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Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

<h2>CHAPTER XII THE SINN FEIN PLOT</h2> FORTUNATELY for O’Sheill’s peace of mind, he left the house before Williams made his discovery. He stepped into the street painfully conscious of the large sum of money he carried. It seemed to him that every man looked at him suspiciously. A request for a match was met with an oath and the two women who asked him the location of a certain hotel drew back nervously at his scowl. He boarded the Elevated at the Ninety-third Street station and alighted at Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, still glancing about him suspiciously. It was not until he was in his room on the top floor of a cheap and old hotel on the far West Side that he ventured to feel safe. He sighed with relief as he stuffed a Dublin clay with malodorous shag. Twenty thousand dollars! Four thousand pounds! Some would go to the traitorous work he was employed to prosecute, but a lot of it would go to satisfy private hates. And when it was exhausted there would be more to come. It would be easy to conceal the notes about his person, and, anyway, he reflected, he was not under suspicion. He was aroused from his reveries by the sudden, gentle tapping on his door. After a few seconds of hesitation he called out: “What is it ye want?” The voice that answered him was strongly tinged with the German accent to which he had recently become used. It will not be forgotten that Anthony Trent had a genius for mimicry. “I’m from Mr. Williams,” said the stranger gutturally. He had followed O’Sheill with no difficulty. “What’s your name?” O’Sheill demanded. “We won’t give names,” Trent reminded him significantly. “But I can prove my identity. I was in the house at Ninety-third Street when you came. The money was given you to stir up trouble in Ireland and circulate rumors that will embarrass the British government and made bad blood between English and American sailors. You have twenty one-thousand-dollar bills and you put them in a green oilskin package.” “That’s right,” O’Sheill admitted, “but what do you want?” He was filled with a vague uneasiness. This young man seemed so terribly in earnest and his eyes darted from door to window and window to door as though he feared interruption. “Mr. Williams sent me here to see if you had been followed. Directly you went we had information from an agent of ours that your visit was known to the Secret Service. Tell me, did any person speak to you on your way here?” “No,” answered O’Sheill, now thoroughly nervous by the other’s anxiety. “Are you sure?” he was asked. “There was one fellow who asked me for a light, but I told him to go to hell and get it.” “Anything suspicious about him?” Trent demanded. “Not that I could see.” “That will be good news for Mr. Williams,” Trent returned. “Our agent said the Hunchback was on the job.” “Who’s he?” O’Sheill said. “One of our most dangerous enemies,” the younger man retorted. “He’s a man of forty, but looks younger. He had one shoulder higher than the other and he limps when he walks. He’s the man we’re afraid of. I think we have alarmed ourselves unnecessarily.” O’Sheill’s face was no longer merely uneasy. He was terror-stricken. “And I guess we haven’t,” he exclaimed. “The man who asked me for a light was a hunchback. There was two women who asked me the way to some blasted hotel. They looked at me as if they wanted never to forget my face.” “Stop a minute,” said Trent gravely. “Answer me exactly about these women. I want to know in what danger we all stand. The only two women known by sight to us who are likely to be put on a case of this kind wouldn’t look like detectives. There’s Mrs. Daniels and Miss Barrett. They work as mother and daughter. Mrs. Daniels is gray-haired, tall and slight, with a big nose for a woman and eyes set close together. When she looks at you it seems as if the eyes were gimlets. The girl is pretty, reddish hair and laughing eyes.” Trent paused for a moment to think of any other attributes he could ascribe to the unknown women he had directed to their hotel just after O’Sheill had scowled at them a half hour back. “And very white little teeth.” “My God!” cried O’Sheill, his arms dropping at his side, “that’s them to the life! What’s going to happen to me?” “If they find you with that money you’ll be deported and handed over to your British friends. How can you explain having twenty thousand dollars? Mr. Williams thought of that, but he didn’t actually know they were on your trail. You must give me the money. I shan’t be stopped. You are to stay here. They may be here in five minutes or they may wait till morning, but you may be certain that you won’t be allowed to get away. You must claim to be just over here to get an insight into labor conditions.” Mr. Williams’ messenger chuckled. “I don’t believe they can get anything on you.” “But if they do?” O’Sheill demanded. It seemed to him that the stranger’s levity was singularly ill-timed. “If they do,” Trent advised, “you must remember that you’re a British subject still—whether you like it or not—and you have certain inalienable rights. Immediately appeal to the British authorities. Give the Earl of Reading some work to do. Make the Consul-General here stir himself. Tell them you came over here to investigate labor conditions. That story goes any time and just now it’s fashionable. As an Irishman you’ll have far more consideration from the British Government than if you were merely an Englishman.” “But what about this money?” O’Sheill queried uneasily. “I’ll take it,” Trent told him. “If it’s found on you nothing can do you any good. You’ll do your plotting in a British jail.” O’Sheill was amazed at the careless manner in which this large sum was thrust into the other man’s pocket. Surely these accomplices of his dealt in big things. “When you’re ready to sail you can get it back,” Trent continued. “That can be arranged later. Meanwhile don’t forget my instructions. Be indignant when you are searched. Call on the British Ambassador.” Trent paused suddenly. An idea had struck him. “By the way,” he went on, “you have other things that would get you into trouble beside that money.” “I know it,” O’Sheill admitted. “What am I to do with them?” “I’m taking a chance if they are found on me,” the younger man commented. “But they are not after me. Give me what you have,” he cried. Into this keeping the frightened O’Sheill confided certain letters which later were to prove such an admirable aid to the United States Government. It was as Trent turned to the door that he heard steps coming along the passage as softly as the creaking boards permitted. He placed his fingers on his lips and enjoined silence. The furtive sound completed O’Sheill’s distress. He felt himself entrapped. Trent saw him take from his hip pocket a revolver. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Wait.” He turned down the gas to a tiny glimmer. Through the transom the stronger light in the passage was seen. It was but a slight effort for the muscular Trent to draw himself up so that he could peer through the transom at the man tapping softly at the door. Unquestionably it was Williams, and the hand concealed in his right hand coat pocket was no doubt gripping the butt of an automatic. He was a man of great physical strength, that Trent had noted earlier in the evening. Although of enormous strength himself, and a boxer and wrestler, he knew he would stand no chance if these two discovered his errand. There was no other exit than the door. Anthony Trent stepped silently to O’Sheill’s side. “It’s the Hunchback,” he whispered. “If once he gets those long fingers around your throat you’re gone. Listen to me. I’m going to turn the gas out. Then I shall open the door. When he rushes in get him. If he gets you instead I’ll be on the top of him and we’ll tie him up. Ready?” The prospect of a fight restored O’Sheill’s spirits. Every line of his evil face was a black menace to Friedrich Wilhelm outside. “Don’t use your revolver,” Anthony Trent cautioned. “Why?” O’Sheill whispered. “We can’t stand police investigation,” said the other. “Get ready now I’m going to open the door.” When he flung it open Williams stepped quickly in. O’Sheill maddened at the very thought that any one imperiled his money, could only see, in the dim light, an enemy. The first blow he struck landed fair and square on the Prussian nose. On his part Williams supposed the attack a premeditated one. O’Sheill was playing him false. The pain of the blow awoke his own hot temper and made him killing mad. He sought to get his strong arms about the Sinn Feiner’s throat. It was while they thrashed about on the floor that Anthony Trent made his escape. He closed the door of the room carefully and locked it from the outside. Then he unscrewed the electric bulb that lit the hall. None saw him pass into the street. It was one of his triumphant nights. Next morning at breakfast he found Mrs. Kinney much interested in the city’s police news as set forth in the papers. He was singularly cheerful. “What is it?” he demanded. “Some very dreadful crime?” “A double murder,” she told him, “and the police don’t seem to be able to figure it out at all.” Trent sipped his coffee gratefully. “What’s strange about that?” he demanded. “I don’t see,” Mrs. Kinney went on, “what a gentleman like this Mr. Williams seems to have been——” Anthony Trent put down his cup. “What’s his other name?” he inquired. “Frederick,” said the interested Mrs. Kinney. “Frederick Williams, a Holland Dutch gentleman living in Ninety-third Street near the Drive. He aided the Red Cross and bought Liberty Bonds. What I want to know is why he went to a low place like the Shipwrights Hotel to see a man named O’Sheill from Liverpool, England?” “A double murder?” he demanded. “Here it is,” she returned, and showed him the paper. The two men had been found dead, the report ran, under mysterious circumstances, but the police thought a solution would quickly be found. Anthony Trent smiled as he read of official optimism. He was inclined to doubt it. When Mrs. Kinney was out shopping he read through the documents he had taken from O’Sheill. They seemed to him to be of prime importance. There was a list of American Sinn Feiners implicating men in high positions, men against whom so far nothing detrimental was known. Outlines of plots were made bare to embroil and antagonize Britain and the United States—allies in the great cause—and all that subtle propaganda which had nothing to do with the betterment of prosperous Ireland but everything to do with Prussian aggrandizement. It was a poisonous collection of documents. The chief of the Department of Justice in New York was called up from a public station and informed that a messenger was on his way with very important papers. The chief was warned to make immediate search of the premises at Ninety-third Street where a highly important German spy might be captured. In the evening papers Anthony Trent was gratified to learn that the highly-born, thin, haughty person was none other than the Baron von Reisende who had received his congé with Bernstorff and was thought to be in the Wilmhelmstrasse. He had probably returned by way of Mexico. And certain politicians of the baser sort were sternly warned against plotting the downfall of America’s allies. Altogether Trent had done a good night’s work for his country. As for himself twenty thousand dollars went far toward making the total he desired. Consistent success in such enterprises as his was leading him into a feeling that he would not be run to earth as had been those lesser practitioners of crime who lacked his subtlety and shared their secrets with others. But there was always the chance that he had been observed when he thought he was alone in some great house. Austin, the Conington Warren butler, looked him full in the face on his first adventure. And that other butler who served the millionaire whose piano he had wrecked might, some day, place a hand on his shoulder and denounce him to the world. Yet butlers were beings whose duties took them little abroad. They did not greatly perturb him. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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