The Secret of the Silver Car

скачать книгу бесплатно


"Thank you," she said, taking the book with an appearance of interest. "Do you know I never thought to see Americans at Dereham Old Hall with the single exception of Reginald's old friend Conington Warren. Colonel Langley is so conservative but the war has broadened everyone hasn't it and stupid national prejudices are breaking down."

"Conington Warren here?" he asked.

"He lives in England now," she told him, "his physicians warned him that prohibition would kill him so they simply prescribed a country where he could still take this cocktail. You know him of course?"

"A little," he said; she wondered why he smiled so curiously. He wondered what this beautiful girl would say if she knew it was at Conington Warren's mansion in Fifth avenue that he had started his career as a criminal. So that great sportsman, owner of thoroughbreds and undeniable shot, was in this very house! After all it was not a strange coincidence. The well known Americans who love horse and hound with the passion of the true sportsman are to be seen in the great houses of England more readily than the mushroom financier.

"What other people are there here you know?" she demanded.

"I can't tell you till tomorrow," he returned, "I only said a word or two to the Duchess. She deplored having to go to bed so early and was disappointed at not being able to dance."

"She is one of my dearest friends," the girl answered.

"Which means you see her every fault," he laughed.

"Isn't your neuralgia better?" she asked after a pause.

Anthony Trent shook his head.

"I shan't sleep all night," he said despondently. "Going to bed would only make it worse."

She was obviously put out at this statement.

"Then you'll stop here all night?"

"At all events until it gets light. It's only two o'clock now. If you are keen on big game hunting you won't sleep if you begin that book."

"You'll frighten the servants in the morning," she said later.

"I'll tip them into confidence," he assured her.

The girl was growing nervous. There were a hundred symptoms from the tapping of her little feet on the rug to the fidgeting with the book and the meaningless play with her fan. She started when a distant dog bayed the moon and dropped her book. It rolled under a table and Trent picked it up. But when he handed it back to her there was an air of excitement about him, an atmosphere of triumph which puzzled her.

"You look as though you enjoyed hunting for books under tables."

"I enjoy any hunting when I get a reward for my trouble."

"And what did you find?" she asked "a little mouse under the chair?"

"I found a key," he said.

"Someone must have dropped it," she said idly.

"Not a door key," he returned, "but the key to a mystery. Being a woman you are interested in mysteries that have a beautiful society girl as their heroine of course?"

"I really must disappoint you," she said rather coldly, "and I don't quite understand why you are not quick to take the many hints I have dropped. Can't you see I want to sit here alone and think? Your own room will be just as comfortably furnished. In a sense this is a sort of second home to me. Mrs. Langley and I are related and this room is an old and favorite haunt when I'm depressed. Is it asking very much that you leave me here alone?"

"Under ordinary conditions no," he said suavely.

"These are ordinary conditions," she persisted.

"I'm not sure," he retorted. "Tell me this if you dare. Why have you the combination to a safe written on a little piece of mauve paper and concealed in the book on your lap?"

She turned very pale and the look she gave him turned his suspicion into a desire to protect her. The woman of the world air dropped from her and she looked a frightened pathetic and extraordinarily lovely child.

"What shall I do?" she cried helplessly. "You are a detective?"

"Not yet," he said smiling, "although later I intend to be. But I'm not here even as a great amateur. Consider me merely a notoriously good shot suffering equally from neuralgia and curiosity. You have the combination of a safe concealed in this room and you want me to go to bed so that you may take out wads of bank notes and pay your bridge debts. Is that right so far?"

"You are absolutely wrong," she cried with spirit. "I need no money and have no debts. There are no jewels in the safe."

"Letters of course," he said easily.

She did not speak for a moment. He could see she was wondering what she dare tell him. She could not guess that he knew of the three packages of letters each tied with green ribbon. It was, he supposed, the old story of compromising letters. Innocent enough, but letters that would spell evil tidings to the jealous fiancé. They might have been written to Colonel Langley. Men of that heroic stamp often appealed to sentimental school girls and the colonel was undeniably handsome in his cold superior way. His heart ached for her. She was suffering. What had seemed so easy was now become a task of the greatest difficulty.

"Yes," she said deliberately, "letters. Letters I must have."

"Do you suppose I can stand by and see my host robbed?"

"If you have any generosity about you you can in this instance. I only want to destroy one letter because if it should ever be discovered it will hurt the man I love most in the world."

Anthony Trent groaned. He had guessed aright. There was some man of her own class and station who did not love her well enough to overlook some little silly affectionate note sent to the beau sabreur Langley perhaps a half dozen years before. It was a rotten thing to keep such letters. He looked at the girl again and cursed his luck that she was already engaged. Then he sighed and remembered that even were she free it could never be his lot to marry unless he confessed all. And he knew that to a woman of the type he wanted to marry this confession would mean the end of confidence the beginning of despair.

"I shall not stop you," he said.

She looked at him eagerly.

"And you'll never tell?"

"Not if they put me through the third degree."

"But … oughtn't you to tell?" she asked.

"Of course," he admitted, "but I won't. I can see you are wondering why. I'll tell you. I've been in just such a position – and I did what you are going to do."

Without another word she went swiftly to the concealed safe and began to manipulate the lock. For five minutes she tried and then turned to him miserably.

"It won't open," she wailed.

"I'll have a shot at it," he said gaily, and went down on his knees by her side. He soon found out why it remained immovable. It was an old combination. She did not understand his moves as he went through the same procedure which had opened it before. She only saw that the doors swung back. She did not see him pry the iron sheathing back with the jimmy. It was miraculously easy.

Then he crossed the room to his chair and lighted another cigarette. "Help yourself," he cried and picked up the book which had held the combination.

The girl's back was to him and he could not see what she was doing. He heard the scratch of a match being lighted and saw her stooping over the stone fireplace. She was burning her past. Then he heard her sigh with relief.

"I shall never forget what you have done for me," she said holding out her hand.

"It was little enough," he said earnestly.

"You don't know just how much it was," the girl returned, "or how grateful I shall always be to you. If I hadn't got that letter! I shouldn't have got it but for you. And to think that tomorrow we shall be introduced as one stranger to another. I'm rather glad I don't know your name or you mine. It will be rather fun won't it, being introduced and pretending we've never met before. If you are not very careful the Duchess will suspect we share some dreadful secret."

"The Duchess is rather that way inclined, isn't she?" he said.

He held the hand she offered him almost uncomfortably long a time. She would look for him tomorrow in vain. He supposed she would begin by asking if there were any other Americans there except Conington Warren. After a time she would find he was not a guest of the Langleys. She would come at last to know what he was. And with this knowledge there would come contempt and a deliberate wiping his image from her mind. Anthony Trent had no sentimental excuses to offer. He had chosen his own line of country.

He looked at her again. It would be the last time. Perhaps there was a dangerously magnetic quality about his glance for the girl dropped her eyes.

"Faustus," he said abruptly, "sold his soul for a future. I think I'd be willing to barter mine for a past."

"Au revoir," she said softly.

When she had closed the door he walked across the room to shut the safe. What secrets of hers, he wondered, had been shut up there so long. He found himself in a new and strange frame of mind. Why should he be jealous of what she might have written in the letter that was now ashes? She had probably thought hero-worship was love. She had a splendid face he told himself. High courage, loyalty and breeding were mirrored in it. He wondered what sort of a man it was who had won her.

He looked at the neatly-tied bundle of letters. It seemed as though they had hardly been touched. Suddenly he turned to the compartment where the long letter had lain, the letter from which he had made so many extracts, the letter it was imperative Colonel Langley should believe to be intact.

It was gone. In the hearth there were still some burned pages. He could recognize the watermark.

Anthony Trent had amiably assisted an unknown girl to destroy a letter whose safety meant a great deal to him. If Colonel Langley were to discover the loss it would be easy enough to put the blame upon the bicycle-riding American who had pretended to be a friend of Private William Smith.

As he thought it over Anthony Trent saw that the girl in blue had not lied to him, had not sought to entrap him by gaining his sympathy as the "Countess" had succeeded in doing before another open safe in New York. He had assumed one thing and she had meant another.

What was William Smith to this unknown beauty? Trent gritted his teeth. He was going to find out. At all events he now knew the real name of the private soldier who had shared the dug-out with him. The next thing was to find out where he lived.

Chapter Four

A LADY INTERRUPTS

Anthony Trent told the obliging manager of the Maids' Head Hotel that he was interested mainly in the study of cathedral churches and since he had now studied the magnificent Norwich cathedral would push on to Ely.

He found England an exceedingly easy place to shake off pursuers despite its small size. There were always junctions where he could change from one line to another without incurring suspicion. He started for Ely but was soon lost among the summer crowds which thronged the university city of Cambridge. The convenient system of merely claiming one's baggage and ordering a porter to take it to car or taxi rendered the tracking of it by baggage checks almost impossible.

While it was true he was not pursued, so far as he knew, he wanted to be careful. It was not likely Langley would charge him with the theft of the Ladigny confession but it was quite probable that the Colonel might suspect the writer of the confession. He might think that Smith had hired a clever American safe breaker to win for him what was very necessary for his freedom of action. And Smith, if he did not already know it, would find the man over whom he held many years in American prisons almost within his clutches.

It was necessary that Anthony Trent should see Smith first and make a bargain with him. It was imperative that he meet the man alone and where he could place the cards on the table and talk freely.

In a room of the quaint half-timbered hostelry in Norwich Trent had come across some useful books of reference. There were, for example, such guides to knowledge as "Crockford's Clerical Directory"; "Hart's Army List"; the "Court Directory of London" and "Lodge's Peerage and Baronetage." The name for which Trent sought diligently was that of Arthur Spencer Jerningham Grenvil. By these names Private William Smith had the legal right to be known. By these names he had signed a confession.

A. S. J. Grenvil had admitted forging a check for two hundred pounds. The signature he had skilfully imitated was that of Reginald Langley of Dereham Old Hall in the county of Norfolk.

There was a copy of a letter written by Colonel Langley to Grenvil dated six years before. On the whole it was a letter which impressed Trent favorably. It was written from rather a lofty altitude by a man to whom family honor and the motto noblesse oblige meant a whole code of chivalry.

"Until you went to Sandhurst you were a credit to your name and the great family from which you spring," he read. "Suddenly, without any warning, your habits altered and you became a gambler. Well, many of your race have gambled, but at least they played fair and paid what they owed. You did not even do that. It was with great difficulty that your father was able to get you your commission in my old regiment. We hoped you would feel that in the presence of so many men of birth and breeding that you must alter your habits and wear with credit your sovereign's uniform. And now you are a common forger. Of course the signature you forged will be honored. But I require this of you: that you will confess to me your guilt; that you will leave the regiment; that you will do some honest work and re-establish yourself in my eyes. I will see to it that work of a not unpleasing kind is found for you in Australia. On my part I will undertake to keep your secret so long as you keep away from England. Remember, Arthur, there are other discreditable things I could bring to your notice if I chose. I am anxious that my kinsman, your father, should not suffer any more from your escapades. On receipt of this letter proceed to my lawyers whose address you know. They have instructions what to do."

It was plain that the father of the man he had known as William Smith was of rank. The fact that he was a kinsman of Colonel Langley might be explained by reference to the fifth book on the shelf at the Maids' Head – "Debrett's Landed Gentry of Gt. Britain."

He turned to Langley of Dereham Old Hall. Langley's mother, it seemed, was the Lady Dorothea Grenvil daughter of the ninth, and sister of the present Earl of Rosecarrel. Grenvil, therefore, was the family name of the Earls of Rosecarrel.

In the peerage all the particulars concerning the Grenvils were laid bare. The tenth earl, who had been British Ambassador to Turkey, was a Knight of the Garter, etc., etc., had married Elizabeth only daughter of Admiral, Lord Arthur Jerningham and had issue:

First the heir, Viscount St. Just, major in the Royal Horse Guards, V.C.G.C.B. Second and third, two sons killed in the great war. Fourth, Arthur Spencer Jerningham Grenvil of whom no particulars were given. Fifth came the Lady Rhona Elizabeth Onslow married to the Duke of Ontarlier in the peerage of France and last the Lady Daphne Villiers Grenvil, unmarried. Trent reckoned out that she would be a girl of twenty-one. Private Smith would be twenty-six.

The town house of the Earls of Rosecarrel was in Grosvenor Place and their country seats were Alderwood Hall in Cambridgeshire and Rosecarrel Castle in Cornwall.

Alderwood Hall was six miles from the university city and the house could be seen on one of the small hills to the west of the town. A guide book informed Trent that the house was thrown open to visitors on Thursdays at a small fee which went to the local hospital. There were to be seen some notable examples of the "Norwich School" works by Crome, Cotman, Vincent and Stark.

The butler was distressed by the heat of early September and dismissed the visitors as soon as possible. But he regarded the American tourist in a different light for Trent had slipped him a half sovereign.

"I want to take my time," said Trent, "I like pictures and I want to examine these more closely."

"Certainly, sir," said the butler. "Anything I can do to help you I shall be proud to do."

Anthony Trent, who had a wide knowledge of paintings of the outdoors and possessed one of the world's missing masterpieces, none other than The Venetian Masque of Giorgione which he had taken from a vulgar and unappreciative millionaire, looked at the fresh, simple landscapes with joy.

"Is the family in residence?" he asked when he had finished.

"The Earl always spends the summer at Rosecarrel," the man answered. "He keeps his yacht in Fowey Harbour. I'm afraid his lordship is failing. You see the loss of Master Gervase and Master Bevil was a terrible shock. We lost seven out of our twelve gardeners here and two of them that came back won't ever be much good."

"What about Mr. Arthur Grenvil?" Trent asked idly. "I used to know him."

"He's back," the butler said. But the look of affection which the old family servant had shown when he spoke of the two who had fallen was gone. "I'll say this for Master Arthur, he fought too and got wounded. There's none that can say aught against his pluck."

"He is cool enough," Trent said, and thought of the scene in the dug-out when he and Arthur Grenvil waited for death and did not give way to terror. "He's down in Cornwall with the Earl, I suppose?"

"And Lady Daphne," the butler added. "Since the death of the Countess she looks after everything."

Trent visualized one of those managing domineering young women who rule tenants relentlessly but after all exercise benevolent despotism in bucolic matters.

"Was he badly hurt?" Trent asked before he left.

"I hardly knew him," the butler said. "I give you my word I was fair shocked at the difference; isn't for the likes of me to question the ways of Providence but why Mr. Arthur was left and the others taken I don't understand."

Anthony Trent wondered, too. It would have saved him a great deal of worry if things had been reversed. On the whole this mauvais sujet, of an ancient family was a consistent trouble maker.

A Bradshaw's time table showed Trent that as Lord Rosecarrel's yacht was at Fowey he would be wise to make a trip to the Delectable Duchy, as a Fowey author has termed Cornwall, and disguise himself as a tourist and thus pave the way for a meeting with Private William Smith.

He purchased a large scale automobile map of Cornwall and when he reached the quaint seaport had a fair idea of the locality. Rosecarrel Castle lay some ten miles away on the moorland. The local guidebook told him all about it. It was the great house of the neighbourhood, a granite built fastness which had suffered siege many times. The Grenvils were a Cornish family of distinction and happier in their own West Countree than on the Cambridge estates.

Trent had always found the consultation of local newspapers a great help toward knowledge of a community and he immediately solaced himself with what Fowey had to offer. A perusal of the advertising columns gave him a good idea of what he could do to pass his time in a manner that would seem logical to the countryfolk. Since he was not a painter, and Fowey had no golf links, his occupation in the absence of a sailing or power boat was merely that of a sightseer and he felt out of his element in this innocent guise.