Kitabı oku: «Anthony Trent, Master Criminal», sayfa 17
CHAPTER XXX
“PRIVATE TRENT”
Before Trent went to enlist, he had an understanding with Mrs. Kinney as to the Kennebago camp. She was to live there and keep the house and gardens in good order until he returned. He had none of those premonitions of disaster which some who go to war have in abundance. Now that the danger of his arrest was gone and Kaufmann could never again entrap him he felt cheerful and lighthearted.
“I shall come back,” he told the old woman, “I feel it in my bones. But if not there will be enough for you to live on. I am seeing my lawyer about it this morning.”
On the way to the recruiting station, Trent met Weems.
“What branch are you going in?” he asked upon learning of Trent’s plans.
“Where I’m most needed,” Trent said cheerfully. “Infantry I guess.”
“You can get a commission right away,” Weems cried, a sudden thought striking him. “It was in last night’s papers. It said that men holding the B.S. degree were wanted and would be commissioned right off the reel. You’re a B.S. You wait a bit. Be an officer instead of an enlisted man. I bet the food’s better.”
He was a little piqued that Anthony Trent betrayed so little pleasure at the news. It so happened that Trent had given a deal of thought to this very thing. And his decision was to allow the chance of a commission to go. There was a strain of quixotism about him and a certain fineness of feeling which went to make this decision final. He loved his country in the quiet intense manner which does not show itself in the waving of flags. To outward appearances and to the unjudging mind, Weems would seem the more loyal of the two. Weems wore a flag in his buttonhole and shouted loudly his protestations and yet had made no sacrifice. Trent was to offer his life quietly, untheatrically. And he wanted to wear no officer’s uniform in case his arrest or discovery would bring reproach upon it. In his mind he could see headlines in the paper announcing that an officer of the United States Army was a notorious – he shuddered at the word – thief. And again, there was no certainty in his mind that he would give up his mode of life. In the beginning he had set out to obtain enough money to live in comfort. That, long ago, had been achieved. Then the jewels to adorn his lamp occupied his mind and now the game was in his blood. He wanted his camp for recreation but it would not satisfy wholly. When the war was over there would be Europe’s fertile fields to work upon.
There were many things to aid him in his feeling that the turning over of a new leaf would be useless. Nothing could ever undo what he had done. Try as he might he would never face the world an honest man. He would go to war. He would be a good soldier.
It was in the infantry that they needed men and Camp Dix received him with others. So insignificant a thing was one soldier that he presently felt a sense of security that had been denied him for years.
The experiences he went through in Camp were common to all. They were easier to him than most because of his perfection of physical condition. On the whole it was interesting work but he was glad when he marched along the piers of the Army Transport Service, where formerly German lines had docked, and boarded the Leviathan. Private Trent was going “over there.”
It was common knowledge that the regiments would not yet be sent to France. What they had learned at Camp Dix would be supplemented by a post-graduate course in England.
Curiously enough Trent found himself on the Sussex Downs, those rolling hills of chalk covered with short springy aromatic grasses and flowers. Here were a hundred sights and sounds that stirred his blood. Five generations of Trents had been born in America since that adventurous younger son had set out for the Western world. The present Anthony was coming back to the ancient home of his family under the most favorable circumstances. He was coming back with his mind purged of ancient enmities fostered so long by Britain’s foes to further alien causes; coming back to a country knit to his own by bonds that would not easily be broken.
It was curious that he should find himself here on the high downs because it was from this county of Sussex that the Trents sprang. Not far from Lewes was an old house, set among elms, which had been theirs for three hundred years. When he was last in England he had made a pilgrimage to it only to find its owner salmon fishing in Norway. The housekeeper had shown him over it, a big rambling house full of odd corridors and unexpected steps and he had never failed to think of it with pride. On that visit he had been disappointed to find the village church shut; the sexton was at his midday dinner.
Trent had been under canvas only a few days when he obtained leave for a few hours and set out to the church. He counted three Anthony Trents whose deeds were told on mural tablets. One had been an admiral; one a bishop and the third a colonel of Dragoons at Waterloo. He sauntered by the old house and looked at it enviously. “If I bought that,” he thought, “I would settle down to the ways of honest men.”
He shrugged his shoulders. There were many things yet to be done. It was only since he had been in England and seen her wounded that he realized what none can until it is witnessed, the certainty that there must be much suffering before the end is achieved.
The men in his company were not especially congenial. They were friendly enough but their interests were narrow. Trent was glad when the training period was over and he embarked in the troop train for Dover en route to the Western front. He made a good soldier. More than one of his mates said he would wear the chevrons before many weeks but he was anxious for no such distinction.
At the time his regiment arrived in France the American troops were at grips with the enemy. It was the first time that they held as a unit part of the line. The Germans, already making their retreat, left in the rear nests of machine gunners to hamper the pursuers. To clear these nests of hornets, to search abandoned cellars and buildings where men or bombs might be lying in wait was a task far more deadly than participation in a battle. Only iron-nerved men, strong to act and quick to think, were needed. There was a day when volunteers were asked for. Anthony Trent was the first man to offer himself. Under a lieutenant this band of brave men went about its dangerous task. The casualties were many and among them the officer.
He had made such an impression on his men and they had gained such favorable mention for gallant conduct that there was a fear lest the new officer might be of less vigorous and dashing nature. It was work, this nest clearing danger, that Trent liked enormously. He had come to know what traps the Hun was likely to set, the tempting cigar-box, the field glasses, the fountain-pen the touching of which meant maiming at the least. And against some of these trapped men Trent revived his old football tackle and brought them startled to the ground. It was the most stirring game of his life.
But one look at the new officer changed his mood. He looked at his lieutenant and his lieutenant looked at him. And the officer licked his lips hungrily. It was Devlin whom he had laughed at in San Francisco. Instinctively the men who observed this meeting sensed some pre-war hatred and speculated on its origin. Recollecting himself Trent saluted.
“So I’ve got a thief in my company,” Devlin sneered. “I’ll have to watch you pretty close. Looting’s forbidden.”
It was plain to the men who watched Devlin’s subsequent plan of action that he was trying to goad the enlisted man into striking him. In France the discipline of the American army was taking on the sterner character of that which distinguished the Allies.
No task had ever been so difficult for Anthony Trent as this continual curb he was compelled to put upon his tongue. Devlin had always disliked him. He was maddened at the thought that Trent had taken the Mount Aubyn ruby from under his nose. It was because of this, Dangerfield had discharged him from a lucrative position. And in the case of the Takowaja emerald it was Anthony Trent who had laughed at him. Many an hour had Devlin spent trying to weave the rope that would hang him. And in these endeavors he had gathered many odds and ends of information over which he chuckled with joy.
But first of all he wanted to break his enemy. There was no opportunity of which he did not take advantage. Ordinarily his superior officers would have witnessed this policy and reprimanded him; but conditions were such that their special duties kept Devlin and his men apart from their comrades. Devlin was a good officer and credit was given him for much that Trent deserved.
It chanced one night that while they waited for a little wood to be cleared of gas, Devlin and Trent sat within a few feet of one another. It was an opportunity Devlin was quick to seize.
“Thought you’d fooled me in ’Frisco, didn’t you?”
Trent lighted a cigarette with exasperating slowness.
“I did fool you,” he asserted calmly. “It is never hard to fool a man with your mental equipment.”
“Huh,” Devlin grunted, “you’ve got the criminal’s low cunning, I’ll admit that, Mr. Maltby of Chicago.”
He made a labored pretence of hunting for his cigarette case.
“Gone!” he said sneering; “some one’s lifted it but I guess you know where it is. Oh no, I forgot. You weren’t a dip, you were a second story man. Excuse me.”
He kept this heavy and malicious humor going until Trent’s imperturbability annoyed him.
“What a change!” he commented presently. “Me the officer and you the enlisted man who’s got to do as I say. You with your fast auto and your golf and society ways and me who used to be a cop.”
Winning no retort from his victim he leaned forward and pushed Trent roughly. He started back at the white wrath which transfigured the other’s face.
“Look here, Devlin,” Trent cried savagely, “you want me to hit you so you can prefer charges against me for striking an officer and have me disciplined. Listen to this: if you put your filthy hand on me again I won’t hit you, I’ll kill you.”
Towering and threatening he stood over the other. Devlin, who knew men and the ways of violence, looked into Trent’s face and recognized it was no idle threat he heard.
“That would be a hell of a fine trick,” he said, a little unsteadily, “to empty your gun in my back.”
“You know I wouldn’t do it that way,” Trent retorted. “Why should I let you off so easily as that?”
“Easily?” Devlin repeated.
“When I get ready,” Trent said grimly, “I shall want you to realize what’s coming to you.”
“Is that a threat?” Devlin demanded.
Trent nodded his head.
“It’s a threat.”
Devlin thought for a moment.
“I’ll fix you,” he said.
“How?” Trent inquired. “You’ve tried every way there is to have me killed. If there’s a doubtful place where some boches may be hiding with bombs whom do you send to find out? You send Private Trent. I’m not kicking. I volunteered for the job. I came out to do what I could. My one disappointment is that my officer is not also a gentleman.”
Devlin’s face was now better humored.
“I’ll fix you,” he said again, “I’ll see Pershing pins a medal on you all right.”
Trent wondered what he meant. And he wondered why for a day or two Devlin goaded him no more. Instead he looked at him as one who knew another was marked down for death and disgrace. It was inevitable that Anthony Trent could never know how near to discovery he was. The odds are against the best breakers of law. The history of crime told him that the cleverest had been captured by some trifling piece of carelessness. Had Devlin some such clue, he wondered?
CHAPTER XXXI
DEVLIN’S REVENGE
THERE came a night when Devlin’s men were called upon to clean out part of a forest from which many snipers had been firing, and where machine guns and their crews were known to be. It was work for picked men only and Trent admitted Devlin made a courageous leader.
The Americans met unexpectedly strong opposition. It was only when half their little company was lost that they were ordered to retreat. The way was made difficult with barbed wire and shell splintered trees. It was one of a hundred similar sorties taking place all along the Allied lines hardly worthy of mention in the press.
Trent, when he had gained a clearing in the wood, saw Devlin go down like an ox from the clubbed rifle in a Prussian hand. Trent had put a shot through the man’s head almost before Devlin’s body fell to the soft earth. He had an excellent chance of escape alone but he could not leave the American officer who was his enemy to bleed to death among his country’s foes. He was almost spent when he reached his own lines and the Red Cross relieved him of his inert burden. They told him Devlin still lived.
Three days later Trent was called to the hospital in which his officer lay white and bandaged. Although Devlin’s voice was weak it did not lack the note of enmity which ever distinguished it when its owner spoke to Anthony Trent.
“What did you do it for?” Devlin demanded.
“Do what?”
“Bring me in after that boche laid me out?”
“Only one reason,” Trent informed him. “Alive, you have a certain use to your country. Dead, you would have none.”
“That’s a lie,” Devlin snarled, “I’ve figured it out lying in this damned cot. You saw I wasn’t badly hurt and you knew some of the boys would fetch me in later. You thought you’d do a hero stunt and get a decoration and you reckoned I’d be grateful and let up on you. That was clever but not clever enough for me. I see through it. You’ve got away with out-guessing the other feller so far but I’m one jump ahead of you in this.” He paused for breath, “I’ve got you fixed, Mister Anthony Trent, and don’t you forget it. You think I’m bluffing I suppose.”
“I think you’re exciting yourself unduly,” Trent said quietly. “Take it up when you are well.”
“You’re afraid to hear what I know,” Devlin sneered. “You’ve got to hear it sometime, so why not now?”
Trent spoke as one does to a child or a querulous invalid.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded.
“Never heard of any one named Austin, did you?”
“It’s not an unusual name,” Trent admitted. But he was no longer uninterested. Conington Warren’s butler was so called. And this Austin had met him face to face on the stairway of his master’s house on the night that he had taken Conington Warren’s loose cash and jewels.
“He’s out here,” Devlin said and looked hard at Trent to see what effect the news would have.
“You forget I don’t know whom,” Trent reminded him. “What Austin?”
“You know,” Devlin snapped, “the Warren butler. I was on that case and he recognized me not a week ago and asked me who you were. He’s seen you, too. We put two and two together and it spells the pen for you. He was English and although he was over age the British are polite that way. If he said he was forty-one they said they guessed he was forty-one. I went to see him in a hospital before he ‘went west’ and he told me all about it.”
Anthony Trent could not restrain a sigh of relief. Austin was dead.
“That don’t help you any,” Devlin cried. “Don’t you wish you’d left me in the woods now? That was your opportunity. Why didn’t you take it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Trent answered. “For one thing you dislike me too much to see anything but bad in what I do. That’s your weakness. That’s why you have always failed.”
“Well, I haven’t failed this time,” Devlin taunted him. “I’ve laid information against you where it’s going to do most good.”
He hoped to see the man he hated exhibit fear, plead for mercy or beg for a respite. He had rehearsed this expected scene during the night watches. Instead he saw the hawk-like face inscrutable as ever.
“I’ve told the adjutant what I know and what Austin said and he’s bound to make an investigation. That means you’ll be sent home for trial and I guess you know what that means. I’m going to be invalided home and I’ll put in my leave working up the case against you. They ought to give you a stretch of anything from fifteen to twenty years. I guess that’ll hold you, Mister Anthony Trent.”
The other man made no answer. He thought instead of what such a prison term would do for him. He had seen the gradual debasement of men of even a high type during the long years of internment. Men who had gone through prison gates with the same instincts of refinement as he possessed to come out coarsened, different, never again to be the men they were. He would sidle through the gaping doors a furtive thing with cunning crafty eyes whose very walk stamped him a convict. How could so long a term of years spent among professional criminals fail to besmirch him?
He took a long breath.
“I’m not there yet,” he said. “It’s a long way to an American jail and a good bit can happen in three thousand miles.”
He was turned from these dismal channels of thought by a hospital orderly who summoned him to the adjutant’s quarters.
In civil life this officer had been a well known lawyer who had abandoned a large practice to take upon himself the over work and worries that always hurl themselves at an adjutant.
He had heard of the rescue of Lieutenant Devlin by a man of his company and was pleased to learn that it was an alumnus of his old college who had been recommended for a decoration on that account. He looked at Trent a moment in silence.
“When I last saw you,” he said, “you won the game for us against Harvard.” He sighed, “I never thought to see you in a case of this sort.”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” Trent answered him.
“For some reason or another,” the adjutant informed him, “Lieutenant Devlin has preferred charges against you which had better been left until this war is over in my opinion as a soldier.”
“I am still in the dark,” Trent reminded him.
Captain Sutton looked over some papers.
“You are charged,” he said, “with being a very remarkable and much sought after criminal. Devlin asserts you purloined a ruby owned by Mr. Dangerfield worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, and an emerald worth almost as much.”
“What a curious delusion,” Trent commented with calmness.
“Delusion?” retorted the adjutant.
“What else could it be?” the other inquired.
“It might be the truth,” the officer said drily.
“Does he offer proofs?”
“More I’m afraid than you’ll care to read,” Captain Sutton told him. “You understand, I suppose, that there are certain regulations which govern us in a case like this. I should like to dismiss it as something entirely irrelevant to military duties. You were a damned good football player, Trent, and they tell me you’re just as good a soldier, but an officer has preferred charges against you and they must be given attention. Sit down there for a few minutes.”
Devlin, feeling the hour of triumph approaching, lay back in his bed gloating. The hatred that he bore Anthony Trent was legitimate enough in its way. By some accident or another Devlin was enlisted on the side of the law and his opponent against it. One was the hunter; the other the hunted. And the hunter was soon to witness the disgrace of the man who had laughed at him, beaten him, cheated him of a coveted position. Naturally of a brave and pugnacious disposition, Devlin saw no lack of chivalry in hounding a man over whom he had military authority. If Trent had been his friend he would have fought for him. But since he was his foe he must taste the bitterness of the vanquished.
So engrossed was he over his pleasurable thoughts that he did not see the distress which came over the face of the nurse who took his temperature and recorded his pulse beat. Nor did he see the hastily summoned physician reading the recently marked chart over the bed. Instead he was filled with a strange and satisfying exaltation of spirit. Catches of old forgotten songs came back to him. He felt himself growing stronger. He was Devlin the superman, the captor of Anthony Trent who had beaten the best of them. It was almost with irritation that he opened his eyes to speak with the doctor, a middle-aged, gray man with kindly eyes.
“Lieutenant,” the doctor said gently, “things aren’t going as well with you as we hoped. You should not have exhausted yourself talking. It should not have been allowed.”
Devlin saw the doctor put his hand under the coverlet; then he felt a prick in his arm. Dully he knew that it was the sting of a hypodermic. Then he saw coming toward him a priest of his race and faith and knew he came in that dread hour to administer the last rites of the church.
“Doc,” he gasped, “am I going?”
It was no moment to utter lying comfort.
“I’m afraid so.”
Then he saw an orderly bringing the screen that was placed about the beds of those about to die.
When Captain Sutton and Anthony Trent came into the ward the priest had finished his solemn work and was gone to console another dying man and the physicians to make one of those quick operations unthinkable in the leisurely days of peace.
Trent had no knowledge of what had taken place during his absence. He saw that his enemy was more exhausted. And as he looked he noticed that the eyes of Devlin lacked something of their hate. But it was no time for speculation. Trent saw in the sick man only his nemesis, the instrument which fate was using to rob him of his liberty. He was not to know that here was a man so close to death that hate seemed idle and vengeance a burden.
“Lieutenant,” Captain Sutton began, “I have here a copy of your statements and the evidence given by Sergeant Austin of the British army. I will read it to you. Then I shall need witnesses to your signature.”
“Let me see it,” Devlin commanded and drew the typewritten sheets to him. Then, with what strength was left him, he tore the document across and across again.
Captain Sutton looked at him in amazement.
“What did you do that for?” he asked.
But Devlin paid no heed to him. He gazed into the face of Anthony Trent, the man he had hated.
“I made a mistake,” said Devlin faintly. “This isn’t the man.”
And with this splendid and generous lie upon his lips he came to his life’s end.
