ANTHONY TRENT apparently was in no way confused at this interruption. The woman was not to guess that his nonchalant manner and the careless lighting of a cigarette, cloaked in reality a feeling of despair at the untoward ending of his adventure. Calmly she walked past him and looked at the assemblage of finely tempered steel instruments of his profession.

“So you’re a burglar!” she said with an air of decision.

“That is a term I dislike,” said Anthony Trent genially. “Call me rather a professional collector, an abstractor, a connoisseur – anything but that.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” she returned severely, “you came here to steal my father’s money.”

“Your father’s money,” he returned slowly. “Then – then you are Miss Guestwick?”

“Naturally,” she retorted eyeing him keenly, “and if you offer any violence I shall have you arrested.”

She was amazed to see a pleasant smile break over the intruder’s face. He was exceedingly attractive when he smiled.

“What a hard heart you have!”

“You ought to realize this is no time to jest,” she said stiffly.

“I am not so sure,” he made answer.

She looked at him haughtily. He realized that he had rarely seen so beautiful a girl. There was a look of high courage about her that particularly appealed to him. She had long Oriental eyes of jade green. He amended his guess as to her age. She must be seven and twenty he told himself.

“It is my duty to call the police and have you arrested,” she exclaimed.

“That is the usual procedure,” he agreed.

She stood there irresolute.

“I wonder what makes you steal!”

“Abstract,” he corrected, “collect, borrow, annex – but not steal.”

She took no notice of his interruption.

“It isn’t as though you were ill or starving – that might be some sort of excuse – but you are well dressed. I’ve done a great deal of social work among the poor and often I’ve met the wives of thieves and have actually found myself pitying men who have stolen for bread.”

“Jean Valjean stuff,” he smiled, “it has elements of pathos. Jean got nineteen years for it if you remember.”

She paid no heed to his flippancy.

“You talk like an educated man. Economic determination did not bring you to this. You have absolutely no excuse.”

“I have offered none,” he said drily.

She spoke with a sudden air of candor.

“Do you know this situation interests me very much. One reads about burglars, of course, but that sort of thing seems rather remote. We’ve never had any robberies here before, and now to come face to face with a real burglar, cracking – isn’t that the word you use? – a safe, is rather disconcerting.”

“You bear up remarkably well,” he assured her.

It was her turn to smile.

“I’m just wondering,” she said slowly. “My father detests notoriety.”

The intruder permitted himself to laugh gently. He thought of that pretentious tome “Operas I Have Seen.”

“How well Mr. Guestwick conceals it!”

Apparently she had not heard him. It was plain she was in the throes of making up her mind.

“I wonder if I ought to do it,” she mused.

“Do what?” he demanded.

“Let you get away. You have so far stolen nothing so I should not be aiding or abetting a crime.”

“Indeed you would,” he said promptly. “My very presence here is illegal and as you see I have opened that absurd safe.”

“What an amazing burglar!” she cried, “he does not want his freedom.”

“It is your duty as Mr. Guestwick’s daughter to send me to jail and I shan’t respect you if you don’t.”

She was again the haughty young society woman gazing at a curious specimen of man.

“It is very evident,” she snapped, “that you don’t appreciate your position. Instead of sending you to prison I am willing to give you another chance. Will you promise me never to do this sort of thing again if I let you go?”

Trent looked up.

“I have enjoyed your conversation very much,” he observed genially, “but I have work to do. Inside that safe I expect to find fifty thousand dollars and possibly some odd trinkets. I am in particular need of the money and I propose to get it.”

Swiftly she crossed the room to a telephone.

“I don’t think you’ll succeed,” she said, her hand on the instrument.

“Put it to the test,” he suggested. “The wires are not cut.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?” she demanded; “don’t you realize your position?”

“Fully,” he retorted, “but remember you’ll have just the same difficulty as I in explaining your presence here. Now go ahead and get the police.”

“What do you mean?” she cried. He noticed that she paled at what he said and her hands had been for a moment not quite steady.

“First that you are not a Miss Guestwick. There are only two of them and I have just left them at the Opera. Next you are neither servant nor guest. The servants are all abed and there are no house guests. I am not accustomed to making mistakes in matters of this sort. Now, I’m not inviting confidences and I’m not making threats, but the doors are locked and I intend to get what I came for. Ring all you like and see if a servant answers you. By the way how is it I overlooked you when I came in?”

“I hid behind those portières.”

“It was excusable,” he commented, “not to have looked there.”

She sank into a chair her whole face suffused with gloom. He steeled his heart against feeling sympathy for her. He would liked to have learned all about her but there was not much time. The Guestwicks might return earlier than usual or Briggs might be lurking the other side of the door.

“You’ve found me out,” she said quietly, “I’m not one of the Guestwick girls.”

“I told you so,” he said a little impatiently.

“Don’t you want to know anything about me?” she demanded.

“Some other time,” he returned, “I’m busy now.”

“But what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I thought I told you. I’m going to see what Mr. Guestwick has which interests me. Then I shall get a bite to eat somewhere and go home to bed.”

“Are you going to take that fifty thousand dollars?” she demanded. Her tone was a tragic one.

“That’s what I came for,” he told her.

“You mustn’t, you mustn’t,” she declared and then fell to weeping bitterly.

Beauty in distress moved Anthony Trent even when his business most engrossed his attention. It was his nature to be considerate of women. When he had garnered enough money to buy himself a home he intended to marry and settle down to domestic joys. As to this weeping woman, there was little doubt in his mind as to the reason she was in the Guestwick home. Perhaps she noticed the harder look that came to his face.

“Whom do you think I am?” she asked.

“I have not forgotten,” he answered, “that women also are abstractors at times.”

She gazed at him wide open eyes, a look of horror on her face.

“You think I’m here to steal?”

“I wish I didn’t,” he answered. “It’s bad enough for a man, but for a woman like you. What am I to think when I find you hiding in a house where you have no right to be?”

“That’s the whole tragedy of it,” she exclaimed, “that I’ve no right to be here. I suppose I shall have to tell you everything. Can’t you guess who I am?”

Anthony Trent looked at the clock. Precious seconds were chasing one another into minutes and he had wasted too much time already.

“I don’t see that it matters at all to me,” he pointed to the safe, “I’m here on business.”

It annoyed him to feel he was not quite living up to the debonair heroes he had created once upon a time. They would not have permitted themselves to be so brusque with a lovely girl upon whose exquisite cheeks tears were still wet.

“You must listen to me,” she implored, “I’m Estelle Grandcourt. Now do you understand why I’ve come?”

“For the money that you think is already yours,” he said, a trifle sulkily. Matters were becoming complicated.

“Money!” cried the amazing chorus girl, “I hate it!”

His face cleared.

“If that’s the case,” he said genially, “we shall not quarrel. Frankly, Miss Grandcourt, I love it.”

She glanced at him through tear-beaded lashes.

“I suppose you’ve always thought of a show girl as a scheming adventuress always on the lookout for some foolish, rich old man or else some silly boy with millions to spend.”

“Not at all!” he protested.

“But you have,” she contradicted, “I can tell by your manner. For my part I have always thought of burglars as brutal, low-browed men without chivalry or courtesy. I’ve been wrong too. I imagined the gentleman-crook was only a fiction and now I find him a fact. Will you please tell me what you’ve heard about me. I’m not fishing for compliments. I want, really and truly, to know.”

Trent hesitated a moment. He thought, as he looked at her, that never had he seen a sweeter face. She was wholly in earnest.

“Please, please,” she entreated.

“It’s probably all wrong,” he observed, “but the general impression is that Norton Guestwick is a wild, weak lad for whom you set your snares. And when Mr. Guestwick tried to break it off you asked fifty-thousand dollars in cash as a price.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked looking at him almost piteously.

“It was common report,” he said, seeking to exonerate himself, “I read some of it in Gotham Gossip.”

“And just because of what some spiteful writer said you condemn me unheard.”

He looked at the inviting safe and fidgeted.

“I’m not condemning,” he reminded her. “I don’t know anything about the affair. I don’t yet see why you are here, Miss Grandcourt.”

“Because I have the right to be,” she said, looking him full in the face. “I pretended I was a Miss Guestwick. If you wish to know the truth, I am Mrs. Norton Guestwick. I can show you our marriage certificate. This is the first time I have ever been in the house of my father-in-law.”

“How did you get in?” he demanded. He felt certain that Briggs the butler had shown him into the library believing it to be unoccupied.

“I bribed a servant who used to be in our employ.”

“Your employ?” he queried.

“Why not?” she flung back at him. “Is it also reported that I come from the slums? We were never rich as the Guestwicks are rich, but until my father died we lived in good style as we know it in the South. I am at least as well educated as my sisters-in-law who refuse to recognize that I exist. I was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris. I sing and paint and play the piano as well as most girls but do none of these well enough to make a living at it. I came here to New York hoping that through the influence of my father’s friends I could get some sort of a position which would give me a living wage.” She shrugged her shoulders, “I wonder if you know how differently people look at one when one is well off and when one comes begging favors?”

“None better,” he exclaimed bitterly.

“So I had to get in to the chorus because they said my figure would do even if I hadn’t a good enough voice. Then I met Norton.”

She looked at Anthony Trent with a little friendly smile that stirred him oddly. In that moment he envied Norton Guestwick more than any living creature.

“What do they say about my husband?” she asked.

“You can never believe reports,” he said evasively.

“I’ll tell you,” she returned, “they say he is a waster, a libertine, weak and degenerate. They are wrong. He is full of sweet, generous impulses. His mother has so pampered him that he was almost hopeless till I met him. I expect you think it’s conceited of me but I have a great influence on him.”

“You would on any man,” he said fervently.

She looked at him in a way that suggested a certain subtle tribute to his best qualities.

“Ah, but you are different,” she sighed, “you are strong and resolute. You would sway the woman you loved and make her what you wanted her to be. He is clay for my molding and I want him to be a splendid, fine son like my father.” She looked at Trent with a tender, proud smile, “If you had ever met my father you would understand.”

Anthony Trent shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He had not dared for months now to think of that kindly country physician who died from the exposure attendant on a trip during a blizzard to aid a penniless patient.

“I know what you mean,” he said at length, “and I think it is splendid of you. Good God! why can people like the Guestwicks object to a girl like you?”

“They’ve never seen me,” she explained, “and that’s the main trouble. They persist in thinking of me as a champagne-drinking adventuress who wants to blackmail them. That money" – she pointed to the safe, “I didn’t ask for it. Mr. Guestwick offered it to me as a bribe to give up my husband and consent to a divorce.”

“But I still don’t see why you are here,” he said.

“Our old servant arranged it. She says they always come up here after the opera, all four of them. If I confront them they must see I’m not the sort of girl they think me. I’m dreading it horribly but it’s the only way.”

Anthony Trent looked at her with open admiration.

“You’ll win,” he cried enthusiastically, “I feel it in my bones.”

“And when I absolutely refuse to take their money they must see I’m not the adventuress they call me.”

Anthony Trent had by this time forgotten the money. The mention of it reminded him of his errand and the fleeting minutes.

“If you don’t take it, what is going to happen to it?”

“I’m going to tell Mr. Guestwick that he can’t buy me.”

“But I’m willing to be bought,” he said, forcing a smile. “In fact that’s what I came for.”

She shrunk back as though he had struck her. Her big eyes looked reproach at him. Tremulous eager words seemed forced from her by the agitation into which his words had thrown her.

“You couldn’t do that now,” she wailed, “not now you know. They’ll be in very soon now and what could I say if the money was gone? Don’t you see they would send me away in disgrace and Norton would believe that I was just as bad as they said? Then he’d divorce me and I think my heart would break.”

“Damn!” muttered Trent. Things were happening in an unexpected fashion. He tried not to look at her piteous face.

“Please be kind to me,” she begged, “this is your opportunity to do one great noble thing.”

“It really means so much to you?” he asked.

“It means everything,” she said simply.

He paced the room for a minute or more. He was fighting a great battle. There remained in him, despite his mode of living, a certain generosity of character, a certain fineness bequeathed him by generations of honorable folk. He saw clearly what the girl meant. She was here to fight for her happiness and the redemption of the man she loved. How small a thing, it seemed to him suddenly, was the necessity he had felt for obtaining the miserable money. What stinging mordant memories would always be his if he refused her!

There was a tenderness, a protective look in his eyes when he glanced down at her. He was his father’s son again.

“It means something to me, too,” he told her, “to do as you want, and I don’t believe there’s a person on this green earth I’d do it for but you.”

His hand lingered for a moment on her white shoulder.

“Good luck, little girl.”

The partly lighted hall full of mysterious shadows awakened no fear in him as he quietly descended the stairs. And when he came to the avenue he did not glance up and down as he usually did to see whether or not he was being followed.

There was a lightness of heart and an exaltation of spirit which he had never experienced. It was that happiness which alone comes to the man who has made a sacrifice. There was never a moment since he had abandoned fiction that he was nearer to returning to its uncertain rewards. Pipe after pipe he smoked when he was once more in his quiet room and asked himself why he had done this thing. There were two reasons hard to dissociate. First, this wonderful girl had reminded him of the man he had passionately admired – his father, the father who had taught him to play fair. And then he was forced to admit he had never been more drawn to any woman than to this girl, who must, before his last pipe was smoked, have won her victory or gone down to defeat. Again and again he told himself that there was no man he envied so much as Norton Guestwick.

CHAPTER IX
“THE COUNTESS”

The next morning Anthony Trent observed that Mrs. Kinney was filled with the excitement that attended the reading of an unusual crime as set forth by the morning papers. It was in those crimes committed in the higher circles of society which intrigued her most, that society which she had served.

As a rule Trent let her wander on feeling that her pleasures were few. Sometimes he thought it a little curious that she should concern herself with affairs in which he was sure, sooner or later, to be involved. It was a relief to know she spoke of them to none but him. He rarely bothered to follow her rambling recitals, contenting himself now and again with exclamations of supposed interest. But this morning he was suddenly roused from his meditations by the mention of the word Guestwick.

“What’s that?” he demanded.

“I was telling you about the Guestwick robbery, sir,” she said as she filled his cup.

He did not as a rule look at the paper until his breakfast was done. To send her for it now might, later, be used as a chain in the evidence that might even now be forging for him. He affected a luke-warm interest.

“What was it?” he asked.

“Money mad!” returned Mrs. Kinney, shaking her head. “All money mad. The root of all evil.”

“A robbery was it?”

“It was like this,” Mrs. Kinney responded, strangely gratified that her employer found her recital worth listening to. “There was fifty-thousand dollars in cash in the safe in Mr. Guestwick’s library. He’s a millionaire and lives on Fifth Avenue. It’s a most mysterious case. The butler swears his master rang him up and told him to send all the servants to bed.”

At length Mrs. Kinney recited Briggs’s evidence before the police captain who was hurriedly summoned to the mansion. “They arrested the butler,” said Mrs. Kinney. “Mr. Guestwick says he came from one of those castles in England where dissolute noblemen do nothing but shoot foxes all day and play cards all night. The police theory is that the butler admitted them and then went bed so as to prove an alibi.”

“Mr. Guestwick denies sending any such message?”

“Yes. He was at the Opera.”

Anthony Trent fought down the desire to rush out into the kitchen and take the paper from before Mrs. Kinney’s plate. She had said that Briggs was to have admitted more than one person.

“How many did this suspected butler let in?”

“Only one, the man. He was in evening dress. Briggs suspected him from the first, but daren’t go against his master’s positive instructions. Briggs, the butler, says the man must have opened the door to his accomplice when he’d been sent off to bed with instructions not to answer any bell or telephone. The other was a beautiful young woman dressed just as she’d come from the Opera herself.”

“Who saw her if Briggs did not?” he demanded.

“They caught her,” Mrs. Kinney returned triumphantly, “and the arrest of her accomplice is expected any minute. They know who he is.”

Anthony Trent put down his untasted coffee.

“That’s interesting,” he commented. “Do they mention his name?”

“I don’t know as they did,” she replied. “I’ll go fetch the paper.”

He read it through with a deeper interest than he had ever taken in printed sheet before. Such was Guestwick’s importance that two columns had been devoted to him.

Mr. Guestwick on returning from the Opera was incensed to find none to let him in his own house. He was compelled to use a latchkey. The house was silent and unlighted. Mr. Guestwick, although a man of courage, felt the safety of his women folk would be better guarded if he called in a passing policeman. In the library they came face to face with crime.

There, standing at the closed safe, her skirt caught as the heavy doors had swung to, was a beautiful woman engaged as they came upon her in trying to tear off the imprisoning garments. Five minutes later and she would have escaped said police sapience.

Finger prints revealed her as a very well-known criminal known to the continental police as “The Countess.” She was one of a high-class gang which operated as a rule on the French and Italian Riviera, and owed its success to the ease with which it could assume the manners and customs of the aristocracy it planned to steal from. “The Countess,” for example, spoke English with a perfection of idiom and inflection that was unequaled by a foreigner. She was believed to come from an old family of Tuscany. Despite a rigid examination by the police she had declined to make any explanation. That, she told them, would be done in court.

Anthony Trent looked at the clock. It was nine and she would be brought before a magistrate at half-past ten.

So he had been fooled! 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.

There was possibly some danger in going. Briggs would be there. The woman might point at him in open court. There were a hundred dangers, but they had no power to deter him. He swore to watch her, gain what particulars he might as to her past life and associates, and then take his revenge. God! How she had hoodwinked him!

His face he must, of course, disguise in some simple manner. It was not difficult. In court he took a seat not too far back. Chewing gum, as he had often observed in the subway, had a marvelous power in altering an expression. He sat there, his lower jaw thrust out and his mouth drawn down, ceaselessly chewing. And one eye was partially closed. He had brought the thing to perfection. With shoulders hunched he looked without fear of detection into the fascinating green eyes of “The Countess.”

By this time her defense was arranged. Last night, her lawyer explained, she was so overcome with the shock that she could not make even a simple statement to the police.

Miss Violet Benyon, he declared, of London, England, and temporarily at the Plaza, had felt on the previous evening need for a walk. Knowing Fifth Avenue to be absolutely safe she walked North. Passing the Guestwick mansion she saw a man in evening dress stealing down the steps, across the road and into the Park. Fearing robbery she had rung the bell. Getting no answer and finding the door open she went in. The only light was in the library. Of a fearless nature, Miss Benyon of London went boldly in. There was an open safe. This she closed and in the doing of it was imprisoned. That was all. The lawyer swept the finger-prints aside as unworthy evidence. He was appearing before a neolithic magistrate who was prejudiced against them.

An imposing old lady who claimed to be Miss Benyon’s aunt went bail for her niece’s appearance to the amount of ten thousand dollars. She mentioned as close friends names of well known Americans, socially elect, who would rush to her rescue ere the day was out. So impressive was she, and so splendid a witness did Miss Benyon make, that the magistrate disregarded Mr. Guestwick’s plea and admitted her to bail.

Trent knew very well that Central Office men would dog the steps of aunt and niece, making escape almost impossible. But he was nevertheless convinced that Miss Violet Benyon of London, or the Countess from the Riviera, would never return to the magistrate’s court as that trusting jurist anticipated.

And Anthony Trent was right. The two women, despite police surveillance, left the hotel and merged themselves among the millions. The younger woman taking advantage of a new maid’s inexperience offered her a reward for permitting her to escape by back ways in order to win, as she averred, a bet. The aunt’s escape was unexplained by the police. They found awaiting the elder woman’s coming a girl from a milliner’s shop. She was allowed to go without examination. Trent read the account very carefully and stored every published particular in his trained memory. There was no doubt in his mind that the milliner’s assistant was the so-called aunt. He remembered her as a slim, elderly woman, very much made-up.

On his own account he called at the milliner’s and made some inquiries. He found that there was no account with the Benyons and no assistant had been sent to the hotel. It was none of his business to aid police authorities. And he was not anxious that the two should be caught in that way. There would come a time when he was retired from his present occupation when he would feel the need of excitement. Getting even with the clever actress who prevented him from taking the Guestwick money would call for his astutest planning.