The Closing Net. Henry Cottrell Rowland

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       Henry Cottrell Rowland

      The Closing Net

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066062194

Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I TIDE WATER CLAM

       CHAPTER II THE TIDE TURNS

       CHAPTER III LÉONTINE DIGS IN THE SAND

       CHAPTER IV A BACK EDDY

       CHAPTER V LÉONTINE SHOWS HER TEETH

       CHAPTER VI "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?"

       CHAPTER VII AMERICAN METHODS

       CHAPTER VIII HAWK AND RAVEN

       CHAPTER IX THE FALCON STRIKES

       CHAPTER X ROSENTHAL

       CHAPTER XI AN HEROIC LIE

       CHAPTER I UNDER COVER

       CHAPTER II THE COUNTESS ROSALIE

       CHAPTER III THE FIRST ROUND

       CHAPTER IV SANCTUARY

       CHAPTER V QUICKSANDS

       CHAPTER VI TEMPTATION

       CHAPTER VII BACK INTO THE WORLD

       CHAPTER VIII THE PASSING OF IVAN

       CHAPTER IX THE NET CLOSES

       CHAPTER X INTO THE LIGHT

CHAPTER I

      TIDE WATER CLAM

       Table of Contents

      My friend, it's my belief that when it rains every third drop lands on a crook. You've no idea what a lot there are, and the only wonder is how they make a living. But your most dangerous crook is the gentleman variety, and that was easy for me because my father's family was about the best in the United States, barring only my mother's. His stock was pure English and hers Dutch; you'll find both names in the school histories; both families had signers of the Declaration. They were both thoroughbreds, all right. The only trouble was that they were never married, and that made a lot of trouble for me, afterwards.

      I spent the first six years of my life in a pretty little cottage down Boston way, and about the only person I saw was my old nursery governess, Ma'm'selle Durand, or Tante Fi-Fi, as I called her. Then, as far as I could make out, my father lost his fortune and his nerve at the same time, and they found him in his library—dead. That settled my mother, and a little later Tante Fi-Fi faded away, and I found myself bawling my lungs open in the state asylum for orphans.

      Young as I was, I couldn't stand it very long, so one hot day in July I ambled out, slipped down to a pond that was near by, hid my clothes under some stones, and splashed around. Then I came out ​crying and went up naked to a farmhouse and told the folks that the other boys had swiped my clothes and I was due home three hours ago. They laughed at first; then a motherly woman went into the house and fetched me out some old duds one of her brood had outgrown. She said I needn't bother to bring them back, they weren't worth it. They were worth a lot to me, because, you see, they represented my whole capital for a start in life on my own.

      Well, I drifted around for a few years, doing the things that most homeless kids do, I suppose, and finally I got a billet as cabin-boy on a yacht. That led to steward, and then the family took me into their town house as butler. It was a low-grade, flash crowd with barrels of money and all as crooked as a switch-back railway, men and women both, so that one fine night when a second-story worker handed me a proposition for opening the back door I said, "All right, matey, on one condition—that you share up even and then teach me the trade!"

      That was how I started my professional career. Before that I'd only been an amateur, like a good many butlers and chauffeurs and the like. Ever feel any compunctions? Nary one! There are two emotions that never touched me; one is scruple and the other fear. Good workers go down under both sometimes, and if I had been with real swell people at the start it might have been different. But where the boss of the house buncoes his guests at bridge and brags of it afterward to his wife, before the butler, there ain't much of an example set to the service. More than that, everybody was always saying to me, just as you did a little while ago, "You look like a ​gentleman." And I did, and behaved a darn sight more like one than the people I waited on. The result was that I got to thinking of myself as a man that wasn't getting what by rights belonged to him, and I went to work to correct that with all the natural intelligence I had in me, which was considerable.

      For some years I was mighty successful. Plain burglary was my specialty because I liked the excitement of it; but I was handy at the side lines, too, and when it came to con games or even such youthful pranks as nicking a pocketbook or wrist-bag I was right on the job, and here my looks helped me a lot. Once or twice I've bluffed out a sucker that as good as saw me take the goods. I knew how to dress and how to walk into a big ballroom and how to order a dinner in a swell restaurant and how to talk to a lady in the deck chair next to mine. Yes, my son, I have seen life.

      The first time I got pinched, and I tell it to my shame, was right here in Paris, and all along of a piece of sheer, light-hearted foolishness. I'd come over from London with a running-mate, just for a spree. We were both flush and doing the swell act. It was the week of the Grand Prix de Steeplechase out at Auteuil, and we went to the races, not on business, mind you, but just for fun. While we were standing by the paying-booth watching the types cash in, along comes a big, whiskered Russian with a whole fistful of winning tickets. The guy handed him out a big wad of bank-notes, which Mr. Russian crams into the side pocket of his trousers, then saunters over to the betting-booths.

      ​"That looks appetising," says I to my pal. "What d'ye want to bet I can't take that away from Mr. Bear?"

      "Lay ye a five-pun' note," says he.

      "Done,"