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Anthony Trent, Master Criminal

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<h2>CHAPTER XV THE BARON LENDS A HAND</h2> “Hip, hip, ’ooray!” said the Baron again, and sank back into bibulous slumber. By his side on a tray was a half-emptied bottle of liqueur cognac and an open bottle of champagne. He had evidently been consuming over-many champagne and brandy highballs. Anthony Trent considered him for a few moments in silence. He saw a way out of his difficulties and a certain ironical method of fooling investigation which pleased him more than a little. In a tall tumbler he mixed brandy and champagne—half and half—and poked the little Baron in the ribs. The familiar sight of being offered his favorite tipple made the trembling hand seize the glass. The contents was absorbed greedily, and the Baron fell back on the chaise longue. The well-worn phrase “dead to the world” alone describes the condition of the Baron, who had married a brewery. Trent raised the man—he could have weighed no more than a hundred pounds—in his strong arms and carried him across to the dressing table. And with the Baron’s limp hands he opened the jewel case. Therefrom he extracted a necklace of diamonds set in platinum. What else was there he did not touch. He had a definitely planned course of action in view. The Baron’s recording fingers closed the box. It would be as pretty a case of finger-prints as ever gladdened the heart of a central-office detective. The Baron was next carried to the chaise longue. He would not wake for several hours. It would have been quite easy for Trent to make his escape undetected. But there was something else to be done first. He locked the door of the Venetian bedroom and then took up the telephone receiver. His carefully trained memory recorded the accent and voice of the Baron von Eckstein as he had heard it during an evening at the theater. He called a telephone number. Fortunately it was a private wire connecting with the central. “I wish to speak to Mrs. Adrien Beekman,” he said when at length there was an answer to his call. “She is in bed,” a sleepy voice returned. “She can’t be disturbed.” “She must be,” said Trent, mimicking the Baron. “It is a matter of vast importance. Tell her a gentleman wishes to present her ambulance fund with a large sum of money. To-morrow will be too late.” “I’ll see what can be done,” said the voice. “That’s about the only matter I dare disturb her on. Hold the wire.” “Madam,” said Trent a minute later, “it is the Baron von Eckstein who has the honor to speak with you.” “An odd hour to choose,” returned Mrs. Adrien Beekman with no cordiality. “I wish to make reparation, Madam,” the pseudo Baron flung back. “This afternoon you talked to my wife, the Baroness, about your ambulances.” “And found her not interested in the least,” Mrs. Beekman said, a little crossly. So eminent a leader of society as she was not accustomed to refusal of a donation when asked of rich women striving for social recognition. “We have decided that your cause is one which should have met a more generous response. I have been accused of being disloyal. That is false, Madam. My wife has been attacked as pro-German. That is also false. To prove our loyalty we have decided to send you a diamond necklace. Convert this into money and buy what ambulances you can.” “Do you mean this?” said the astonished Mrs. Adrien Beekman. “I am never more serious,” retorted the Baron. “What value has it?” she asked next. “You will get fifty thousand dollars at least,” he said. “Ten ambulances!” she cried. “Oh, Baron, how very generous! I’m afraid I’ve cherished hard feelings about you both that have not been justified. How perfectly splendid of you!” “One other thing,” said the Baron, “I am sending this by a trusted messenger at once. Please see that some one reliable is there to receive it.”   It was safer, Trent thought, to gain the Square over the roofs and down the stairways of the apartment house. It was now raining and hardly a soul was in view. The Adrien Beekman house was only a block distant. They were of the few who retained family mansions on the lower end of Fifth Avenue. He knocked at the Beekman door and a man-servant opened it. In the shadows the man could only see the dark outline of the messenger. “I am the Baron von Eckstein,” he said, still with his carefully mimicked accent. “This is the package of which I spoke to your mistress.”   It seemed, when he got back to Webster Hall, that none had missed him. The first to speak was the Baroness. “We are just going over to the house,” she said cordially. “I don’t want to share you,” he said, smiling, “with all these others. I’d rather come to-morrow at four. May I?” At four on the next day Anthony Trent, dressed in the best of taste as a man of fashion and leisure, ascended the steps to the Burton Trent home and wondered, as others had done before him, at the amazing fowl which guarded its approach. He was kept waiting several minutes. From the distant reception rooms he heard acrimonious voices. One was the Baron’s and it pleased him to note that he had caught its inflections so well the night before. The other voice was that of his new friend, the Baroness. Unfortunately the conversation was in German and its meaning incomprehensible. When at last he was shown into a drawing room he found the Baroness highly excited and not a little indignant. She was too much overwrought to take much interest in her new acquaintance. Almost she looked as though she wished he had not come. Things rarely looked so rosy to the Baroness as they did after a good dinner and it was but four o’clock. “What has disturbed you?” he asked. “Everything,” she retorted. “Mainly my husband. Tell me, if you were a woman and your husband, in a drunken fit, gave away a diamond necklace to an enemy would you be calm about it?” “Has that happened?” he demanded. “It has,” she snapped. “You remember I told you at the dance I had left the original necklace at home for safety?” “I believe you did mention it,” he said, meditating. “I’d much better have worn it, Mr. Trent. Everybody knows the Baron’s passion is for cognac and champagne. No man since time began has ever drunk so much of them. When we got back here last night we had a gay and festive time. It was almost light when I went to my room and found the necklace gone. I sobered the Baron and he could give absolutely no explanation. He said he had slept in the dressing room to guard the jewels. That was nonsense. He came there to worry my maid. She went to bed and left him drinking. The police came in and took all the servants’ finger-prints and tried to fasten the thing on them. There were marks on the jewel case where some one’s hands had been put. I offered a reward of five thousand dollars for any one who could point out the man or woman who had taken the necklace.” Trent kept his countenance to the proper pitch of interest and sympathy. It was not easy. “What have the police found?” “Wait,” the Baroness commanded, “you shall hear everything. This morning I received a letter from Mrs. Adrien Beekman. You know who she is, of course. She thanked me, rather patronizingly, for giving my diamond necklace to her Ambulance Fund. She said she had sold it to a Mexican millionaire for fifty thousand dollars, enough to buy ten ambulances.” “How did she get the necklace?” Trent asked seriously. “That husband of mine,” she returned. “The Baron did it. I can only think that in his maudlin condition he remembered what I had told him at dinner about being bothered by the Beekman woman for a cause I’m not very much in sympathy with. There is no other explanation. It all fits in. Actually he took the diamonds to the Beekman place himself. I can’t do anything. I dare not tell the facts or I should be laughed out of New York.” “Mrs. Adrien Beekman is very influential,” he reminded her, choking back his glee, “it may prove worth your while.” “She hates me,” the Baroness said vindictively. “I’ve never been so upset in my life. You haven’t heard all. There’s worse. One of my servants is trying to get into the Army and Navy Finger-printing Bureau. She’s made finger-prints of every one in the house—me included—from glasses or anything we’ve touched. It was the Baron’s finger-prints on the jewel case, as the police found out, too, and I’ve got to pay her five thousand dollars reward!” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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