Back Aa

Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

Close

<h2>CHAPTER XXIX MRS. KINNEY INTERVENES</h2> AT his apartment, which he reached by noon, he found a note from Mrs. Kinney advising him that she would not be back until late. A salad would be found in the ice box. But his appetite had deserted him and strong tea and crackers sufficed him. The feeling of exaltation which had carried him along was now dying down leaving in its place a grim, dogged determination. He saw now very clearly that the time was come to pay for his misdeeds. Dimly he had felt that some day there would have to be a reckoning. He had never thought it so near. It would not have been difficult to make his escape from the man who threatened. With his swift motor he could cross some sparsely peopled border district into Canada. Or he could drop down into South or Central America and there wait until the years brought safety or he had deteriorated in fibre as do most men of his race in tropic sloth. The thing that kept him was a chivalrous, burning desire to capture Kaufmann. Anthony Trent wondered how many men weaker than he had been forced to betray their country as he had very nearly done. And the knowledge that he had even considered such baseness for a moment awakened a deep smouldering wrath in his mind that needed for its outlet some expression of physical force. Kaufmann was strongly built and rugged but it would hardly be a smiling suave spy that he would drag before the police. At least they would go down to ruin together. At ten thirty the bell rang. But the feeble steps that made their weary ascent were those of Mrs. Kinney. When first he flung open the door he hardly recognized her. As a rule neat and quietly dressed in black she was to-night wearing the faded gingham dress she used for rough work, a dress he had seldom seen. She wore no hat; instead a handkerchief was on her head. She looked for all the world like some shabby denizen of the city’s foreign quarters. “Are you expecting him?” she demanded. “Yes,” he said dully. It was a shock not to meet him when he was nerved to the task. She looked at him with a certain triumph in her face that was not unmixed with affection. “He will never come here again.” “What do you mean?” he cried. “He’s dead.” It was curious to note the flash of her usually mild eye as she said it. For a moment he thought the old woman was demented. But her voice was firm. “I followed him on his way here,” she went on. “I found out where he lived. As he crossed Eighth avenue at 34th street I told people he was a German spy. There were a lot of soldiers on their way to the Pennsylvania station and they started to run after him. Then a man tripped him up but he got to his feet and crossed the road in front of a motor truck.” “You are certain he was killed?” “I waited to make sure,” she said simply. “Nobody knew it was I who started calling him a spy.” There was a pause of half a minute. The knowledge of his safety was almost too much for Trent after his hours of suspense. “I suppose you know,” he said huskily, “that you’ve probably saved my life. I didn’t do as he wanted me to. I was prepared to denounce him to the police.” “But they’d have got you, too,” she said. “I know,” he returned. “I’d thought of that.” “Oh, Mr. Trent!” she cried, “Oh, Mr. Trent!” Then for the second time in the years he had known her she fell into a fit of weeping. When she was recovered and had taken a cup of strong tea she explained how it was she had tracked Kaufmann to his home. She had slipped away from Trent at the Grand Central when he was too much worried to notice it. Kaufmann walked the half dozen blocks to his rooms in the house occupied by a physician on Forty-eighth street, just west of Fifth avenue. Applying for work Mrs. Kinney was engaged instantly for two days a week. The need for respectable women was so great that no references were asked. She was thus free of the house and regarded without suspicion. She worked there the whole day but learned nothing from the cook and waitress of Mr. Kaufmann. He rented the whole of the second floor and had a fad for keeping it in order himself. It saved them trouble. The maids said, vaguely, he was in the importing business and very wealthy. It was while Kaufmann went down to sign for a registered letter that Mrs. Kinney slipped into the room. There was nothing in the way of papers or documents that she could see. Because he could not bear investigation, Anthony Trent telephoned to the Department of Justice as he had done in the case of Frederick Williams. He felt certain that Kaufmann was a highly placed official. But there was no newspaper mention of the raid. Trent was not to know that no news was allowed to leak out for the reason that matters of enormous importance were discovered. He was right in assuming Kaufmann to be a personage. The mangled body was buried in the Potters’ Field and those lesser men depending on the monetary support and counsel of Kaufmann were thrown into confusion. His superiors in Germany, when later they found the Allies in possession of certain secrets, assumed their agent to be interned. Altogether Mrs. Kinney deserved her country’s thanks. “And now shall we go back to Kennebago?” “Not yet,” he said smiling a little gravely. “Not yet. It may be I shall never see Kennebago again.” She looked at him startled. The affairs of the past week had been a great strain to her. “I’m going to enlist,” he said. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2