Reading one morning that owing to the financial trouble into which the war had plunged a great West of England family, the celebrated Edgcumbe sapphire had been purchased by a New York manufacturer of ammunition—one of the new millionaires created by the war to buy what other countries had to sacrifice.
The papers gave every necessary particular. At ten o’clock one morning Anthony Trent sallied forth to loot. By dinner time the Edgcumbe sapphire had replaced the blue cube of cut glass and in his lamp the papers were devoting front page space to its daring abduction. How he accomplished it properly belongs to another chapter in the life of the master criminal. So easy was it of consummation that he planned to use the same technique for a greater coup.
When these two great stones were making his brazen lamp a thing of flashing beauty they threw into infinite dullness the cube of green. Looking at it night after night when Mrs. Kinney was long abed and the grateful silences had drowned the noise of day, Anthony Trent longed for an emerald to bear these lordly jewels company.
There was an excellent second-hand book store on Thirty-second street, between Seventh avenue and Sixth, where he browsed often among waiting volumes. One day he picked up a book, written in French, “Romances of Precious Stones.” It was by a Madame Sernin, grandniece of the great Russian novelist Feoder Vladimir Larrovitch. Trent remembered that he had read her translation of Crasny Baba and Gospodi Pomi, and looked at this original work with interest. It was published in Paris just before the war.
He knew well that most of the great stones which had became famous historically were still in Europe. And Europe, until the long war was over, was closed to him. He hoped Madame Sernin had something to say about American-owned jewels. There was a reference in the index and later, in his rooms, he read it eagerly. There were, Mme. Sernin announced, but two of the great emeralds in the United States. One belonged to the wife of the Colombian minister and was found in Colombia. Trent considered this stone carefully. It might not be in the United States after all. Mme. Sernin was doubtful herself. But of the second stone she was certain. It was known as the Takowaja Emerald. A century and a half before it had been dug from the Ural Mountains. That great “commenceuse,” the second Catherine of Russia, had given it to her favorite, Gregory Orlov, who had sold it to a traveling English noble in a day before American gold was known in Continental Europe.
It was now the property of Andrew Apthorpe, of Boston in Massachusetts. Presumably the man was a collector, and assuredly he was wealthy, but Anthony Trent had never heard of him. A trip by boat to Boston would make a pleasant break and a day later he was steaming north. His inevitable golf clubs accompanied him. Trent was one of those natural-born players whose game suffer little if short of practice. And of late he had not stinted himself of play. He told Mrs. Kinney he was going to Edgartown for a few days. He had sometimes played around these island links; and his bag of clubs was always an excellent excuse for traveling in strange parts.
Directly he had registered at the Adams House he consulted a city directory. Andrew Apthorpe’s town house was in the same block on Beacon street which held the Clent Bulstrode mansion.
It was a vast, forbidding residence of red brick running back to the Charles embankment. The windows were small and barred and the shades drawn. An empty milk bottle and a morning paper at a basement door gave evidence of occupancy. And at the garage at the rear a burly chauffeur was cleaning the brass work of a touring car. Looking wisely and suspiciously at Trent as he sauntered by was an Airedale. The family, Trent surmised, was absent and the caretaker, who rose late if the neglected Post was a sign, and this man and dog were left to guard the place.
If the Takowaja emerald were housed here with two such guardians its recovery might not be difficult. But the more Trent thought of it the more improbable it seemed that the owner of such a gem should leave it prey to any organized attack. The curious part about this Ural emerald was that Trent had never before heard of it and he knew American owned stones well. Most of the owners of famous jewels were ready to talk of them, lend them for exhibition purposes when they were properly guarded, but he had never seen a line about the Apthorpe emerald.
A few minutes before midday Anthony Trent strolled into the Ames building and saw that Andrew Apthorpe, cotton broker, occupied very large offices. A little later he followed one of the Apthorpe clerks, a well-dressed, good-looking young man, to the place where he lunched. It was curiously unlike a New York restaurant. Circular mahogany counters surrounded self possessed young women who permitted themselves to attend to those who hungered. To such as they knew and liked they were affable. To others their front was cold and severe.