BEGINNING THE GAME
WHEN he left Weems, it was too late to start a round of golf so Trent
took his homeward way intent on starting another story. Crosbeigh was
always urging him to turn out more of them.
His boarding house room seemed shabbier than ever. The rug, which had
never been a good one, showed its age. The steel engravings on the wall
were offensive. “And Weems,” he thought, “owns a Constable!”
His upright piano sounded thinner to his touch. “And Weems,” he sighed,
“has been able to buy a grand.”
Up from the kitchen the triumphant smell of a “boiled New England
dinner” sought out every corner of the house. High above all the varied
odors, cabbage was king. The prospect of the dinner table was appalling,
with Mr. Lund, distant and ready to quarrel over any infringement of his
rights or curtailment of his portion. Mrs. Clarke ready to resent any
jest as to her lord’s habits. The landlady eager to give battle to such
as sniffed at what her kitchen had to offer. Wearisome banter between
brainless boarders tending mainly to criticism of moving picture
productions and speculations as to the salaries of the stars. Not a soul
there who had ever heard of William Blake or Ravel! Overdressed girls
who were permanently annoyed with Anthony Trent because he would never
take them to ice-cream parlors. Each new boarder as she came set her cap
for him and he remained courteous but disinterested.
One of the epics of Mrs. Sauer’s boarding house was that night when Miss
Margaret Rafferty, incensed at the coldness with which her advances were
received and the jeers of her girl friends, brought as a dinner guest a
former sweetheart, now enthusiastically patrolling city sidewalks as a
guardian of the peace. It was not difficult to inflame McGuire. He
disliked Anthony Trent on sight and exercised an untrammeled wit during
the dinner at his expense. It was afterwards in the little garden where
the men went to smoke an after dinner cigar that the unforgivable phrase
was passed.
McGuire was just able to walk home. He had met an antagonist who was a
lightning hitter, whose footwork was quick and who boxed admirably and
kept his head.
After this a greater meed of courtesy was accorded the writer of
stories. But the bibulous Clarke alone amused him, Clarke who had been
city editor of a great daily when Trent was a police reporter on it, and
was now a Park Row derelict supported by the generosity of his old
friends and acquaintances. Only Mrs. Clarke knew that Anthony Trent on
numerous occasions gave her a little money each week until that day in
the Greek kalends when her husband would find another position.
Anthony Trent settled himself at his typewriter and began looking over
the carbon copy of the story he had just sold to Crosbeigh. He wished
to assure himself of certain details in it. Among the pages was an
envelope with the name of a celebrated Fifth Avenue club embossed upon
it. Written on it in pencil was Crosbeigh’s name. Unquestionably he had
swept it from the editorial desk when he had taken up the carbon copy of
his story.
Opening it he found a note written in a rather cramped and angular hand.
The stationery was of the Fifth Avenue club. The signature was
unmistakable, “Conington Warren.” Trent read:
“My dear Crosbeigh:
“I am sending this note by Togoyama because I want to be sure that
you will lunch with me at Voisin’s to-morrow at one o’clock. I wish
affairs permitted me to see more of my old Yale comrades but I am
enormously busy. By the way, a little friend of mine thinks she can
write. I don’t suppose she can, but I promised to show her efforts
to you. I’m no judge but it seems to me her work is very much the
kind you publish in your magazine. We will talk it over to-morrow.
Of course she cares nothing about what you would pay her. She wants
to see her name in print.
“Yours ever,
“CONINGTON WARREN.”
Trent picked up an eraser and passed it over the name on the envelope.
It had been written with a soft pencil and was easily swept away.
Over the body of the letter he spent a long time. He copied it exactly.
A stranger would have sworn that the copy had been written by the same
hand which indited the original. And when this copy had been made to
Trent’s satisfaction, he carefully erased everything in the original but
the signature. Then remembering Weems’ description of the Conington
Warren camp in the Adirondacks, he wrote a little note to one Togoyama.
It was five when he had finished. There was no indecision about him.
Twenty minutes later he was at the Public Library consulting a large
volume in which were a hundred of the best known residences in New York.
So conscientious was the writer that there were plans of every floor and
in many instances descriptions of their interior decoration. Anthony
Trent chuckled to think of the difficulties with which the unlettered
crook has to contend. “Chicago Ed. Binner,” for example, had married
half a hundred servant maids to obtain information as to the disposition
of rooms that he could have obtained by the mere consultation of such a
book as this.
It was while Mrs. Sauer’s wards were finishing their boiled dinner that
some of them had a glimpse of Anthony Trent in evening dress descending
the stairs.
“Dinner not good enough for his nibs,” commented one boarder seeking to
curry the Sauer favor.
“I’d rather have my boarders pay and not eat than eat and not pay,” said
Mrs. Sauer grimly. It was three weeks since she had received a dollar
from the speaker.
“Drink,” exclaimed Mr. Clarke, suddenly roused from meditation of a day
now dead when a highball could be purchased for fifteen cents. “This
food shortage now. That could be settled easily. Take the tax off
liquor and people wouldn’t want to eat so much. It’s the high cost of
drinking that’s the trouble. What’s the use of calling ourselves a free
people? I tell you it was keeping vodka from the Russians that caused
the whole trouble. Don’t argue with me. I know.”
Mr. Clarke went from the dinner table to his bed and awoke around
midnight possessed with the seven demons of unsatiated thirst. He
determined to go down and call upon Anthony Trent. He would plead for
enough money to go to the druggist and get his wife’s prescription
filled. Trent, good lad that he was, always fell for it. And, he argued,
it was a friendly act to do, this midnight call on a hard working young
writer who had once been at his command.
For the first time Anthony Trent’s door was locked. And the voice that
snapped out an interrogation was different from the leisurely and
amiable invitation to enter which was usual. The door was suddenly flung
open, so sudden that poor Clarke was startled. And facing him, his fists
clenched and a certain tensity of attitude that was a strange one to the
visitor, was Anthony Trent still in evening dress. Clarke construed it
into an expression of resentment at his intrusion. He could not
understand the sudden affability that took possession of his former
reporter.
“Come in, Mr. Clarke,” said Trent cordially. “I am sorry your wife’s
heart is troubling her but I agree with you that you should rush with
all haste to the nearby druggist and have that prescription filled. And
as the man who owes you money did not pay you to-day as he promised, but
will without fail to-morrow at midday, take this five dollar bill with
my blessing.”
“How did you know?” gasped Clarke.
“I am a mind reader,” Trent retorted. “It saves time.” He led Mr. Clarke
gently to the door. “Now I’m tired and want to go to sleep so don’t call
in on your way back with the change. Just trot up to bed as quietly as
you can.”
When the door was locked and a chair-back wedged against the handle,
Trent lowered the shades. Then he cleared his table of the litter of
paper. A half dozen pages of the first draft of his new story held his
attention for a few seconds. Then he deliberately tore the pages into
little fragments, threw them into the waste paper basket. And to this
cenotaph he added the contents of the table drawer, made up of notes for
future stories, the results of weeks of labor.
“Dust to dust,” he murmured, “ashes to ashes!”
It was the end of the career of Anthony Trent, writer.
And on the table which had formerly held only writing paper a quaint
miscellany was placed. Eight scarf pins, each holding in golden claws
stones of price. Apparently Conington Warren had about him only what was
good. And there was a heavy platinum ring with a ruby of not less than
four carats, a lady’s ring. It would not be difficult for a man so
clever with his hands and apt mechanically to remove these jewels from
their setting. Nor was there any difficulty in melting the precious
metals.
It seemed to Trent that he had gloated over these glistening stones for
hours before he put them away.
Then he took out a roll of bills and counted them. Conington Warren, it
seemed, must have had considerable faith in the excellent Togoyama now
hurrying to the Adirondack camp, for he had left three thousand dollars
in the upper left hand drawer of a Sheraton desk.
Morning was coming down the skies when Trent, now in dressing gown,
lighted his pipe and sat down by the window.
“Well,” he muttered softly, “I’ve done it and there’s no going back.
Yesterday I was what people call an honest man. Now----?”
He shrugged his shoulders and puffed quickly. Out of the window grey
clouds of smoke rose as fragrant incense.
He had never meant to take up a career of crime. Looking back he could
see how little things coming together had provoked in him an insatiable
desire for an easier life. In all his personal dealings heretofore, he
had been scrupulously honest, and there had never been any reflection on
his honor as a sportsman. He had played games for their own sake. He had
won without bragging and lost with excuses. Up in Hanover there were
still left those who chanted his praise. What would people think of him
if he were placed in the dock as a criminal?
His own people were dead. There were distant cousins in Cleveland, whom
he hardly remembered. There was no family honor to trail in the dust, no
mother or sweetheart to blame him for a broken heart.
He stirred uneasily as he thought of the possibility of capture. Even
now those might be on his trail who would arrest him. It would be
ironical if, before he tasted the fruits of leisure, he were taken to
prison--perhaps by Officer McGuire! It had all been so absurdly easy.
Within a few minutes of receiving the forged note the Japanese was on
his way to the mountains.
The bishop-like butler who adored his master according to Crosbeigh, had
seemed utterly without suspicion when he passed Trent engaged in
animated converse with his supposed employer. The bad moment was when
the man had come into the library where the intruder was hiding himself
and stood there waiting for an answer to his question. Trent had seen to
it that the light was low. It was a moment of inspiration when he called
to mind Conington Warren’s imperious gesture as he waved away Voisin’s
head waiter, and another which had made him put on the velvet smoking
jacket. And it had all come out without a hitch. But he was playing a
game now when he could never be certain he was not outguessed. It might
be the suave butler was outside in the shadows guiding police to the
capture.
He looked out of the window and down the silent street. There was indeed
a man outside and looking up at him. But it was only poor Clarke whose
own prescription had been too well filled. He had captured, so he
fancied, an errant lamppost wantonly disporting itself.
Anthony Trent looked at him with a relief in which disgust had its part.
He swore, by all the high gods, never to sink to that level. A curious
turn of mind, perhaps, for a burglar to take. But so far the sporting
simile presented itself to him. It was a game, a big game in which he
took bigger risks than any one else. He was going to pit his wit,
strength and knowledge against society as it was organized.
“I don’t see why I can’t play it decently,” he said to himself as he
climbed into bed.