ON THE TRAIL OF “THE COUNTESS”
The expert has usually a critical sense well developed. It was so with
Anthony Trent. He read the details of all the crimes treated in the
daily press almost jealously. What the police regarded as clever
criminals were seldom such in his eyes. There were occasionally crimes
which won his admiration but they were few and far between. Violence to
Trent’s mind was a confession of incompetency, the grammar school type
of crime to a university trained mind. One morning the papers were
unusually full of such examples of robberies with attendant assaults.
Clumsy work, he commented, and then came to a robbery in Long Island of
jewels whose aggregate value was more than a hundred thousand dollars.
The home of Peter Chalmers Rosewarne at the Montauk Point end of Long
Island was the victimized abode. All Americans knew Peter Chalmers
Rosewarne. He was the “Tin King,” enormously wealthy, splendidly
generous and fortune’s favorite. His father had been a Cornish mining
captain who had come from Huel Basset to make a million in the United
States. His son had made ten millions.
His Long Island place, known as St. Michael’s Mount after that estate in
Cornwall near where his father had been born, was a show place. The
gardens were extraordinary. The house was filled with treasures which
only the intelligent rich may gather together. Rosewarne was a convivial
soul in the best sense of the phrase. He loved company and he loved
display and more than all he loved his wife on whom he showered the
beautiful things women adore. Abstractors of precious stones would
gravitate naturally to such a home as his.
Anthony Trent remembered that the Rosewarne strain of Airedales was the
best the breed had to show. He had read once that Rosewarne turned his
dogs loose at nights and laughed burglars to scorn. And well he might,
for of all dogs, the gods have blessed none with such sense as the
Airedales possess. Theirs not to bark indiscriminately or bite their
master’s friends. Theirs to reason why: to know instinctively what is
hidden from the lesser breeds.
A dozen such dogs roaming their master’s grounds, their guardian
instincts aroused, would effectually bar out strangers. That a robbery
had been committed at St. Michael’s Mount spelled for Trent an inside
job. The papers told him that a large house party was gathered under the
hospitable Rosewarne roof. Rosewarne himself indignantly denied the
possibility of his guests’ guilt. The servants seemed equally
satisfactory.
Sifting the news Anthony Trent learned that the suspected person was a
girl who had been member of a picnic party using the Rosewarne grounds.
There was a space of nearly ten acres which the mining man had reserved
for parties, suitably recommended, who made excursions from the
Connecticut side of the Sound. Here Sunday Schools passed blameless days
and organized clambakes. The party to which the suspected girl belonged
was a camp for working girls situated on one of the Thimble Islands.
Nearly forty of them, enjoying the privilege of the Rosewarne grounds,
had spent the day there. Mrs. Rosewarne herself had seen them depart
into the evening mist. Then she had seen, thirty minutes later, a girl
running to the water’s edge. She was dressed, as were the others of her
party, with red trimmed middy blouse and red ribbons in her hair. A
brunette, rather tall and slight, and awed when the chatelaine of the
great estate asked what was the matter. It seemed she had become tired
and had slept. When she awoke the boat was gone; she had not been
missed.
Mrs. Rosewarne was not socially inept enough to bring the simple girl to
her own sophisticated dinner table. Instead the girl had an ample meal
in the housekeeper’s room. At nine o’clock a fast launch was to be ready
to take her to her camp. It might easily overtake the sail boat if the
breezes died down.
At nine-fifteen the mechanician in charge of the boat came excitedly
into the house to relate his unhappy experiences. The girl, wrapped in
motor coat, was safely in the boat when she begged the man to get her a
glass of water from the boat house at the dock. It was while he was
doing so that the boat disappeared. He heard her call to him in fright
and then saw the boat--one capable of twenty knots an hour--glide away
with the girl holding her hands out to him supplicatingly. She had
fooled with the levers, he averred, and would probably perish in
consequence. It was while Rosewarne considered the matter of sending out
his yacht in pursuit that the discovery was made that a hundred
thousand dollars worth of jewels had been taken.
The mechanician had been fooled, of that they were now assured, and the
working girl became a fleeing criminal. The sudden temptation through
seeing sparkling stones in profusion was the result. A number of boats
went in pursuit and the ferries were watched, but the fast motor launch
was not found.
Considering the case from the evidence he had at command Trent was
certain it was no genuine member of the working girls’ camp who had done
this thing. Every move spoke of careful preparation. Some one had chosen
a moment to appear at the Mount when suspicion would be removed and her
coming seem logical. And no ordinary person would have been able to
drive a high powered boat as she had done. Another thing which seemed
conclusive proof of his correctness was the fact that the girl had
overlooked--this was as the police phrased it--Mrs. Simeon Power’s pearl
necklace and the diamond tiara belonging to Mrs. Campbell Glenelg. This
omission supported the police theory that it was the work of an
inexperienced criminal.
Anthony Trent chuckled as he read this. He also had rejected the Power’s
pearls and the Glenelg tiara. They had been in his appraising hand.
_They were both extraordinarily good imitations!_ Assuredly a timid
working girl could not be such a judge of this. She was a professional
and a clever one. Probably she had sunk the launch and swam ashore.
Later reports veered around to his view. The camp people were highly
indignant at being saddled with a criminal. They had counted noses
before embarkation and none was missing. Mrs. Rosewarne described the
girl and so did the housekeeper. The latter, remarking on the slightly
foreign intonation, was told by the girl herself that she came from New
Bedford where her father was employed in a textile mill belonging to
Dangerfield. Like so many of the inhabitants of this mill town he was of
French Canadian stock and habitually spoke French in the home. But the
housekeeper who had served the wealthy in England and Continental Europe
would have it that this intruder come of a higher social class than New
Bedford mills afford.
Interviewing the housekeeper in the guise of a Branford newspaper man
Trent asked her a hundred questions. And each one of her answers
confirmed the belief that had grown in him. This clever woman was “The
Countess.” He felt certain of it. That slight intonation was hers. The
figure, the height, the coloring. And of course the exact knowledge of
what stones were good and what were not. This was another count against
her for Trent had marked St. Michael’s Mount for his hunting ground and
now precautions against abstractors would be redoubled.
He felt almost certain that this was the Countess’s first exploit since
her escape from the hotel after the Guestwick robbery. He had followed
the papers too closely to miss any unusual crime. A woman of her
breeding need never drop to association with the typical criminal. Since
she was marooned in the United States during the war she was of
necessity cut off from her favorite Riviera hunting grounds. Where,
then, might she meet the wealthy set if not among the owners of big
estates on Long Island? Trent felt it probable that she was near some
such social center as Meadowbrook or Piping Rock. How was he to find
her?
To begin with he decided to attend the Mineola Horse and Dog show. This
country fair, held during late September, invariably attracted, as he
knew, all the horse-loving polo-riding elements of the smart set. Not to
go there, not to be interested intelligently in horses, hounds and dogs
was a confession of ineligibility to the great Long Island homes.
Although he entertained a bare hope of seeing her and passed the first
day in disappointment, he saw her almost directly he entered the show
grounds on the second morning. She looked very smart in her riding
habit, her hair was done in a more severe coiffure than he had noticed
before. She was talking to a well known society woman, also in riding
kit, a Mrs. Hamilton Buxton, famous for her horses and her loves. But he
could not judge from this whether or not the Countess was on friendly
terms with her or not. There is a _camaraderie_ among those who exhibit
horses or dogs which is of the ring-side and not the salon. Outside it
was possible Mrs. Hamilton Buxton might not recognize her.
Later on he saw that both women were riding in the class for ladies’
hunters, to be ridden side saddle by the owners. So the Countess owned
hunters now! Well, he expected something of the sort from a woman who
had outwitted so astute a craftsman as himself. In a sense he was glad
of it. It was better to find her in such a set as this. When she rode
around the ring he saw by the number she bore that she was a Madame de
Beaulieu of Old Westbury. She rode very well. There was the _haute
école_ stamp about her work and she was placed second to Mrs. Hamilton
Buxton whose chestnut was of a better type.
Anthony Trent went straightway to New York. He did not want to be
seen--yet. He called up a certain number and made an appointment with a
Mr. Moor. This man, David Moor, was a private detective without ambition
and without imaginative talent. It always amused Trent when he employed
a detective to find out details that were laborious in the gathering. In
some subtle manner Trent had given Moor the impression that he was a
secret service agent exceedingly high in the department.
“Moor,” he said briskly as the small and depressed David entered the
room, “I want to find all about a Madame de Beaulieu who lives in Old
Westbury, Long Island. I suspect her of being a German spy. Find out
what other members of the household there are, and who calls. Whether
they are in society or only trying to be. I want a full and reliable
report. The tradesmen know a whole lot as a rule and servants generally
talk. I want to know as soon as possible but keep on the job until you
have something real.” He knew that Moor by reason of an amazingly large
family was always hard up. He handed him fifty dollars. “Take this for
expenses.”
Moor went from the room with tears in his eyes. He looked at Trent as a
loving dog looks at its master. Two years before his wife lay at the
point of death, needing, more than anything, a rest from household
worries and the noise of her offspring. Trent sent her to a sanitarium
and the children to camps for the whole of a hot summer. In his dull,
depressed fashion, Moor was always hoping that some day he could do
something to help this benefactor who waved his thanks aside.
The report, written in Moor’s small, clear writing, entertained Trent
vastly. Madame de Beaulieu was a daughter of France whose husband was
fighting as an officer of Chasseurs and had been decorated thrice. Many
pictures adorned the house of her hero. She had a French maid who
allowed herself to be very familiar with her mistress. Undoubtedly she
was the “aunt” of the Guestwick occasion. The men of the household were
doubtful according to Moor. One was Madame’s secretary, an American
named Edward Conway, who looked after her properties, and the other an
Englishman, Captain Monmouth, a former officer of cavalry who had broken
an ankle in a steeple chase, so the report ran, and was debarred from
military service. He was a cousin by marriage. The servants asserted
that he was an amazingly lucky player at bridge or indeed of any card
game. So much so indeed that the neighboring estate owners who had been
inclined to be friendly were now stiffly aloof. The captain’s skill at
dealing was uncanny. Bills were piling up against them all. It was due
largely to this that Moor was able to get so much information. A
vituperative tradesman sets no watch on his tongue. Conway, the
secretary, confined his work almost entirely to drinking. There were
many bitter wrangles at the table but the English tongue was never
adopted on such occasions. The part of Moor’s screed which interested
Trent most was that there had been a discussion overheard by a
disgruntled maid to take in some wealthy paying guest and offer to get
him into Long Island’s hunting set. It would be worth a great deal to
an ambitious man to gain an entrée into some of these famous Westbury
homes. Of course the odd household could probably not live up to such
promises but its members had done a great deal. For example, a Sunday
paper in its photogravure supplement had snapped Madame de Beaulieu
talking with Mrs. Hamilton Buxton; and Captain Monmouth was there to be
seen chatting with Wolfston Colman, the great polo player. An excellent
beginning astutely planned.
It was while Anthony Trent debated as to whether he dare risk the
Countess’s recognition of him that a wholly accidental circumstance
offered him the opportunity.
Suffering from a slightly inflamed neck he was instructed to apply
dioxygen to the area. This he did with such cheerful liberality that his
shaving mirror next day showed him a man with black hair at the front
and a vivid blond at the back. The dioxygen had helped him to blondness
as it had helped a million brunettes of the other sex. For a moment he
was chagrined. Then he saw how it might aid. It was his intention to go
back to Kennebago for the deer hunting and accordingly he despatched
Mrs. Kinney post haste. She was used to these erratic commands and saw
nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that he was in a bath robe with
a turkish towel wound about his head. He was in dread of becoming bald
and was continually fussing with his hair. In a day or so Anthony Trent
was a changed being. His eyes had a hazel tint in them which formed not
too startling a contrast to his new blondness. He was careful to touch
up his eyebrows also.
Shutting up his flat he registered at a newly built hotel as Oscar
Lindholm of Wisconsin. He would pass for what we assume the handsome
type of Scandinavian to be. It was at this hotel Captain Monmouth stayed
when he came to indulge in what he termed a “flutter” with the cards.
There were still a few houses in the city where one could be reasonably
sure of quiet. Hard drinking youths were barred at these houses. They
became quarrelsome. The men who played were in the main big business men
who could win without exhuberance or lose without going to the district
attorney. They were invariably good players and lost only to the
professionals. And their tragedy was that they could not tell a
professional until the game was done. Captain Monmouth always excited in
players of this type a certain spirit of contempt. He was so languid, so
gently spoken, so bored at things. And he consumed so much Scotch
whiskey that he seemed primed for sacrifice. But he was never the
altar’s victim. He was always so staggered at his unexpected good
fortune that he readily offered a revenge. A servant had told David Moor
that the household was supported on these earnings.
Captain Monmouth, stepping through the lounge on the way to his taxi,
caught sight of Oscar Lindholm. Oscar was leaning against the bar rail
talking loudly of the horse. Five hours later Oscar was still standing
at the bar and the horse was still his theme. Monmouth was a careful
soul for all his gentle languors and sauntered into the tap room and
demanded an Alexander cocktail. As became a son of Wisconsin, Oscar was
free and friendly. The “Alexander” was a new one on him, he explained,
dropping for a moment themes equine.
Monmouth never made the mistake of offering friendship to a bar-room
stranger unless he knew exactly what he was and how he might fit into
the Monmouth scheme of things. He referred Mr. Lindholm to the guardian
of the bottles. It was the size of the Lindholm wad that decided Captain
Monmouth to accept an invitation to a golden woodcock in the grill room.
There it was that Lindholm opened his heart. He wanted to follow hounds
from the back of a horse.
“Well, why don’t you, my good sir?” Monmouth replied languidly. For a
moment a light of interest had passed across the dark blue eyes of the
ex-cavalryman. Trent knew he was interested.
Trent explained. He said that the following of hounds near New York was
only possible to one who passed the social examination demanded by these
who controlled the hunting set.
“You’re quite right,” Monmouth admitted, “for the outsider it’s
impossible.”
“I’ll show ’em,” Oscar Lindholm returned chuckling. Then he took the
proof of an advertisement from the columns of a great New York daily and
passed it over to Monmouth.
“Wealthy westerner wants to share home among hunting set of Long
Island. Private house and right surroundings essential. References.
O. L.”
And that light passed over the Englishman’s eyes, and was succeeded by a
look of boredom.
“You don’t suppose, do you,” he asked, “that the kind of people you want
to know will admit a stranger from Wisconsin into their family?”
“Why not?” the other cried, indignantly. “Isn’t this a free country and
ain’t I as good as any other man?”
“In Wisconsin, undoubtedly: I can’t speak for Westbury. By the way, can
you ride?”
“I could ride your head off,” Lindholm bragged.
“Yes?” said Monmouth softly. “Now that’s very interesting. Perhaps we
could arrange a little match somewhere?”
“Any time at all,” Trent returned. He did not for a moment believe he
had a chance against Monmouth but he could afford to lose a little money
to him. In fact he was anxious for the opportunity.
“You are staying here?” Monmouth demanded.
Trent pushed a visiting card toward him. It was newly done. “Oscar
Lindholm, Spartan Athletic Club, Madison, Wisconsin.”
“Yes, I’m staying here,” he admitted. “Are you?”
“My home is in Westbury,” Captain Monmouth replied.
“Then you could get me right in to the set I want?”
“Impossible,” cried the other, rising stiffly to his feet. “One owes too
much to one’s friends.”
“Bull!” said Oscar Lindholm rudely. “You only owe yourself anything. If
I have a lot of money and you want some of it why consult your friends?
What have they done for you?”
“I don’t care to discuss it,” Captain Monmouth exclaimed. “Good night,
Mr. Lindholm.” He limped away.
Assuredly he was no simpleton. He was not sure of this blond lover of
cross-country sport. If Lindholm were genuine in his desire to break
into the sort of society he aimed at he would come back to the attack.
If he were not genuine it were wiser to shake him off.
As for Trent, he felt reasonably sure things would come his way. But
there was a certain subtlety about these foreign gentlemen of fortune
which called for careful treading. Were he once to win his way to the
establishment of Madame de Beaulieu he would be in dangerous company.
The man who had just left him was dangerous, he sensed. The Countess
already commanded his respect. Then there was the so-called secretary
and the woman who posed now as a maid. And in the house there might be a
treasure trove that would make his wildest expenditures justified.
Looked at in a cool and reasonable manner it was a very dangerous
experiment for Anthony Trent to make. He would be one against four. One
man against a gang of international crooks, all the more deadly because
they were suave and polished.
It was while he was breakfasting that Captain Monmouth took a seat near
him. Trent commanded his waiter to transport his food to Monmouth’s
table.
“What about that horse race?” he demanded.
“Let me see,” the other murmured. “Oh yes, you say you can ride?”
“I can trim you up in good style,” Trent said cheerfully, “any old
time.”
“What stakes?” Monmouth asked, without eagerness. “What distance? Over
the sticks or on the flat?”
“Stakes?” Trent said as though not understanding.
“I never ride or play cards for love,” Monmouth told him.
“That can be arranged later,” Trent said, “the main thing is where can
we pull it off? Out west there’s a million places but here everything is
private property.”
Captain Monmouth reflected for a moment.
“I shall be in town again in three days’ time. You’ll be here?”
“Depends what answers I get to my advertisement.”
“Oh yes,” Monmouth returned, “they will be very amusing. Very amusing
indeed.”
“Why?” Trent demanded.
“Because the people who will answer will not suit your purpose at all.
There may be many who would be glad of help in running a house in these
hard times but they dare not answer an advertisement like yours for fear
it might be known. And then again think of the risk of taking an unknown
into the home?”
“I offer references,” Trent reminded him.
“But my dear sir,” Monmouth protested, “what are athletic clubs in
Madison to do with those who have the entrée to Meadowbrook?”
“Supposing,” Trent said presently, “a family such as I want did get into
communication with me, how much would they expect?”
Captain Monmouth looked at him appraisingly. Trent felt certain that if
a figure were named it would be the one he would have to pay for the
privilege of meeting the charming Madame de Beaulieu.
“One couldn’t stay at a decent hotel under two hundred and fifty a
week,” the cavalryman returned. “You’d have to pay at least five
hundred.”
“That’s a lot,” Trent commented.
“I imagined you’d think that,” Monmouth said drily.
“But I could pay it easy enough,” the pseudo-Scandinavian retorted.