ANTHONY TRENT looked about his well-furnished rooms with a certain merited affection. In a week he would know them no more. Already arrangements had been made to send the furniture to his camp on Kennebago. A great deal of the furniture Weems had gathered there was distressfully bad. Weems ran to gilt and brocade mainly.
As Trent surveyed his apartment it amused him to think that never was a flat in a house such as this furnished so well and at so great a cost. The things might seem modest enough at first glance. There was, for example, a steel engraving, after Stuart, of George Washington. A fitting and a worthy picture for any American’s room but hardly one which required a large amount of money to obtain.
None save Anthony Trent knew that behind the print was concealed one of the most beautiful examples of that flower of the Venetian Renaissance, Giorgione. A few months before the Scribblers’ Club had invited motion picture magnates to its monthly dinner. Only a few of these moulders of public taste had accepted. There were good enough reasons for declination. The subject incensed those who held that writers had no grudge against the “movies.” Others lacked speech-making ability in the English tongue. And there were some high-stomached producers who feared the Scribblers’ fare might be unworthy.
One big man consented to speak. He was glib with that oratory which comes from successful selling. Before he had sprung into notoriety he had been a salesman in a Seventh Avenue store, one of those persuasive gentlemen who waylay passersby. His speech was, of course, absurd. It was interesting mainly as an example that intelligence is not always necessary in the making of big money.
It was when he began to speak of the material rewards that his acumen had garnered, that Anthony Trent awoke to interest. The producer told his hearers that they had assuredly read of the sale to an unnamed purchaser of a Giorgione. “I am that purchaser!” said the great man. “I give more money for it than—” his shrewd appraising eye went around the table. He saw eager unsuccessful writers, starveling associate editors and a motley company of the unarrived. There were a few who had gained recognition but in the main it was not a prosperous gathering as commerce reckons success. “I give more money for it,” he declared, “than all this bunch will make in their lifetime. It’ll be on view at the Metropolitan Museum next week when you boys can take an eyefull. It’s on my desk at this present moment in a plain wooden case. It ain’t a big picture; this Giorgione"—his “G” was wrongly pronounced—“didn’t paint ’em big. My wife don’t know anything about it but she’s got the art bug and she’ll get it to-morrow morning as her birthday present.”
However, the lady was disappointed. The wooden case was brought to the table and the magnate unwrapped it with his own fat fingers. Instead of the canvas representing a Venetian fête and undraped ladies, was the comic sheet of a Sunday paper. The motion picture magnate used his weekly news-sheet (produced in innumerable theatres) to advertise his loss by a production of the missing picture. It was good advertising and made the Venetian master widely known. But it still reposed behind the sphinx-like Washington.
The Benares lamp was naturally his pièce de résistance. Never in history had such value been gathered together in a lamp. Trent remembered seeing once in the British Museum a lamp from the Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem on which was inscribed, “The Painter is the poor and humble Mustafa.” As he looked at his own lantern he thought, “The Decorator is the unknown Anthony Trent.”
Collectors of china would have sneered at a single vase on the top of a bookcase. It was white enameled and had a few flowers painted on it. And the inscription told the curious that it was a souvenir of Watch Hill, R. I.
In reality it was the celebrated vase of King Senwosri who had gazed on it twenty-five centuries before Christ. Senator Scrivener had bought it at a great price in Cairo. Some day the white enamel which Trent had painted over the imperishable glass would be carefully removed and it would gladden his eyes in Maine where visitors would be infrequent.
There were a dozen curious things Trent looked at, things hidden from all eyes but his, which aroused exciting memories of a career he fully believed had drawn to a close. He doubted if ever a man in all the history of crime had taken what he had taken and was yet personally unknown. Some day, if possible, he might be able to learn from the police what mental estimate they had formed of him. He must loom large in their eyes. They must invest him with a skill and courage that would be flattering indeed were he to learn of it. The occasional mentions of him he read in daily papers were too distorted to be interesting and McWalsh’s tribute to the unknown master was his only reward so far.