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Secret of the Silver Car

<h2>Chapter Five</h2> <h3>THE MAN WHO DENIED</h3> Thinking things over that night as he walked along the Camel banks and disturbed the otters at play, Anthony Trent determined to call upon Arthur Grenvil and force him to acknowledge that he had not forgotten the conversation, the confidence that was so fully given, in the dug-out. Footmen and a butler barred his ingress. They were polite and filled with regrets but the facts remained that Mr. Arthur Grenvil by doctor's orders saw none. The Lady Daphne was engaged. The men-servants could offer him no hope. He was able to see at close range some advantages of the many servants the rich were able to employ to hedge them about with privacy. The Rosecarrel butler was less urbane than his brother at Alderwood and the opportunity for private conversation was lacking. Trent saw in this rebuff another move in the subtle game Private Arthur Smith was playing. The next two days were spent in riding over the moors but not a glimpse of Lady Daphne or her brother did he get. He was certain they were avoiding him deliberately. The idea possessed Trent that Arthur Grenvil was not satisfied to obtain merely the rewards that were offered for his apprehension.[Pg 81] If he followed the great thefts of the world he would know that four of its most famous stones were still missing. And from Trent's confession he would guess the master criminal still held them. They were even now in Trent's Maine camp ornamenting a brass Benares lamp as though they were merely the original pieces of glass that had occupied the spaces when Trent purchased it. Trent could sell through discreet sources the loot that was hidden in Kennebago for not less than half a million dollars. If Arthur Grenvil chose to command him to do so and share the proceeds what could he do? The hold he had on the other man was slight. Langley might have extorted the confession more as a warning than an instrument to use against a relative. In the two other cases to which Arthur Grenvil had confessed his creditors were those who had been his friends. He had embezzled the mess funds of his regiment. It was unlikely that a cavalry regiment which had fought from Dettingen to Mons would like a story of that sort to get abroad. On the morning of the third day after his rebuff at the hands of the footmen Trent made up his mind. He would see Arthur Grenvil and see him at once. "If he thinks he can keep me out," said Trent his mouth tightening to a narrow line, "he holds me too cheap." <hr class="tb" /> It happened that Arthur Grenvil knew nothing of the attempt of Anthony Trent to see him. The doctors had indeed ordered him rest. Lady Daphne[Pg 82] when she heard of Trent's insistence said nothing but wondered why it was that he should make the attempt. She still thought uneasily of that night at Dereham when he had discovered her with the combination to her host's safe. There was such a thing as blackmail and, after all what did she know of the American except that he had been a guest of the Langleys. In itself this should have been enough to vouch for his position in life. She found herself more interested in Anthony Trent than in any man she had ever met. And it was because of this concern that in a letter to Alicia Langley she asked about him. Alicia's letter was astonishing. "I can't imagine, my dear Daphne to whom you refer. There was no Anthony Trent here on the first. The only American was Mr. Conington Warren who was wafted to our shores permanently on the waves of prohibition. I think you knew personally every other man except the Duke of Valladolida. He is, of course, a grandee of Spain, short, slight and bald, but a first rate shot, Reginald says, and plays polo for the Madrid team. Certainly there was no tall, clean-shaven, good-looking man here whom you don't know quite well." Alicia Langley invariably added postscripts. This time it interested the reader more than the letter. "I showed your letter to Reginald and he was almost excited. He said an Anthony Trent had motored over from Norwich and wanted to learn particulars of a private in his regiment. As the private in question was Arthur you may draw your[Pg 83] own inferences if you can. Reginald refused to speak so this Trent man of yours doesn't know Arthur's nom de guerre from anything he has learned here. Reginald wants you to tell him where you met the man. Please do as he seems to think it very serious." While Lady Daphne read this communication, not without agitation, her brother was dressing for dinner. Some people were coming over from Pencarrow. He occupied two splendid rooms facing west and was looking over the moorland to the sea when the handle of the room leading to a large upper hall was opened noiselessly and admitted Anthony Trent. When Grenvil remembered he had not long to make the change from flannels into evening dress, he turned about to see the American sitting in a comfortable chair. "Please don't try and ring for the servants," Trent advised smoothly, "because I am nearest to the bell and I shall not permit it." If he expected an outbreak of anger he was disappointed. Instead there was that puzzled expression which could only arise from innocence of Trent's identity or the most finished art. "Don't think I am a housebreaker," Trent went on equably, "I am not. This is visitors day if you remember and after paying my shilling I looked at the state rooms, pictures and autograph letters and fell asleep. When I woke up I entered this room by mistake." "And you want to find your way out?" Grenvil[Pg 84] returned. "If you will ring the bell I will have you shown." "Not until I have had the opportunity of talking a little to you. In our first conversation I was indiscreet. You will admit that, won't you?" "Were you?" Grenvil answered vaguely. "I really don't remember Mr. Trent." "Then you deny ever having seen me until we met by the salmon pool a few days ago?" Trent looked at him like a hawk. "I do," Grenvil retorted. "Then if you do, why don't you resent my butting in like this? Why don't you call some men-servants and have me flung out for a damned nuisance? Say I threatened you, say anything an innocent man could and would say. Your attitude doesn't fool me in the least. You are playing a deep game but I can play a deeper." Grenvil shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of weariness. "There are many things I cannot explain," he said. "You are going to begin right now," Trent said. He was not in a mood to be trifled with. He firmly believed that this man was planning to send him to gaol for a period of years so long that he would come out a whitehaired broken man. He looked round frowning as steps sounded along the corridor and a tap came on the door. "Let me in Arthur," he heard Lady Daphne say, "I've had a most extraordinary letter from Aunt Alicia. I must see you about it." [Pg 85] She rattled the locked door impatiently. Her brother walked over to it. Trent could offer no objection. He was confused and annoyed that at a moment such as this the girl must interrupt. To Anthony Trent she was as one above and apart. There was no use in concealing that he himself was a crook no matter how differently he pursued the profession from the lesser lights whom he despised. And Arthur Grenvil was as crooked as he with less excuse for it. Lady Daphne stopped short when she saw Trent rise from his chair and bow. Her greeting was so wholly different from the friendly manner she had shown ere this, that he was at loss to understand it. He did not know that Mrs. Langley was the Aunt Alicia. He could only suppose her brother had hinted that he was not what he seemed. "I was not told you were here," she said. "I'm glad you've come," Arthur Grenvil said. Trent could see that he only spoke the truth. From what did he expect his sister to protect him. "Mr. Trent here has an idea I'm deliberately pretending not to know who he is." "I assure Mr. Trent," she said haughtily, "that at all events I know what he is." Trent looked at her a little quizzically. "I wonder if you really do," he commented. "I shall be very glad to prove it," she answered, "but I am not anxious that my brother should have to listen. I hoped you understood that he is under the doctors' orders and must not be worried. As[Pg 86] dinner is almost ready and I have several things to do will you be kind enough to put this discussion off until tomorrow morning?" "Just as you please," he said. "When and where?" "You are staying at the Bassetts I think. Very well I will drive over there tomorrow at half past ten." He flushed. The inference was plain. He was not permitted to meet her within the castle. The servant who showed him out seemed to feel differently today. He felt outcast. <hr class="tb" /> There was a little apple orchard behind the Bassetts' stone built barns where each day Anthony Trent used to practise short approaches with a favorite mashie. He held it as an axiom that if a golfer kept his hand in with short mashie practise he would never be off his game. He was industriously trying to approach over a tall spreading tree when he heard the sound of wheels outside. It was not yet time for his appointment with Lady Daphne but he could see from the higher ground of the orchard that it was she. She was driving a dashing pair of chestnuts to a mail phaeton. By her side sat a man with a powerful unscrupulous face who was evidently amusing her by his conversation. Trent supposed he was a guest at the castle, some man who had the right to meet her by reason of being on the right side of the law. Almost jealously Anthony Trent saw him help her to alight. He was a heavily built man but not[Pg 87] an ungraceful one and he was exceedingly well dressed. Trent judged him to be five and forty and used to dominating men. He had noticed often that men most ruthless with their fellows have the most charming ways with women. "I shan't be very long," Lady Daphne said laughing, "You will be able to smoke just two cigarettes, Mr. Castoon." Castoon. Of course it was Rudolph Castoon the banker, the English born member of the great continental firm of bankers and financiers. One of the brothers was a leader among New York capitalists. It was said that each Castoon was loyal to the country where it had been arranged he should be born. It was in the sweet smelling sitting room of the Bassetts that Trent found her. She was standing up and refused to be seated. Her enmity now was hardly concealed. "I find," she began, "that you have deceived me. You claimed to be one of the guns at Colonel Langley's shoot." "I permitted you to assume it," he corrected, "but that is not an excuse." "Colonel Langley is very anxious to know where it was I saw you and under what circumstances." "You will hardly inform him as to that," said Trent smiling. "If it becomes necessary I shall," she replied. "At all events I was in the house of a relative while you were there—" "As a thief in the night. Thank you." [Pg 88] "You were there as a detective." She had never seen him lose his calm before. He flushed red and a look of hatred came over his face. "A detective! I? If you knew how I loathed them you would never suspect me of being that." "If not why are you down here hounding my brother?" "Hasn't he told you?" "He says you persist in pretending to know him." "Lady Daphne," Trent said earnestly. "Was your brother a Private William Smith, a gentleman ranker in the seventy-eighth battalion of the City of London Regiment?" "Yes," she answered. "And wasn't this same man under his own name expelled from Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge." "Then you are a detective!" she cried. "On my honor, no," he exclaimed. "Lady Daphne, your brother saved my life, and when I wanted to speak about the very terrible and unusual experience he denied knowing me." "You are not telling me everything," she said after a pause, "I am glad you are not a detective even though you may be not what I thought you, but is it reasonable you should try to force yourself on a man who quite evidently wants to be alone with his thoughts just to thank him for doing something every soldier was glad to do for any other allied soldier?" "There was something else," he admitted. "I may[Pg 89] as well tell you what. We were, as we had every reason to think, dying. We told each other part of our past lives. Why I don't pretend to understand. Nerves I suppose and the feeling that nothing mattered in the least. I told him part of my past which in effect put a club in his hand to use over me. When I got better I assumed he was killed. I found he wasn't and followed him here to ask what he was going to do with his knowledge. You wondered what errand I had at Dereham Old Hall. It was to read through the confession which you burned. I had read it and replaced it before you came in." "Then you know all about him?" she gasped. "I know what was written there," he answered. "I wanted to know so that I could tell him I, too, had a weapon with which to fight. I am not his enemy, far from it." "You mean you don't want to threaten him or hold your knowledge of what he did over us?" He looked at her gloomily. To think that this was the impression she had of him hurt. "So that's what you think of me," he said slowly. "Indeed it isn't," she answered quickly. "I didn't think it in the beginning and I don't want to do so now, but what was one to think?" "It was your brother's behaviour that puzzled me," he said, "and still puzzles me. Don't you see I only want to be sure that he won't use what I told him?" Lady Daphne looked at him curiously. Here was a man whose manners were perfect, who seemed to[Pg 90] have the same sports and occupation of the kind of men she knew hinting that he had done things of whose consequence he was afraid. She supposed there were many temptations into which a man might fall, lapses of which he might repent and still go in fear of discovery. "I don't wonder you were bewildered," she said presently, "and I understand far better than you how it was. Mr. Trent you need never be afraid that the man who was Private Smith will ever say a word to any living souls of what you said to him." "How can I be certain?" he demanded. "You don't know the rewards that a man might gain for speaking the truth about me." "Private William Smith and my brother Arthur are two different people." He looked at her in astonishment. Was the weary chase, the long uncertainty to begin again? There was never a doubt in his mind but that what she told him was true even if it was hard to be believed. "Then where is Private Smith?" he asked. "Where is the man who knows the real me?" "At the castle," she said. He made a gesture of despair. "It is incomprehensible." "I am going to tell you about them—about the two utterly different men." She said nothing for a full minute. Then she went to the door and called Mrs. Bassett into the room. "Please tell Mr. Castoon I shall have to keep him waiting rather longer than I thought." [Pg 91] "Certainly, my Lady," Mrs. Bassett said. Later she told her husband that Mr. Castoon looked very black at the news. "He's not the kind to like being kept waiting," she explained. "Princes of the Blood ought to be glad to wait for Lady Daphne," the tenant farmer cried. "You learned somehow that Arthur was expelled from Harrow. It is true. He managed to get into Trinity but lasted only a term. Then came Sandhurst and a commission finally and black disgrace. Mr. Rudolph Castoon who is a friend of my eldest brother took pity on him and made him one of his secretaries—he's in Parliament you know—but even he couldn't do anything. Then a little while in Australia and failure there. The last thing he did was to enlist just before the war broke out. Colonel Langley was given the command of a London regiment and found Arthur under the name you knew." "But you said he wasn't Private Smith," Trent broke in eagerly. "You will see later what I mean. How did you meet him?" Trent explained in a few words. But what confessions or boasts he had been betrayed into making he said nothing about. "My brother was expelled from Harrow when he was eighteen. Until he was seventeen he was one of the sweetest natured boys you could imagine. He was full of fun and mischief but all his tutors loved him and there wasn't a particle of vice in him. Suddenly he seemed possessed of devils. He drank, he[Pg 92] gambled—and cheated—he was insolent to his teachers. It broke my mother's heart. It helped to make my father the silent broken man he is today. It was the same when he went up to Trinity and the same when he was at Sandhurst...." There was a long pause. Trent could see she was struggling against tears. There welled up in him an almost divine pity. He wanted to soothe her, comfort her and let her cry on his shoulder. It was in this moment that Anthony Trent knew he loved her and would always love her. Those passing affections of adolescence were pale, wan emotions compared with this. And it was an hour of grief to him. He realized that his ways of life had cut him off irremediably from marriage with such a woman as this. "What happened," she said at last, "when you came to after being blown from that dug-out?" "I was badly hurt," he answered, wonderingly, "those high explosives play the strangest tricks with one." "This is what happened to my brother. He was unconscious for a very long time and his head was fearfully mangled. When he came out of ether he said very distinctly. 'Oh Bingo, how rottenly clumsy of you.'" "Who was Bingo?" Trent asked. "At the time nobody knew. Arthur's uniform was torn off in the explosion and his regiment unknown." "He could have told them," Trent asserted. She shook her head. [Pg 93] "You are mistaken. He could not tell them. They thought he was, what's the word, malingering. They thought he wanted to be sent back and get out of the fighting. Then he complained of the dreadful noise. By degrees they found that he did not even know of the war. They thought of course he was pretending. My father heard of the wound and although he had disowned him he had him brought to our house in Grosvenor Place. We had specialists, those new sorts of doctors who don't depend on medicines. Arthur thought he was still at Harrow eight years or more ago. Then I remembered a boy who shared a study with him there, a boy who had stayed here, a son of Sir Willoughby Hosken who has a place near Penzance. Bingo was somewhere in the Struma valley with his battery and in answer to a letter said that the only act of clumsiness he could call to mind was when he accidentally hit Arthur with an Indian club in the gym at school. "One of the doctors went over to Harrow and found Arthur had been hit like this and was in the infirmary for three days. Mr. Trent, it was after that accident he altered entirely." "I've heard of such cases," Trent said quickly. "Pressure of some sort on the brain they call it. There was quite an epidemic of such incidents in America a few years ago. It was supposed to be a cure for bad boys. Then you think—" "I know," she said emphatically. "He is now exactly as he was when he was a boy, gentle, thoughtful and clean. Our specialists saw the army surgeons[Pg 94] and they supposed that in dressing his dreadful wounds they removed the portions of depressed bone and so made this extraordinary cure. They say the war has proved this sort of thing again and again." The news which spelled salvation to Anthony Trent seemed too tremendous to believe. There was no miracle about it. It was a simple fact demonstrated by surgery and accepted now by the laity. The years in which Arthur Grenvil had sown wild oats and disrupted friendships and relationships was wiped from his consciousness. Trent now understood the half diffident, almost shy manner so inexplicable in a man of the type William Smith had been. "My father thinks," the girl went on, "that as he will have to find out some of the things he did it will be as well to prepare him for it and shield him against consequences." "Consequences?" he hazarded. "I'm afraid," she said gravely, "that it will not be easy. His creditors for example have learned that my father has forgiven him and they are coming down on him. Fortunately my father can afford to pay but there is always the dread of some adventurer turning up and letting us into some dreadful secrets." "Men like me," he asked. "You know I didn't mean that," she said. "I think it most wonderful that you are here, because you will be able to tell him something about the[Pg 95] good part of his life you know. He is always hoping that his memory will come back but the doctors say it won't." She hesitated a little. "Poor Arthur is very much depressed at times. Could you try and remember as much about him as possible?" "Surely," said Anthony Trent. "As it happens I met a man out there who knew him well and said he was a good soldier." "I wish my father could know that," she said. "I'm going to ask you to luncheon tomorrow and to meet a man whose life Arthur saved would cheer him enormously. We shall be alone." She frowned. "I'd forgotten Mr. Castoon who is probably furious at being kept waiting. I promised him I'd be back in two cigarettes time. I was going to drive in to Camelford but I don't think I will. I feel almost that I want to cry." She held out her hand impulsively. "Forgive me for what I thought about you and come to luncheon at one tomorrow." "You don't know how I'd like to," he said wistfully, "but you have forgotten about my past; and I had no such excuse as your brother." "You are exaggerating it," she said more brightly. "Anyhow it's all over." Exaggerating! And even were it all over, which he doubted, a blacker past remained than ever she dreamed of. "I don't want Mr. Castoon to see that I've got tears in my eyes. Please tell him to wait a little longer while I talk to Mrs. Bassett. Au revoir." Anthony Trent watched her go and then sighed.[Pg 96] And he told himself that had he met her ten years before he would have had the strength to win a fortune honestly and not take the lower road. He went outside to where Rudolph Castoon was sitting in the phaeton. The two horses were champing at their bits, a little groom at their heads trying to soothe their high tempers. He approached the financier with no personal feeling of any sort. In the beginning he expected to admire the man as he did all such forceful characters. He often suspected there was more kinship between him and the ruthless financier type that Castoon represented than the world comprehended. Rudolph Castoon looked at him sourly. "Well?" he snapped. Anthony Trent looked at him and knew instantly that he would always share the hate he saw in the capitalist's face. For a moment he was at a loss to understand the reason. Then he saw that it was jealousy, furious, dynamic jealousy. Lady Daphne had come to see Mrs. Bassett. Instead Castoon found she had come to see a younger and better looking man. Trent did not fall into the error of underrating Castoon. In the event of a contest of any kind between them he would walk warily. But he never expected to see the man again and his peremptory way of speaking angered him. "Well?" Castoon demanded again. "Thank you," said Trent urbanely, "I find the air of these moorlands of great benefit to me. Formerly I slept poorly but now I sleep as soon as my head[Pg 97] touches the pillow. And my appetite is better. I eat three eggs for breakfast every morning. Do you sleep well?" "I did not come here to sleep," Castoon frowned. "But if you are here for long you must," Trent said pleasantly. "I am not in the least interested in your health or how many eggs you can eat for breakfast." Castoon's manner was frankly rude. "I want to know where Lady Daphne Grenvil is." "She said she had forgotten you," Trent answered, "she also said you would probably be furious at being kept waiting." "I am," Castoon asserted. "Would it be too much to ask the reason?" "I expected you to," Trent said affably. The time he took to select a cigarette from his case and the meticulous manner in which he lighted it added to the other man's ill temper just as Anthony Trent intended it should. "If you are quite finished, sir," Castoon cried, "I should be glad to hear." "As an American," Trent began airily, "I like the old family servant tradition. Lady Daphne is talking over her childhood days with Mrs. Bassett. My mother was from the Southern states and I suppose I inherit a liking for that sort of thing." "Will you come to the point, sir?" Castoon exclaimed. "I thought I told you that Lady Daphne was talking over nursery reminisences with an old servant." [Pg 98] "She may be doing that now, but what was she doing before? I'll tell you; she was talking to you. Do you deny it?" "My dear man," Trent cried in apparent surprise, "Deny it? I boast about it! It is the only thing I hope will be printed in my obituary notices." "I'm not sure I should be desolated at reading your obituary notices," Castoon said keeping his temper back. He could say no more for Lady Daphne came hurrying along the hydrangea-bordered path to the gate. "I'm dreadfully sorry, Mr. Castoon," she cried. "I can forget everything now that you are here," he returned gallantly, "even the humour of this young man whose name I don't know." "Mr. Anthony Trent of New York," she told him. "You'll meet him at luncheon tomorrow." "That will make it a very pleasant function," the financier said grimly. He could say no more because the horses reared impatiently and for a moment there was danger. "That off horse nearly came over backward," Castoon said when the team had settled down a little and the farm was a half mile behind. "But it didn't," Lady Daphne said calmly, "so why worry?" "It would have been his fault," Castoon said venomously. "You don't seem to like him," she said smiling. "I hate any man who looks at you as he does." "How does he look?" she asked with an air of innocence. [Pg 99] "He looks at you as if he was in love with you, and I hate any man to do that." "You have no right to resent it Mr. Castoon," she said coldly. "I have told you a hundred times that you concern yourself far too much with my affairs." "I'm going to marry you," he said doggedly. "I never fail. Look at my life history and see where I have been beaten. I know you don't care for me yet. You'll have to later." "My father doesn't care for you either." Rudolph Castoon sniffed impatiently. "His type is dying out. He still remains ignorant that money has displaced birth." "It's the one thing money won't buy, though," she reminded him. "Birth can't buy power," the financier said quickly, "and money means power. Your father has had both. It would have been easier for me to marry Daphne, daughter of the Earl of Rosecarrel, Viscount St. Just, Baron Wadebridge, Knight of the Garter, and Ambassador to Turkey, and all the rest of it, than it will be to marry you now your father has abandoned his career." "That sounds merely silly to me," she exclaimed. "Someday I will explain to you how very sensible it is. You will understand exactly." "Do you mean you are so inordinately vain you would rather marry an ambassador's daughter than the daughter of a man who isn't a power politically any more?" "At least I can say I don't mean that. I am vain,[Pg 100] that's true, but I wish you were one of the daughters of a tenant farmer on these purple moors instead of being an earl's daughter." He sighed a little. Then the recollection of Anthony Trent came back. "Who is this man Trent?" he demanded. "A delightful man," she said, "an American who knows how to behave. I met him at a houseparty somewhere or other. He used to know Arthur." Castoon could not keep back a sneer. "That vouches for him of course." "At least he wouldn't say anything as underbred as that," she cried angrily, and touched one of her high-mettled chestnuts with a lash. Castoon hung on to the seat as the pair tried to get away. "You'll kill yourself some day driving such horses as these," he said later. He was not a coward; but unnecessary risk always seemed a childish thing to create and he believed himself heir to a great destiny. <hr class="chap" />[Pg 101] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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