THE DANGER OF SENTIMENT
AFTER leaving Drummond’s house Anthony Trent started without intemperate
haste for his comfortable apartment. In accordance with his
instructions, Mrs. Kinney retired not later than ten. There might come a
night when he needed to prove the alibi that she could unconsciously
nullify if she waited up for him.
In these early days of his career he was not much in fear of detection
and approached his door with little of the trepidation he was to
experience later when his name was unknown still but his reputation
exceedingly high with the police. Later he knew he must arrange his mode
of life with greater care.
New York, for example, is not an easy city for a man fleeing from police
pursuit. Its brilliant lighting, its sleeplessness, the rectangular
blocks and absence of helpful back alleys, all these were aids to the
law abiding.
He had not chosen his location heedlessly. From the roof on which he
often slept he could see five feet distant from its boundary, the wall
that circumscribed the top of another house such as his but having its
entrance on a side street. It would not be hard to get a key to fit the
front door; and since he would make use of it infrequently and then only
late at night there was little risk of detection.
Thinking several moves ahead of his game was one of Trent’s means to
insure success. He must have some plausible excuse in case he were
caught upon the roof. The excuse that suggested itself instantly was a
cat. He bought a large and frolicsome cat, tiger-striped and a stealthy
hunter by night, and introduced him to Mrs. Kinney. That excellent woman
was not pleased. A cat, she asserted, needed a garden. “Exactly,” agreed
her employer, “a roof garden.” So it was that Agrippa joined the
household and sought to prey upon twittering sparrows. And since Agrippa
looking seventy feet below was not in fear of falling, he leaped the
intermediate distance between the roofs and was rewarded with a sparrow.
Thereafter he used what roof offered the best hunting.
Two maiden ladies occupied the topmost flat, the Misses Sawyer, and were
startled one evening at a knock upon their door. An affable young
gentleman begged permission to retrieve his cat from their roof. The
hunting Agrippa had sprung the dreadful space and feared, he asserted
plausibly, to get back.
The Misses Sawyer loved cats, it seemed, but had none now, fearing to
seem disloyal to the memory of a peerless beast about whom they could
not talk without tear-flooded eyes. They told their neighbor cordially
that whenever Agrippa strayed again he was to make free of the roof.
“Ring our bell,” said one of them, “and we’ll let you in.”
“But how did you get in?” the other sister demanded, suddenly.
“The door was open,” he said blandly.
“That’s that dreadful Mr. Dietz again,” they cried in unison. “He
drinks, and when he goes out to the saloon, he puts the catch back so
there won’t be the bother of a key. I have complained but the janitor
takes no notice. I suppose we don’t offer him cigars and tips, so he
takes the part of Dietz.”
By this simple maneuver Anthony Trent established his right to use the
roof without incurring suspicion.
The Drummond loot proved not to be despised by one anxious to put a
hundred thousand dollars to his credit. The actual amount was three
thousand, eight hundred dollars. Furthermore, there was some of the
Drummond stationery, a bundle of letters and the two or three things he
had taken hastily from young Bulstrode’s room. He regretted there had
been so small an opportunity to investigate the Bulstrode mansion but
time had too great a value for him. The black pearl had flung itself at
him, and some yale keys and assorted club stationery--these were all he
could take. The stationery might prove useful. He had discovered that
fact in the Conington Warren affair. If it had not been that the butler
crept out of the dark hall to watch him as he left the Bulstrode house,
he would have tried the keys on the hall door. That could be done later.
It is not every rich house which is guarded by burglar resisting
devices.
It was the bundle of letters and I. O. U.’s that he examined with
peculiar care. They were enclosed in a long, blue envelope on which was
written “Private and Personal.”
When Trent had read them all he whistled.
“These will be worth ten times his measly thirty-eight hundred,” he said
softly.
But there was no thought of blackmail in his mind. That was a crime at
which he still wholesomely rebelled. It occurred to him sometimes that a
life such as his tended to lead to progressive deterioration. That there
might come a time when he would no longer feel bitterly toward
blackmailers. It was part of his punishment, this dismal thought of what
might be unless he reverted to the ways of honest men. Inasmuch as a man
may play a crooked game decently, so Anthony Trent determined to play
it.
Many of the letters in the blue envelope were from women whose names
were easily within the ken of one who studied the society columns of the
metropolitan dailies. Most of them seemed to have been the victims of
misplaced bets at Belmont Park or rash bidding at Auction. There was one
letter from the wife of a high official at Washington begging him on no
account to let her husband know she had borrowed money from him. A
prominent society golfing girl whose play Trent had a score of times
admired for its pluck and skill had borrowed a thousand dollars from
Drummond. There was her I. O. U. on the table. Scrawling a line on
Drummond stationery in what seemed to be Drummond handwriting, Anthony
Trent sent it back to her. There were acknowledgments of borrowings from
the same kind of rich waster that Graham Bulstrode represented. A score
of prominent persons would have slept the better for knowing that their
I. O. U.’s had passed from Drummond’s keeping. The man was more of a
usurer than banker.
What interested Anthony Trent most of all was a collection of letters
signed “N.G.” and written on the stationery of a very exclusive club.
It was a club to which Drummond did not belong.
The first letter was merely a request that Drummond meet the writer in
the library of the athletic club where Anthony Trent had seen him.
The second was longer and spelled a deeper distress.
“It’s impossible in a case like this,” wrote “N.G.,” “to get any man I
know well to endorse my note. If I could afford to let all the world
into my secret, I should not have come to you. You know very well that
as I am the only son your money is safe enough. I must pay this girl
fifty thousand dollars or let my father know all about it. He would be
angry enough to send me to some god-forsaken ranch to cut wild oats.”
The third letter was still more insistent. The writer was obviously
afraid that he would have to beg the money from his father.
“I have always understood,” he wrote, “that you would lend any amount on
reasonable security. I want only fifty thousand dollars but I’ve got to
have it at once. It’s quite beyond my mother’s power to get it for me
this time. I’ve been to that source too often and the old man is on to
it. E.G. insists that the money in cash must be paid to her on the
morning of the 18th when she will call at the house with her lawyer. I
am to receive my letters back and she will leave New York. Let me know
instantly.”
The next letter indicated that William Drummond had decided to lend
“N.G.” the amount but that his offer came too late.
“I wish you had made up your mind sooner,” said “N.G.” “It would have
saved me the devil of a lot of worry and you could have made money out
of it. As it is my father learned of it somehow. He talked about the
family honor as usual. But the result is that when she and her lawyer
call at ten on Thursday morning the money will be there. No check for
her; she’s far too clever, but fifty thousand in crisp new notes. As for
me, I’m to reform. That means I have to go down town every morning at
nine and work in my father’s brokerage business. Can you imagine me
doing that? I blame you for it, Drummond. You are too cautious by a damn
sight to please me.”
Anthony Trent was thus put into possession of the following facts. That
a rich man’s son, initials only known, had got into some sort of a
scrape with a girl, initials were E.G., who demanded fifty thousand
dollars in cash which was to be paid at the residence of the young man’s
father. The date set was Thursday the eighteenth. It was now the early
morning of Tuesday the sixteenth.
Trent had lists of the members of all the best clubs. He went through
the one on whose paper N.G. had written. There were several members with
those initials. Careful elimination left him with only one likely name,
that of Norton Guestwick. Norton Guestwick was the only son and heir of
a very rich broker. The elder Guestwick posed as a musical critic, had a
box in the Golden Horseshoe and patronized such opera singers as
permitted it. Many a time Anthony Trent had gazed on the Guestwick
family seated in their compelling box from the modest seat that was his.
Guestwick had even written a book, “Operas I Have Seen,” which might be
found in most public libraries. It was an elaborately illustrated tome
which reflected his shortcomings as a critic no less than his vanity as
an author. A collector of musical books, Trent remembered buying it with
high hopes and being disgusted at its smug ineffectiveness.
He had seldom seen Norton in the family box but the girls were seldom
absent. They, too, upheld the Arts. Long ago he had conceived a dislike
for Guestwick. He hated men who beat what they thought was time to music
whose composers had other ideas of it.
Turning up a recent file of _Gotham Gossip_ he came upon a reference to
the Guestwick heir. “We understand,” said this waspish, but usually
veracious weekly, “that Norton Guestwick’s attention to pretty Estelle
Grandcourt (née Sadie Cort) has much perturbed his aristocratic parents
who wish him to marry a snug fortune and a girl suited to be their
daughter-in-law. It is not violating a confidence to say that the lady
in question occupies a mansion on Commonwealth avenue and is one of the
most popular girls in Boston’s smart set.”
While many commentators will puzzle themselves over the identity of the
dark lady of the immortal sonnets, few could have failed to perceive
that E.G. was almost certain to be Estelle Grandcourt. Sundry tests of a
confirmatory nature proved it without doubt. He had thus two days in
which to make his preparations to annex the fifty thousand dollars.
There were difficulties. In these early days of his adventuring Anthony
Trent made no use of disguises. He had so far been but himself. Vaguely
he admitted that he must sooner or later come to veiling his identity.
For the present exploit it was necessary that he should find out the
name of the Guestwick butler.
He might have to get particulars from Clarke. But even Clarke’s help
could not now be called in and it was upon this seemingly unimportant
thing that his plan hinged. In a disguise such as many celebrated
cracksmen had used, he might have gained a kitchen door and learned by
what name Guestwick’s man called himself. Or he might have found it out
from a tradesman’s lad. But to ask, as Anthony Trent, what might link
him with a robbery was too risky.
Unfortunately for Charles Newman Guestwick his book, which had cost
Trent two dollars and was thrown aside as worthless, supplied the key to
what was needed.
It was the wordy, garrulous book that only a multi-millionaire author
might write and have published. The first chapter, “My Childhood,” was
succeeded by a lofty disquisition on music. Later there came revelations
of the Guestwick family life with portraits of their various homes. The
music room had a chapter to itself. Reading on, Anthony Trent came to
the chapter headed, rather cryptically, “After the Opera.”
“It is my custom,” wrote the excellent Guestwick, “to hold in my box an
informal reception after the performance is ended. My wide knowledge of
music, of singers and their several abilities lends me, I venture to
say, a unique position among amateurs.
“We rarely sup at hotel or restaurant after the performance. In my
library where there is also a grand piano--we have three such
instruments in our New York home and two more at Lenox--Mrs. Guestwick
and my daughters talk over what we have heard, criticizing here, lauding
there, until a simple repast is served by the butler who always waits up
for us. The rest of the servants have long since retired. My library
consists of perhaps the most valuable collection of musical literature
in the world.
“I have mentioned in another chapter the refining influence of music on
persons of little education. John Briggs, my butler, is a case in point.
He came to me from Lord Fitzhosken’s place in Northamptonshire, England.
The Fitzhoskens are immemoriably associated with fox-hunting and the
steeple-chase and all Briggs heard there in the way of music were the
cheerful rollicking songs of the hunt breakfast. I sent him to see
Götterdämmerung. He told me simply that it was a revelation to him. He
doubted in his uneducated way whether Wagner himself comprehended what
he had written.”
There were thirty other chapters in Mr. Guestwick’s book. In all he
revealed himself as a pompous ass assured only of tolerance among a
people where money consciousness had succeeded that of caste. But
Anthony Trent felt kindly toward him and the money he had spent was
likely to earn him big dividends if things went well.
Caruso sang on the night preceding the morning on which Estelle
Grandcourt was to appear and claim her heart balm. This meant a large
attendance; for tenors may come and go, press agents may announce other
golden voiced singers, but Caruso holds his pride of place honestly won
and generously maintained. It had been Trent’s experience that the
Guestwicks rarely missed a big night.
It was at half past nine Anthony Trent groaned that a professional
engagement compelled him to leave the Metropolitan. He had spent money
on a seat not this time for an evening of enjoyment, but to make certain
that the Guestwicks were in their box.
There was Charles Newman Guestwick beating false time with a pudgy hand.
His lady, weighted with Guestwick jewels, tried to create the impression
that, after all, Caruso owed much of his success to her amiable
patronage. The two daughters upheld the Guestwick tradition by being
exceedingly affable to those greater than they and using lorgnettes to
those who strove to know the Guestwicks.
Mr. John Briggs, drinking a mug of ale and wondering who was winning a
light weight contest at the National Sporting Club, was resting in his
sitting-room. He liked these long opera evenings, which gave him the
opportunity to rest, as much as he despised his employer for his
inordinate attendance at these meaningless entertainments. He shuddered
as he remembered “The Twilight of the Gods.”
At ten o’clock when Mr. Briggs was nodding in his chair the telephone
bell rang. Over the wire came his employer’s voice. It was not without
purpose that Anthony Trent’s unusual skill in mimicry had been employed.
As a youth he had acquired a reputation in his home town for imitations
of Henry Irving, Bryan, Otis Skinner and their like.
“Is this you, Briggs?” demanded the supposed Mr. Guestwick.
“Yes, sir,” returned Briggs.
“I wish you to listen carefully to my instructions,” he was commanded.
“They are very important.”
“Certainly, sir,” the man returned. He sensed a something, almost
agitation in the usually placid voice. “I hope there’s nothing serious,
sir.”
“There may be,” the other said, “that I can’t say yet. See that every
one goes to bed but you. Send them off at once. You must remain up until
a man in evening dress comes to the front door and demands admittance.
It will be a detective. Show him at once to the library and leave him
absolutely undisturbed. Absolutely undisturbed, Briggs, do you
understand?”
“I’ll do as you say, sir,” Briggs answered, troubled. He was sure now
that serious sinister things were afoot and wished the Guestwicks had
been as well disposed to dogs in the house as had been that hard
drinking, reckless Lord Fitzhosken. Suddenly an important thought came
to him. “Is there any way of making sure that the man who comes is the
detective?”
“I am glad you are so shrewd, Briggs,” said the millionaire. “It had not
occurred to me that an impostor might come. Say to the man, ‘What is
your errand?’ I shall instruct him to answer, ‘I have come to look at
Mr. Guestwick’s rare editions.’”
“Very good, sir,” said Briggs.
“Unless he answers that, do not admit him. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” the butler made answer.
At half past ten a man in evening dress rang the door of the Guestwick
mansion. He was a tall man with a hard look and a biting, gruff voice.
Briggs interposed his sturdy body between the stranger and the
entrance.
“What is your errand?” said Briggs suavely.
“I have come to look at Mr. Guestwick’s rare editions,” he was told.
“Step inside,” urged Briggs with cordiality.
“Everybody in bed?” the man snapped.
“Except me,” said the butler.
“Any one here except the servants?”
“We have no house guests,” said Briggs. “We don’t keep a deal of
company.”
“Show me to the library,” the stranger commanded.
Briggs, now stately and offended, led the way. Briggs resented the tone
the detective used. In his youth the butler had been handy with the
gloves. It was for this reason he was taken into service by the
fox-hunting nobleman so that he might box with his lordship every day
before breakfast. Briggs would have liked the opportunity to put on the
gloves with this frowning, overbearing, hawknosed detective.
“You’ve got your orders?” cried the stranger.
“I have,” Briggs answered, a trace of insolence perceptible.
“Then get out and don’t worry me. Remember this, answer no phone
messages or door bells. My men outside will attend to the people who
want to get into this house.”
Briggs tried new tactics. He was feverishly anxious to find out what was
suspected.
“As man to man,” Briggs began with a fine affability.
Imperiously he was ordered from the room.
Anthony Trent sank into a chair and laughed gently. It had all been so
absurdly easy. Two good hours were before him. None would interrupt. It
was known that young Norton had been bundled out of town until his
charmer had disappeared. _Gotham Gossip_ had told him so much. It was
almost certain that the Guestwicks would not return to their home until
half past twelve. That would give him a sufficient time to examine every
likely looking place in the house. The old time crook would no doubt
have hit Mr. Briggs over the head with a black jack and run a risk in
the doing of it. The representative of the newer school had simply sent
all the servants to bed.
Looking quickly about the great apartment, book-lined and imposing,
Trent’s eyes fell on an edition in twenty fat volumes of _Penroy’s
Encyclopædia of Music and Art_. Scrutiny told the observer that behind
these steel-bound fake books there was a safe. It was an old dodge,
this. If the money for Miss Grandcourt was not here there were, no
doubt, negotiable papers and jewels. This was just the sort of
sacro-sanct spot where valuables might be laid away.
To pry open the glass door of the book case, roll back the works of the
unknown Penroy and come face to face with the old fashioned safe took
less than two minutes. It was amazing that so shrewd a man as Guestwick
must be in business matters should rely on this. It was rather that he
relied on the integrity of his servants and an efficient system of
burglar alarm.
From the cane that Anthony Trent had carelessly thrown on a chair, he
took some finely tempered steel drills and presently assembled the tools
necessary to his task. As a boy he had been the rare kind who could take
a watch apart and put it together again and have no parts left over. It
was largely owing to an inborn mechanical skill that he had persuaded
himself he could make good at his calling.
It was striking eleven by the ship’s clock--six bells--when he rolled
the doors open. He rose to his feet and stretched. Kneeling before the
safe had cramped his muscles. Sinking into a big black leathern chair he
contemplated the strong box that was now at his mercy. He allowed
himself the luxury of a cigarette. There passed before his mind’s eye a
vista of pleasant shaded pools wherein big trout were lying. Weems did
not own the only desirable camp on Kennebago.
He was suddenly called back from this dreaming, this castle-building, to
a realization that such prospects might never be his. It was the low,
pleasant, tones of a cultivated woman’s voice which wrought the amazing
change.
“I suppose you’re a burglar,” the voice said. There was no trace of
nervousness in her tone.
He sprang to his feet and looked around. Not twenty feet distant he saw
her. She was a tall, graceful girl about twenty-two or three, clad in a
charming evening gown. Over her white arm trailed a fur cloak costly and
elegant. And, although the moment was hardly one for thinking of female
charms, he was struck by her unusual beauty. She possessed an air of
extreme sophistication and stood looking at him as if the man before her
were some unusual and bizarre specimen of his kind.