He stooped down and picked up the shattered red glass. It was the sole damage done by Mrs. Kinney’s activity.
“It will cost only a few cents to have it repaired,” he commented, and went back to the bathroom, and speedily forgot the whole matter.
At breakfast Anthony Trent admitted he was bored. There had been little excitement in his recent work. The niceness of calculation, the careful planning and dextrous carrying out of his affairs had netted him a great deal of money with very little risk. There had been risk often enough but not within the past few months. His thoughts went back to some of his more noteworthy feats, and he smiled. He chuckled at the episode of the bank president whom he had given in charge for picking his pocket when he had just relieved the financier of the choicest contents of his safe.
Trent’s specialty was adroit handling of situations which would have been too much for the ordinary criminal. He had an aplomb, an ingenuous air, and was so diametrically opposed to the common conception of a burglar that people had often apologized to him whose homes he had looted.
It was his custom to read through two of the leading morning papers after breakfast. It was necessary that he should keep himself fully informed of the movements of society, of engagements, divorces and marriages. It was usually among people of this sort that he operated. To the columns devoted to lost articles he gave special attention. More than once he had seen big rewards offered for things that he had concealed in his rooms. And although the comforting phrase, “No questions asked” invariably accompanied the advertisement, he never made application for the reward.
In this, Trent differed from the usual practitioner of crime. When he had abandoned fiction for a more diverting sport he had formulated regulations for his professional conduct drawn up with extraordinary care. It was the first article of his faith under no circumstances to go to a “fence” or disposer of stolen goods, or to visit pawnshops. It is plain to see such precautions were wise. Sooner or later the police get the “fence” and with him the man’s clientèle. Every man who sells to a “fence” puts his safety in another’s keeping, and Anthony Trent was minded to play the game alone.
As to the pawnshops, daily the police regulations expose more searchingly the practices of those who bear the arms of old Lombardy above their doors. The court news is full of convictions obtained by the police detailed to watch the pawnbrokers’ customers. It was largely on this account that Trent specialized on currency and remained unknown to the authorities.
On this particular morning the newspapers offered nothing of interest except to say that a certain Italian duke, whose cousin had recently become engaged to an American girl of wealth and position, was about to cross the ocean and bear with him family jewels as a wedding gift from the great house he represented. Methodically Trent made a note of this. Later he took the subway downtown to consult with his brokers on the purchase of certain oil stocks.
He had hardly taken his seat when Horace Weems pounced upon him. This Weems was an energetic creature, by instinct and training a salesman, so proud of his art and so certain of himself that he was wont to boast he could sell hot tamales in hell. By shrewdness he had amassed a comfortable fortune. He was a short, blond man nearly always capable of profuse perspirations. Trent knew by Weems’ excitement that there was at hand either an entrancingly beautiful girl—as Weems saw beauty—or a very rich man. Only these two spectacles were capable of bringing Weems’ smooth cheeks to this flush of excitement. Weems sometimes described himself as a “money-hound.”
“You see that man coming toward us,” Weems whispered.