CHAPTER XIII

ANTHONY TRENT INTERESTS HIMSELF IN POLICE GOSSIP

SO far as he knew, none suspected him. His face had been seen on one or two occasions, but he was of a type common among young Americans of the educated classes. Above middle height, slenderly fashioned but wire-strong, he had a shrewd, humorous face with strongly marked features. It might be that the nose was a trifle large and the mouth a trifle tight, but none looking at him would say, “There goes a criminal.” They would say, rather, “There goes a resourceful young business man who can rise to any emergency.”

Since Trent had calculated everything to a nicety, he knew he must, during these harvesting years, deny himself the privilege of friendship with other men or women. Too many of his gild had lost their liberty through some errant desire to be confidential. This habit of solitude was trying to a man naturally of a sociable nature, but he determined that it could be cast from him as one throws away an old coat when he was a burglar emeritus.

That blessed moment had arrived. He even looked up an old editor friend, the man who had first put into his mind that he could make more money at burglary than in writing fiction.

“It’s good to see you again!” cried the editor. “I often wish you hadn’t been left money by that Australian uncle of yours, so that you could still write those corking crook yarns for us. There was never any one like you. I was talking about you at the Scribblers’ Club dinner the other night.”

Trent frowned. Publicity was a thing to avoid and this particular editor had always been ready to sound his praise. The editor had once before asked him to join this little club made up of professional writers. They were men he would have delighted to know under other conditions.

“Be my guest next Tuesday,” the editor persisted. “I’m toastmaster and the subject is ‘Crime in Fiction.’ I told the boys I’d get you to speak if I possibly could. I’m counting on you. Will you do it?”

It seemed a deliciously ironical thing. Here was an honest editor asking the friend he did not know to be a master criminal to make an address on crime in fiction. Trent laughed the noiseless laugh he had cultivated in place of the one that was in reality the expression of himself. The editor thought it a good sign.

“Who are the other speakers?” Trent demanded.

“Oppenheim Phelps for one. He’s over here on a visit. His specialty is high-grade international spy stuff, as you know. E. W. Hornung would be the man to have if we could get him, but that’s impossible. I’ve got half a dozen others, but Phelps and you will be the drawing cards.”

“Put me down,” Trent said genially, “but introduce me as a back number almost out of touch with things but willing to oblige a pal.” He laughed again his noiseless laugh.

Crosbeigh looked at him meditatively. Certainly Anthony Trent was changed. In the old days, before he came into Australian money, he was at times jocund with the fruitful grape, a good fellow, a raconteur, one who had been popular at school and college and liked to stand well with his fellows. But now, Crosbeigh reflected, he was changed. There was a certain suspicion about him, a lack of trust in men’s motives. It was the attitude no doubt which wealth brought. The moneyless man can meet a borrower cheerfully and need cudgel his mind for no other excuse than his poverty.

Crosbeigh was certain Trent had a lot of money for the reason he had actually refused four cents a word for what he had previously received only two cents. But the editor admired his old contributor and was glad to see him again.

“I’m going to spring a surprise on you,” Crosbeigh declared, “and I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it.”

“I hope so,” Trent returned, idly, and little dreamed what lay before him.

The dinner was at a chop house and the food no worse than the run of city restaurants. Anthony Trent, who had fared delicately for some time, put up with the viands readily enough for the pleasure of being again among men of the craft which had been his own.

Oppenheim Phelps was interesting. He was introduced as a historian who had made his name at fiction. It was a satisfaction, he said, to find that modern events had justified him. The reviewers had formerly treated him with patronizing airs; they had called his secret diplomacy and German plot-stuff as chimeras only when they had shown themselves to be transcripts, and not exaggerated ones at that, of what had taken place during the last few years.

Anthony Trent sat next to the English novelist and liked him. It brought him close to the war to talk to a man whose home had been bombed from air and submarine. And Phelps was also a golfer and asked Trent, when the war was over, to visit his own beloved links at Cromer.

It had grown so late when the particularly prosy member of the club had made his yawn-bringing speech, that Crosbeigh came apologetically to Trent’s side.

“I’m afraid, old man,” he began, “that it’s too late for any more speeches except the surprise one. A lot of us commute. Do you mind speaking at our next meeting instead?”

“Not a bit,” Trent said cheerfully. But he felt as all speakers do under these circumstances that his speech would have been a brilliant one. He had coined a number of epigrams as other speakers had plowed laboriously along their lingual way and now they were to be still-born.

But he soon forgot them when Crosbeigh announced the surprise speaker.

“I have been very fortunate,” Crosbeigh began, “in getting to-night a man who knows more of the ways of crooks than any living authority. Gentlemen, you all know Inspector McWalsh!”

“Well, boys,” said the Inspector, “I guess a good many of you know me by name.” He had risen to his full height and looked about him genially. He had imbibed just the right amount to bring him to this stage. Three highballs later, he would be looking for insults but he was now ripe with good humor. He had come because Conington Warren had asked him to oblige Crosbeigh. For writers on crime he had the usual contempt of the professional policeman and he was fluent in his denunciation. “You boys,” he went on, “make me smile with your modern scientific criminals, the guys what use chemistry and electricity and x-rays and so forth. I’ve been a policeman now for thirty years and I never run across any of that stuff yet.”

Inspector McWalsh poured his unsubtle scorn on such writings for ten full minutes. But he added nothing to the Scribblers’ knowledge of his subject.

It chanced that the writer he had taken as his victim was a guest at the dinner. This fictioneer pursued the latest writings on physicist and chemical research so that he might embroider his tales therewith. Personally Trent was bored by this artificial type of story; but as between writer and policeman he was always for the writer.

The writer was plainly angry but the gods had not blessed him with a ready tongue and he was prepared to sit silent under McWalsh’s scorn. Some mischievous devil prompted Anthony Trent to rise to his aid. It was a bold thing to do, to draw the attention of the man who had been in charge of the detectives sent to run him to earth, but of late excitement had been lacking.

“Inspector McWalsh,” he commenced, “possesses precisely that type of mind one would expect to find in a successful policeman. He has that absolute absence of imagination without which one cannot attain his rank in the force. All he has done in his speech is to pour his scorn of a certain type of crime story on its author. As writers we are sorry if Inspector McWalsh never heard of the Einthoven string galvanometer upon which the solution of the story he ridicules rests, yet we know it to exist. Were I a criminal instead of a writer I should enjoy to cross swords with men who think as the Inspector does. I could outguess them every time.”

“Who is this guy?” Inspector McWalsh demanded loudly.

“Anthony Trent,” Mr. Crosbeigh whispered. “He wrote some wonderful crook stories a few years ago dealing with a crook called Conway Parker.”

“What one would expect to hear from a man with McWalsh’s opportunities to deal with crime is some of the difficulty he experiences in his work. There must be difficulty. We know by statistics what crimes are committed and what criminals brought to justice. What happens to the crooks who remain safe from arrest by reason of superior skill? I’ll tell you, gentlemen. They live well and snap their fingers at men like the last speaker. There is such a thing as fatty degeneration of the brain----”

Inspector McWalsh rose to his feet with a roar. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”

“I am not insulting a guest,” Trent went on equably, “I am asking him to tell us interesting things of his professional work instead of giving his opinion on modern science. I met McWalsh years ago when I covered Mulberry Street for the _Morning Leader_. He was captain then. Let him entertain us with some of the reasons why the Ashy Bennet murderer was never caught. You remember, gentlemen, that Bennet was shot down on Park Row at midday. Then the thoroughbred racer Foxkeen was poisoned in his stall at Sheepshead Bay. Why was that crime never punished? I remember a dozen others where the police have been beaten. Coming down to the present time, there is the robbery of the house of the genial sportsman Inspector McWalsh tells us he is proud to call his friend, Conington Warren. How was it the burglar or burglars were allowed to escape?” Trent was enjoying himself hugely. “I have a right to demand protection of the New York police. In my own humble home I have valuables bequeathed me by an uncle in Australia which are never safe while such men as snap their fingers at the police are at large. Let Inspector McWalsh tell us why his men fail. It will help us, perhaps, to understand the difficulties under which they labor. It may help us to appreciate the silent unadvertised work of the police. The Inspector is a good sport who loves a race horse and a good glove fight as much as I do myself. I assure him he will make us grateful if he will take the hint of a humble scribbler.”

The applause which followed gratified the Inspector enormously. He thought it was evidence of his popularity, a tribute to his known fondness for the race tracks. His anger melted.

“Boys,” he shouted, rising to his feet and waving a Larranaga to the applauders, “I guess he’s right and I hope the fellow who writes that scientific dope will accept my word that it wasn’t personal. Of course we do have difficulties. I admit it. I had charge of that Ashy Bennet murder and I’d give a thousand dollars to be able to put my hand on the man who done it. As to Foxkeen I had a thousand on him to win at eight-to-one and when he was poisoned the odds were shortening every minute so you can guess I was sore on the skunk who poisoned him. The police of all countries fail and they fail the most in countries where people have most sympathy with crime. Boys, you know you all like a clever crook to get away with it. It’s human nature. We ain’t helped all we could be and you know it. We, ‘gentlemen of the police,’” he quoted Austin’s words glibly, “we make mistakes sometimes. We get the ordinary crook easy enough. If you don’t believe me get a permit to look over Sing Sing. The crimes the last speaker mentioned were committed by clever men. They get away with it. The clever ones do get away with things for a bit. But if the guy who croaked Bennet tried murder again the odds are we’d gather him in. Same with the man or men who put strychnine in Foxkeen’s oats. The clever ones get careless. That’s our opportunity.”

The Inspector lighted a new cigar, sipped his highball and came back to his speech.

“Boys, I’m not rich--no honest cop is--but I’d give a lot of money to get my hands on a gentleman crook who’s operating right now in this city. I’ve got a list of seven tricks I’m certain he done himself. He’s got technique.” Inspector McWalsh turned purple red, “Dammit, he made me an accomplice to one of his crimes. Yes, sir, he made me carry a vase worth ten thousand dollars out of Senator Scrivener’s house on Fifth Avenue and hand it to him in his taxi. He had a silk hat, a cane and a coat and he asked me to hold the vase for a moment while he put his coat on. I thought he was a friend of the Senator so I trotted down the hall--there was a big reception on--down the steps past my own men on watch for this very crook or some one like him, and handed it through the window. None of my men thought of questioning him. Why did he do it you wonder. He did it because he thought some one _might_ have seen him swipe it. The thing was thousands of years old and if any of you find it Senator Scrivener stands ready to give you five thousand dollars reward. I believe he took the----” Inspector McWalsh stopped. He thought it wiser to say no more. “That’s about all now,” he concluded. Then with a flourish he added, “Gentlemen, I thank you.”

McWalsh sat down with the thunder of applause ringing gratefully in his ears. And none applauded more heartily than Anthony Trent.