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Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

<h2>CHAPTER XXV ON THE TRAIL OF “THE COUNTESS”</h2> 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. <div class="blockquot">“Wealthy westerner wants to share home among hunting set of Long Island. Private house and right surroundings essential. References. O. L.” </div> 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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