CHAPTER XII
THE SINN FEIN PLOT
FORTUNATELY for O'Sheill's peace of mind, he left the house beforeWilliams made his discovery. He stepped into the street painfullyconscious of the large sum of money he carried. It seemed to him thatevery man looked at him suspiciously. A request for a match was met withan oath and the two women who asked him the location of a certain hoteldrew back nervously at his scowl.
He boarded the Elevated at the Ninety-third Street station and alightedat Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, still glancing about himsuspiciously. It was not until he was in his room on the top floor of acheap and old hotel on the far West Side that he ventured to feel safe.He sighed with relief as he stuffed a Dublin clay with malodorous shag.Twenty thousand dollars! Four thousand pounds! Some would go to thetraitorous work he was employed to prosecute, but a lot of it would goto satisfy private hates. And when it was exhausted there would be moreto come. It would be easy to conceal the notes about his person, and,anyway, he reflected, he was not under suspicion.
He was aroused from his reveries by the sudden, gentle tapping on hisdoor. After a few seconds of hesitation he called out:
"What is it ye want?"
The voice that answered him was strongly tinged with the German accentto which he had recently become used. It will not be forgotten thatAnthony Trent had a genius for mimicry.
"I'm from Mr. Williams," said the stranger gutturally. He had followedO'Sheill with no difficulty.
"What's your name?" O'Sheill demanded.
"We won't give names," Trent reminded him significantly. "But I canprove my identity. I was in the house at Ninety-third Street when youcame. The money was given you to stir up trouble in Ireland andcirculate rumors that will embarrass the British government and made badblood between English and American sailors. You have twentyone-thousand-dollar bills and you put them in a green oilskin package."
"That's right," O'Sheill admitted, "but what do you want?"
He was filled with a vague uneasiness. This young man seemed so terriblyin earnest and his eyes darted from door to window and window to door asthough he feared interruption.
"Mr. Williams sent me here to see if you had been followed. Directly youwent we had information from an agent of ours that your visit was knownto the Secret Service. Tell me, did any person speak to you on your wayhere?"
"No," answered O'Sheill, now thoroughly nervous by the other's anxiety.
"Are you sure?" he was asked.
"There was one fellow who asked me for a light, but I told him to go tohell and get it."
"Anything suspicious about him?" Trent demanded.
"Not that I could see."
"That will be good news for Mr. Williams," Trent returned. "Our agentsaid the Hunchback was on the job."
"Who's he?" O'Sheill said.
"One of our most dangerous enemies," the younger man retorted. "He's aman of forty, but looks younger. He had one shoulder higher than theother and he limps when he walks. He's the man we're afraid of. I thinkwe have alarmed ourselves unnecessarily."
O'Sheill's face was no longer merely uneasy. He was terror-stricken.
"And I guess we haven't," he exclaimed. "_The man who asked me for alight was a hunchback._ There was two women who asked me the way to someblasted hotel. They looked at me as if they wanted never to forget myface."
"Stop a minute," said Trent gravely. "Answer me exactly about thesewomen. I want to know in what danger we all stand. The only two womenknown by sight to us who are likely to be put on a case of this kindwouldn't look like detectives. There's Mrs. Daniels and Miss Barrett.They work as mother and daughter. Mrs. Daniels is gray-haired, tall andslight, with a big nose for a woman and eyes set close together. Whenshe looks at you it seems as if the eyes were gimlets. The girl ispretty, reddish hair and laughing eyes." Trent paused for a moment tothink of any other attributes he could ascribe to the unknown women hehad directed to their hotel just after O'Sheill had scowled at them ahalf hour back. "And very white little teeth."
"My God!" cried O'Sheill, his arms dropping at his side, "that's them tothe life! What's going to happen to me?"
"If they find you with that money you'll be deported and handed over toyour British friends. How can you explain having twenty thousanddollars? Mr. Williams thought of that, but he didn't actually know theywere on your trail. You must give me the money. I shan't be stopped. Youare to stay here. They may be here in five minutes or they may wait tillmorning, but you may be certain that you won't be allowed to get away.You must claim to be just over here to get an insight into laborconditions." Mr. Williams' messenger chuckled. "I don't believe they canget anything on you."
"But if they do?" O'Sheill demanded. It seemed to him that thestranger's levity was singularly ill-timed.
"If they do," Trent advised, "you must remember that you're a Britishsubject still--whether you like it or not--and you have certaininalienable rights. Immediately appeal to the British authorities. Givethe Earl of Reading some work to do. Make the Consul-General here stirhimself. Tell them you came over here to investigate labor conditions.That story goes any time and just now it's fashionable. As an Irishmanyou'll have far more consideration from the British Government than ifyou were merely an Englishman."
"But what about this money?" O'Sheill queried uneasily.
"I'll take it," Trent told him. "If it's found on you nothing can do youany good. You'll do your plotting in a British jail."
O'Sheill was amazed at the careless manner in which this large sum wasthrust into the other man's pocket. Surely these accomplices of hisdealt in big things.
"When you're ready to sail you can get it back," Trent continued. "Thatcan be arranged later. Meanwhile don't forget my instructions. Beindignant when you are searched. Call on the British Ambassador." Trentpaused suddenly. An idea had struck him. "By the way," he went on, "youhave other things that would get you into trouble beside that money."
"I know it," O'Sheill admitted. "What am I to do with them?"
"I'm taking a chance if they are found on me," the younger mancommented. "But they are not after me. Give me what you have," he cried.
Into this keeping the frightened O'Sheill confided certain letters whichlater were to prove such an admirable aid to the United StatesGovernment.
It was as Trent turned to the door that he heard steps coming along thepassage as softly as the creaking boards permitted.
He placed his fingers on his lips and enjoined silence. The furtivesound completed O'Sheill's distress. He felt himself entrapped. Trentsaw him take from his hip pocket a revolver.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Wait."
He turned down the gas to a tiny glimmer. Through the transom thestronger light in the passage was seen. It was but a slight effort forthe muscular Trent to draw himself up so that he could peer through thetransom at the man tapping softly at the door.
Unquestionably it was Williams, and the hand concealed in his right handcoat pocket was no doubt gripping the butt of an automatic. He was a manof great physical strength, that Trent had noted earlier in the evening.Although of enormous strength himself, and a boxer and wrestler, he knewhe would stand no chance if these two discovered his errand. There wasno other exit than the door.
Anthony Trent stepped silently to O'Sheill's side.
"It's the Hunchback," he whispered. "If once he gets those long fingersaround your throat you're gone. Listen to me. I'm going to turn the gasout. Then I shall open the door. When he rushes in get him. If he getsyou instead I'll be on the top of him and we'll tie him up. Ready?"
The prospect of a fight restored O'Sheill's spirits. Every line of hisevil face was a black menace to Friedrich Wilhelm outside.
"Don't use your revolver," Anthony Trent cautioned.
"Why?" O'Sheill whispered.
"We can't stand police investigation," said the other. "Get ready nowI'm going to open the door."
When he flung it open Williams stepped quickly in. O'Sheill maddened atthe very th
ought that any one imperiled his money, could only see, inthe dim light, an enemy. The first blow he struck landed fair and squareon the Prussian nose. On his part Williams supposed the attack apremeditated one. O'Sheill was playing him false. The pain of the blowawoke his own hot temper and made him killing mad. He sought to get hisstrong arms about the Sinn Feiner's throat.
It was while they thrashed about on the floor that Anthony Trent madehis escape. He closed the door of the room carefully and locked it fromthe outside. Then he unscrewed the electric bulb that lit the hall. Nonesaw him pass into the street. It was one of his triumphant nights.
Next morning at breakfast he found Mrs. Kinney much interested in thecity's police news as set forth in the papers.
He was singularly cheerful.
"What is it?" he demanded. "Some very dreadful crime?"
"A double murder," she told him, "and the police don't seem to be ableto figure it out at all."
Trent sipped his coffee gratefully.
"What's strange about that?" he demanded.
"I don't see," Mrs. Kinney went on, "what a gentleman like this Mr.Williams seems to have been----"
Anthony Trent put down his cup.
"What's his other name?" he inquired.
"Frederick," said the interested Mrs. Kinney. "Frederick Williams, aHolland Dutch gentleman living in Ninety-third Street near the Drive. Heaided the Red Cross and bought Liberty Bonds. What I want to know is whyhe went to a low place like the Shipwrights Hotel to see a man namedO'Sheill from Liverpool, England?"
"A double murder?" he demanded.
"Here it is," she returned, and showed him the paper. The two men hadbeen found dead, the report ran, under mysterious circumstances, but thepolice thought a solution would quickly be found. Anthony Trent smiledas he read of official optimism. He was inclined to doubt it.
When Mrs. Kinney was out shopping he read through the documents he hadtaken from O'Sheill. They seemed to him to be of prime importance. Therewas a list of American Sinn Feiners implicating men in high positions,men against whom so far nothing detrimental was known. Outlines of plotswere made bare to embroil and antagonize Britain and the UnitedStates--allies in the great cause--and all that subtle propaganda whichhad nothing to do with the betterment of prosperous Ireland buteverything to do with Prussian aggrandizement. It was a poisonouscollection of documents.
The chief of the Department of Justice in New York was called up from apublic station and informed that a messenger was on his way with veryimportant papers. The chief was warned to make immediate search of thepremises at Ninety-third Street where a highly important German spymight be captured.
In the evening papers Anthony Trent was gratified to learn that thehighly-born, thin, haughty person was none other than the Baron vonReisende who had received his _conge_ with Bernstorff and was thought tobe in the Wilmhelmstrasse. He had probably returned by way of Mexico.
And certain politicians of the baser sort were sternly warned againstplotting the downfall of America's allies. Altogether Trent had done agood night's work for his country. As for himself twenty thousanddollars went far toward making the total he desired.
Consistent success in such enterprises as his was leading him into afeeling that he would not be run to earth as had been those lesserpractitioners of crime who lacked his subtlety and shared their secretswith others.
But there was always the chance that he had been observed when hethought he was alone in some great house. Austin, the Conington Warrenbutler, looked him full in the face on his first adventure. And thatother butler who served the millionaire whose piano he had wreckedmight, some day, place a hand on his shoulder and denounce him to theworld. Yet butlers were beings whose duties took them little abroad.They did not greatly perturb him.
Anthony Trent, Master Criminal Page 12
