THE dinner was a wearisome affair to Trent. His companions were vulgar, their conversation tedious and the flattery they offered him nauseous. It was exactly half-past nine when a waiter came to his side and told him there was a long distance call for him from Denver. Apologizing he left the table.

“His brother is a mining man out in Colorado,” Weiller informed the company. “They’re a rich bunch, the Chicago Maltbys.”

“They can’t come too rich for us,” one of his friends chuckled. “Pass me the wine, George.”

“This is a great little opportunity for rehearsing,” Weiller reminded them. “I’ve got to sign this bird up to-night. If I do we’ll have another little dinner on Saturday with a souvenir beside each plate.”

Directly Trent reached the hotel lobby he slipped the waiter a five dollar bill. “If they get impatient,” he cautioned the man, “say I’m still busy on the long distance and must not be interrupted.”

Five minutes later he opened the door of Norah’s flat and turned on the light. There, upon a chair, was the bag on which he had built so many hopes. His long sensitive fingers felt each of the pendants. Then with the small blade of a pocket knife he cut a few stitches and drew out the Takowaja emerald. For a full minute he gazed at its green glittering glory. Then from a waistcoat pocket he took the brilliant which had been purchased with the Benares lamp. They were much of a size and he placed the glass where the jewel had been and with a needle of black silk already prepared sewed up the cut stitches. The whole time occupied from entering the apartment to leaving it was not five minutes. He was back with his guests within a quarter of an hour.

“You must have had good news,” Norah exclaimed when he took his seat. His face which had been expressionless before was now lighted up. He was a new man, vivacious, witty and bubbling over with fun.

“I had very good news,” he smiled, “I put through a deal which means a whole lot to me. Let’s have some more wine to celebrate.”

The dinner was taking place in a private room and he had insisted that the service be of the best. Now he was free from the tension that inevitably preceded one of his adventures he could enjoy himself. For the first time he looked at the omnibus by the door behind him. It was not the youthful fledgling waiter he expected to see but a big, dark man with a black moustache and imperial. Norah observed his glance.

“George offered to star him as the mysterious count but the poor wop don’t speak English.”

“I’ll bet he left spaghetti land because he done a murder,” George commented, “a nasty looking rummy I call him.”

“I’ll swear he wasn’t here when I went to the ’phone,” said Trent. “I should have noticed him.”

None heard him. The new bottle demanded attention. There was something vaguely familiar about the face but for the life of him Trent could not place it. Uneasily he was aware that the man of whom this strange waiter reminded him had come at a moment of danger. The more he looked the more certain he was that imperial and moustache were the disguising features. But it is not easy to strip such appendages off in the mind’s eye and see clearly what lies beneath. But there was a way to do so. On the back of an envelope Trent sketched the waiter as he appeared. It was a good likeness. Then with the rubber on his pencil end he erased moustache and imperial. The face staring at him now was beyond a question that of Devlin, the man who had run foul of him over the case of the Mount Aubyn ruby. He remembered now that Devlin had left Jerome Dangerfield’s employ to join a New York detective agency.

What was Devlin doing here disguised as a waiter if not on his trail? And pressed against his side was a stone of world fame. There was no possibility of escape. The dining room was twenty feet from the street below and he had no way of reaching it. The door was guarded by Devlin and outside in the corridor waiters flitted to and fro. “Old Sir Richard caught at last.”

He was roused from his eager scheming by a waiter asking what liqueur he would have. Automatically he ordered the only liqueur he liked, green chartreuse. Would Devlin allow the party to break up? If so he had a place of safety already prepared for the emerald. But if arrest and search were to take place before he could reach his room there was no help. He would be lucky to get off with fifteen years.

Something told him that Devlin was about to act. Waiters were now grouped about the door. He knew that Devlin must long ago have marked him down and this was the final scene. And yet, oddly enough, when suddenly the door closed and a truculent detective advanced to the table tearing off moustache and imperial, Anthony Trent, who had not left his seat, had no longer the incriminating stone upon him. He felt, in fact, reasonably secure.

“Quiet youze,” Devlin shouted and flashed a badge at them. Five of the eight felt certain he had come for them. Weiller owed much money in the vicinity of Fort Lee, New Jersey and was never secure. And more than that he had passed many opprobrious remarks concerning the waiter whom he supposed did not understand him.

“I’m employed,” said Devlin, “to recover the emerald stolen from the home of the late Andrew Apthorpe of Groton, Massachusetts, on the third of last month, and you can be searched here or in the station house.”

“It’s an outrage,” exclaimed Miss Richards the character woman.

“Sure it is,” Devlin agreed cynically, “but what are you going to do about it?”

A woman operative was introduced who took the ladies of the party into an adjoining room for search. The emerald was not found. The search revealed merely, that Miss Richards had been souvenir hunting and her spoils were a knife, spoon and olive fork.

The men had passed the ordeal successfully. That they had made the most of their host’s temporary absence the pockets full of cigars, cigarettes and salted almonds testified. Anthony Trent seemed hugely amused at the procedure. Alone of them he did not breathe suits for defamation of character and the like.

“I have rooms here,” he reminded Devlin, “by all means search them.”

“I have,” snapped the other, showing his teeth.

“I regret I didn’t bring my golf clubs,” Trent taunted him.

“I hope I’ll put you in a place where they don’t play golf,” Devlin cried angrily. “I’m wise to you.”

“It’s good he’s wise to something,” shouted Miss Richards.

“Isn’t it?” Trent returned equably. “I’ve had no experience of it so far.” He resumed his seat and beckoned a waiter, “Some more coffee. Sit down, ladies, the ordeal is over.”

“Not by a long shot,” snarled Devlin, “I’ve got a search warrant to search the apartment rented by Norah Thompson and I want you, Weiller, to come with me.” He turned to the moving picture celebrities – self confessed celebrities – “as for you, you’d better beat it quick.”

Devlin’s last impression of the ornate dining room was the sight of the debonair Trent sipping his green chartreuse. Devlin ground his strong teeth when the other raised the green filled glass and drank his health.

He was not to know that in the glass invisible amid the enveloping fluid was the Takowaja emerald, slipped there in the moment of peril.

CHAPTER XXIV
DEVLIN’S PROMISE

HALF an hour later the stone, reposing in a tin box of cigarettes, was in the mails on the way to Trent’s camp at Kennebago. Mrs. Kinney had instructions to hold all mail and its safety was thus assured. There was nothing more to fear. He wanted very much to know what had happened at Miss Thompson’s apartment and proposed to call after breakfast.

But Devlin called first upon him. It was a depressed Devlin. Not indeed a Devlin come to be apologetic, but one less assured.

“Well?” said Trent affably, “come to search me again. I’m getting a little tired of it, my good man.”

“I want to know why you pass here under the name of Maltby of Chicago when your name is Trent and you live in New York City.”

“A private detective has no right to demand any such knowledge. Last night you took upon yourself powers and authority which we could have resisted if we chose. You had no legal right to search us. I submitted first because I had nothing to fear and secondly to see if the others had the stone. I didn’t think they had.”

“What do you know about the stone?” Devlin demanded suspiciously.

“Everything except just where it is at this present moment. Between you and me, Devlin, I’m here after it too. I was at Groton, as can easily be proved, on the day after the murder.” Trent smiled as a curious look passed over the detective’s face, “I’m going to disappoint you. I passed the day and night in Boston when the murder was done. I have just as much use for that ten thousand dollars as you have. By the way I suppose you got the stone?”

“Like hell I did,” Devlin cried red in the face, “I got this.” He showed Trent the piece of cut glass which had hung in his room for so long. “Glass, that’s what it is.” Devlin leaned forward and looked hard into Anthony Trent’s eyes. “You know more about this than you pretend. It ain’t accident that brings you around when two such stones as Dangerfield’s ruby and this here emerald get stolen. There’s something more to it than that. There’s something mighty queer about you, Mister Anthony Trent, and I’m going to see what it is.”

Trent looked at him for a moment and then smiled. It was the tolerant smile of the superior. It angered Devlin. His red face grew redder still.

“My good Devlin,” said Trent, “stupidity such as yours may be a good armor but it is a poor diving suit.”

“Talk sense,” Devlin commanded.

“If you wish,” Trent agreed easily. “I mean that you haven’t the mental equipment to live up to your desires. You have the impertinence to think you can outwit me. I’m your superior in everything. Mentally, morally and physically I can beat you and in your heart you know it. I think I’ve stood about as much from you as I care to take from any man. For a time you amused me. At Sunset Park you thought you were being very subtle searching my room with your twin ass, O’Brien, but I was laughing at you.”

“You was drunk,” said Devlin slowly.

“That’s how gin takes me,” said the other, “I see the ludicrous in men and things. Just listen to me. My past and present bears investigation. You looked me up and you know.” Trent drew his bow at a venture. “You found that out, didn’t you?”

“Because I couldn’t find anything against you doesn’t prove you’re what you pretend,” Devlin admitted grudgingly.

“The point I wish to make is this,” Anthony Trent said incisively, “I’m tired of you. You bore me. You weary me. You exasperate me. I am willing to overlook your blundering stupidity this time but if you worry me again I shall go after you so hard you’ll wish you’d never heard my name. I’ve got money and that means influence. You’ve neither. Think it over. Now get out.”

Devlin looked at him doubtfully. There was a strong personal animus against Anthony Trent. He hated anything suave, smiling or polite. And when these qualities were in conjunction with physical prowess they spelled danger. But for the moment nothing was to be gained by violence. Devlin essayed a genial air.

“We all of us make mistakes,” he admitted. “I’m willing to say it. I’m sorry I’ve gone wrong over this case.” He held out a big short fingered hand. “Good-bye.”

“What’s the use?” Trent demanded. “You will always be my enemy and I never shake hands with an enemy if I can get out of it.”

Devlin was at a loss for the moment. It had been his experience that when he offered a hand it was grasped gladly, eagerly. There was something in this harder unsmiling Trent which impressed him against his will.

“They shake hands before the last round of a prize fight,” he reminded the other man.

“So they do,” said Trent smiling a little, and offered his hand.

Two weeks later he was compelled to concede that Devlin’s pertinacity sometimes won its reward.

Devlin had always been an advocate of the third degree. Together with some operatives from his agency he staged a gruesome drama into which hysterical and frightened the drink-enervated Norah Thompson was dragged. Under the pitiless cross-examination of these hard men she broke down. Andrew Apthorpe’s murderer was found. But the triumph was incomplete. She convinced them that although the emerald had been hers for a time, of its destination or present ownership she had no idea. She went into penal servitude for life with a newspaper notoriety that made the Takowaja emerald the most famous stone in existence.

CHAPTER XXV
ON THE TRAIL OF “THE COUNTESS”

The expert has usually a critical sense well developed. It was so with Anthony Trent. He read the details of all the crimes treated in the daily press almost jealously. What the police regarded as clever criminals were seldom such in his eyes. There were occasionally crimes which won his admiration but they were few and far between. Violence to Trent’s mind was a confession of incompetency, the grammar school type of crime to a university trained mind. One morning the papers were unusually full of such examples of robberies with attendant assaults. Clumsy work, he commented, and then came to a robbery in Long Island of jewels whose aggregate value was more than a hundred thousand dollars.

The home of Peter Chalmers Rosewarne at the Montauk Point end of Long Island was the victimized abode. All Americans knew Peter Chalmers Rosewarne. He was the “Tin King,” enormously wealthy, splendidly generous and fortune’s favorite. His father had been a Cornish mining captain who had come from Huel Basset to make a million in the United States. His son had made ten millions.

His Long Island place, known as St. Michael’s Mount after that estate in Cornwall near where his father had been born, was a show place. The gardens were extraordinary. The house was filled with treasures which only the intelligent rich may gather together. Rosewarne was a convivial soul in the best sense of the phrase. He loved company and he loved display and more than all he loved his wife on whom he showered the beautiful things women adore. Abstractors of precious stones would gravitate naturally to such a home as his.

Anthony Trent remembered that the Rosewarne strain of Airedales was the best the breed had to show. He had read once that Rosewarne turned his dogs loose at nights and laughed burglars to scorn. And well he might, for of all dogs, the gods have blessed none with such sense as the Airedales possess. Theirs not to bark indiscriminately or bite their master’s friends. Theirs to reason why: to know instinctively what is hidden from the lesser breeds.

A dozen such dogs roaming their master’s grounds, their guardian instincts aroused, would effectually bar out strangers. That a robbery had been committed at St. Michael’s Mount spelled for Trent an inside job. The papers told him that a large house party was gathered under the hospitable Rosewarne roof. Rosewarne himself indignantly denied the possibility of his guests’ guilt. The servants seemed equally satisfactory.

Sifting the news Anthony Trent learned that the suspected person was a girl who had been member of a picnic party using the Rosewarne grounds. There was a space of nearly ten acres which the mining man had reserved for parties, suitably recommended, who made excursions from the Connecticut side of the Sound. Here Sunday Schools passed blameless days and organized clambakes. The party to which the suspected girl belonged was a camp for working girls situated on one of the Thimble Islands.

Nearly forty of them, enjoying the privilege of the Rosewarne grounds, had spent the day there. Mrs. Rosewarne herself had seen them depart into the evening mist. Then she had seen, thirty minutes later, a girl running to the water’s edge. She was dressed, as were the others of her party, with red trimmed middy blouse and red ribbons in her hair. A brunette, rather tall and slight, and awed when the chatelaine of the great estate asked what was the matter. It seemed she had become tired and had slept. When she awoke the boat was gone; she had not been missed.

Mrs. Rosewarne was not socially inept enough to bring the simple girl to her own sophisticated dinner table. Instead the girl had an ample meal in the housekeeper’s room. At nine o’clock a fast launch was to be ready to take her to her camp. It might easily overtake the sail boat if the breezes died down.

At nine-fifteen the mechanician in charge of the boat came excitedly into the house to relate his unhappy experiences. The girl, wrapped in motor coat, was safely in the boat when she begged the man to get her a glass of water from the boat house at the dock. It was while he was doing so that the boat disappeared. He heard her call to him in fright and then saw the boat – one capable of twenty knots an hour – glide away with the girl holding her hands out to him supplicatingly. She had fooled with the levers, he averred, and would probably perish in consequence. It was while Rosewarne considered the matter of sending out his yacht in pursuit that the discovery was made that a hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels had been taken.

The mechanician had been fooled, of that they were now assured, and the working girl became a fleeing criminal. The sudden temptation through seeing sparkling stones in profusion was the result. A number of boats went in pursuit and the ferries were watched, but the fast motor launch was not found.

Considering the case from the evidence he had at command Trent was certain it was no genuine member of the working girls’ camp who had done this thing. Every move spoke of careful preparation. Some one had chosen a moment to appear at the Mount when suspicion would be removed and her coming seem logical. And no ordinary person would have been able to drive a high powered boat as she had done. Another thing which seemed conclusive proof of his correctness was the fact that the girl had overlooked – this was as the police phrased it – Mrs. Simeon Power’s pearl necklace and the diamond tiara belonging to Mrs. Campbell Glenelg. This omission supported the police theory that it was the work of an inexperienced criminal.

Anthony Trent chuckled as he read this. He also had rejected the Power’s pearls and the Glenelg tiara. They had been in his appraising hand. They were both extraordinarily good imitations! Assuredly a timid working girl could not be such a judge of this. She was a professional and a clever one. Probably she had sunk the launch and swam ashore.

Later reports veered around to his view. The camp people were highly indignant at being saddled with a criminal. They had counted noses before embarkation and none was missing. Mrs. Rosewarne described the girl and so did the housekeeper. The latter, remarking on the slightly foreign intonation, was told by the girl herself that she came from New Bedford where her father was employed in a textile mill belonging to Dangerfield. Like so many of the inhabitants of this mill town he was of French Canadian stock and habitually spoke French in the home. But the housekeeper who had served the wealthy in England and Continental Europe would have it that this intruder come of a higher social class than New Bedford mills afford.

Interviewing the housekeeper in the guise of a Branford newspaper man Trent asked her a hundred questions. And each one of her answers confirmed the belief that had grown in him. This clever woman was “The Countess.” He felt certain of it. That slight intonation was hers. The figure, the height, the coloring. And of course the exact knowledge of what stones were good and what were not. This was another count against her for Trent had marked St. Michael’s Mount for his hunting ground and now precautions against abstractors would be redoubled.

He felt almost certain that this was the Countess’s first exploit since her escape from the hotel after the Guestwick robbery. He had followed the papers too closely to miss any unusual crime. A woman of her breeding need never drop to association with the typical criminal. Since she was marooned in the United States during the war she was of necessity cut off from her favorite Riviera hunting grounds. Where, then, might she meet the wealthy set if not among the owners of big estates on Long Island? Trent felt it probable that she was near some such social center as Meadowbrook or Piping Rock. How was he to find her?

To begin with he decided to attend the Mineola Horse and Dog show. This country fair, held during late September, invariably attracted, as he knew, all the horse-loving polo-riding elements of the smart set. Not to go there, not to be interested intelligently in horses, hounds and dogs was a confession of ineligibility to the great Long Island homes.

Although he entertained a bare hope of seeing her and passed the first day in disappointment, he saw her almost directly he entered the show grounds on the second morning. She looked very smart in her riding habit, her hair was done in a more severe coiffure than he had noticed before. She was talking to a well known society woman, also in riding kit, a Mrs. Hamilton Buxton, famous for her horses and her loves. But he could not judge from this whether or not the Countess was on friendly terms with her or not. There is a camaraderie among those who exhibit horses or dogs which is of the ring-side and not the salon. Outside it was possible Mrs. Hamilton Buxton might not recognize her.

Later on he saw that both women were riding in the class for ladies’ hunters, to be ridden side saddle by the owners. So the Countess owned hunters now! Well, he expected something of the sort from a woman who had outwitted so astute a craftsman as himself. In a sense he was glad of it. It was better to find her in such a set as this. When she rode around the ring he saw by the number she bore that she was a Madame de Beaulieu of Old Westbury. She rode very well. There was the haute école stamp about her work and she was placed second to Mrs. Hamilton Buxton whose chestnut was of a better type.

Anthony Trent went straightway to New York. He did not want to be seen – yet. He called up a certain number and made an appointment with a Mr. Moor. This man, David Moor, was a private detective without ambition and without imaginative talent. It always amused Trent when he employed a detective to find out details that were laborious in the gathering. In some subtle manner Trent had given Moor the impression that he was a secret service agent exceedingly high in the department.

“Moor,” he said briskly as the small and depressed David entered the room, “I want to find all about a Madame de Beaulieu who lives in Old Westbury, Long Island. I suspect her of being a German spy. Find out what other members of the household there are, and who calls. Whether they are in society or only trying to be. I want a full and reliable report. The tradesmen know a whole lot as a rule and servants generally talk. I want to know as soon as possible but keep on the job until you have something real.” He knew that Moor by reason of an amazingly large family was always hard up. He handed him fifty dollars. “Take this for expenses.”

Moor went from the room with tears in his eyes. He looked at Trent as a loving dog looks at its master. Two years before his wife lay at the point of death, needing, more than anything, a rest from household worries and the noise of her offspring. Trent sent her to a sanitarium and the children to camps for the whole of a hot summer. In his dull, depressed fashion, Moor was always hoping that some day he could do something to help this benefactor who waved his thanks aside.

The report, written in Moor’s small, clear writing, entertained Trent vastly. Madame de Beaulieu was a daughter of France whose husband was fighting as an officer of Chasseurs and had been decorated thrice. Many pictures adorned the house of her hero. She had a French maid who allowed herself to be very familiar with her mistress. Undoubtedly she was the “aunt” of the Guestwick occasion. The men of the household were doubtful according to Moor. One was Madame’s secretary, an American named Edward Conway, who looked after her properties, and the other an Englishman, Captain Monmouth, a former officer of cavalry who had broken an ankle in a steeple chase, so the report ran, and was debarred from military service. He was a cousin by marriage. The servants asserted that he was an amazingly lucky player at bridge or indeed of any card game. So much so indeed that the neighboring estate owners who had been inclined to be friendly were now stiffly aloof. The captain’s skill at dealing was uncanny. Bills were piling up against them all. It was due largely to this that Moor was able to get so much information. A vituperative tradesman sets no watch on his tongue. Conway, the secretary, confined his work almost entirely to drinking. There were many bitter wrangles at the table but the English tongue was never adopted on such occasions. The part of Moor’s screed which interested Trent most was that there had been a discussion overheard by a disgruntled maid to take in some wealthy paying guest and offer to get him into Long Island’s hunting set. It would be worth a great deal to an ambitious man to gain an entrée into some of these famous Westbury homes. Of course the odd household could probably not live up to such promises but its members had done a great deal. For example, a Sunday paper in its photogravure supplement had snapped Madame de Beaulieu talking with Mrs. Hamilton Buxton; and Captain Monmouth was there to be seen chatting with Wolfston Colman, the great polo player. An excellent beginning astutely planned.

It was while Anthony Trent debated as to whether he dare risk the Countess’s recognition of him that a wholly accidental circumstance offered him the opportunity.

Suffering from a slightly inflamed neck he was instructed to apply dioxygen to the area. This he did with such cheerful liberality that his shaving mirror next day showed him a man with black hair at the front and a vivid blond at the back. The dioxygen had helped him to blondness as it had helped a million brunettes of the other sex. For a moment he was chagrined. Then he saw how it might aid. It was his intention to go back to Kennebago for the deer hunting and accordingly he despatched Mrs. Kinney post haste. She was used to these erratic commands and saw nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that he was in a bath robe with a turkish towel wound about his head. He was in dread of becoming bald and was continually fussing with his hair. In a day or so Anthony Trent was a changed being. His eyes had a hazel tint in them which formed not too startling a contrast to his new blondness. He was careful to touch up his eyebrows also.

Shutting up his flat he registered at a newly built hotel as Oscar Lindholm of Wisconsin. He would pass for what we assume the handsome type of Scandinavian to be. It was at this hotel Captain Monmouth stayed when he came to indulge in what he termed a “flutter” with the cards. There were still a few houses in the city where one could be reasonably sure of quiet. Hard drinking youths were barred at these houses. They became quarrelsome. The men who played were in the main big business men who could win without exhuberance or lose without going to the district attorney. They were invariably good players and lost only to the professionals. And their tragedy was that they could not tell a professional until the game was done. Captain Monmouth always excited in players of this type a certain spirit of contempt. He was so languid, so gently spoken, so bored at things. And he consumed so much Scotch whiskey that he seemed primed for sacrifice. But he was never the altar’s victim. He was always so staggered at his unexpected good fortune that he readily offered a revenge. A servant had told David Moor that the household was supported on these earnings.

Captain Monmouth, stepping through the lounge on the way to his taxi, caught sight of Oscar Lindholm. Oscar was leaning against the bar rail talking loudly of the horse. Five hours later Oscar was still standing at the bar and the horse was still his theme. Monmouth was a careful soul for all his gentle languors and sauntered into the tap room and demanded an Alexander cocktail. As became a son of Wisconsin, Oscar was free and friendly. The “Alexander” was a new one on him, he explained, dropping for a moment themes equine.

Monmouth never made the mistake of offering friendship to a bar-room stranger unless he knew exactly what he was and how he might fit into the Monmouth scheme of things. He referred Mr. Lindholm to the guardian of the bottles. It was the size of the Lindholm wad that decided Captain Monmouth to accept an invitation to a golden woodcock in the grill room. There it was that Lindholm opened his heart. He wanted to follow hounds from the back of a horse.

“Well, why don’t you, my good sir?” Monmouth replied languidly. For a moment a light of interest had passed across the dark blue eyes of the ex-cavalryman. Trent knew he was interested.

Trent explained. He said that the following of hounds near New York was only possible to one who passed the social examination demanded by these who controlled the hunting set.

“You’re quite right,” Monmouth admitted, “for the outsider it’s impossible.”

“I’ll show ’em,” Oscar Lindholm returned chuckling. Then he took the proof of an advertisement from the columns of a great New York daily and passed it over to Monmouth.

“Wealthy westerner wants to share home among hunting set of Long Island. Private house and right surroundings essential. References. O. L.”

And that light passed over the Englishman’s eyes, and was succeeded by a look of boredom.

“You don’t suppose, do you,” he asked, “that the kind of people you want to know will admit a stranger from Wisconsin into their family?”