“Boys, I’m not rich—no honest cop is—but I’d give a lot of money to get my hands on a gentleman crook who’s operating right now in this city. I’ve got a list of seven tricks I’m certain he done himself. He’s got technique.” Inspector McWalsh turned purple red, “Dammit, he made me an accomplice to one of his crimes. Yes, sir, he made me carry a vase worth ten thousand dollars out of Senator Scrivener’s house on Fifth Avenue and hand it to him in his taxi. He had a silk hat, a cane and a coat and he asked me to hold the vase for a moment while he put his coat on. I thought he was a friend of the Senator so I trotted down the hall—there was a big reception on—down the steps past my own men on watch for this very crook or some one like him, and handed it through the window. None of my men thought of questioning him. Why did he do it you wonder. He did it because he thought some one might have seen him swipe it. The thing was thousands of years old and if any of you find it Senator Scrivener stands ready to give you five thousand dollars reward. I believe he took the——” Inspector McWalsh stopped. He thought it wiser to say no more. “That’s about all now,” he concluded. Then with a flourish he added, “Gentlemen, I thank you.”
McWalsh sat down with the thunder of applause ringing gratefully in his ears. And none applauded more heartily than Anthony Trent.
CHAPTER XIV
AMBULANCES AND DIAMONDS
THERE was an opportunity later on to visit the Scribblers again. Crosbeigh begged him to come as he desired a full attendance in honor of an occasion unique in the club’s history.
It seemed that some soldier members of the club, foregathering in New York, offered the opportunity for a meeting that might never recur. The toastmaster was a former officer and the speakers were men who had fought through the ghastly early years of the war before the United States came into it.
It happened that Trent had known the toastmaster, Captain Alan Kent, when the two had been newspaper cubs together. In those days Kent had been an irresponsible, happy-go-lucky youngster, liked by all for his carefree disposition. To-day, after three years of war, he was a sterner man, in whose eyes shone steadily the conviction of the cause he had espoused. War had purged the dross from him.
“You boys, here,” he said, “haven’t suffered enough. You haven’t seen nations in agony as we have. The theater of war is still too remote. The loss of a transport wakens you to renewed effort for a moment and then you get back to thinking of other things, more agreeable things, and speculate as to when the war will be over. I’ve spoken to rich men who seem to think they’ve done all that is required of them by purchasing a few Liberty Bonds. They must be bought if we are to win the war, but there’s little of the personal element of sacrifice in merely buying interest-bearing bonds.”
He launched into a description of war as he had seen it, dwelling on the character it developed rather than the horrors he had suffered, horrors such as are depicted in the widely circulated book of Henri Barbusse. This mention of negative patriotism rather disturbed Anthony Trent. All he had done was to buy Liberty Bonds. And here was Alan Kent, who had lived through three years of hell to come back full of courage and cheer, and anxious, when his health was reestablished, to leave the British Service and enroll in the armies of America. It was not agreeable for him to think how he had passed those three years.
He was awakened from these unpleasant thoughts by the applause which followed Kent’s speech. The next speaker was an ambulance driver, who made a plea for more and yet more ambulances.
“Lots of you people here,” he said, “seem to think that when once a battery of ambulances are donated they are there till the war is over. They suffer as much as guns or horses. The Huns get special marks over there for potting an ambulance, and they’re getting to be experts at the game. I’ve had three of Hen. Ford’s little masterpieces shot under me, so to speak. I’m trying to interest individuals in giving ambulances. They’re not very expensive. You can equip one for $5,000. Men have said to me, ‘What’s the use of one ambulance?’ I tell them as I tell you that the one they may send will do its work before it’s knocked out. It may pick up a brother or pal of a man in this room. It may pick up some of you boys even, for some of you are going. God, it makes me tired this cry of what’s the use of ‘one little ambulance.’”