“Ring our bell,” said one of them, “and we’ll let you in.”
“But how did you get in?” the other sister demanded, suddenly.
“The door was open,” he said blandly.
“That’s that dreadful Mr. Dietz again,” they cried in unison. “He drinks, and when he goes out to the saloon, he puts the catch back so there won’t be the bother of a key. I have complained but the janitor takes no notice. I suppose we don’t offer him cigars and tips, so he takes the part of Dietz.”
By this simple maneuver Anthony Trent established his right to use the roof without incurring suspicion.
The Drummond loot proved not to be despised by one anxious to put a hundred thousand dollars to his credit. The actual amount was three thousand, eight hundred dollars. Furthermore, there was some of the Drummond stationery, a bundle of letters and the two or three things he had taken hastily from young Bulstrode’s room. He regretted there had been so small an opportunity to investigate the Bulstrode mansion but time had too great a value for him. The black pearl had flung itself at him, and some yale keys and assorted club stationery – these were all he could take. The stationery might prove useful. He had discovered that fact in the Conington Warren affair. If it had not been that the butler crept out of the dark hall to watch him as he left the Bulstrode house, he would have tried the keys on the hall door. That could be done later. It is not every rich house which is guarded by burglar resisting devices.
It was the bundle of letters and I. O. U.’s that he examined with peculiar care. They were enclosed in a long, blue envelope on which was written “Private and Personal.”
When Trent had read them all he whistled.
“These will be worth ten times his measly thirty-eight hundred,” he said softly.
But there was no thought of blackmail in his mind. That was a crime at which he still wholesomely rebelled. It occurred to him sometimes that a life such as his tended to lead to progressive deterioration. That there might come a time when he would no longer feel bitterly toward blackmailers. It was part of his punishment, this dismal thought of what might be unless he reverted to the ways of honest men. Inasmuch as a man may play a crooked game decently, so Anthony Trent determined to play it.
Many of the letters in the blue envelope were from women whose names were easily within the ken of one who studied the society columns of the metropolitan dailies. Most of them seemed to have been the victims of misplaced bets at Belmont Park or rash bidding at Auction. There was one letter from the wife of a high official at Washington begging him on no account to let her husband know she had borrowed money from him. A prominent society golfing girl whose play Trent had a score of times admired for its pluck and skill had borrowed a thousand dollars from Drummond. There was her I. O. U. on the table. Scrawling a line on Drummond stationery in what seemed to be Drummond handwriting, Anthony Trent sent it back to her. There were acknowledgments of borrowings from the same kind of rich waster that Graham Bulstrode represented. A score of prominent persons would have slept the better for knowing that their I. O. U.’s had passed from Drummond’s keeping. The man was more of a usurer than banker.
What interested Anthony Trent most of all was a collection of letters signed “N.G.” and written on the stationery of a very exclusive club. It was a club to which Drummond did not belong.
The first letter was merely a request that Drummond meet the writer in the library of the athletic club where Anthony Trent had seen him.
The second was longer and spelled a deeper distress.
“It’s impossible in a case like this,” wrote “N.G.,” “to get any man I know well to endorse my note. If I could afford to let all the world into my secret, I should not have come to you. You know very well that as I am the only son your money is safe enough. I must pay this girl fifty thousand dollars or let my father know all about it. He would be angry enough to send me to some god-forsaken ranch to cut wild oats.”
The third letter was still more insistent. The writer was obviously afraid that he would have to beg the money from his father.
“I have always understood,” he wrote, “that you would lend any amount on reasonable security. I want only fifty thousand dollars but I’ve got to have it at once. It’s quite beyond my mother’s power to get it for me this time. I’ve been to that source too often and the old man is on to it. E.G. insists that the money in cash must be paid to her on the morning of the 18th when she will call at the house with her lawyer. I am to receive my letters back and she will leave New York. Let me know instantly.”
The next letter indicated that William Drummond had decided to lend “N.G.” the amount but that his offer came too late.
“I wish you had made up your mind sooner,” said “N.G.” “It would have saved me the devil of a lot of worry and you could have made money out of it. As it is my father learned of it somehow. He talked about the family honor as usual. But the result is that when she and her lawyer call at ten on Thursday morning the money will be there. No check for her; she’s far too clever, but fifty thousand in crisp new notes. As for me, I’m to reform. That means I have to go down town every morning at nine and work in my father’s brokerage business. Can you imagine me doing that? I blame you for it, Drummond. You are too cautious by a damn sight to please me.”
Anthony Trent was thus put into possession of the following facts. That a rich man’s son, initials only known, had got into some sort of a scrape with a girl, initials were E.G., who demanded fifty thousand dollars in cash which was to be paid at the residence of the young man’s father. The date set was Thursday the eighteenth. It was now the early morning of Tuesday the sixteenth.
Trent had lists of the members of all the best clubs. He went through the one on whose paper N.G. had written. There were several members with those initials. Careful elimination left him with only one likely name, that of Norton Guestwick. Norton Guestwick was the only son and heir of a very rich broker. The elder Guestwick posed as a musical critic, had a box in the Golden Horseshoe and patronized such opera singers as permitted it. Many a time Anthony Trent had gazed on the Guestwick family seated in their compelling box from the modest seat that was his. Guestwick had even written a book, “Operas I Have Seen,” which might be found in most public libraries. It was an elaborately illustrated tome which reflected his shortcomings as a critic no less than his vanity as an author. A collector of musical books, Trent remembered buying it with high hopes and being disgusted at its smug ineffectiveness.
He had seldom seen Norton in the family box but the girls were seldom absent. They, too, upheld the Arts. Long ago he had conceived a dislike for Guestwick. He hated men who beat what they thought was time to music whose composers had other ideas of it.
Turning up a recent file of Gotham Gossip he came upon a reference to the Guestwick heir. “We understand,” said this waspish, but usually veracious weekly, “that Norton Guestwick’s attention to pretty Estelle Grandcourt (née Sadie Cort) has much perturbed his aristocratic parents who wish him to marry a snug fortune and a girl suited to be their daughter-in-law. It is not violating a confidence to say that the lady in question occupies a mansion on Commonwealth avenue and is one of the most popular girls in Boston’s smart set.”
While many commentators will puzzle themselves over the identity of the dark lady of the immortal sonnets, few could have failed to perceive that E.G. was almost certain to be Estelle Grandcourt. Sundry tests of a confirmatory nature proved it without doubt. He had thus two days in which to make his preparations to annex the fifty thousand dollars. There were difficulties. In these early days of his adventuring Anthony Trent made no use of disguises. He had so far been but himself. Vaguely he admitted that he must sooner or later come to veiling his identity. For the present exploit it was necessary that he should find out the name of the Guestwick butler.
He might have to get particulars from Clarke. But even Clarke’s help could not now be called in and it was upon this seemingly unimportant thing that his plan hinged. In a disguise such as many celebrated cracksmen had used, he might have gained a kitchen door and learned by what name Guestwick’s man called himself. Or he might have found it out from a tradesman’s lad.