Trent, with the case in his pocket, walked to the door. It was not his intention to make the more hazardous climb up to his room when so easy a way of getting there presented itself. It was locked and barred.
In his room he sat and looked at what he had taken. It represented, so Kaufmann said, his freedom from arrest. It contained plans of vital importance to the allies. They could only be used by the enemy to bring destruction to those who fought for right. And what punishment would be given the wounded hero for losing what was entrusted to him? For an hour Trent sat there looking at the pigskin case. And gradually what had seemed an impossible sacrifice to make, came to be something desirable and splendid. Anthony Trent had never been able to regard his career as one justified by circumstances. There burned in his breast the spark of patriotism more strongly than he knew. He had fought his fight and won. His eyes were moist as he thought of his father, that old civil war soldier who had been wounded on Gettysburg’s bloody field and walked always with a limp like the English sailor beneath.
When he opened the door Heathcote was still slumbering. He replaced the case as nearly in the position he found as he could. In that moment Anthony Trent felt he could look any man in the face.
He was still slumbering when Commander Heathcote awoke. Presently the officer saw that the door was unbarred and as investigation proved, unlocked.
“I’d have sworn,” muttered the Commander, “that I locked and barred it.”
CHAPTER XXIX
MRS. KINNEY INTERVENES
AT his apartment, which he reached by noon, he found a note from Mrs. Kinney advising him that she would not be back until late. A salad would be found in the ice box. But his appetite had deserted him and strong tea and crackers sufficed him. The feeling of exaltation which had carried him along was now dying down leaving in its place a grim, dogged determination. He saw now very clearly that the time was come to pay for his misdeeds. Dimly he had felt that some day there would have to be a reckoning. He had never thought it so near.
It would not have been difficult to make his escape from the man who threatened. With his swift motor he could cross some sparsely peopled border district into Canada. Or he could drop down into South or Central America and there wait until the years brought safety or he had deteriorated in fibre as do most men of his race in tropic sloth.
The thing that kept him was a chivalrous, burning desire to capture Kaufmann. Anthony Trent wondered how many men weaker than he had been forced to betray their country as he had very nearly done. And the knowledge that he had even considered such baseness for a moment awakened a deep smouldering wrath in his mind that needed for its outlet some expression of physical force. Kaufmann was strongly built and rugged but it would hardly be a smiling suave spy that he would drag before the police. At least they would go down to ruin together.
At ten thirty the bell rang. But the feeble steps that made their weary ascent were those of Mrs. Kinney. When first he flung open the door he hardly recognized her. As a rule neat and quietly dressed in black she was to-night wearing the faded gingham dress she used for rough work, a dress he had seldom seen. She wore no hat; instead a handkerchief was on her head. She looked for all the world like some shabby denizen of the city’s foreign quarters.