I read them when I was young and innocent but now I know how
extremely fictional they are; written for the greater part, I'm
informed, by blameless women in boarding houses. I like reading the real
thing."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Reports of actual crimes as set forth in the newspapers.
Cross-examinations of witnesses and all that, summing up of the judges
and coroners' inquests. Was this Trent person really good?"
"You shall judge," said the American. "He wrote of crimes and criminals
from what such actual practitioners had told him. He was for a time a
police reporter on a big New York paper and had to hang around Mulberry
Street. After that he tried the magazines but as editors are so remote
as a rule from actual knowledge of the world's play and work, he didn't
make much money at it. Finally his pet editor--a man with some human
attributes--said in effect, 'I can't raise your rates; the publisher
won't stand for it. If I paid decent prices he couldn't buy champagne
and entertain his favorites.' This was in the era before prohibition.
The human editor went on giving advice and wound up by saying, 'Why
don't you do what your super-crook character does and relieve the
dishonest rich of their stolen bonds? Conway Parker gets away with it,
why shouldn't you?'"
"Of course he was rotting?" Private Smith asked.
"Yes," the American said, "He didn't really mean it but the thought
germs fell into the right sort of broth. Anthony Trent wasn't naturally
a crook but he hated having to live in a cheap boarding house and eat
badly cooked meals and play on a hard-mouthed, hired, upright piano.
Some ancestor had dowered him with a love of beautiful things, rugs,
pictures, pottery, bronzes, music and a rather secluded life. Also he
had dreams about being a great composer. He was a queer mixture. On the
whole rather unbalanced I suppose. His father died and left him almost
nothing. All he could do was newspaper work at first."
"You mean he actually followed the editor's advice?"
"Yes. He had certain natural gifts to aid him. He was a first rate
mimic. It's a sort of gift I suppose. He had gone in for amateur
theatricals at his college and done rather well. He pulled off his first
job successfully but the butler saw him and did not forget. That was the
trouble the butler remembered. It wasn't a big affair. It didn't make
any such stir as for example as when he took the Mount Aubyn Ruby."
"I read of that," Smith returned eagerly. "He knocked out a millionaire
surrounded with detectives and got away in an airplane."
"He got away but not in an airplane," replied Anthony Trent. "On the
whole the unknown aviator was rather useful to him but was absolutely
blameless. Then there was the case of the Apthorpe emerald. Did you hear
of that?"
"Haven't I told you," Smith returned impatiently, "that I read all about
things of that sort? How could I have missed that even though I was in
the trenches when it happened. It was the delight of my hospital life to
read about it in Reynolds Journal. It was said a woman murdered old
Apthorpe for it."
"She did," Trent admitted, "and she took the emerald but Anthony Trent
got it from her and fooled them all. His last big job before the United
States got into the war was getting the blue-white diamond that was
known as the Nizam's Diamond."
"A hundred carat stone," Smith said reverently. "By Jove, what a master!
As I never heard of him of course he was never caught. They are all
caught in the end, though. His day will come."
For a moment the thought that Anthony Trent's life was coming to an end
before many hours had passed took the narrator from his mood of triumph
into a state of depression. To have to give up everything and die in the
darkness. Exit Anthony Trent for all time! And as he thought of his
enemies the police toiling for the rich rewards that they would never
get for apprehending him his black mood passed and Smith heard him
chuckle.
"They all get caught in the end," Smith repeated, "the best of them. The
doctrine of averages is against them. Your Anthony Trent is one lone man
fighting against so many. He may have the luck with him so far but
there's only one end to it. They got Captain Despard and he was a
top-hole marauder. They got our estimable Charles Peace and they
electrocuted Regan in your own country only last month and he was
clever, God knows. I think I'd back your Trent man against any single
opponent, but the odds are too great. The pack will pull him down and
break him up some day."
Again Private Smith of the City of London regiment heard the man he had
rescued from danger to present him with death, laugh a curious
triumphant laugh. He had seen so much of war's terror that he supposed
the man was going mad. It would perhaps be a more merciful end.
"No," said the American. "Anthony Trent will never be discovered. He
will be the one great criminal who will escape to the confusion of the
detectives of New York and London. _I am Anthony Trent._"