Chapter 2

I read them when I was young and innocent but now I know how
extremely fictional they are; written for the greater part, I'm
informed, by blameless women in boarding houses. I like reading the real
thing."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Reports of actual crimes as set forth in the newspapers.
Cross-examinations of witnesses and all that, summing up of the judges
and coroners' inquests. Was this Trent person really good?"

"You shall judge," said the American. "He wrote of crimes and criminals
from what such actual practitioners had told him. He was for a time a
police reporter on a big New York paper and had to hang around Mulberry
Street. After that he tried the magazines but as editors are so remote
as a rule from actual knowledge of the world's play and work, he didn't
make much money at it. Finally his pet editor--a man with some human
attributes--said in effect, 'I can't raise your rates; the publisher
won't stand for it. If I paid decent prices he couldn't buy champagne
and entertain his favorites.' This was in the era before prohibition.
The human editor went on giving advice and wound up by saying, 'Why
don't you do what your super-crook character does and relieve the
dishonest rich of their stolen bonds? Conway Parker gets away with it,
why shouldn't you?'"

"Of course he was rotting?" Private Smith asked.

"Yes," the American said, "He didn't really mean it but the thought
germs fell into the right sort of broth. Anthony Trent wasn't naturally
a crook but he hated having to live in a cheap boarding house and eat
badly cooked meals and play on a hard-mouthed, hired, upright piano.
Some ancestor had dowered him with a love of beautiful things, rugs,
pictures, pottery, bronzes, music and a rather secluded life. Also he
had dreams about being a great composer. He was a queer mixture. On the
whole rather unbalanced I suppose. His father died and left him almost
nothing. All he could do was newspaper work at first."

"You mean he actually followed the editor's advice?"

"Yes. He had certain natural gifts to aid him. He was a first rate
mimic. It's a sort of gift I suppose. He had gone in for amateur
theatricals at his college and done rather well. He pulled off his first
job successfully but the butler saw him and did not forget. That was the
trouble the butler remembered. It wasn't a big affair. It didn't make
any such stir as for example as when he took the Mount Aubyn Ruby."

"I read of that," Smith returned eagerly. "He knocked out a millionaire
surrounded with detectives and got away in an airplane."

"He got away but not in an airplane," replied Anthony Trent. "On the
whole the unknown aviator was rather useful to him but was absolutely
blameless. Then there was the case of the Apthorpe emerald. Did you hear
of that?"

"Haven't I told you," Smith returned impatiently, "that I read all about
things of that sort? How could I have missed that even though I was in
the trenches when it happened. It was the delight of my hospital life to
read about it in Reynolds Journal. It was said a woman murdered old
Apthorpe for it."

"She did," Trent admitted, "and she took the emerald but Anthony Trent
got it from her and fooled them all. His last big job before the United
States got into the war was getting the blue-white diamond that was
known as the Nizam's Diamond."

"A hundred carat stone," Smith said reverently. "By Jove, what a master!
As I never heard of him of course he was never caught. They are all
caught in the end, though. His day will come."

For a moment the thought that Anthony Trent's life was coming to an end
before many hours had passed took the narrator from his mood of triumph
into a state of depression. To have to give up everything and die in the
darkness. Exit Anthony Trent for all time! And as he thought of his
enemies the police toiling for the rich rewards that they would never
get for apprehending him his black mood passed and Smith heard him
chuckle.

"They all get caught in the end," Smith repeated, "the best of them. The
doctrine of averages is against them. Your Anthony Trent is one lone man
fighting against so many. He may have the luck with him so far but
there's only one end to it. They got Captain Despard and he was a
top-hole marauder. They got our estimable Charles Peace and they
electrocuted Regan in your own country only last month and he was
clever, God knows. I think I'd back your Trent man against any single
opponent, but the odds are too great. The pack will pull him down and
break him up some day."

Again Private Smith of the City of London regiment heard the man he had
rescued from danger to present him with death, laugh a curious
triumphant laugh. He had seen so much of war's terror that he supposed
the man was going mad. It would perhaps be a more merciful end.

"No," said the American. "Anthony Trent will never be discovered. He
will be the one great criminal who will escape to the confusion of the
detectives of New York and London. _I am Anthony Trent._"

CHAPTER THREE

_THE BEGINNING OF THE SEARCH_

"You?" cried Private Smith. "Ye Gods! And I haven't even a match left so
I can see you before we go. I die in better company than I know." Trent
could hear that he raised himself slowly and painfully to his feet. Then
he heard the soldier's heels click smartly together. "Ave Cæsar--" he
began. But the immortal speech of those gladiators being about to die
was not finished.

There broke on Trent's astonished gaze a flash of sunlight that made him
blink painfully. And the terrifying noise of high explosive hurt his
ears and that swift dreadful sucking of the air that followed such
explosions was about him again in its intensity. He had been dug out of
his tomb for what?

The doctors thought him a very bad case. Of course he was delirious. He
stuck to a ridiculous story that he was imprisoned in a tomb with one
William Smith, a private in the 78th Battalion of the City of London
Regiment and that H. E. had mysteriously disinterred him. H. E. did
perform marvels that were seemingly against known natural laws but
Private Trent was obviously suffering from shell shock.

When he was better and had been removed to a hospital far from the area
of fighting he still kept to his story. One of the doctors who liked him
explained that the delusion must be banished. He spoke very
convincingly. He explained by latest methods that the unreal becomes
real unless the patient gets a grip on himself. He said that Trent was
likely to go through life trying to find a non-existent friend and
ruining his prospects in the doing of it. "I'll admit," he said at the
end of his harangue, "that you choose your friend's name well."

"Why do you say that?" Trent asked.

"Because the muster roll of the 78th shows no fewer than twenty-seven
William Smiths and they're all of 'em dead. That battalion got into the
thick of every scrap that started."

Trent said no more but made investigations on his own behalf.
Unfortunately there was none to help him. The ambulance that picked him
up was shelled and he had been taken from its bloody interior the only
living soul of the crew and passengers. None lived who could tell him
what became of his companion, the man to whom he had revealed his
identity, the man who possessed his secret to the full.

When he was discharged from the service and was convalescing in
Bournemouth he satisfied himself that the unknown Smith had died. Again
luck was with Anthony Trent. The one man--with the exception of Sutton
whose lips he was sure were sealed--who could make a clear hundred
thousand dollars reward for his capture was removed from the chance of
doing it even as the knowledge was offered him. The words that he would
have spoken, "Hail Cæsar, I, being about to die, salute thee!" had come
true in that blinding flash that had brought Anthony Trent back to the
world.

But even with this last narrow escape to sober him Trent was not certain
whether the old excitement would call and send him out to pit himself
against society. He had no grievance against wealthy men as such. What
he had wanted of theirs he had taken. He was now well enough off to
indulge in the life, as a writer, he had wanted. He had taken his part
in the great war as a patriot should and was returning to his native
land decorated by two governments. Again and again as he sat at the
balcony of his room at the Royal Bath Hotel and looked over the bay to
the cliffs of Swanage he asked himself this question--was he through
with the old life or not? He could not answer. But he noticed that when
he boarded the giant Cunarder he looked about him with the old keenness,
the professional scrutiny, the eagerness of other days.

He tipped the head steward heavily and then consulted the passenger list
and elected to sit next to a Mrs. Colliver wife of a Troy millionaire.
She was a dull lady and one who lived to eat, but he had heard her
boasting to a friend on the boat train that her husband had purchased a
diamond tiara in Bond Street which would eclipse anything Troy had to
offer. Mrs. Colliver dreaded to think of the duty that would have to be
paid especially as during the war less collars were used than in normal
times.

It was with a feeling of content that Anthony Trent paced the deck as
the liner began her voyage home. Two years was a long time to be away
and he felt that a long lazy month in his Maine camp would be the
nearest thing to the perfect state that he could dream of when he heard,
distinctly, without a chance of being mistaken, the voice of Private
William Smith shouting a goodbye from the pier.

Trent had a curiously sensitive ear. He had never, for example, failed
to recognize a voice even distorted over telephone wires. William Smith
had one of those distinctive voices of the same timbre and inflection of
those of his caste but with a certain quality, that Trent could not now
stop to analyze, which stamped it as different.

All Trent's old caution returned to him. It was possible that the man
whom he had supposed dead had come to see the Cunarder off without
knowing Anthony Trent was aboard. But the passenger lists could be
inspected and even now the law might have been set in motion that would
take him handcuffed from the vessel at quarantine to be locked up in a
prison. He was worth a hundred thousand dollars to any informant and he
could not doubt that the so-called Smith had gone wrong because of the
lust for money to pay his extravagances. It was inevitably the reason in
men of the class of Smith and Despard.

He was obsessed with the determination to find out. He would track the
man he had known as Smith and find out without letting him be any the
wiser. A hundred ideas of disguise flashed across the quick-working
brain. He tried to tell himself that it was likely that the voice might
have proceeded from an utter stranger. But this was false comfort he
knew. It was Smith of the 78th City of London regiment who was on the
pier already growing inch by inch farther away.

The second officer tried to stop him and a passenger grasped him by the
arm as he climbed the rails but they tried vainly. He dropped as lightly
as he could and picked himself up a little dazed and looked around. He
could see a hundred faces peering down at him from the moving decks
overhead. He could see a crowd of people streaming down the pier to the
city. And among them was the man he sought.

"One moment, sir," said a policeman restraining him, "what's the meaning
of this?"

"Just come ashore," Trent smiled. The policeman loomed over him huge,
stolid, ominous. The man looked from Trent in evening dress and without
hat or overcoat, to the shadowy ship now on her thousand league voyage
and he shook his head. It was an irregular procedure, he told himself
and as such open to grave suspicion. But he was courteous. Trent was a
gentleman and no look of fear came to his face when the officer spoke.
The man remained close to Trent when he approached the few groups of
people still on the pier. To every man in the groups the stranger
contrived to ask a question. Of one he asked the time, of another the
best hotel in Liverpool.

"It may seem very strange," said Trent pleasantly to the perplexed
policeman, "but I did an unaccountable thing. I thought I saw a man who
was in the trenches with me in France during the war and saved my life
and I sprang over the side to find him and now he's gone."

The policeman waved a white gloved hand to the people who had already
left the landing stage.

"Your friend may be there, sir," he said.

"You don't want to detain me, then?" Trent cried.

"It's dark, sir," said the policeman, "and I could hardly be expected to
remember which way you went."

At the end of the short pier was a taxicab stand and a space where
private machines might park. Anthony Trent arrived in time to see a huge
limousine driven by a liveried chauffeur with a footman by his side
begin to climb the step grade to the street. As it passed him he could
swear he heard Smith's voice from within, saying, "It's the most rotten
luck that I should be a younger son and not get the chances Geoffrey
does."

Trent could not see the number plate of the big machine. He could note
only a coat of arms on the door surmounted by a coronet. He had no time
to ask if any of the dock laborers knew the occupants. He sprang into
the sole taxi that occupied the stand and commanded the driver to
overtake the larger car. So eager was the man to earn the double fare
that he was halted by a policeman outside the Atlantic Riverside
Station. The time taken up by explanations permitted the coronetted
limousine to escape.

In so big a city as Liverpool a car could be lost easily but the
sanguine taxi driver, certain at least of getting his fare, persisted in
driving all over the city and its suburbs until he landed his passenger
tired and disappointed at the Midland Hotel.

On the whole Anthony Trent had rarely spent such unprofitable hours. He
had paid a premium for his state room on a fast boat and was now
stranded in a strange city without baggage. And of course he was
worried. He had believed himself alone to have been rescued when the
high explosive had taken the roof from his tomb. Now it seemed probable
that the British soldier, Smith, had also made his escape.

Although it was quite possible Trent was following a stranger whose
voice was like that of Private Smith, he had yet to find that stranger
and make sure of it. Trent was not one to run away from danger.

As he sat in the easy chair before the window he told himself again and
again that it was probable the voice he identified with the unknown
Smith was like that of a thousand other men of his class. He had acted
stupidly in jumping from a ship's rails and risking his limbs. And how
much more unwisely had he acted in that black silence when he was led to
cast aside his habitual silence and talk freely to a stranger. In effect
he had put himself in the keeping of another man without receiving any
confidence in return. He blamed the wound, the shock and a thousand
physical causes for it but the fact was not to be banished by that.
Smith knew Anthony Trent as a master criminal while Anthony Trent only
knew that Smith has enlisted under another name because he had disgraced
his own. It might easily be that this unknown Smith was like a hundred
other "gentlemen rankers" who could only be accused of idleness and
instability. But Anthony Trent stirred uneasily when he recalled the
eagerness with which Smith spoke of some of those crimes Anthony Trent
had committed. Smith knew about them, admired the man who planned them.
Trent on thinking it over for the hundredth time believed Smith was
indeed a crook and as such dangerous to him.

Few men believe in intuition, guess work or "hunches" as do those who
work outside the law. Again and again Anthony Trent had found his
"hunches" were correct. Once or twice he had saved himself by implicitly
acting on them in apparent defiance of reason. At the end of many hours
during which he tried to tell himself he was mistaken and this voice
owned by someone else, he gave it up. He knew it was Smith.

To find out by what name the Smith of the dug-out went by in his own
country must be the first step. The second would be to shadow him,
observe his way of life and go through his papers. So far all he had to
go upon was a quick glance at an automobile of unknown make upon whose
panels a coat of arms was emblazoned surmounted by a crown. Had he
possessed a knowledge of heraldry he could have told at a glance whether
the coronet was that of a baron, viscount, earl, marquis or duke and so
narrowed down the search. And had he observed the coat of arms and motto
he could have made certain, for all armorial bearings are taxable and
registered.

To try to comb the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire for the occupants
of an unknown car would take time and might lead to police interest in
his activities.

Before he retired to his bed a courteous agent of the Cunard Company had
called upon him to inquire at what he was dissatisfied that he left the
ship so suddenly. To this agent he told the same story--the true
one--that he had told the policeman.

The purser was able to inform the group in the smoking room ere it
retired.

"I don't believe that for a moment," Colliver declared.

"Why not?" asked the Harvard professor, "don't you know that truth in
the mouth of an habitual liar is often a potent and confounding weapon?"

"Maybe," Colliver said dryly, "but I'm an honest man and I'd like to
know why you think that man Trent was an habitual liar."

"I don't know," the professor answered amiably. "I always think in terms
of crime on board ship."

"There's no need to on this ship," the purser said testily.

"I hope not," said the professor, "but coming back from the far East
last year on another line I made friends with a man much of the build of
Mr. Colliver here. I did not like him very much. He had only prejudices
and no opinions. A typical successful man of business I presume."

"Thank you," said Mr. Colliver finding one of his own neck adornments
growing tight.

"He was murdered," the theologian went on, "because he carried some
diamonds for his wife in a pocket. Some thieves found it out."

"What thieves?" Colliver demanded.

"It is one of the undiscovered murders on the high seas," the professor
said placidly.

"Mighty awkward for you," Colliver said, still angry.

"Fortunately I had an alibi," said the other, "I was violently ill of
_mal de mer_."

"Mighty convenient," Colliver commented.

Later he asked the purser's private opinion of the professor. Myers
Irving joined with Colliver in resenting the professor's attack on
business men.

"Ordinarily," Colliver said, "I don't like advertising men, but you're
different. They're like vultures after my account as a rule."

"You'd have to force your account on me," said Myers Irving seriously.
"I'm not an ordinary business or advertising man. Primarily I'm a
business builder. I leave nothing to underlings. I direct everything
personally. I take few accounts. If my clients don't make good on their
end of it I give them up. I make money for my clients. I have no other
ambition. I believe in advertising. It might be that fellow Trent jumped
ashore for some publicity stunt. Supposing he said he did it because he
forgot to order some special dish at the Adelphi or Midland? Such a dish
would get more publicity than you could shake a stick at. But I'm not
here to talk shop."

Colliver watched the trim advertising man saunter off.

"A bright boy," commented the Troy magnate, "maybe he'll be surprised
before this trip is over. Maybe he'll have to talk shop."

Captain Sutton listened to the purser's explanation as though they were
entirely reasonable. But all the time he said to himself, "why need he
have been afraid of me?"

* * * * *

Anthony Trent bought himself a suit of clothes in the city and set out
for London on the ten o'clock train. An Army List showed him the names
of the officers of the City of London Regiment. He decided to call upon
the adjutant, a Captain Edgell. It took him little time to find out that
Edgell had resumed his former occupation of stock broker and was living
with his family at Banstead in Surrey.

Edgell was a golfer of distinction and before the war had been a scratch
man at the club on the Downs. Five years absence had sent his handicap
up a bit but he was engaged in pulling it down when a golfing stranger
from the United States giving the name of Trent who had the club's
privileges for the day asked him if he could introduce him to a member
for a round of golf. It so happened that most of the men waiting to play
were ruddy faced gentlemen with handicaps of from twelve up to
twenty-four. They did not excite Edgell.

"Glad to," he said heartily. He had been brigaded with Americans and
liked them. "Do you play a strong game?"

"I have a two handicap at Wykasol," Trent said.

"Good business," cried Edgell, "we'll play together."

They played. They became intimate during the game and Edgell learned
with regret that Trent was not one of the many American business men
engaged in their work in London. Trent beat the stockbroker on the
twenty-third hole.

"If I could only putt like that," said Edgell, "I'd have a chance for
the open championship."

"I wish I could drive a ball the length you do," Trent said not to be
outdone.

"Of course you'll have dinner with us," the stockbroker said. "We don't
dress for it any more since the war so you've no excuse. I learned to
make cocktails from some of your fellows in France so you ought to feel
at home."

"As home used to be," Trent corrected. "I'd love to come if I'm not
putting you out."

Edgell's home was a half-timbered house standing in an acre of lawn and
flower garden. It was thoroughly comfortable. There seemed to be a
number of children but they did not obtrude. Trent could see them
playing in different parts of the garden, the little ones with their
nurse and the elder playing clock golf on a perfect green in front of
the house. Always the quiet secure atmosphere of a home such as this
brought to Anthony Trent a vision of what he had lost or rather of what
he could never obtain.

Little six-year old Marjorie Edgell liked Trent on sight and liking him
announced it openly. She told him what a great man her father was and
how he had medals and things. Finally she asked the visitor whether he
would not like to have medals. It was the opportunity for which Trent
had been looking. Ordinarily averse to talking of himself, he wanted to
get on to the subject of the war with the late adjutant of the
seventy-eighth.

"I have," he told little Marjorie.

"Daddy," she shrieked in excitement, "Mr. Trent has medals too."

"So you were in the big thing?" Edgell asked. "Honestly wouldn't you
rather play golf? I can get all the excitement I want on the Stock
Exchange to last me the rest of my life. I enlisted in a city regiment
as a private and I left it as adjutant after four years and I'm all for
the piping ways of peace. My battalion was the 78th and we always had
the luck with us. Whenever we got anywhere something started."

"The seventy-eighth battalion," Trent commented, "I had a pal in your
battalion, a pal who saved my life. I'm going to look him up next week.
Curious that I should be talking to his adjutant. William Smith was his
name. I wonder if you knew him?"

"I wonder if you know how many William Smiths and John Smiths are lying
in France and Flanders with little wooden crosses over them?"

"This one came through all right," Trent said.

"At least ten William Smiths came through," Edgell asserted. "I think I
remember them all. Which was your man? Describe him."

Trent lighted his cigarette very deliberately. To be asked to describe a
man he had claimed as a pal and yet had never seen face to face was not
easy.

"I think you would recognize my William Smith," Trent answered, "if I
told you he was not really William Smith at all but a man who had
assumed that name as a disguise."

"I understand," Edgell exclaimed, "a slight blond man very erect and
rather supercilious with what the other men called a lah-de-dah voice. I
remember him well. I had him up before me for punishment many times.
Little infractions of discipline which he constantly committed. Used to
rile me by his superior airs. Quite a mysterious person. Saved your life
did he? Well, he had all the pluck a man need have."

"I want to thank him for it," Trent said, "but I've only known him as
William Smith. The War Office people tell me he was demobilized three
months back and they have no address. If you'll tell me, in confidence,
his real name I can find him out."

"But my dear chap," said Captain Edgell, "I don't know it. None of us
knew it. My sergeant-major swore he'd been a regular and an officer but
that's mere conjecture. He _was_ a regular now I come to think of it and
sent to us when his own regiment was wiped out in the Autumn of 1914."

"Who would be able to tell me?" Trent asked eagerly.

"The colonel knew," Edgell declared, "I sent him up to the old man for
punishment once. The colonel looked at him as if he could not believe
his eyes. 'You are down here as William Smith,' he said."

"'That is my name, sir,' said Smith."

"Then the colonel knew him?" Trent asked.

"Undoubtedly. I was told to leave them alone. I should like to have
asked Colonel Langley but he is one of those men it's hard to approach.
Doesn't mean to be standoffish but gives that impression. One of those
very tall men who seem to be looking through you and taking no interest
whatsoever in the proceeding."

"I want to find out," Trent said, "could you give me a letter of
introduction?"

"Glad to," Edgell replied, "but he's like that native song bird of
yours, the clam. He is a silent fighter. The men respected him and went
to their deaths for him but they would have felt it disrespectful to
love him. He lives at a place called Dereham Old Hall in Norfolk. A
great county swell with magnificent shooting. One of those places
royalty stays every year for a week at the partridges. Always thought
it a funny thing he was given the command of a lot of cockneys
considering he was Sandhurst and Tenth Hussars till he married and
chucked the service, but he made good as you fellows say."

While Captain Edgell was writing the letter Trent had leisure to reflect
that the identity of Private William Smith might remain permanently
veiled in obscurity if Colonel Langley refused to talk. If the colonel
was not to be lured to disclose what Trent needed to know, the American
would be left in a very unpleasant position. Until he knew whether his
"hunch" was right or wrong he could never again sleep in peace with the
name Anthony Trent as his own. He was in danger every minute. Smith
might have tracked him to the liner to have him arrested in America.
That he had left the boat might easily be known. Therefore in order to
win twenty thousand sovereigns English money, or a half million francs
in the coinage of the country where the two had spent weary months,
Smith had only to start the hue and cry in England. The ports would be
watched. In the end they would get him.

There was no escape over the borders to Mexico or dash to safety over
the Canadian frontier as he had planned to do under similar conditions
of peril in his own country.