The Secret of the Silver Car, Wyndham Martyn [best novels to read to improve english txt] 📗

about with privacy. The Rosecarrel butler was less urbane than his brother at Alderwood and the opportunity for private conversation was lacking. Trent saw in this rebuff another move in the subtle game Private Arthur Smith was playing.

The next two days were spent in riding over the moors but not a glimpse of Lady Daphne or her brother did he get. He was certain they were avoiding him deliberately. The idea possessed Trent that Arthur Grenvil was not satisfied to obtain merely the rewards that were offered for his apprehension. If he followed the great thefts of the world he would know that four of its most famous stones were still missing. And from Trent’s confession he would guess the master criminal still held them. They were even now in Trent’s Maine camp ornamenting a brass Benares lamp as though they were merely the original pieces of glass that had occupied the spaces when Trent purchased it. Trent could sell through discreet sources the loot that was hidden in Kennebago for not less than half a million dollars. If Arthur Grenvil chose to command him to do so and share the proceeds what could he do? The hold he had on the other man was slight. Langley might have extorted the confession more as a warning than an instrument to use against a relative. In the two other cases to which Arthur Grenvil had confessed his creditors were those who had been his friends. He had embezzled the mess funds of his regiment. It was unlikely that a cavalry regiment which had fought from Dettingen to Mons would like a story of that sort to get abroad.

On the morning of the third day after his rebuff at the hands of the footmen Trent made up his mind. He would see Arthur Grenvil and see him at once. “If he thinks he can keep me out,” said Trent his mouth tightening to a narrow line, “he holds me too cheap.”

It happened that Arthur Grenvil knew nothing of the attempt of Anthony Trent to see him. The doctors had indeed ordered him rest. Lady Daphne when she heard of Trent’s insistence said nothing but wondered why it was that he should make the attempt. She still thought uneasily of that night at Dereham when he had discovered her with the combination to her host’s safe. There was such a thing as blackmail and, after all what did she know of the American except that he had been a guest of the Langleys. In itself this should have been enough to vouch for his position in life.

She found herself more interested in Anthony Trent than in any man she had ever met. And it was because of this concern that in a letter to Alicia Langley she asked about him.

Alicia’s letter was astonishing. “I can’t imagine, my dear Daphne to whom you refer. There was no Anthony Trent here on the first. The only American was Mr. Conington Warren who was wafted to our shores permanently on the waves of prohibition. I think you knew personally every other man except the Duke of Valladolida. He is, of course, a grandee of Spain, short, slight and bald, but a first rate shot, Reginald says, and plays polo for the Madrid team. Certainly there was no tall, clean-shaven, good-looking man here whom you don’t know quite well.” Alicia Langley invariably added postscripts. This time it interested the reader more than the letter. “I showed your letter to Reginald and he was almost excited. He said an Anthony Trent had motored over from Norwich and wanted to learn particulars of a private in his regiment. As the private in question was Arthur you may draw your own inferences if you can. Reginald refused to speak so this Trent man of yours doesn’t know Arthur’s nom de guerre from anything he has learned here. Reginald wants you to tell him where you met the man. Please do as he seems to think it very serious.”

While Lady Daphne read this communication, not without agitation, her brother was dressing for dinner. Some people were coming over from Pencarrow. He occupied two splendid rooms facing west and was looking over the moorland to the sea when the handle of the room leading to a large upper hall was opened noiselessly and admitted Anthony Trent. When Grenvil remembered he had not long to make the change from flannels into evening dress, he turned about to see the American sitting in a comfortable chair.

“Please don’t try and ring for the servants,” Trent advised smoothly, “because I am nearest to the bell and I shall not permit it.”

If he expected an outbreak of anger he was disappointed. Instead there was that puzzled expression which could only arise from innocence of Trent’s identity or the most finished art.

“Don’t think I am a housebreaker,” Trent went on equably, “I am not. This is visitors day if you remember and after paying my shilling I looked at the state rooms, pictures and autograph letters and fell asleep. WTien I woke up I entered this room by mistake.”

“And you want to find your way out?” Grenvil returned. “If you will ring the bell I will have you shown.”

“Not until I have had the opportunity of talking a little to you. In our first conversation I was indiscreet. You will admit that, won’t you?”

“Were you?” Grenvil answered vaguely. “I really don’t remember Mr. Trent.”

“Then you deny ever having seen me until we met by the salmon pool a few days ago?” Trent looked at him like a hawk.

“I do,” Grenvil retorted.

“Then if you do, why don’t you resent my butting in like this? Why don’t you call some men-servants and have me flung out for a damned nuisance? Say I threatened you, say anything an innocent man could and would say. Your attitude doesn’t fool me in the least. You are playing a deep game but I can play a deeper.”

Grenvil shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of weariness. “There are many things I cannot explain,” he said.

“You are going to begin right now,” Trent said. He was not in a mood to be trifled with. He firmly believed that this man was planning to send him to goal for a period of years so long that he would come out a white-haired broken man.

He looked round frowning as steps sounded along the corridor and a tap came on the door.

“Let me in Arthur,” he heard Lady Daphne say, “I’ve had a most extraordinary letter from Aunt Alicia. I must see you about it.”

She rattled the locked door impatiently. Her brother walked over to it. Trent could offer no objection. He was confused and annoyed that at a moment such as this the girl must interrupt. To Anthony Trent she was as one above and apart. There was no use in concealing that he himself was a crook no matter how differently he pursued the profession from the lesser lights whom he despised. And Arthur Grenvil was as crooked as he with less excuse for it.

Lady Daphne stopped short when she saw Trent rise from his chair and bow. Her greeting was so wholly different from the friendly manner she had shown ere this, that he was at loss to understand it. He did not know that Mrs. Langley was the Aunt Alicia. He could only suppose her brother had hinted that he was not what he seemed.

“I was not told you were here,” she said.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” Arthur Grenvil said. Trent could see that he only spoke the truth. From what did he expect his sister to protect him. “Mr. Trent here has an idea I’m deliberately pretending not to know who he is.”

“I assure Mr. Trent,” she said haughtily, “that at all events I know what he is.”

Trent looked at her a little quizzically.

“I wonder if you really do,” he commented.

“I shall be very glad to prove it,” she answered, “but I am not anxious that my brother should have to listen. I hoped you understood that he is under the doctors’ orders and must not be worried. As dinner is almost ready and I have several things to do will you be kind enough to put this discussion off until tomorrow morning?”

“Just as you please,” he said. “When and where?” “You are staying at the Bassetts I think. Very well I will drive over there tomorrow at half past ten.”

He flushed. The inference was plain. He was not permitted to meet her within the castle. The servant who showed him out seemed to feel differently today. He felt outcast.

There was a little apple orchard behind the Bassetts’ stone built barns where each day Anthony Trent used to practise short approaches with a favorite mashie. He held it as an axiom that if a golfer kept his hand in with short mashie practise he would never be off his game. He was industriously trying to approach over a tall spreading tree when he heard the sound of wheels outside. It was not yet time for his appointment with Lady Daphne but he could see from the higher ground of the orchard that it was she. She was driving a dashing pair of chestnuts to a mail phaeton. By her side sat a man with a powerful unscrupulous face who was evidently amusing her by his conversation. Trent supposed he was a guest at the castle, some man who had the right to meet her by reason of being on the right side of the law.

Almost jealously Anthony Trent saw him help her to alight. He was a heavily built man but notan ungraceful one and he was exceedingly well dressed. Trent judged him to be five and forty and used to dominating men. He had noticed often that men most ruthless with their fellows have the most charming ways with women.

“I shan’t be very long,” Lady Daphne said laughing, “You will be able to smoke just two cigarettes, Mr. Castoon.”

Castoon. Of course it was Rudolph Castoon the banker, the English born member of the great continental firm of bankers and financiers. One of the brothers was a leader among New York capitalists. It was said that each Castoon was loyal to the country where it had been arranged he should be born.

It was in the sweet smelling sitting room of the Bassetts that Trent found her. She was standing up and refused to be seated. Her enmity now was hardly concealed.

“I find,” she began, “that you have deceived me. You claimed to be one of the guns at Colonel Langley’s shoot.”

“I permitted you to assume it,” he corrected, “but that is not an excuse.”

“Colonel Langley is very anxious to know where it was I saw you and under what circumstances.”

“You will hardly inform him as to that,” said Trent smiling.

“If it becomes necessary I shall,” she replied. “At all events I was in the house of a relative while you were there—”

“As a thief in the night. Thank you.”

“You were there as a detective.”

She had never seen him lose his calm before. He flushed red and a look of hatred came over his face.

“A detective! I? If you knew how I loathed them you would never suspect me of being that.”

“If not why are you down here hounding my brother?”

“Hasn’t he told you?”

“He says you persist in pretending to know him.”

“Lady Daphne,” Trent said earnestly, “Was your brother a Private William Smith, a gentleman ranker in the seventy-eighth battalion of the City of London Regiment?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“And wasn’t this same man under his own name expelled from Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge.”

“Then you are a detective!” she cried.

“On my honor, no,”