Wyndham Martyn

“ Daphne. I feel that there is nothing in life for me but the memory of you. I want more than anything else to do something for you to prove my love. I have nothing in all life to lose. I have no relations, no friends to speak of. My life has been made up of," he hesitated, "of adventures where I pitted myself against the world and won."
She thought of that night in Dereham. Was that one of his adventures? Certainly he had given her the impression of great strength and resolution. Of all the men she met Rudolph Castoon and Anthony Trent most radiated this uncommon quality. ”

“ When Alice had married a man twenty-four years her senior there had been prophecies that it would not last long. But the two Harringtons had confounded such dismal predictions and lived—to their own vast amusement—to be held up as exemplars of matrimonial felicity in a set where such a state was not too frequent.
His perambulations were interrupted by the entrance of Lambart, a butler with a genius for his service, who bore on a silver tray a siphon of seltzer water, a decanter of Scotch whiskey and a pint bottle of fine champagne. ”

“ Call him. You have only to say, ‘Captain Monmouth, this woman whom you love is a notorious criminal. All Europe knows her as the Countess. The money that she wants to build her house of love with is stolen money. She will assuredly disgrace your name as she has that of the great family from which she sprang.’”
She looked supplicatingly at Anthony Trent. “You have only to tell him that and there is no happiness left for me in all the world.” ”

“ She had no fear of the man who ruled his people as an autocrat. It is not in the nature of such women as Pauline to eliminate a certain feeling of contempt for the power of men whom they can sway by whim and artifice. Michæl, Count Temesvar, was terrible to such as he hated, and a political force of sinister strength, but to the green eyed woman who looked at him mockingly he was one of the weak and pliable pawns on life's board.
"Sit down," he said suavely. There was no sudden look of affection as he gazed at her. He spoke, she reflected, very much as he had done to Anthony Trent. ”

“ There were a dozen curious things Trent looked at, things hidden from all eyes but his, which aroused exciting memories of a career he fully believed had drawn to a close. He doubted if ever a man in all the history of crime had taken what he had taken and was yet personally unknown. Some day, if possible, he might be able to learn from the police what mental estimate they had formed of him. He must loom large in their eyes. They must invest him with a skill and courage that would be flattering indeed were he to learn of it. ”

“ Monty had in that careless phrase, “If ever I kill a man,” reminded himself vividly of the dangers that he felt beset him and his friend Steven Denby. He had been trying to forget it and now it was with him to stay. And another and a dreadful thought occurred. Would Denby take those accursed pearls with him to the Harrington mansion on Long Island? It was so disquieting that he rose abruptly and went into a secluded corner of the upper smoking-room and called for a cigar and a pony of brandy. ”

“ Pauline was certainly a splendidly athletic woman. She held herself magnificently and was at her best this morning but merely to be with her bored the pseudo-chauffeur who had thoughts only for Daphne. Daphne could have given her two strokes a hole and a beating, he reflected. Gloom seized on him as he wondered if ever again he would see her. He was in peril in Castle Radna even as an honest worker. Peter Sissek had sworn to pay him for the beating. Half of Trent's energies were consumed in going over his car to make sure the bolts and nuts were tight and had not been loosened maliciously. ”

“ Nora admitted frankly. “If he’d give me a chance I’d fall for him in a minute, but attractive young men never bother about me. The best I can draw is—Monty! I’m beginning to dislike the whole sex.”
“Theoretically you are quite right, my dear,” said the maturer Alice; “men are awful things—God bless ’em—but practically, well, some day you’ll explode like a bottle of champagne and bubble all over some man.”
“Speaking of champagne,” Nora said after a disbelieving gesture at the prophecy, “I wish I had another of Michael’s purple drinks. He’s a genius.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ And I used to think that a man who had not been worthy of a woman should be given a chance to rebuild his life if he really loved her." He shook his head. "It isn't the right idea. Sentimental nonsense the world calls it. The wedding gift a man offers his bride is his past." He shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't qualify."
Anthony Trent looked at the rough wall and saw only those dancing days of happiness and love in another castle. And instead of Pauline with her world weary face, her knowledge of every art to hold men, he saw his slim and lovely Daphne. ”

“ Monty Vaughan was an American who knew his Paris in all months but those two which are sacred to foreign travelers, and it irritated him one blazing afternoon in late July to be persistently mistaken for a tourist and offered silly useless toys and plans of the Louvre. The camelots, those shrewd itinerant merchants of the Boulevards, pestered him continually. These excellent judges of human nature saw in him one who lacked the necessary harshness to drive them away and made capital of his good nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The count sneered.
"You," he cried, "Who are you? What have you done that men should fear you? For a moment you have a little luck, the little luck that will bring you blindly to greater danger."
"I'm strictly incognito," Trent answered. "Once I was unwise enough to answer such a challenge, but you may believe me that I, too, have a name. Now count, it won't help you a bit to put up a fight. It will save you trouble if you'll back up against that tree and let me tie you up." ”

“ It was, as Taylor told her, a question of deciding between two people. She could help, indirectly, to convict a clever smuggler, or she could send her weak, dependent, innocent eighteen-year-old sister to jail. And she had said to Taylor: “I have no choice.”
Denby looked at her a little puzzled. In Paris, a year ago, she had seemed a sweet, natural girl, armed with a certain dignity that would not permit men to become too friendly on short acquaintance. And here it seemed that she was almost trying to flirt with him in a wholly different way. ”

“ It explained very clearly why the Jerome Dangerfields were going to Sunset Park. The collective value of the jewels appealed particularly to Trent. He wondered if the Mount Aubyn ruby would shine out on that festal night. And if so how would it be guarded? It would be less difficult to disguise the detectives in fancy costume than in evening dress. Of course the owner of such a world-famous gem might wear an imitation as the Baroness von Eckstein had done. But if Clarke had painted her aright this was an occasion when an ambitious woman would be willing to take risks. ”

“ No more golf, no more hunting and fishing trips, and of course no more of those taut-nerved nights when he, a single human being, pitted his strength and intelligence against the forces of organized society—and won. There was small consolation in thinking that now, at all events, Anthony Trent, master criminal would not be caught. He would go down in police history as the most mysterious of those criminals who have set the detectives by the heels. ”

“ All those high resolves of his had been brought into being by a woman who must have been laughing at him all the while, who must have congratulated herself that her lies had touched a man’s heart and left fifty thousand dollars for her.
It was a bitter and harder Anthony Trent that came to the police court; a man who was now almost as ashamed at his determination of last night to abandon his career as he was now anxious to pursue it. ”

“ Lambart had, previously to his importation, valeted the late lamented Marquis of St. Mervyn, an eccentric peer who had broken his noble neck in a steeplechase. Like most English house-servants he was profoundly conservative; and after two positions which he had left because his employers treated him almost as an equal, he had come to the Harringtons and taken a warm but perfectly respectful liking to his millionaire employer. Lambart was a remarkably useful person and it was his proud boast that none had ever beheld him slumbering. ”

“ Few were more skilled than the master criminal in the reading of those signs by which men reveal for a second or so the depths of their natures.
Anthony Trent had not jumped from the rails of the big ship because he had seen Sutton. He had no idea his old adjutant was on board. He had not jumped ashore because of any person on the liner. He took his reckless leap because among those who waited on the pier he heard the voice of the one man he feared, the man he had been trying to find since that day in France when death seemed at last to have claimed him. ”

“ Lund conjured up a vision of such a restaurant peopled by such a festive crowd. He felt in that moment that an early manhood spent in Somerville had perhaps robbed him of a chance to live.
“They all get caught sooner or later,” asserted the little man in the morris chair.
“Because they get careless or because they trust another. If you want to be a successful crook, Mr. Lund, you’ll have to map out your plan of life as carefully as an athlete trains for a specific event. Now if you went in for crime you’d have to examine your weaknesses.” ”

“ Michael cried, “I’ll play pool or auction or poker, I’ll sit or talk or sing, but I’m hanged if I hesitate and get lost, or maxixe!”
Alice shook her head mournfully. “Ah, Michael,” she said, “if you were only as light-footed as you are light-headed, what a partner you’d make. We are going to dance anyway.”
Ethel hesitated at the doorway. “Aren’t you dancing or playing pool, Mr. Denby?”
“In just a moment,” he said. “First I have a word to say to Monty.”
“I understand,” she returned. “Man’s god—business! Men use that excuse over the very littlest things sometimes.” ”

“ Trent said not daring to put the fervor in his voice that he felt. There was almost an uncanny feeling in talking with this new Arthur Grenvil. As a judge of men, and as a man who had met a great number of criminals and could estimate them accurately, Trent had known even in the darkness of the dug-out that Private William Smith was bad.
Despite the absence of coarseness from the speech of the unseen man Trent had felt that he was evil and dangerous, a man to watch carefully. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But what Denby had carelessly termed “pearl trouble” was quite sufficient for the less experienced man. He had a vivid imagination, more vivid now than at any period of his career. Paris was full of Apaches, he knew, and not all spent their days lying in the sun outside the barriers. Supposing one sprang from behind a tree and fell upon Denby and seized the precious package whose outline was discernible through the breast pocket of his coat. Monty suddenly took upon himself the rôle of an adviser. ”

“ Finally Peter Sissek stumbled over it. And as he stooped to retrieve it, Alfred Anthony swung at him. For the second time Peter had taken the count. To hit a defenceless, unsuspecting man was not a thing to give Trent any pleasure, but it was not a moment in which to hesitate. With Peter's livery cap and duster on, Trent took the bundle on his shoulder and carried it at such an angle that in case of scrutiny his face would be shielded from gaze. ”

“ Trent told him. “Surely there is some one more your strength who would make a better match of it?”
“Huh!” grunted the other, “think I don’t play well enough, eh?”
“I know it,” said Trent composedly.
Dangerfield regarded him sourly.
“You’re not overburdened with modesty, young man.”
“I hope not,” the other retorted, “nothing handicaps a man more in life. I happen to know golf, though, and my experience is that if I play with a much inferior player I get careless and that’s bad for my game. I’m perfectly frank about it. You know next to nothing about the game. ”

“ Steven Denby asked curiously. It was difficult to suppose that a man of his friend’s wealth and standing would experience much trouble in offering heart and fortune.
“I haven’t asked yet,” Monty admitted. “I’ve been on the verge of it hundreds of times, but she always laughs as I’m coming around to it, and someone comes in or something happens and I’ve never done it.” He sighed with the deprecating manner of the devout lover. “If you’d only seen her, Steve, you’d see what mighty little chance I stood. I feel it’s a bit of impertinence to ask a girl like that to marry me.” ”

“ He called to mind a phrase that Miss Barham had said about Castoon at this very table. She had said there was nothing financially shady about him which might prevent marriage between him and Daphne. No matter how much Anthony Trent sought to deceive himself about his way of crime and comfort himself with the reflection he never despoiled the poor or worthy but inevitably set himself against the rich and undeserving, he knew he stood condemned in the eyes of decent men and women. He was aware that Daphne and Arthur were listening for his answer. Daphne's face was white. ”

“ The occasional mentions of him he read in daily papers were too distorted to be interesting and McWalsh’s tribute to the unknown master was his only reward so far.
The life that was coming, was to be the life he desired. Leisure, the possession of books, the opportunity to wander as he chose through far countries when the war was over. And he liked to think that later he might find love. Often he had envied men with children. Well, he could offer the woman that he might find comforts that fiction would never have brought him. ”

“ Monty said wretchedly. He had in his joy at meeting her forgotten all about smuggling and now the whole thing loomed up again. “I’ve got half Long Island in my eyes, and if you don’t mind, Alice, I’ll go and wash up.”
“And you won’t tell me anything about your crime?” Nora pouted.
“Meet me in the Pagoda in five minutes,” he whispered, “and I will. It’s mighty nice to see a pretty girl again who can talk American.”
“As if men cared what girls say,” she observed sagely. “It’s the way they look that counts.”
When Monty was gone she strolled back to where Alice was sitting. ”

“ The big man paused in angry amazement that one built so much more slenderly than he could hit with this terrific force. Pauline leaned forward her lips parted and the red flush of excitement victor over art's rouge. She was a woman of violent loves and hates and had urged many a love sick swain into unequal contest for amusement's sake. Although Trent had attracted her she was not sure that she did not want to see Sissek punish him. ”

“ Because I am fighting for my happiness. Captain Monmouth knows nothing of what my life has been. I have told him that after the war I shall go back to France and sell my property and with it help him to buy a place that was once a seat of his family. There, away from the world, we shall live and die. I want only him and he wants only me. We have known life and its vanities. We want happiness. ”

“ But above all, and even stronger than her fear of irrevocably breaking with him and being judged hereafter as one unworthy, was the dread of Taylor and that warrant that could at his will send Amy to prison and her mother possibly to her grave. She hardened herself to go through with the ordeal.
“So far you are right,” she admitted.
“Then it remains only for us two to fight. I hate fighting women. A few hours ago I would have sworn that you and I never could fight, but a few hours have shown me that I’m as liable to misread people as—as Monty, for example. You say you’ve got to fight. ”

“ In a chair before one of them Hentzi sat nervous as ever in the presence of his violent employer. Before the other window was a big bronze statue of the dying Gaul. The stage was set very comfortably for all but the manacled Anthony Trent.
"You said I could have these off," Trent began, "these damned steel bangles that I've worn so long."
"It is for yourself to remove them," the count said suavely. "I am about to give you the opportunity. You see I am generous. Others would blame me for it."
"You are not generous," Trent snapped. "A coward never is." ”

“ Nora said superciliously. “You’re only a sort of petty larceny smuggler with your silver hair-brushes. Mr. Denby does things on a bigger scale. You’re safe with us, Mr. Denby,” she reminded him.
“I know,” he answered, “so safe that if I had any dark secrets to reveal I’d proclaim them with a loud voice.”
“That’s always the way,” Nora complained. “Every time I meet a man who seems exciting he turns out to be just a nice man—I hate nice men.” She crossed over to the agitated Monty.
“Mr. Denby is a great disappointment to me, too,” Ethel Cartwright confessed. ”