The Secret of the Silver Car

by Wyndham Martyn

  CHAPTER TWO

  _THE MAN IN THE DARK_

  One day late in October when the Allies were moving with such speedagainst the enemy Private Trent had been struck with a piece ofshrapnel. There was the recognized noise of the flying fragments andthen a sudden flaming pain in his left arm followed by blackunconsciousness.

  He came back very slowly to the realization that he was not seriouslyhurt. His wounded arm was bandaged. He was still rather weak and layback for some moments before opening his eyes. Then he opened them tomeet only a wall of unrelieved night. "I'm blind!" he thought.

  Groping about him he felt dank earth, the earth he had been accustomedto in the trenches, slimy, sweating clay. With his undamaged hand hefelt the bandages that were about his head. There was no wound near hiseyes; but that would not be necessary, for he had seen so many cases ofblindness due to the bursting of high explosives. It might be temporaryblindness or it might be permanent.

  There was a great silence about him. Gone were the myriad sounds of warthat had enveloped him before his injury. Perhaps he was deaf, too. "MyGod!" he groaned thinking of this new infliction and then grew a littleless miserable when he recognized the sound of his own voice. Well,blindness was enough! Never again to see the green earth or the morningsun stealing down the lake where his home was. At a little past thirtyto see only through the eyes of others. No more golf, no more huntingand fishing trips, and of course no more of those taut-nerved nightswhen he, a single human being, pitted his strength and intelligenceagainst the forces of organized society--and won. There was smallconsolation in thinking that now, at all events, Anthony Trent, mastercriminal would not be caught. He would go down in police history as themost mysterious of those criminals who have set the detectives by theheels.

  A little later he told himself he would rather be caught, sentenced to aterm of life imprisonment if only he might see a tiny ribbon of blue skyfrom his cell window, than condemned to this eternal blackness.

  Then the miracle happened. A few yards from him came a scratching soundand then a sudden flame. And in that moment he could see the profile ofa man bending over a cigarette. He was not blind!

  "Who are you?" Anthony Trent cried not yet able to comprehend thislifting of what he felt was a sentence imposed. "Where am I?"

  The man who answered spoke with one of those cultivated English voiceswhich Trent had once believed to be the mark of decadence oreffeminacy, a belief the bloody fields of France had swept from him.

  "Well," said the man slowly, "I really don't see that it matters muchnow to anyone what my name may be."

  "The only thing that matters to me," Trent cried with almost hystericalfervor, "is that I'm not blind as I thought I was."

  The answer of the unknown man was singular; but Trent, who was not farfrom hysteria on account of bodily pain and the mental anguish throughwhich he had been, did not take note of it.

  "I don't think that matters much either," the voice of the man in thedark commented.

  "Then where are we?" Trent demanded.

  "There again I can't help you much," the unknown answered. "This _was_ acommon or garden dug-out."

  "_Was_," Trent repeated, "What is it now?"

  "A tomb," the stranger told him puffing at his cigarette. "I found youbleeding to death and I bandaged your arm. I was knocked out myself andyour men and mine had gone on and there was never a Red Cross man oranyone else in sight so I carried you into this dug-out. All of a suddensome damned H. E. blocked up the opening. When the dust settled Iexplored with my few matches. Our tomb is sealed up--absolutely. I'veoften heard of it happening before. It looks as if a house had beenlifted up and planted right on this dug-out."

  "So that's why you said it didn't matter much if I could see or not?"

  "Does it?" the man asked shortly.

  "Have you another match?" Trent asked presently. "I'd like to explore."

  "No good," the other retorted. "I've been all round the damned place andthere isn't a chance, except that the thing may collapse and bury us."

  "Then we are to starve to death without an effort?"

  "We shall asphyxiate, we shan't starve. Don't you notice how heavy theair is? Presently we shall get drowsy. Already I feel light headed andinclined to talk."

  "Then talk," Trent said, "Anything is better than sitting here andwaiting. The air is heavy; I notice it now. I suppose I'm going to bedelirious. Talk, damn you, talk. Why not tell me your name? Whatdifference can it make to you now? Are you afraid? Have you done thingsyou're ashamed of? Why let that worry you since it only proves you'rehuman."

  "I'm not ashamed of what I've done," the other drawled, "it's my familywhich persists in saying I've disgraced it."

  Anthony Trent was in a strange mood. Ordinarily secretive to a degreeand fearful always of dropping a hint that might draw suspicion to hisways of life, he found himself laughing in a good humored way that thisEnglish soldier should imagine he must conceal his name for fear ofdisgrace. Why the man was a child, a pigmy compared with Anthony Trent.He had perhaps disobeyed an autocrat father or possibly married a chorusgirl instead of a blue blooded maiden.

  "You've probably done nothing," said Trent. "It may be you were expelledfrom school or university and that makes you think you are a desperatecharacter."

  There was silence for a moment or so.

  "As it happens," the unknown said, "I was expelled from Harrow andkicked out of Trinity but it isn't for that. I'm known in the army asPrivate William Smith of the 78th Battalion, City of London Regiment."

  "I thought you were an officer," Trent said. Private Smith had the kindof voice which Trent associated with the aristocracy.

  "I'm just a plain private like you," Smith said, "although the lowlyrank is mine for probably far different reasons."

  "I'm not so sure of that," Trent said, a trifle nettled. "I could havehad a commission if I wanted it."

  "I did have one," Smith returned, "but I didn't mean what I saidoffensively. I meant only that I dare not accept a commission."

  Anthony Trent waited a moment before he answered.

  "I'm not so sure of that," he said again.

  The reasons for which Trent declined his commission and thereby enduredcertain hardships not unconnected with sleeping quarters and noisycompanionship were entirely to his credit. Always with the fear ofexposure before his eyes he did not want to place odium on the status ofthe American officer as he would have done had screaming headlines inthe papers spoken of the capture by police authorities of LieutenantAnthony Trent the cleverest of modern crooks. But he could not bringhimself to speak of this even in his present unusual mood.

  "It doesn't matter now very much," Smith said laughing a little, "weshall both be called missing and the prison camps will be searched forus. In the end my family may revere my memory and yours call you itschief glory."

  "I haven't a family," Trent said. "I used to be sorry for it. I'm gladnow." He stopped suddenly. "Do you know," he said later, "you werelaughing just now. You're either crazy or else you must have your nervewith you still."

  "I may be crazy," returned Private Smith, "but I usually make my livingby having my nerve with me as you call it. It has been my downfall. If Ihad been a good, moral child, amenable to discipline I might havecommanded a regiment instead of being a 'tommy' and I might be repentingnow. By the way you don't seem as depressed as one might expect. Why?"

  "After a year of this war one doesn't easily lose the habit of laughingat death."

  "I've had four years of it," Smith said. "I was a ranker when it brokeout and saw the whole show from August 1914. On the whole what iscoming will be a rest. I don't know how they manage these things inyour country but in England when a man has been, well call it unwise,there is always a chance of feeling a heavy hand on one's shoulder andhearing a voice saying in one's ear, 'I arrest you in the King's name!'Very dramatic and impressive and all that sort of thing, but wearing onthe nerves--very." Private Smith laughed gently, "I'm afraid you aredying in rathe
r bad company."

  "We have something in common perhaps," Trent said. He grinned to himselfin the covering blackness as he said it. "Tell me, did you ever hear ofAnthony Trent?"

  "Never," Private Smith returned quickly. "Sorry! I suppose I ought toknow all about him. What has he done?"

  "He wrote stories of super-crookdom for one thing."

  "That explains it," Smith asserted, "You see those stories rather boreme. I read them when I was young and innocent but now I know howextremely fictional they are; written for the greater part, I'minformed, by blameless women in boarding houses. I like reading the realthing."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Reports of actual crimes as set forth in the newspapers.Cross-examinations of witnesses and all that, summing up of the judgesand coroners' inquests. Was this Trent person really good?"

  "You shall judge," said the American. "He wrote of crimes and criminalsfrom what such actual practitioners had told him. He was for a time apolice reporter on a big New York paper and had to hang around MulberryStreet. After that he tried the magazines but as editors are so remoteas a rule from actual knowledge of the world's play and work, he didn'tmake much money at it. Finally his pet editor--a man with some humanattributes--said in effect, 'I can't raise your rates; the publisherwon't stand for it. If I paid decent prices he couldn't buy champagneand entertain his favorites.' This was in the era before prohibition.The human editor went on giving advice and wound up by saying, 'Whydon't you do what your super-crook character does and relieve thedishonest rich of their stolen bonds? Conway Parker gets away with it,why shouldn't you?'"

  "Of course he was rotting?" Private Smith asked.

  "Yes," the American said, "He didn't really mean it but the thoughtgerms fell into the right sort of broth. Anthony Trent wasn't naturallya crook but he hated having to live in a cheap boarding house and eatbadly cooked meals and play on a hard-mouthed, hired, upright piano.Some ancestor had dowered him with a love of beautiful things, rugs,pictures, pottery, bronzes, music and a rather secluded life. Also hehad dreams about being a great composer. He was a queer mixture. On thewhole rather unbalanced I suppose. His father died and left him almostnothing. All he could do was newspaper work at first."

  "You mean he actually followed the editor's advice?"

  "Yes. He had certain natural gifts to aid him. He was a first ratemimic. It's a sort of gift I suppose. He had gone in for amateurtheatricals at his college and done rather well. He pulled off his firstjob successfully but the butler saw him and did not forget. That was thetrouble the butler remembered. It wasn't a big affair. It didn't makeany such stir as for example as when he took the Mount Aubyn Ruby."

  "I read of that," Smith returned eagerly. "He knocked out a millionairesurrounded with detectives and got away in an airplane."

  "He got away but not in an airplane," replied Anthony Trent. "On thewhole the unknown aviator was rather useful to him but was absolutelyblameless. Then there was the case of the Apthorpe emerald. Did you hearof that?"

  "Haven't I told you," Smith returned impatiently, "that I read all aboutthings of that sort? How could I have missed that even though I was inthe trenches when it happened. It was the delight of my hospital life toread about it in Reynolds Journal. It was said a woman murdered oldApthorpe for it."

  "She did," Trent admitted, "and she took the emerald but Anthony Trentgot it from her and fooled them all. His last big job before the UnitedStates got into the war was getting the blue-white diamond that wasknown as the Nizam's Diamond."

  "A hundred carat stone," Smith said reverently. "By Jove, what a master!As I never heard of him of course he was never caught. They are allcaught in the end, though. His day will come."

  For a moment the thought that Anthony Trent's life was coming to an endbefore many hours had passed took the narrator from his mood of triumphinto a state of depression. To have to give up everything and die in thedarkness. Exit Anthony Trent for all time! And as he thought of hisenemies the police toiling for the rich rewards that they would neverget for apprehending him his black mood passed and Smith heard himchuckle.

  "They all get caught in the end," Smith repeated, "the best of them. Thedoctrine of averages is against them. Your Anthony Trent is one lone manfighting against so many. He may have the luck with him so far butthere's only one end to it. They got Captain Despard and he was atop-hole marauder. They got our estimable Charles Peace and theyelectrocuted Regan in your own country only last month and he wasclever, God knows. I think I'd back your Trent man against any singleopponent, but the odds are too great. The pack will pull him down andbreak him up some day."

  Again Private Smith of the City of London regiment heard the man he hadrescued from danger to present him with death, laugh a curioustriumphant laugh. He had seen so much of war's terror that he supposedthe man was going mad. It would perhaps be a more merciful end.

  "No," said the American. "Anthony Trent will never be discovered. Hewill be the one great criminal who will escape to the confusion of thedetectives of New York and London. _I am Anthony Trent._"