On his own account he called at the milliner’s and made some inquiries. He found that there was no account with the Benyons and no assistant had been sent to the hotel. It was none of his business to aid police authorities. And he was not anxious that the two should be caught in that way. There would come a time when he was retired from his present occupation when he would feel the need of excitement. Getting even with the clever actress who prevented him from taking the Guestwick money would call for his astutest planning.
CHAPTER X
ANTHONY TRENT SAVES A PIANO
FOR some months now Trent had been preparing a campaign against the collection of precious stones belonging to Carr Faulkner whose white stone mansion looked across the Park from his home. But whereas Trent’s house faced east, the Faulkner abode looked west. And in matter of residence locality there is an appreciable difference in this outlook.
The Faulkner millions were in the main inherited. There was a conservative banking house on Broad Street bearing the Faulkner name but it did not look for new business and found its principal work in guarding the vast Faulkner fortune.
Faulkner’s first wife had been a collector of pearls, those modest stones whose assembled value is always worth the criminal’s attention. The second wife, a young woman of less aristocratic stock, eschewed pearls, holding the theory that each one was a tear. She wanted flashing stones which advertised their value more ostentatiously. Trent had seen her at the Opera and marked her down as a profitable client.
It was because Trent worked so carefully that he made so few mistakes. He had no friends to ask him leading questions and gossip about his mode of life. He had been half a year collecting information about the Carr Faulkners, the style in which they lived, the intimate friends they had and a hundred little details which a careful professional must know before he can hope to make a success.
The system of burglar alarm installed in the mansion was an elaborate one but he was not unskilled in matters of this sort. For three months he had worked in the shop where they were made and his general inborn mechanical skill had been aided by conscientious study. Attention to detail had saved him more than once, and is an aid to be counted on more than luck.
Yet it was sheer blind, kindly, garrulous luck that finally took Trent unsuspected into the Carr Faulkner mansion. Riding up Madison avenue in a trolley car late one afternoon, he overheard one of the Faulkner’s maids discussing the family.
One of the girls had knocked over a vase of cut flowers which stood on a grand piano in Mrs. Carr Faulkner’s boudoir and the water had leaked through onto the wire and wood, doing some little damage.
“She was madder’n a wet hen,” said the girl.