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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Last Case, by E. C. Bentley
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+Title:  Trent's Last Case
+Title:  The Woman in Black
+
+Author:  E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+Published: in UK as Trent's Last Case; in USA as The Woman in Black.
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Last Case, by E. C. Bentley
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+
+
+
+
+TRENT'S LAST CASE
+
+by E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I: Bad News
+
+Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know
+judge wisely?
+
+When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a
+shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it
+gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as
+this dead man had piled up--without making one loyal friend to mourn him,
+without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honour. But when
+the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of
+business as if the earth too shuddered under a blow.
+
+In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no figure
+that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He had a niche
+apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and augment the
+forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions for their labour,
+had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had been this
+singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing especially dear to
+the hearts of his countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head
+through the years when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of
+stability, the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding
+chieftains that infest the borders of Wall Street.
+
+The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those chieftains on
+the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with accretion through his
+father, who during a long life had quietly continued to lend money and never
+had margined a stock. Manderson, who had at no time known what it was to be
+without large sums to his hand, should have been altogether of that newer
+American plutocracy which is steadied by the tradition and habit of great
+wealth. But it was not so. While his nurture and education had taught him
+European ideas of a rich man's proper external circumstance; while they had
+rooted in him an instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which
+does not shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
+him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his forbear.
+During that first period of his business career which had been called his
+early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of genius, his hand
+against every man's--an infant prodigy- who brought to the enthralling pursuit
+of speculation a brain better endowed than any opposed to it. At St Helena it
+was laid down that war is une belle occupation; and so the young Manderson had
+found the multitudinous and complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New
+York.
+
+Then came his change. At his father's death, when Manderson was thirty years
+old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he served
+seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic adaptability of his
+nation he turned to steady labour in his father's banking business, closing
+his ears to the sound of the battles of the Street. In a few years he came to
+control all the activity of the great firm whose unimpeached conservatism,
+safety, and financial weight lifted it like a cliff above the angry sea of the
+markets. All mistrust founded on the performances of his youth had vanished.
+He was quite plainly a different man. How the change came about none could
+with authority say, but there was a story of certain last words spoken by his
+father, whom alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
+
+He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was current in
+the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of Manderson called up a
+vision of all that was broad-based and firm in the vast wealth of the United
+States. He planned great combinations of capital, drew together and
+centralized industries of continental scope, financed with unerring judgement
+the large designs of state or of private enterprise. Many a time when he 'took
+hold' to smash a strike, or to federate the ownership of some great field of
+labour, he sent ruin upon a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or
+steelworkers or cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more
+lawless and ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate
+business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the
+financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to
+protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country.
+Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national lust
+for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the Colossus.
+
+But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
+unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants and
+certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little circle knew
+that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability in the markets, had
+his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when the Street had trembled at
+his name. It was, said one of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a
+decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate
+would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches
+sputtering in his hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of
+tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room
+of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried
+out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go
+soberly down to his counting-house--humming a stave or two of 'Spanish
+Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless
+satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to
+some Rupert of the markets  a coup worth a million to the depredator might
+have been made. 'Seems to me,' he would say almost wistfully, 'the Street is
+getting to be a mighty dull place since I quit.' By slow degrees this amiable
+weakness of the Colossus became known to the business world, which exulted
+greatly in the knowledge.
+
+At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a hurricane; for
+it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed like towers in an
+earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous inferno of pale despair.
+All over the United States, wherever speculation had its devotees, went a waft
+of ruin, a plague of suicide. In Europe also not a few took with their own
+hands lives that had become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom
+most of them had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out
+of the Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
+Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the Cathedral
+top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men stabbed and
+shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it as the air, because
+in a lonely corner of England the life had departed from one cold heart vowed
+to the service of greed.
+
+The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when Wall
+Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week
+past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the
+Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of
+Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This
+bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been
+'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was
+due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or
+three railway statements which had been expected to be much better than they
+were. But at whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of the
+threatened break had been felt, 'the Manderson crowd' had stepped in and held
+the market up. All through the week the speculator's mind, as shallow as it is
+quick- witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in this the hand of the
+giant stretched out in protection from afar. Manderson, said the newspapers in
+chorus, was in hourly communication with his lieutenants in the Street. One
+journal was able to give in round figures the sum spent on cabling between New
+York and Marlstone in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of
+expert operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to
+Marlstone to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that Manderson,
+on the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon his holiday and
+return home by the Lusitania; but that he soon had the situation so well in
+hand that he had determined to remain where he was.
+
+All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the 'finance
+editors', consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd business men of
+the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better help their plans than
+this illusion of hero-worship--knew also that no word had come from Manderson
+in answer to their messages, and that Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron
+fame, was the true organizer of victory. So they fought down apprehension
+through four feverish days, and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the
+ground beneath the feet of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with
+Etna-mutterings of disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was
+firm, and slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn
+out but thankfully at peace.
+
+In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the sixty
+acres of the financial district. It came into being as the lightning comes--a
+blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was
+first whispered over the telephone--together with an urgent selling order by
+some employee in the cable service. A sharp spasm convulsed the convalescent
+share- list. In five minutes the dull noise of the kerbstone market in Broad
+Street had leapt to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive
+of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed
+hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
+trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous 'short'
+interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a
+sudden and ruinous collapse of 'Yankees' in London at the close of the Stock
+Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours' trading in front
+of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the saviour and warden of the
+markets had recoiled upon its authors with annihilating force, and Jeffrey,
+his ear at his private telephone, listened to the tale of disaster with a set
+jaw. The new Napoleon had lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial
+landscape sliding and falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news
+of the finding of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumour that it was
+suicide, was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached
+Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
+and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
+
+All this sprang out of nothing.
+
+Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
+ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power to a
+myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
+unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various servitudes to which they
+were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona tossed and
+murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a
+million or two of half- crazed gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of
+Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before
+he died strong hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of
+commerce and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
+countrymen had made a strange discovery--that the existence of the potent
+engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a
+condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days,
+the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
+'recovered a normal tone'.
+
+While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic scandal
+in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents. Next morning
+the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable politician was
+shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the streets of New Orleans.
+Within a week of its rising, 'the Manderson story', to the trained sense of
+editors throughout the Union, was 'cold'. The tide of American visitors
+pouring through Europe made eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man
+who had died in poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat.
+Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
+buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
+Manderson's people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the
+Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever Will be, to stand in reverence by
+the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
+
+CHAPTER II: Knocking the Town Endways
+
+In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the
+telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his
+pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over to the
+instrument.
+
+'Who is that?' he said. 'Who?... I can't hear you .... Oh, it's Mr. Bunner, is
+it?... Yes, but... I know, but he's fearfully busy this afternoon. Can't
+you... Oh, really? Well, in that case--just hold on, will you?'
+
+He placed the receiver before Sir James. 'It's Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
+Manderson's right-hand man,' he said concisely. 'He insists on speaking to you
+personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking from the house
+down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak clearly.'
+
+Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
+receiver. 'Well?' he said in his strong voice, and listened. 'Yes,' he said.
+The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of amazement and
+horror. 'Good God!' murmured Sir James. Clutching the instrument, he slowly
+rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At intervals he repeated 'Yes.'
+Presently, as he listened, he glanced at the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr.
+Silver over the top of the transmitter. 'Go and hunt up Figgis and young
+Williams. Hurry.' Mr. Silver darted from the room.
+
+The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart and
+black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in the world,
+which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the half-cynical
+competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the charlatan: he made
+no mysteries, and no pretences of knowledge, and he saw instantly through
+these in others. In his handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was
+something a little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint
+about his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint
+he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company which
+owned that most powerful morning paper, the Record, and also that most
+indispensable evening paper, the Sun, which had its offices on the other side
+of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of the Record, to which he
+had in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in
+the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts, you
+must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great deal of
+both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a profession not
+favourable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
+
+'You're sure that's all?' asked Sir James, after a few minutes of earnest
+listening and questioning. 'And how long has this been known?... Yes, of
+course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it's all over the place down
+there by now .... Well, we'll have a try .... Look here, Bunner, I'm
+infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you a good turn. You know I mean
+what I say. Come and see me the first day you get to town .... All right,
+that's understood. Now I must act on your news. Goodbye.'
+
+Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the rack
+before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a
+forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured
+man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
+
+'I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,' said Sir James, banishing all
+signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. 'When you have them,
+put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special edition of the
+Sun.' The hard- featured man nodded and glanced at the clock, which pointed to
+a few minutes past three; he pulled out a notebook and drew a chair up to the
+big writing- table. 'Silver,' Sir James went on, 'go and tell Jones to wire
+our local correspondent very urgently, to drop everything and get down to
+Marlstone at once. He is not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an
+unnecessary word about this news until the Sun is on the streets with it--you
+all understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
+himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways. Just
+tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a scoop. Say that
+Figgis will be over in five minutes with the facts, and that he had better let
+him write up the story in his private room. As you go, ask Miss Morgan to see
+me here at once, and tell the telephone people to see if they can get Mr.
+Trent on the wire for me. After seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.'
+The alert-eyed young man vanished like a spirit.
+
+Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over the
+paper. 'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,' he began quickly and clearly,
+pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis scratched down a line
+of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had been told that the day was
+fine--the pose of his craft. 'He and his wife and two secretaries have been
+for the past fortnight at the house called White Gables, at Marlstone, near
+Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since
+spent a part of each summer there. Last night he went to bed about half-past
+eleven, just as usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was
+not missed until this morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a
+gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head,
+through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not
+robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a straggle having
+taken place. Dr Stock, of Marlstone, was at once sent for, and will conduct
+the post-mortem examination. The police from Bishopsbridge, who were soon on
+the spot, are reticent, but it is believed that they are quite without a clue
+to the identity of the murderer. There you are, Figgis. Mr. Anthony is
+expecting you. Now I must telephone him and arrange things.'
+
+Mr. Figgis looked up. 'One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,' he
+suggested, 'has been put in charge of the case. It's a safe statement.'
+
+'If you like,' said Sir James.
+
+'And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?'
+
+'Yes. What about her?'
+
+'Prostrated by the shock,' hinted the reporter, 'and sees nobody. Human
+interest.'
+
+'I wouldn't put that in, Mr. Figgis,' said a quiet voice. It belonged to Miss
+Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her appearance while the
+dictation was going on. 'I have seen Mrs. Manderson,' she proceeded, turning
+to Sir James. 'She looks quite healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been
+murdered? I don't think the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to
+be doing all she can to help the police.'
+
+'Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan,' he said with a momentary
+smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb. 'Cut it out,
+Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I want.'
+
+'Our Manderson biography happens to be well up to date,' replied Miss Morgan,
+drooping her dark eyelashes as she considered the position. 'I was looking
+over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for tomorrow's paper. I
+should think the Sun had better use the sketch of his life they had about two
+years ago, when he went to Berlin and settled the potash difficulty. I
+remember it was a very good sketch, and they won't be able to carry much more
+than that. As for our paper, of course we have a great quantity of cuttings,
+mostly rubbish. The sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then
+we have two very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a
+drawing Mr. Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is
+better than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a bad
+photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once, and you
+can choose. As far as I can see, the Record is well ahead of the situation,
+except that you will not be able to get a special man down there in time to be
+of any use for tomorrow's paper.'
+
+Sir James sighed deeply. 'What are we good for, anyhow?' he enquired
+dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. 'She even knows
+Bradshaw by heart.'
+
+Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. 'Is there anything
+else?' she asked, as the telephone bell rang.
+
+'Yes, one thing,' replied Sir James, as he took up the receiver. 'I want you
+to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan--an everlasting bloomer--just to
+put us in countenance.' She permitted herself the fraction of what would have
+been a charming smile as she went out.
+
+'Anthony?' asked Sir James, and was at once deep in consultation with the
+editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the Sun building in
+person; the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say, was all very well if
+you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the Murat of Fleet Street, who
+delighted in riding the whirlwind and fighting a tumultuous battle against
+time, would say the same of a morning paper.
+
+It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that Mr.
+Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr. Anthony.
+
+'They can put him through at once,' he said to the boy.
+
+'Hullo!' he cried into the telephone after a few moments.
+
+A voice in the instrument replied, 'Hullo be blowed! What do you want?'
+
+'This is Molloy,' said Sir James.
+
+'I know it is,' the voice said. 'This is Trent. He is in the middle of
+painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment. Well, I
+hope it's something important, that's all!'
+
+'Trent,' said Sir James impressively, 'it is important. I want you to do some
+work for us.'
+
+'Some play, you mean,' replied the voice. 'Believe me, I don't want a holiday.
+The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent things. Why
+can't you leave a man alone?' 'Something very serious has happened.' 'What?'
+
+'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered--shot through the brain--and they don't
+know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It happened at his
+place near Bishopsbridge.' Sir James proceeded to tell his hearer, briefly and
+clearly, the facts that he had communicated to Mr. Figgis. 'What do you think
+of it?' he ended. A considering grunt was the only answer. 'Come now,' urged
+Sir James. 'Tempter!'
+
+'You will go down?'
+
+There was a brief pause.
+
+'Are you there?' said Sir James.
+
+'Look here, Molloy,' the voice broke out querulously, 'the thing may be a case
+for me, or it may not. We can't possibly tell. It may be a mystery; it may be
+as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being robbed looks interesting,
+but he may have been outed by some wretched tramp whom he found sleeping in
+the grounds and tried to kick out. It's the sort of thing he would do. Such a
+murderer might easily have sense enough to know that to leave the money and
+valuables was the safest thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have a hand in
+hanging a poor devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a
+measure of social protest.'
+
+Sir James smiled at the telephone--a smile of success. 'Come, my boy, you're
+getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the case. You know you
+do. If it's anything you don't want to handle, you're free to drop it. By the
+by, where are you?'
+
+'I am blown along a wandering wind,' replied the voice irresolutely, 'and
+hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
+
+'Can you get here within an hour?' persisted Sir James.
+
+'I suppose I can,' the voice grumbled. 'How much time have I?'
+
+'Good man! Well, there's time enough--that's just the worst of it. I've got to
+depend on our local correspondent for tonight. The only good train of the day
+went half an hour ago. The next is a slow one, leaving Paddington at midnight.
+You could have the Buster, if you like'--Sir James referred to a very fast
+motor car of his--'but you wouldn't get down in time to do anything tonight.'
+
+'And I'd miss my sleep. No, thanks. The train for me. I am quite fond of
+railway travelling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker and the
+stoked. I am the song the porter sings.'
+
+'What's that you say?'
+
+'It doesn't matter,' said the voice sadly. 'I say,' it continued, 'will your
+people look out a hotel near the scene of action, and telegraph for a room?'
+
+'At once,' said Sir James. 'Come here as soon as you can.'
+
+He replaced the receiver. As he turned to his papers again a shrill outcry
+burst forth in the street below. He walked to the open window. A band of
+excited boys was rushing down the steps of the Sun building and up the narrow
+thoroughfare toward Fleet Street. Each carried a bundle of newspapers and a
+large broadsheet with the simple legend:
+
+                        MURDER OF SIGSBEE MANDERSON
+
+Sir James smiled and rattled the money in his pockets cheerfully. 'It makes a
+good bill,' he observed to Mr. Silver, who stood at his elbow.
+
+Such was Manderson's epitaph.
+
+CHAPTER III: Breakfast
+
+At about eight o'clock in the morning of the following day Mr. Nathaniel
+Burton Cupples stood on the veranda of the hotel at Marlstone. He was thinking
+about breakfast. In his case the colloquialism must be taken literally: he
+really was thinking about breakfast, as he thought about every conscious act
+of his life when time allowed deliberation. He reflected that on the preceding
+day the excitement and activity following upon the discovery of the dead man
+had disorganized his appetite, and led to his taking considerably less
+nourishment than usual. This morning he was very hungry, having already been
+up and about for an hour; and he decided to allow himself a third piece of
+toast and an additional egg; the rest as usual. The remaining deficit must be
+made up at luncheon, but that could be gone into later.
+
+So much being determined, Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment of the
+view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a connoisseur's eye he
+explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from
+a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture
+and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the
+distant moor. Mr. Cupples delighted in landscape.
+
+He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by
+constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A
+sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin but kindly
+mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him
+very much of a clerical air, and this impression was helped by his commonplace
+dark clothes and soft black hat. The whole effect of him, indeed, was
+priestly. He was a man of unusually conscientious, industrious, and orderly
+mind, with little imagination. His father's household had been used to recruit
+its domestic establishment by means of advertisements in which it was
+truthfully described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had
+escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible kindness of
+heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed nothing to humour. In an
+earlier day and with a clerical training he might have risen to the scarlet
+hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded member of the London Positivist
+Society, a retired banker, a widower without children. His austere but not
+unhappy life was spent largely among books and in museums; his profound and
+patiently accumulated knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects
+which had stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the
+quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of research; at
+their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most himself. His favourite
+author was Montaigne.
+
+Just as Mr. Cupples was finishing his meal at a little table on the veranda, a
+big motor car turned into the drive before the hotel. 'Who is this?' he
+enquired of the waiter. 'Id is der manager,' said the young man listlessly.
+'He have been to meed a gendleman by der train.'
+
+The car drew up and the porter hurried from the entrance. Mr. Cupples uttered
+an exclamation of pleasure as a long, loosely built man, much younger than
+himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda, flinging his hat on a
+chair. His high-boned, quixotic face wore a pleasant smile; his rough tweed
+clothes, his hair and short moustache were tolerably untidy.
+
+'Cupples, by all that's miraculous!' cried the man, pouncing upon Mr. Cupples
+before he could rise, and seizing his outstretched hand in a hard grip. 'My
+luck is serving me today,' the newcomer went on spasmodically. 'This is the
+second slice within an hour. How are you, my best of friends? And why are you
+here? Why sit'st thou by that ruined breakfast? Dost thou its former pride
+recall, or ponder how it passed away? I am glad to see you!'
+
+'I was half expecting you, Trent,' Mr. Cupples replied, his face wreathed in
+smiles. 'You are looking splendid, my dear fellow. I will tell you all about
+it. But you cannot have had your own breakfast yet. Will you have it at my
+table here?'
+
+'Rather!' said the man. 'An enormous great breakfast, too--with refined
+conversation and tears of recognition never dry. Will you get young Siegfried
+to lay a place for me while I go and wash? I shan't be three minutes.' He
+disappeared into the hotel, and Mr. Cupples, after a moment's thought, went to
+the telephone in the porter's office.
+
+He returned to find his friend already seated, pouring out tea, and showing an
+unaffected interest in the choice of food. 'I expect this to be a hard day for
+me,' he said, with the curious jerky utterance which seemed to be his habit.
+'I shan't eat again till the evening, very likely. You guess why I'm here,
+don't you?'
+
+'Undoubtedly,' said Mr. Cupples. 'You have come down to write about the
+murder.'
+
+'That is rather a colourless way of stating it,' the man called Trent replied,
+as he dissected a sole. 'I should prefer to put it that I have come down in
+the character of avenger of blood, to hunt down the guilty, and vindicate the
+honour of society. That is my line of business. Families waited on at their
+private residences. I say, Cupples, I have made a good beginning already. Wait
+a bit, and I'll tell you.' There was a silence, during which the newcomer ate
+swiftly and abstractedly, while Mr. Cupples looked on happily.
+
+'Your manager here,' said the tall man at last, 'is a fellow of remarkable
+judgement. He is an admirer of mine. He knows more about my best cases than I
+do myself. The Record wired last night to say I was coming, and when I got out
+of the train at seven o'clock this morning, there he was waiting for me with a
+motor car the size of a haystack. He is beside himself with joy at having me
+here. It is fame.' He drank a cup of tea and continued: 'Almost his first
+words were to ask me if I would like to see the body of the murdered man if
+so, he thought he could manage it for me. He is as keen as a razor. The body
+lies in Dr Stock's surgery, you know, down in the village, exactly as it was
+when found. It's to be post-mortem'd this morning, by the way, so I was only
+just in time. Well, he ran me down here to the doctor's, giving me full
+particulars about the case all the way. I was pretty well au fait by the time
+we arrived. I suppose the manager of a place like this has some sort of a pull
+with the doctor. Anyhow, he made no difficulties, nor did the constable on
+duty, though he was careful to insist on my not giving him away in the paper.'
+
+'I saw the body before it was removed,' remarked Mr. Cupples. 'I should not
+have said there was anything remarkable about it, except that the shot in the
+eye had scarcely disfigured the face at all, and caused scarcely any effusion
+of blood, apparently. The wrists were scratched and bruised. I expect that,
+with your trained faculties, you were able to remark other details of a
+suggestive nature.'
+
+'Other details, certainly; but I don't know that they suggest anything. They
+are merely odd. Take the wrists, for instance. How was it you could see
+bruises and scratches on them? I dare say you saw something of Manderson down
+here before the murder.' 'Certainly,' Mr. Cupples said.
+
+'Well, did you ever see his wrists?'
+
+Mr. Cupples reflected. 'No. Now you raise the point, I am reminded that when I
+interviewed Manderson here he was wearing stiff cuffs, coming well down over
+his hands.'
+
+'He always did,' said Trent. 'My friend the manager says so. I pointed out to
+him the fact you didn't observe, that there were no cuffs visible, and that
+they had, indeed, been dragged up inside the coat-sleeves, as yours would be
+if you hurried into a coat without pulling your cuffs down. That was why you
+saw his wrists.'
+
+'Well, I call that suggestive,' observed Mr. Cupples mildly. 'You might infer,
+perhaps, that when he got up he hurried over his dressing.'
+
+'Yes, but did he? The manager said just what you say. "He was always a bit of
+a swell in his dress," he told me, and he drew the inference that when
+Manderson got up in that mysterious way, before the house was stirring, and
+went out into the grounds, he was in a great hurry. "Look at his shoes," he
+said to me: "Mr. Manderson was always specially neat about his footwear. But
+those shoe-laces were tied in a hurry." I agreed. "And he left his false teeth
+in his room," said the manager. "Doesn't that prove he was flustered and
+hurried?" I allowed that it looked like it. But I said, "Look here: if he was
+so very much pressed, why did he part his hair so carefully? That parting is a
+work of art. Why did he put on so much? for he had on a complete outfit of
+underclothing, studs in his shirt, sock-suspenders, a watch and chain, money
+and keys and things in his pockets." That's what I said to the manager. He
+couldn't find an explanation. Can you?"
+
+Mr. Cupples considered. 'Those facts might suggest that he was hurried only at
+the end of his dressing. Coat and shoes would come last.'
+
+'But not false teeth. You ask anybody who wears them. And besides, I'm told he
+hadn't washed at all on getting up, which in a neat man looks like his being
+in a violent hurry from the beginning. And here's another thing. One of his
+waistcoat pockets was lined with wash-leather for the reception of his gold
+watch. But he had put his watch into the pocket on the other side. Anybody who
+has settled habits can see how odd that is. The fact is, there are signs of
+great agitation and haste, and there are signs of exactly the opposite. For
+the present I am not guessing. I must reconnoitre the ground first, if I can
+manage to get the right side of the people of the house.' Trent applied
+himself again to his breakfast.
+
+Mr. Cupples smiled at him benevolently. 'That is precisely the point,' he
+said, 'on which I can be of some assistance to you.' Trent glanced up in
+surprise. 'I told you I half expected you. I will explain the situation. Mrs.
+Manderson, who is my niece--'
+
+'What!' Trent laid down his knife and fork with a clash. 'Cupples, you are
+jesting with me.'
+
+'I am perfectly serious, Trent, really,' returned Mr. Cupples earnestly. 'Her
+father, John Peter Domecq, was my wife's brother. I never mentioned my niece
+or her marriage to you before, I suppose. To tell the truth, it has always
+been a painful subject to me, and I have avoided discussing it with anybody.
+To return to what I was about to say: last night, when I was over at the
+house--by the way, you can see it from here. You passed it in the car.' He
+indicated a red roof among poplars some three hundred yards away, the only
+building in sight that stood separate from the tiny village in the gap below
+them.
+
+'Certainly I did,' said Trent. 'The manager told me all about it, among other
+things, as he drove me in from Bishopsbridge.'
+
+'Other people here have heard of you and your performances,' Mr. Cupples went
+on. 'As I was saying, when I was over there last night, Mr. Bunner, who is one
+of Manderson's two secretaries, expressed a hope that the Record would send
+you down to deal with the case, as the police seemed quite at a loss. He
+mentioned one or two of your past successes, and Mabel--my niece--was
+interested when I told her afterwards. She is bearing up wonderfully well,
+Trent; she has remarkable fortitude of character. She said she remembered
+reading your articles about the Abinger case. She has a great horror of the
+newspaper side of this sad business, and she had entreated me to do anything I
+could to keep journalists away from the place--I'm sure you can understand her
+feeling, Trent; it isn't really any reflection on that profession. But she
+said you appeared to have great powers as a detective, and she would not stand
+in the way of anything that might clear up the crime. Then I told her you were
+a personal friend of mine, and gave you a good character for tact and
+consideration of others' feelings; and it ended in her saying that, if you
+should come, she would like you to be helped in every way.'
+
+Trent leaned across the table and shook Mr. Cupples by the hand in silence.
+Mr. Cupples, much delighted with the way things were turning out, resumed:
+
+'I spoke to my niece on the telephone only just now, and she is glad you are
+here. She asks me to say that you may make any enquiries you like, and she
+puts the house and grounds at your disposal. She had rather not see you
+herself; she is keeping to her own sitting-room. She has already been
+interviewed by a detective officer who is there, and she feels unequal to any
+more. She adds that she does not believe she could say anything that would be
+of the smallest use. The two secretaries and Martin, the butler (who is a most
+intelligent man), could tell you all you want to know, she thinks.'
+
+Trent finished his breakfast with a thoughtful brow. He filled a pipe slowly,
+and seated himself on the rail of the veranda. 'Cupples,' he said quietly, 'is
+there anything about this business that you know and would rather not tell
+me?'
+
+Mr. Cupples gave a slight start, and turned an astonished gaze on the
+questioner. 'What do you mean?' he said.
+
+'I mean about the Mandersons. Look here! Shall I tell you a thing that strikes
+me about this affair at the very beginning? Here's a man suddenly and
+violently killed, and nobody's heart seems to be broken about it, to say the
+least. The manager of this hotel spoke to me about him as coolly as if he'd
+never set eyes on him, though I understand they've been neighbours every
+summer for some years. Then you talk about the thing in the coldest of blood.
+And Mrs. Manderson--well, you won't mind my saying that I have heard of women
+being more cut up about their husbands being murdered than she seems to be. Is
+there something in this, Cupples, or is it my fancy? Was there something queer
+about Manderson? I travelled on the same boat with him once, but never spoke
+to him. I only know his public character, which was repulsive enough. You see,
+this may have a bearing on the case; that's the only reason why I ask.'
+
+Mr. Cupples took time for thought. He fingered his sparse beard and looked out
+over the sea. At last he turned to Trent. 'I see no reason,' he said, 'why I
+shouldn't tell you as between ourselves, my dear fellow. I need not say that
+this must not be referred to, however distantly. The truth is that nobody
+really liked Manderson; and I think those who were nearest to him liked him
+least.'
+
+'Why?' the other interjected.
+
+'Most people found a difficulty in explaining why. In trying to account to
+myself for my own sensations, I could only put it that one felt in the man a
+complete absence of the sympathetic faculty. There was nothing outwardly
+repellent about him. He was not ill-mannered, or vicious, or dull--indeed, he
+could be remarkably interesting. But I received the impression that there
+could be no human creature whom he would not sacrifice in the pursuit of his
+schemes, in his task of imposing himself and his will upon the world. Perhaps
+that was fanciful, but I think not altogether so. However, the point is that
+Mabel, I am sorry to say, was very unhappy. I am nearly twice your age, my
+dear boy, though you always so kindly try to make me feel as if we were
+contemporaries--I am getting to be an old man, and a great many people have
+been good enough to confide their matrimonial troubles to me; but I never knew
+another case like my niece's and her husband's. I have known her since she was
+a baby, Trent, and I know--you understand, I think, that I do not employ that
+word lightly--I know that she is as amiable and honourable a woman, to say
+nothing of her other good gifts, as any man could wish. But Manderson, for
+some time past, had made her miserable.'
+
+'What did he do?' asked Trent, as Mr. Cupples paused.
+
+'When I put that question to Mabel, her words were that he seemed to nurse a
+perpetual grievance. He maintained a distance between them, and he would say
+nothing. I don't know how it began or what was behind it; and all she would
+tell me on that point was that he had no cause in the world for his attitude.
+I think she knew what was in his mind, whatever it was; but she is full of
+pride. This seems to have gone on for months. At last, a week ago, she wrote
+to me. I am the only near relative she has. Her mother died when she was a
+child; and after John Peter died I was something like a father to her until
+she married--that was five years ago. She asked me to come and help her, and I
+came at once. That is why I am here now.'
+
+Mr. Cupples paused and drank some tea. Trent smoked and stared out at the hot
+June landscape.
+
+'I would not go to White Gables,' Mr. Cupples resumed. 'You know my views, I
+think, upon the economic constitution of society, and the proper relationship
+of the capitalist to the employee, and you know, no doubt, what use that
+person made of his vast industrial power upon several very notorious
+occasions. I refer especially to the trouble in the Pennsylvania coal-fields,
+three years ago. I regarded him, apart from an all personal dislike, in the
+light of a criminal and a disgrace to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw
+my niece here. She told me What I have more briefly told you. She said that
+the worry and the humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up
+appearances before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my
+advice. I said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his
+way of treating her. But she would not do that. She had always taken the line
+of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanour, and nothing, I knew,
+would persuade her to admit to him that she was injured, once pride had led
+her into that course. Life is quite full, my dear Trent,' said Mr. Cupples
+with a sigh, 'of these obstinate silences and cultivated misunderstandings.'
+
+'Did she love him?' Trent enquired abruptly. Mr. Cupples did not reply at
+once. 'Had she any love left for him?' Trent amended.
+
+Mr. Cupples played with his teaspoon. 'I am bound to say,' he answered slowly,
+'that I think not. But you must not misunderstand the woman, Trent. No power
+on earth would have persuaded her to admit that to any one--even to herself,
+perhaps--so long as she considered herself bound to him. And I gather that,
+apart from this mysterious sulking of late, he had always been considerate and
+generous.'
+
+'You were saying that she refused to have it out with him.'
+
+'She did,' replied Mr. Cupples. 'And I knew by experience that it was quite
+useless to attempt to move a Domecq where the sense of dignity was involved.
+So I thought it over carefully, and next day I watched my opportunity and met
+Manderson as he passed by this hotel. I asked him to favour me with a few
+minutes' conversation, and he stepped inside the gate down there. We had held
+no communication of any kind since my niece's marriage, but he remembered me,
+of course. I put the matter to him at once and quite definitely. I told him
+what Mabel had confided to me. I said that I would neither approve nor condemn
+her action in bringing me into the business, but that she was suffering, and I
+considered it my right to ask how he could justify himself in placing her in
+such a position.'
+
+'And how did he take that?' said Trent, smiling secretly at the landscape. The
+picture of this mildest of men calling the formidable Manderson to account
+pleased him.
+
+'Not very well,' Mr. Cupples replied sadly. 'In fact, far from well. I can
+tell you almost exactly what he said--it wasn't much. He said, "See here,
+Cupples, you don't want to butt in. My wife can look after herself. I've found
+that out, along with other things." He was perfectly quiet--you know he was
+said never to lose control of himself--though there was a light in his eyes
+that would have frightened a man who was in the wrong, I dare say. But I had
+been thoroughly roused by his last remark, and the tone of it, which I cannot
+reproduce. You see,' said Mr. Cupples simply, 'I love my niece. She is the
+only child that there has been in our--in my house. Moreover, my wife brought
+her up as a girl, and any reflection on Mabel I could not help feeling, in the
+heat of the moment, as an indirect reflection upon one who is gone.'
+
+'You turned upon him,' suggested Trent in a low tone. 'You asked him to
+explain his words.'
+
+'That is precisely what I did,' said Mr. Cupples. 'For a moment he only stared
+at me, and I could see a vein on his forehead swelling--an unpleasant sight.
+Then he said quite quietly, "This thing has gone far enough, I guess," and
+turned to go.'
+
+'Did he mean your interview?' Trent asked thoughtfully.
+
+'From the words alone you would think so,' Mr. Cupples answered. 'But the way
+in which he uttered them gave me a strange and very apprehensive feeling. I
+received the impression that the man had formed some sinister resolve. But I
+regret to say I had lost the power of dispassionate thought. I fell into a
+great rage'--Mr. Cupples's tone was mildly apologetic--'and said a number of
+foolish things. I reminded him that the law allowed a measure of freedom to
+wives who received intolerable treatment. I made some utterly irrelevant
+references to his public record, and expressed the view that such men as he
+were unfit to live. I said these things, and others as ill-considered, under
+the eyes, and very possibly within earshot, of half a dozen persons sitting on
+this veranda. I noticed them, in spite of my agitation, looking at me as I
+walked up to the hotel again after relieving my mind for it undoubtedly did
+relieve it,' sighed Mr. Cupples, lying back in his chair.
+
+'And Manderson? Did he say no more?'
+
+'Not a word. He listened to me with his eyes on my face, as quiet as before.
+When I stopped he smiled very slightly, and at once turned away and strolled
+through the gate, making for White Gables.' 'And this happened--?' 'On the
+Sunday morning.'
+
+'Then I suppose you never saw him alive again?'
+
+'No,' said Mr. Cupples. 'Or rather yes--once. It was later in the day, on the
+golf-course. But I did not speak to him. And next morning he was found dead.'
+
+The two regarded each other in silence for a few moments. A party of guests
+who had been bathing came up the steps and seated themselves, with much
+chattering, at a table near them. The waiter approached. Mr. Cupples rose,
+and, taking Trent's arm, led him to a long tennis-lawn at the side of the
+hotel.
+
+'I have a reason for telling you all this,' began Mr. Cupples as they paced
+slowly up and down.
+
+'Trust you for that,' rejoined Trent, carefully filling his pipe again. He lit
+it, smoked a little, and then said, 'I'll try and guess what your reason is,
+if you like.'
+
+Mr. Cupples's face of solemnity relaxed into a slight smile. He said nothing.
+
+'You thought it possible,' said Trent meditatively--'may I say you thought it
+practically certain?--that I should find out for myself that there had been
+something deeper than a mere conjugal tiff between the Mandersons. You thought
+that my unwholesome imagination would begin at once to play with the idea of
+Mrs. Manderson having something to do with the crime. Rather than that I
+should lose myself in barren speculations about this, you decided to tell me
+exactly how matters stood, and incidentally to impress upon me, who know how
+excellent your judgement is, your opinion of your niece. Is that about right?'
+
+'It is perfectly right. Listen to me, my dear fellow,' said Mr. Cupples
+earnestly, laying his hand on the other's arm. 'I am going to be very frank. I
+am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to have done nothing
+but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know that he was making a
+desert of the life of one who was like my own child to me. But I am under an
+intolerable dread of Mabel being involved in suspicion with regard to the
+murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in
+contact, if only for a time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not
+fitted for it. It would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in
+these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of
+imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today
+which would carry them through anything, perhaps.
+
+I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life
+prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that
+as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She
+has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are
+cultivated; but it is all mixed up'-Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague
+gesture--'with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I
+fear she is not a child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my
+wife's child.'
+
+The younger man bowed his head. They paced the length of the lawn before he
+asked gently, 'Why did she marry him?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Mr. Cupples briefly.
+
+'Admired him, I suppose,' suggested Trent.
+
+Mr. Cupples shrugged his shoulders. 'I have been told that a woman will
+usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her circle. Of
+course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating personality like his would
+influence a girl whose affections were not bestowed elsewhere; especially if
+he laid himself out to win her. It is probably an overwhelming thing to be
+courted by a man whose name is known all over the world. She had heard of him,
+of course, as a financial great power, and she had no idea--she had lived
+mostly among people of artistic or literary propensities--how much soulless
+inhumanity that might involve. For all I know, she has no adequate idea of it
+to this day. When I first heard of the affair the mischief was done, and I
+knew better than to interpose my unsought opinions. She was of age, and there
+was absolutely nothing against him from the conventional point of view. Then I
+dare say his immense wealth would cast a spell over almost any woman. Mabel
+had some hundreds a year of her own; just enough, perhaps, to let her realize
+what millions really meant. But all this is conjecture. She certainly had not
+wanted to marry some scores of young fellows who to my knowledge had asked
+her; and though I don't believe, and never did believe, that she really loved
+this man of forty-five, she certainly did want to marry him. But if you ask me
+why, I can only say I don't know.'
+
+Trent nodded, and after a few more paces looked at his watch. 'You've
+interested me so much,' he said, 'that I had quite forgotten my main business.
+I mustn't waste my morning. I am going down the road to White Gables at once,
+and I dare say I shall be poking about there until midday. If you can meet me
+then, Cupples, I should like to talk over anything I find out with you, unless
+something detains me.'
+
+'I am going for a walk this morning,' Mr. Cupples replied. 'I meant to have
+luncheon at a little inn near the golf-course, The Three Tuns. You had better
+join me there. It's further along the road, about a quarter of a mile beyond
+White Gables. You can just see the roof between those two trees. The food they
+give one there is very plain, but good.'
+
+'So long as they have a cask of beer,' said Trent, 'they are all right. We
+will have bread and cheese, and oh, may Heaven our simple lives prevent from
+luxury's contagion, weak and vile! Till then, goodbye.' He strode off to
+recover his hat from the veranda, waved it to Mr. Cupples, and was gone.
+
+The old gentleman, seating himself in a deck-chair on the lawn, clasped his
+hands behind his head and gazed up into the speckless blue sky. 'He is a dear
+fellow,' he murmured. 'The best of fellows. And a terribly acute fellow. Dear
+me! How curious it all is!'
+
+CHAPTER IV: Handcuffs in the Air
+
+A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his twenties
+achieved some reputation within the world of English art. Moreover, his
+pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a habit of leisurely but
+continuous working, broken by fits of strong creative enthusiasm, were at the
+bottom of it. His father's name had helped; a patrimony large enough to
+relieve him of the perilous imputation of being a struggling man had certainly
+not hindered. But his best aid to success had been an unconscious power of
+getting himself liked. Good spirits and a lively, humorous fancy will always
+be popular. Trent joined to these a genuine interest in others that gained him
+something deeper than popularity. His judgement of persons was penetrating,
+but its process was internal; no one felt on good behaviour with a man who
+seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of
+nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its
+expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and
+its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry.
+At thirty-two he had not yet passed the age of laughter and adventure.
+
+His rise to a celebrity a hundred times greater than his proper work had won
+for him came of a momentary impulse. One day he had taken up a newspaper to
+find it chiefly concerned with a crime of a sort curiously rare in our
+country--a murder done in a railway train. The circumstances were puzzling;
+two persons were under arrest upon suspicion. Trent, to whom an interest in
+such affairs was a new sensation, heard the thing discussed among his friends,
+and set himself in a purposeless mood to read up the accounts given in several
+journals. He became intrigued; his imagination began to work, in a manner
+strange to him, upon facts; an excitement took hold of him such as he had only
+known before in his bursts of art-inspiration or of personal adventure. At the
+end of the day he wrote and dispatched a long letter to the editor of the
+Record, which he chose only because it had contained the fullest and most
+intelligent version of the facts.
+
+In this letter he did very much what Poe had done in the case of the murder of
+Mary Rogers. With nothing but the newspapers to guide him, he drew attention
+to the significance of certain apparently negligible facts, and ranged the
+evidence in such a manner as to throw grave suspicion upon a man who had
+presented himself as a witness. Sir James Molloy had printed this letter in
+leaded type. The same evening he was able to announce in the Sun the arrest
+and full confession of the incriminated man.
+
+Sir James, who knew all the worlds of London, had lost no time in making
+Trent's acquaintance. The two men got on well, for Trent possessed some secret
+of native tact which had the effect of almost abolishing differences of age
+between himself and others. The great rotary presses in the basement of the
+Record building had filled him with a new enthusiasm. He had painted there,
+and Sir James had bought at sight, what he called a machinery-scape in the
+manner of Heinrich Kley.
+
+Then a few months later came the affair known as the Ilkley mystery. Sir James
+had invited Trent to an emollient dinner, and thereafter offered him what
+seemed to the young man a fantastically large sum for his temporary services
+as special representative of the Record at Ilkley.
+
+'You could do it,' the editor had urged. 'You can write good stuff, and you
+know how to talk to people, and I can teach you all the technicalities of a
+reporter's job in half an hour. And you have a head for a mystery; you have
+imagination and cool judgement along with it. Think how it would feel if you
+pulled it off!'
+
+Trent had admitted that it would be rather a lark. He had smoked, frowned, and
+at last convinced himself that the only thing that held him back was fear of
+an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had become a fixed moral habit with
+him, and he had accepted Sir James's offer.
+
+He had pulled it off. For the second time he had given the authorities a start
+and a beating, and his name was on all tongues. He withdrew and painted
+pictures. He felt no leaning towards journalism, and Sir James, who knew a
+good deal about art, honourably refrained--as other editors did not--from
+tempting him with a good salary. But in the course of a few years he had
+applied to him perhaps thirty times for his services in the unravelling of
+similar problems at home and abroad. Sometimes Trent, busy with work that held
+him, had refused; sometimes he had been forestalled in the discovery of the
+truth. But the result of his irregular connection with the Record had been to
+make his name one of the best known in England. It was characteristic of him
+that his name was almost the only detail of his personality known to the
+public. He had imposed absolute silence about himself upon the Molloy papers;
+and the others were not going to advertise one of Sir James's men.
+
+The Manderson case, he told himself as he walked rapidly up the sloping road
+to White Gables, might turn out to be terribly simple. Cupples was a wise old
+boy, but it was probably impossible for him to have an impartial opinion about
+his niece. But it was true that the manager of the hotel, who had spoken of
+her beauty in terms that aroused his attention, had spoken even more
+emphatically of her goodness. Not an artist in words, the manager had yet
+conveyed a very definite idea to Trent's mind. 'There isn't a child about here
+that don't brighten up at the sound of her voice,' he had said, 'nor yet a
+grown-up, for the matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming
+over in the summer. I don't mean that she's one of those women that are all
+kind heart and nothing else. There's backbone with it, if you know what I
+mean--pluck any amount of go. There's nobody in Marlstone that isn't sorry for
+the lady in her trouble--not but what some of us may think she's lucky at the
+last of it.' Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs. Manderson.
+
+He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of the two-
+storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables from which it
+had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car that morning. A
+modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place was beautifully kept,
+with that air of opulent peace that clothes even the smallest houses of the
+well-to-do in an English countryside. Before it, beyond the road, the rich
+meadow-land ran down to the edge of the cliffs; behind it a woody landscape
+stretched away across a broad vale to the moors. That such a place could be
+the scene of a crime of violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well
+ordered, so eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there
+beyond the house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot,
+white road, stood the gardener's toolshed, by which the body had been found,
+lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the gate of the drive
+and along the road until he was opposite this shed. Some forty yards further
+along the road turned sharply away from the house, to run between thick
+plantations; and just before the turn the grounds of the house ended, with a
+small white gate at the angle of the boundary hedge. He approached the gate,
+which was plainly for the use of gardeners and the service of the
+establishment. It swung easily on its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path
+that led towards the back of the house, between the outer hedge and a tall
+wall of rhododendrons. Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the
+little neatly built erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a
+corner of the front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a
+servant, he thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of
+the day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered what
+it could be like to be as rich as the master.
+
+He examined the place carefully and ransacked the hut within, but he could
+note no more than the trodden appearance of the uncut grass where the body had
+lain. Crouching low, with keen eyes and feeling fingers, he searched the
+ground minutely over a wide area; but the search was fruitless.
+
+It was interrupted by the sound--the first he had heard from the house--of the
+closing of the front door. Trent unbent his long legs and stepped to the edge
+of the drive. A man was walking quickly away from the house in the direction
+of the great gate.
+
+At the noise of a footstep on the gravel, the man wheeled with nervous
+swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face was
+almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man's face.
+There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all their tale of
+strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each other, Trent noted
+with admiration the man's breadth of shoulder and lithe, strong figure. In his
+carriage, inelastic as weariness had made it; in his handsome, regular
+features; in his short, smooth, yellow hair; and in his voice as he addressed
+Trent, the influence of a special sort of training was confessed. 'Oxford was
+your playground, I think, my young friend,' said Trent to himself.
+
+'If you are Mr. Trent,' said the young man pleasantly, 'you are expected. Mr.
+Cupples telephoned from the hotel. My name is Marlowe.'
+
+'You were secretary to Mr. Manderson, I believe,' said Trent. He was much
+inclined to like young Mr. Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a physical
+breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living and inward
+health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his years. But there
+was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge to Trent's penetration;
+an habitual expression, as he took it tobe, of meditating and weighing things
+not present to their sight. It was a look too intelligent, too steady and
+purposeful, to be called dreamy. Trent thought he had seen such a look before
+somewhere. He went on to say: 'It is a terrible business for all of you. I
+fear it has upset you completely, Mr. Marlowe.'
+
+'A little limp, that's all,' replied the young man wearily. 'I was driving the
+car all Sunday night and most of yesterday, and I didn't sleep last night
+after hearing the news--who would? But I have an appointment now, Mr. Trent,
+down at the doctor's--arranging about the inquest. I expect it'll be tomorrow.
+If you will go up to the house and ask for Mr. Bunner, you'll find him
+expecting you; he will tell you all about things and show you round. He's the
+other secretary; an American, and the best of fellows; he'll look after you.
+There's a detective here, by the way--Inspector Murch, from Scotland Yard. He
+came yesterday.'
+
+'Murch!' Trent exclaimed. 'But he and I are old friends. How under the sun did
+he get here so soon?'
+
+'I have no idea,' Mr. Marlowe answered. 'But he was here last evening, before
+I got back from Southampton, interviewing everybody, and he's been about here
+since eight this morning. He's in the library now--that's where the open
+French window is that you see at the end of the house there. Perhaps you would
+like to step down there and talk about things.'
+
+'I think I will,' said Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The thick
+turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep made Trent's
+footsteps as noiseless as a cat's. In a few moments he was looking in through
+the open leaves of the window at the southward end of the house, considering
+with a smile a very broad back and a bent head covered with short grizzled
+hair. The man within was stooping over a number of papers laid out on the
+table.
+
+' 'Twas ever thus,' said Trent in a melancholy tone, at the first sound of
+which the man within turned round with startling swiftness. 'From childhood's
+hour I've seen my fondest hopes decay. I did think I was ahead of Scotland
+Yard this time, and now here is the hugest officer in the entire Metropolitan
+force already occupying the position.'
+
+The detective smiled grimly and came to the window. 'I was expecting you, Mr.
+Trent,' he said. 'This is the sort of case that you like.'
+
+'Since my tastes were being considered,' Trent replied, stepping into the
+room, 'I wish they had followed up the idea by keeping my hated rival out of
+the business. You have got a long start, too--I know all about it.' His eyes
+began to wander round the room. 'How did you manage it? You are a quick mover,
+I know; the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was never tied; but I don't see
+how you got here in time to be at work yesterday evening. Has Scotland Yard
+secretly started an aviation corps? Or is it in league with the infernal
+powers? In either case the Home Secretary should be called upon to make a
+statement.'
+
+'It's simpler than that,' said Mr. Murch with professional stolidity. 'I
+happened to be on leave with the missus at Haley, which is only twelve miles
+or so along the coast. As soon as our people there heard of the murder they
+told me. I wired to the Chief, and was put in charge of the case at once. I
+bicycled over yesterday evening, and have been at it since then.'
+
+'Arising out of that reply,' said Trent inattentively, 'how is Mrs. Inspector
+Murch?'
+
+'Never better, thank you,' answered the inspector, 'and frequently speaks of
+you and the games you used to have with our kids. But you'll excuse me saying,
+Mr. Trent, that you needn't trouble to talk your nonsense to me while you're
+using your eyes. I know your ways by now. I understand you've fallen on your
+feet as usual, and have the lady's permission to go over the place and make
+enquiries.'
+
+'Such is the fact,' said Trent. 'I am going to cut you out again, inspector. I
+owe you one for beating me over the Abinger case, you old fox. But if you
+really mean that you're not inclined for the social amenities just now, let us
+leave compliments and talk business.' He stepped to the table, glanced through
+the papers arranged there in order, and then turned to the open roll-top desk.
+He looked into the drawers swiftly. 'I see this has been cleared out. Well
+now, inspector, I suppose we play the game as before.'
+
+Trent had found himself on a number of occasions in the past thrown into the
+company of Inspector Murch, who stood high in the councils of the Criminal
+Investigation Department. He was a quiet, tactful, and very shrewd officer, a
+man of great courage, with a vivid history in connection with the more
+dangerous class of criminals. His humanity was as broad as his frame, which
+was large even for a policeman. Trent and he, through some obscure working of
+sympathy, had appreciated one another from the beginning, and had formed one
+of those curious friendships with which it was the younger man's delight to
+adorn his experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any
+one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities of every
+case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily rules and limits.
+It was understood between them that Trent made no journalistic use of any
+point that could only have come to him from an official source. Each of them,
+moreover, for the honour and prestige of the institution he represented,
+openly reserved the right to withhold from the other any discovery or
+inspiration that might come to him which he considered vital to the solution
+of the difficulty. Trent had insisted on carefully formulating these
+principles of what he called detective sportsmanship. Mr. Murch, who loved a
+contest, and who only stood to gain by his association with the keen
+intelligence of the other, entered very heartily into 'the game'. In these
+strivings for the credit of the press and of the police, victory sometimes
+attended the experience and method of the officer, sometimes the quicker brain
+and livelier imagination of Trent, his gift of instinctively recognizing the
+significant through all disguises.
+
+The inspector then replied to Trent's last words with cordial agreement.
+Leaning on either side of the French window, with the deep peace and hazy
+splendor of the summer landscape before them, they reviewed the case.
+
+Trent had taken out a thin notebook, and as they talked he began to make, with
+light, secure touches, a rough sketch plan of the room. It was a thing he did
+habitually on such occasions, and often quite idly, but now and then the habit
+had served him to good purpose.
+
+This was a large, light apartment at the corner of the house, with generous
+window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle. As one entered
+by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left of it against the wall.
+The inner door was in the wall to the left, at the farther end of the room;
+and was faced by a broad window divided into openings of the casement type. A
+beautifully carved old corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the
+door, and another cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured
+prints of Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance,
+hung on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very
+uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never taken from
+their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English novelists,
+essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army struck dead in its
+ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the cupboard and table, of old
+carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The
+room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a
+great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar
+boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the
+desk.
+
+'Seen the body?' enquired the inspector.
+
+Trent nodded. 'And the place where it lay,' he said.
+
+'First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,' said the inspector. 'From
+what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some
+tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon
+as I began my enquiries I came on some curious points, which by this time I
+dare say you've noted for yourself. The man is shot in his own grounds, quite
+near the house, to begin with. Yet there's not the slightest trace of any
+attempt at burglary. And the body wasn't robbed. In fact, it would be as plain
+a ease of suicide as you could wish to see, if it wasn't for certain facts.
+Here's another thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been
+in a queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had
+some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his manner to
+her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely spoken to her. They
+say he was a changed man, moody and silent--whether on account of that or
+something else. The lady's maid says he looked as if something was going to
+arrive. It's always easy to remember that people looked like that, after
+something has happened to them. Still, that's what they say. There you are
+again, then: suicide! Now, why wasn't it suicide, Mr. Trent?'
+
+'The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,' Trent replied,
+sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees. 'First, of
+course, no weapon is to be found. I've searched, and you've searched, and
+there's no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone's throw of where the
+body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh scratches and bruises, which
+we can only assume to have been done in a struggle with somebody. Third, who
+ever heard of anybody shooting himself in the eye? Then I heard from the
+manager of the hotel here another fact, which strikes me as the most curious
+detail in this affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out
+there, but he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed
+himself to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?'
+
+'That last argument hadn't struck me,' admitted Mr. Murch. 'There's something
+in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had occurred to me, I am
+not considering suicide. I have been looking about for ideas in this house,
+this morning. I expect you were thinking of doing the same.'
+
+'That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let us make
+an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general suspicion. Let us
+suspect everybody in the house, to begin with. Listen: I will tell you whom I
+suspect. I suspect Mrs. Manderson, of course. I also suspect both the
+secretaries--I hear there are two, and I hardly know which of them I regard as
+more thoroughly open to suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady's maid. I
+suspect the other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the
+way, what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go round,
+whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of curiosity I should
+like to know.'
+
+'All very well to laugh,' replied the inspector, 'but at the first stage of
+affairs it's the only safe principle, and you know that as well as I do, Mr.
+Trent. However, I've seen enough of the people here, last night and today, to
+put a few of them out of my mind for the present at least. You will form your
+own conclusions. As for the establishment, there's the butler and lady's maid,
+cook, and three other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who's away with
+a broken wrist. No boy.'
+
+'What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and sinister
+figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background, Murch. Play the
+game. Out with him--or I report you to the Rules Committee.'
+
+'The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a week.
+I've talked to him. He was here last on Friday.'
+
+'Then I suspect him all the more,' said Trent. 'And now as to the house
+itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little in
+this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time, and in
+his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we're in this room, let's start
+here. You seem to be at the same stage of the inquiry. Perhaps you've done the
+bedrooms already?'
+
+The inspector nodded. 'I've been over Manderson's and his wife's. Nothing to
+be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no signs of any
+sort--that I could see. Seems to have insisted on the simple life, does
+Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room's almost like a cell, except for
+the clothes and shoes. You'll find it all exactly as I found it; and they tell
+me that's exactly as Manderson left it, at we don't know what o'clock
+yesterday morning. Opens into Mrs. Manderson's bedroom--not much of the cell
+about that, I can tell you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things
+as most. But she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery--told the
+maid she could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband's room.
+Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr. Trent. She's camping out, so to say, in
+one of the spare bedrooms now.'
+
+'Come, my friend,' Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes in his
+little book. 'Have you got your eye on Mrs. Manderson? Or haven't you? I know
+that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I wish I had seen her. Either
+you've got something against her and you don't want me to get hold of it; or
+else you've made up your mind she's innocent, but have no objection to my
+wasting my time over her. Well, it's all in the game; which begins to look
+extremely interesting as we go on.' To Mr. Murch he said aloud: 'Well, I'll
+draw the bedroom later on. What about this?'
+
+'They call it the library,' said the inspector. 'Manderson used to do his
+writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors here. Since
+he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken to spending his
+evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent 'em in here. He was
+last seen alive, as far as the servants are concerned, in this room.'
+
+Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table.
+'Business letters and documents, mostly,' said Mr. Murch. 'Reports,
+prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, noth-in4g in them
+that I can see. The American secretary--Bunner his name is, and a queerer card
+I never saw turned-- he's been through this desk with me this morning. He had
+got it into his head that Manderson had been receiving threatening letters,
+and that the murder was the outcome of that. But there's no trace of any such
+thing; and we looked at every blessed paper. The only unusual things we found
+were some packets of banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of
+little bags of unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer
+place. It appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a
+speculation--it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed to
+amuse him.'
+
+'What about these secretaries?' Trent enquired. 'I met one called Marlowe just
+now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes, unquestionably English.
+The other, it seems, is an American. What did Manderson want with an English
+secretary?'
+
+'Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his right-hand
+business man, one of his office staff, who never left him. Mr. Marlowe had
+nothing to do with Manderson's business as a financier, knew nothing of it.
+His job was to look after Manderson's horses and motors and yacht and sporting
+arrangements and that--make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had
+the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined
+entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for
+his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson's to have an English
+secretary. He'd had several before Mr. Marlowe.'
+
+'He showed his taste,' observed Trent. 'It might be more than interesting,
+don't you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a modern plutocrat with a
+large P. Only they say that Manderson's were exclusively of an innocent kind.
+Certainly Marlowe gives me the impression that he would be weak in the part of
+Petronius. But to return to the matter in hand.' He looked at his notes. 'You
+said just ' now that he was last seen alive here, "so far as the servants were
+concerned". That meant--?'
+
+'He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the
+manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story last
+night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is meat and drink
+to the servants of the house.'
+
+Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over the
+sun- flooded slopes. 'Would it bore you to hear what he has to say again?' he
+asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A spare, clean-shaven,
+middle- aged man, having the servant's manner in its most distinguished form,
+answered it.
+
+'This is Mr. Trent, who is authorized by Mrs. Manderson to go over the house
+and make enquiries,' explained the detective. 'He would like to hear your
+story.' Martin bowed distantly. He recognized Trent for a gentleman. Time
+would show whether he was what Martin called a gentleman in every sense of the
+word.
+
+'I observed you approaching the house, sir,' said Martin with impassive
+courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. 'My instructions are to
+assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall the
+circumstances of Sunday night?'
+
+'Please,' said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin's style was making
+clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all
+vivacity of expression from his face.
+
+'I last saw Mr. Manderson--'
+
+'No, not that yet,' Trent checked him quietly. 'Tell me all you saw of him
+that evening--after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little detail.'
+
+'After dinner, sir?--yes. I remember that after dinner Mr. Manderson and Mr.
+Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking. If you ask
+me for details, it struck me they were talking about something important,
+because I heard Mr. Manderson say something when they came in through the back
+entrance. He said, as near as I can remember, "If Harris is there, every
+minute is of importance. You want to start right away. And not a word to a
+soul." Mr. Marlowe answered, "Very well. I will just change out of these
+clothes and then I am ready"--or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as
+they passed the window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom,
+and Mr. Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some
+letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as Mr.
+Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in the car by moonlight.'
+
+'That was curious,' remarked Trent.
+
+'I thought so, sir. But I recollected what I had heard about "not a word to a
+soul", and I concluded that this about a moonlight drive was intended to
+mislead.'
+
+'What time was this?'
+
+'It would be about ten, sir, I should say. After speaking to me, Mr. Manderson
+waited until Mr. Marlowe had come down and brought round the car. He then went
+into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Manderson was.'
+
+'Did that strike you as curious?'
+
+Martin looked down his nose. 'If you ask me the question, sir,' he said with
+reserve, 'I had not known him enter that room since we came here this year. He
+preferred to sit in the library in the evenings. That evening he only remained
+with Mrs. Manderson for a few minutes. Then he and Mr. Marlowe started
+immediately.'
+
+'You saw them start?'
+
+'Yes, sir. They took the direction of Bishopsbridge.'
+
+'And you saw Mr. Manderson again later?'
+
+'After an hour or thereabouts, sir, in the library. That would have been about
+a quarter past eleven, I should say; I had noticed eleven striking from the
+church. I may say I am peculiarly quick of hearing, sir.'
+
+'Mr. Manderson had rung the bell for you, I suppose. Yes? And what passed when
+you answered it?'
+
+'Mr. Manderson had put out the decanter of whisky and a syphon and glass, sir,
+from the cupboard where he kept them--'
+
+Trent held up his hand. 'While we are on that point, Martin, I want to ask you
+plainly, did Mr. Manderson drink very much? You understand this is not
+impertinent curiosity on my part. I want you to tell me, because it may
+possibly help in the clearing up of this case.'
+
+'Perfectly, sir,' replied Martin gravely. 'I have no hesitation in telling you
+what I have already told the inspector. Mr. Manderson was, considering his
+position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my four years of service
+with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic nature pass his lips, except a
+glass or two of wine at dinner, very rarely a little at luncheon, and from
+time to time a whisky and soda before going to bed. He never seemed to form a
+habit of it. Often I used to find his glass in the morning with only a little
+soda water in it; sometimes he would have been having whisky with it, but
+never much. He never was particular about his drinks; ordinary soda was what
+he preferred, though I had ventured to suggest some of the natural minerals,
+having personally acquired a taste for them in my previous service. He used to
+keep them in the cupboard here, because he had a great dislike of being waited
+on more than was necessary. It was an understood thing that I never came near
+him after dinner unless sent for. And when he sent for anything, he liked it
+brought quick, and to be left alone again at once. He hated to be asked if he
+required anything more. Amazingly simple in his tastes, sir, Mr. Manderson
+was.'
+
+'Very well; and he rang for you that night about a quarter past eleven. Now
+can you remember exactly what he said?'
+
+I think I can tell you with some approach to accuracy, sir. It was not much.
+Zzz First he asked me if Mr. Bunner had gone to bed, and I replied that he had
+been gone up some time. He then said that he wanted some one to sit up until
+12.30, in case an important message should come by telephone, and that Mr.
+Marlowe having gone to Southampton for him in the motor, he wished me to do
+this, and that
+
+I was to take down the message if it came, and not disturb him. He also
+ordered a fresh syphon of soda water. I believe that was all, sir.'
+
+'You noticed nothing unusual about him, I suppose?'
+
+'No, sir, nothing unusual. When I answered the ring, he was seated at the desk
+listening at the telephone, waiting for a number, as I supposed. He gave his
+orders and went on listening at the same time. 'When I returned with the
+syphon he was engaged in conversation over the wire.'
+
+'Do you remember anything of what he was saying?'
+
+'Very little, sir; it was something about somebody being at some hotel--of no
+interest to me. I was only in the room just time enough to place the syphon on
+the table and withdraw. As I closed the door he was saying, "You're sure he
+isn't in the hotel?" or words to that effect.'
+
+'And that was the last you saw and heard of him alive?'
+
+'No, sir. A little later, at half-past eleven, when I had settled down in my
+pantry with the door ajar, and a book to pass the time, I heard Mr. Manderson
+go upstairs to bed. I immediately went to close the library window, and
+slipped the lock of the front door. I did not hear anything more.'
+
+Trent considered. 'I suppose you didn't doze at all,' he said tentatively,
+'while you were sitting up waiting for the telephone message?'
+
+'Oh no, sir. I am always very wakeful about that time. I'm a bad sleeper,
+especially in the neighbourhood of the sea, and I generally read in bed until
+somewhere about midnight.'
+
+
+
+'And did any message come?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'No. And I suppose you sleep with your window open, these warm nights?'
+
+'It is never closed at night, sir.'
+
+Trent added a last note; then he looked thoughtfully through those he had
+taken. He rose and paced up and down the room for some moments with a downcast
+eye. At length he paused opposite Martin.
+
+'It all seems perfectly ordinary and simple,' he said. 'I just want to get a
+few details clear. You went to shut the windows in the library before going to
+bed. Which windows?'
+
+'The French window, sir. It had been open all day. The windows opposite the
+door were seldom opened.'
+
+'And what about the curtains? I am wondering whether any one outside the house
+could have seen into the room.'
+
+'Easily, sir, I should say, if he had got into the grounds on that side. The
+curtains were never drawn in the hot weather. Mr. Manderson would often sit
+right in the doorway at nights, smoking and looking out into the darkness. But
+nobody could have seen him who had any business to be there.'
+
+'I see. And now tell me this. Your hearing is very acute, you say, and you
+heard Mr. Manderson enter the house when he came in after dinner from the
+garden. Did you hear him re-enter it after returning from the motor drive?'
+
+Martin paused. 'Now you mention it, sir, I remember that I did not. His
+ringing the bell in this room was the first I knew of his being back. I should
+have heard him come in, if he had come in by the front. I should have heard
+the door go. But he must have come in by the window.' The man reflected for a
+moment, then added, 'As a general rule, Mr. Manderson would come in by the
+front, hang up his hat and coat in the hall, and pass down the hall into the
+study. It seems likely to me that he was in a great hurry to use the
+telephone, and so went straight across the lawn to the window he was like
+that, sir, when there was anything important to be done. He had his hat on,
+now I remember, and had thrown his greatcoat over the end of the table. He
+gave his order very sharp, too, as he always did when busy. A very precipitate
+man indeed was Mr. Manderson; a hustler, as they say.'
+
+'Ah! he appeared to be busy. But didn't you say just now that you noticed
+nothing unusual about him?'
+
+A melancholy smile flitted momentarily over Martin's face. 'That observation
+shows that you did not know Mr. Manderson, sir, if you will pardon my saying
+so. His being like that was nothing unusual; quite the contrary. It took me
+long enough to get used to it. Either he would be sitting quite still and
+smoking a cigar, thinking or reading, or else he would be writing, dictating,
+and sending off wires all at the same time, till it almost made one dizzy to
+see it, sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. As for being in a hurry
+over a telephone message, I may say it wasn't in him to be anything else.'
+
+Trent turned to the inspector, who met his eye with a look of answering
+intelligence. Not sorry to show his understanding of the line of inquiry
+opened by Trent, Mr. Murch for the first time put a question.
+
+'Then you left him telephoning by the open window, with the lights on, and the
+drinks on the table; is that it?'  'That is so, Mr. Murch.' The delicacy of
+the change in Martin's manner when called upon to answer the detective
+momentarily distracted Trent's appreciative mind. But the big man's next
+question brought it back to the problem at once.
+
+'About those drinks. You say Mr. Manderson often took no whisky before going
+to bed. Did he have any that night?'
+
+'I could not say. The room was put to rights in the morning by one of the
+maids, and the glass washed, I presume, as usual. I know that the decanter was
+nearly full that evening. I had refilled it a few days before, and I glanced
+at it when I brought the fresh syphon, just out of habit, to make sure there
+was a decent- looking amount.'
+
+The inspector went to the tall corner-cupboard and opened it. He took out a
+decanter of cut glass and set it on the table before Martin. 'Was it fuller
+than that?' he asked quietly. 'That's how I found it this morning.' The
+decanter was more than half empty.
+
+For the first time Martin's self-possession wavered. He took up the decanter
+quickly, tilted it before his eyes, and then stared amazedly at the others. He
+said slowly: 'There's not much short of half a bottle gone out of this since I
+last set eyes on it--and that was that Sunday night.'
+
+'Nobody in the house, I suppose?' suggested Trent discreetly. 'Out of the
+question!' replied Martin briefly; then he added, 'I beg pardon, sir, but this
+is a most extraordinary thing to me. Such a thing never happened in all my
+experience of Mr. Manderson. As for the women-servants, they never touch
+anything, I can answer for it; and as for me, when I want a drink I can help
+myself without going to the decanters.' He took up the decanter again and
+aimlessly renewed his observation of the contents, while the inspector eyed
+him with a look of serene satisfaction, as a master contemplates his
+handiwork.
+
+Trent turned to a fresh page of his notebook, and tapped it thoughtfully with
+his pencil. Then he looked up and said, 'I suppose Mr. Manderson had dressed
+for dinner that night?'
+
+'Certainly, sir. He had on a suit with a dress-jacket, what he used to refer
+to as a Tuxedo, which he usually wore when dining at home.'
+
+'And he was dressed like that when you saw him last?'
+
+'All but the jacket, sir. When he spent the evening in the library, as usually
+happened, he would change it for an old shooting-jacket after dinner, a light-
+coloured tweed, a little too loud in pattern for English tastes, perhaps. He
+had it on when I saw him last. It used to hang in this cupboard here'--Martin
+opened the door of it as he spoke--along with Mr. Manderson's fishing-rods and
+such things, so that he could slip it on after dinner without going upstairs.'
+
+'Leaving the dinner-jacket in the cupboard?'
+
+'Yes, sir. The housemaid used to take it upstairs in the morning.'
+
+'In the morning,' Trent repeated slowly. 'And now that we are speaking of the
+morning, will you tell me exactly what you know about that? I understand that
+Mr. Manderson was not missed until the body was found about ten o'clock.'
+
+'That is so, sir. Mr. Manderson would never be called, or have anything
+brought to him in the morning. He occupied a separate bedroom. Usually he
+would get up about eight and go round to the bathroom, and he would come down
+some time before nine. But often he would sleep till nine or ten o'clock. Mrs.
+Manderson was always called at seven. The maid would take in tea to her.
+Yesterday morning Mrs. Manderson took breakfast about eight in her
+sitting-room as usual, and every one supposed that Mr. Manderson was still in
+bed and asleep, when Evans came rushing up to the house with the shocking
+intelligence.'
+
+'I see,' said Trent. 'And now another thing. You say you slipped the lock of
+the front door before going to bed. Was that all the locking-up you did?'
+
+'To the front door, sir, yes; I slipped the lock. No more is considered
+necessary in these parts. But I had locked both the doors at the back, and
+seen to the fastenings of all the windows on the ground floor. In the morning
+everything was as I had left it.'
+
+'As you had left it. Now here is another point--the last, I think. Were the
+clothes in which the body was found the clothes that Mr. Manderson would
+naturally have worn that day?'
+
+Martin rubbed his chin. 'You remind me how surprised I was when I first set
+eyes on the body, sir. At first I couldn't make out what was unusual about the
+clothes, and then I saw what it was. The collar was a shape of collar Mr.
+Manderson never wore except with evening dress. Then I found that he had put
+on all the same things that he had worn the night before--large fronted shirt
+and all--except just the coat and waistcoat and trousers, and the brown shoes,
+and blue tie. As for the suit, it was one of half a dozen he might have worn.
+But for him to have simply put on all the rest just because they were there,
+instead of getting out the kind of shirt and things he always wore by day;
+well, sir, it was unprecedented. It shows, like some other things, what a
+hurry he must have been in when getting up.'
+
+'Of course,' said Trent. 'Well, I think that's all I wanted to know. You have
+put everything with admirable clearness, Martin. If we want to ask any more
+questions later on, I suppose you will be somewhere about.'
+
+'I shall be at your disposal, sir.' Martin bowed, and went out quietly.
+
+Trent flung himself into the armchair and exhaled a long breath. 'Martin is a
+great creature,' he said. 'He is far, far better than a play. There is none
+like him, none, nor will be when our summers have deceased. Straight, too; not
+an atom of harm in dear old Martin. Do you know, Murch, you are wrong in
+suspecting that man.'
+
+'I never said a word about suspecting him.' The inspector was taken aback.
+'You know, Mr. Trent, he would never have told his story like that if he
+thought I suspected him.'
+
+'I dare say he doesn't think so. He is a wonderful creature, a great artist;
+but, in spite of that, he is not at all a sensitive type. It has never
+occurred to his mind that you, Murch, could suspect him, Martin, the complete,
+the accomplished. But I know it. You must understand, inspector, that I have
+made a special study of the psychology of officers of the law. It is a grossly
+neglected branch of knowledge. They are far more interesting than criminals,
+and not nearly so easy. All the time I was questioning him I saw handcuffs in
+your eye. Your lips were mutely framing the syllables of those tremendous
+words: "It is my duty to tell you that anything you now say will be taken down
+and used in evidence against you." Your manner would have deceived most men,
+but it could not deceive me.'
+
+Mr. Murch laughed heartily. Trent's nonsense never made any sort of impression
+on his mind, but he took it as a mark of esteem, which indeed it was; so it
+never failed to please him. 'Well, Mr. Trent,' he said, 'you're perfectly
+right. There's no point in denying it, I have got my eye on him. Not that
+there's anything definite; but you know as well as I do how often servants are
+mixed up in affairs of this kind, and this man is such a very quiet customer.
+You remember the case of Lord William Russell's valet, who went in as usual,
+in the morning, to draw up the blinds in his master's bedroom, as quiet and
+starchy as you please, a few hours after he had murdered him in his bed. I've
+talked to all the women of the house, and I don't believe there's a morsel of
+harm in one of them. But Martin's not so easy set aside. I don't like his
+manner; I believe he's hiding something. If so, I shall find it out.'
+
+'Cease!' said Trent. 'Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy. Let
+us get back to facts. Have you, as a matter of evidence, anything at all to
+bring against Martin's story as he has told it to us?'
+
+'Nothing whatever at present. As for his suggestion that Manderson came in by
+way of the window after leaving Marlowe and the car, that's right enough, I
+should say. I questioned the servant who swept the room next morning, and she
+tells me there were gravelly marks near the window, on this plain drugget that
+goes round the carpet. And there's a footprint in this soft new gravel just
+outside.' The inspector took a folding rule from his pocket and with it
+pointed out the traces. 'One of the patent shoes Manderson was wearing that
+night exactly fits that print; you'll find them,' he added, 'on the top shelf
+in the bedroom, near the window end, the only patents in the row. The girl who
+polished them in the morning picked them out for me.'
+
+Trent bent down and studied the faint marks keenly. 'Good!' he said. 'You have
+covered a lot of ground, Murch, I must say. That was excellent about the
+whisky; you made your point finely. I felt inclined to shout "Encore!" It's a
+thing that I shall have to think over.'
+
+'I thought you might have fitted it in already,' said Mr. Murch. 'Come, Mr.
+Trent, we're only at the beginning of our enquiries, but what do you say to
+this for a preliminary theory? There's a plan of burglary, say a couple of men
+in it and Martin squared. They know where the plate is, and all about the
+handy little bits of stuff in the drawing-room and elsewhere. They watch the
+house; see Manderson off to bed; Martin comes to shut the window, and leaves
+it ajar, accidentally on purpose. They wait till Martin goes to bed at
+twelve-thirty; then they just walk into the library, and begin to sample the
+whisky first thing. Now suppose Manderson isn't asleep, and suppose they make
+a noise opening the window, or however it might be. He hears it; thinks of
+burglars; gets up very quietly to see if anything's wrong; creeps down on
+them, perhaps, just as they're getting ready for work. They cut and run; he
+chases them down to the shed, and collars one; there's a fight; one of them
+loses his temper and his head, and makes a swinging job of it. Now, Mr. Trent,
+pick that to pieces.'
+
+'Very well,' said Trent; 'just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I know you
+don't believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left by your burglar
+or burglars, and the window found fastened in the morning, according to
+Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next: nobody in the house hears
+anything of this stampede through the library, nor hears any shout from
+Manderson either inside the house or outside. Next: Manderson goes down
+without a word to anybody, though Bunner and Martin are both at hand. Next:
+did you ever hear, in your long experience, of a householder getting up in the
+night to pounce on burglars, who dressed himself fully, with underclothing,
+shirt; collar and tie, trousers, waistcoat and coat, socks and hard leather
+shoes; and who gave the finishing touches to a somewhat dandified toilet by
+doing his hair, and putting on his watch and chain? Personally, I call that
+over-dressing the part. The only decorative detail he seems to have forgotten
+is his teeth.'
+
+The inspector leaned forward thinking, his large hands clasped before him.
+'No,' he said at last. 'Of course there's no help in that theory. I rather
+expect we have some way to go before we find out why a man gets up before the
+servants are awake, dresses himself awry, and is murdered within sight of his
+house early enough to be 'cold and stiff by ten in the morning.'
+
+Trent shook his head. 'We can't build anything on that last consideration.
+I've gone into the subject with people who know. I shouldn't wonder,' he
+added, 'if the traditional notions about loss of temperature and rigour after
+death had occasionally brought an innocent man to the gallows, or near it. Dr.
+Stock has them all, I feel sure; most general practitioners of the older
+generation have. That Dr. Stock will make an ass of himself at the inquest, is
+almost as certain as that tomorrow's sun will rise. I've seen him. He will say
+the body must have been dead about so long, because of the degree of coldness
+and rigor mortis. I can see him nosing it all out in some textbook that was
+out of date when he was a student. Listen, Murch, and I will tell you some
+facts which will be a great hindrance to you in your professional career.
+There are many things that may hasten or retard the cooling of the body. This
+one was lying in the long dewy grass on the shady side of the shed. As for
+rigidity, if Manderson died in a struggle, or labouring under sudden emotion,
+his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously; there are dozens of
+cases noted, particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On
+the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours
+after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays, inspector, much
+as you may resent the limitation. No, what we can say is this. If he had been
+shot after the hour at which the world begins to get up and go about its
+business, it would have been heard, and very likely seen too. In fact, we must
+reason, to begin with, at any rate, on the assumption that he wasn't shot at a
+time when people might be awake; it isn't done in these parts. Put that time
+at 6.30 a.m. Manderson went up to bed at 11 p.m., and Martin sat up till
+12.30. Assuming that he went to sleep at once on turning in, that leaves us
+something like six hours for the crime to be committed in; and that is a long
+time. But whenever it took place, I wish you would suggest a reason why
+Manderson, who was a fairly late riser, was up and dressed at or before 6.30;
+and why neither Martin, who sleeps lightly, nor Bunner, nor his wife heard him
+moving about, or letting himself out of the house. He must have been careful.
+He must have crept about like a cat. Do you feel as I do, Murch, about all
+this; that it is very, very strange and baffling?' 'That's how it looks,'
+agreed the inspector.
+
+'And now,' said Trent, rising to his feet, 'I'll leave you to your
+meditations, and take a look at the bedrooms. Perhaps the explanation of all
+this will suddenly burst upon you while I am poking about up there. But,'
+concluded Trent in a voice of sudden exasperation, turning round in the
+doorway, 'if you can tell me at any time, how under the sun a man who put on
+all those clothes could forget to put in his teeth, you may kick me from here
+to the nearest lunatic asylum, and hand me over as an incipient dement.'
+
+CHAPTER V: Poking About
+
+There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is within us,
+busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness some hint of a
+fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feel at times a wave
+of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him?--not the
+feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow from fate, not the persistent
+illusion of the optimist, but an unsought conviction, springing up like a bird
+from the heather, that success is at hand in some great or fine thing. The
+general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on
+the green suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted
+the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty of
+achievement. A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparently unsorted
+through his mind; a few secret observations that he had made, and which he
+felt must have significance, still stood unrelated to any plausible theory of
+the crime; yet as he went up he seemed to know indubitably that light was
+going to appear.
+
+The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted by a tall
+end window. It went the length of the house until it ran at right angles into
+a narrower passage, out of which the servants' rooms opened. Martin's room was
+the exception: it opened out of a small landing half-way to the upper floor.
+As Trent passed it he glanced within. A little square room, clean and
+commonplace. In going up the rest of the stairway he stepped with elaborate
+precaution against noise, hugging the wall closely and placing each foot with
+care; but a series of very audible creaks marked his passage.
+
+He knew that Manderson's room was the first on the right hand when the bedroom
+floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the latch and the lock,
+which worked normally, and examined the wards of the key. Then he turned to
+the room.
+
+It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat's toilet appointments
+were of the simplest. All remained just as it had been on the morning of the
+ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets and blankets of the unmade bed
+lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead, and the sun shone brightly through
+the window upon them. It gleamed, too, upon the gold parts of the delicate
+work of dentistry that lay in water in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a
+small, plain table by the bedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron
+candlestick. Some clothing lay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed
+chairs. Various objects on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used
+as a dressing-table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make. Trent
+looked them over with a questing eye. He noted also that the occupant of the
+room had neither washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned over the dental
+plate in the bowl, and frowned again at its incomprehensible presence.
+
+The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams, were
+producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a picture of a
+haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the first light of dawn,
+glancing constantly at the inner door behind which his wife slept, his eyes
+full of some terror.
+
+Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities, opened two tall
+cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained clothing, a
+large choice of which had evidently been one of the very few conditions of
+comfort for the man who had slept there.
+
+In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the advantage of
+wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and carefully kept, was ranged
+on two long low shelves against the wall. No boots were among them. Trent,
+himself an amateur of good shoe-leather, now turned to these, and glanced over
+the collection with an appreciative eye. It was to be seen that Manderson had
+been inclined to pride himself on a rather small and well-formed foot. The
+shoes were of a distinctive shape, narrow and round-toed, beautifully made;
+all were evidently from the same last.
+
+Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather shoes on
+the upper shelf.
+
+These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the position
+to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his death. They were a
+well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that they had been very recently
+polished. Something about the uppers of these shoes had seized his attention.
+He bent lower and frowned over them, comparing what he saw with the appearance
+of the neighbouring shoes. Then he took them up and examined the line of
+junction of the uppers with the soles.
+
+As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with great
+precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present, would have
+recognized.
+
+Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary trick
+which tells those who know them that they are suppressing excitement. The
+inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up a strong scent he whistled
+faintly a certain melodious passage; though the inspector could not have told
+you that it was in fact the opening movement of Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worter
+in A Major.
+
+He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape, and
+looked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the heel and the
+instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.
+
+Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behind him to
+the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with eyes that saw
+nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the Englishman's expletive
+of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to the shelves again, and swiftly
+but carefully examined every one of the shoes there.
+
+This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them over closely
+and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again, and hunted
+through them carefully. The litter on the dressing-table now engaged his
+attention for the second time. Then he sat down on the empty chair, took his
+head in his hands, and remained in that attitude, staring at the carpet, for
+some minutes. He rose at last and opened the inner door leading to Mrs
+Manderson's room.
+
+It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put down from
+its place as the lady's bower. All the array of objects that belong to a
+woman's dressing-table had been removed; on bed and chairs and smaller tables
+there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no trace remained of the
+obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break
+the captivity of the drawer. The room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber.
+Yet in every detail of furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional
+but exacting taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of
+colour and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought
+her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an
+artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew stronger; and
+his brows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens laid upon it, and of
+the deed of which the history was now shaping itself with more and more of
+substance before his busy mind.
+
+He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall that faced
+the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony with an iron
+railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that began immediately
+beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrow flower-bed, and
+stretched away, with an abrupt dip at the farther end, toward the orchard. The
+other window opened with a sash above the garden-entrance of the library. In
+the farther inside corner of the room was a second door giving upon the
+passage; the door by which the maid was wont to come in, and her mistress to
+go out, in the morning.
+
+Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan of the room
+and its neighbour. The bed stood in the angle between the communicating-door
+and the sash-window, its head against the wall dividing the room from
+Manderson's. Trent stared at the pillows; then he lay down with deliberation
+on the bed and looked through the open door into the adjoining room.
+
+This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his plan that
+on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon that furthest
+from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of copper connected by a
+free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it thoughtfully, then at the switches
+connected with the other lights in the room. They were, as usual, on the wall
+just within the door, and some way out of his reach as he sat on the bed. He
+rose, and satisfied himself that the lights were all in order. Then he turned
+on his heel, walked quickly into Manderson's room, and rang the bell.
+
+'I want your help again, Martin,' he said, as the butler presented himself,
+upright and impassive, in the doorway. 'I want you to prevail upon Mrs
+Manderson's maid to grant me an interview.'
+
+'Certainly, sir,' said Martin.
+
+'What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?'
+
+'She's French, sir,' replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause: 'She has
+not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impression that the young
+woman knows as much of the world as is good for her--since you ask me.'
+
+'You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?' said Trent.
+'Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.'
+
+'I will send her up immediately, sir.' The butler withdrew, and Trent wandered
+round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than he had expected,
+a small neat figure in black appeared quietly before him.
+
+The lady's maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable notice of
+Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been hoping
+desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was as great
+below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing, she felt the
+need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her scenes were at a
+discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr Murch, he had chilled her
+into self-control with his official manner. Trent, her glimpse of him had told
+her, had not the air of a policeman, and at a distance he had appeared
+sympathique.
+
+As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any approach
+to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good impression at the
+beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour, then, that she said,
+'Monsieur desire to speak with me.' She added helpfully, 'I am called
+Celestine.'
+
+'Naturally,' said Trent with businesslike calm. 'Now what I want you to tell
+me, Celestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress yesterday morning
+at seven o'clock, was the door between the two bedrooms--this door
+here--open?'
+
+Celestine became intensely animated in an instant. 'Oh yes!' she said, using
+her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always, monsieur, and I
+shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the
+room of madame from the other door in there--ah! but if monsieur will give
+himself the pain to enter the other room, all explains itself.' She tripped
+across to the door, and urged Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a
+hand on his arm. 'See! I enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the
+bed. Before I come quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand--open
+always--so! But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of
+Monsieur Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from
+down there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it was as
+ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like an angel--she see
+nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau--I open the curtains--I prepare
+the toilette--I retire--voila!' Celestine paused for breath and spread her
+hands abroad.
+
+Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
+gravity, nodded his head. 'I see exactly how it was now,' he said. 'Thank you,
+Celestine. So Mr Manderson was supposed to be still in his room while your
+mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having breakfast in her boudoir?'
+
+'Oui, monsieur.'
+
+'Nobody missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I am very much
+obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
+
+'It is nothing, monsieur,' said Celestine, as she crossed the small room. 'I
+hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur Manderson. But I not
+regret him too much,' she added with sudden and amazing violence, turning
+round with her hand on the knob of the outer door. She set her teeth with an
+audible sound, and the colour rose in her small dark face. English departed
+from her. 'Je ne le regrette pas du tout, du tout!' she cried with a flood of
+words. 'Madame--ah! je me jetterais au leu pour madame--une femme si
+charmante, si adorable! Mais un homme comme monsieur--maussade, boudeur,
+impassible! Ah, non!- -de ma vie! J'en avais par-dessus la tete, de monsieur!
+Ah! vrai! Est-ce insupportable, tout de meme, qu'il existe des types comme ca?
+Je vous jure que-- '
+
+'Finissez ce chahut, Celestine!' Trent broke in sharply. Celestine's tirade
+had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. 'En voila une
+scene! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ca, mademoiselle. Du reste,
+c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have some common sense! If the
+inspector downstairs heard you saying that kind of thing, you would get into
+trouble. And don't wave your fists about so much; you might hit something. You
+seem,' he went on more pleasantly, as Celestine grew calmer under his
+authoritative eye, 'to be even more glad than other people that Mr Manderson
+is out of the way. I could almost suspect, Celestine, that Mr Manderson did
+not take as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.'
+
+'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.
+
+'Ca, c'est un comble!' observed Trent. 'You are a nice young woman for a small
+tea-party, I don't think. A star upon your birthday burned, whose fierce,
+serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven, Celestine.
+Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a beauty!'
+
+Celestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise restored
+her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at Trent over her
+shoulder, the lady's maid opened the door and swiftly disappeared.
+
+Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two forcible
+descriptive terms in Celestine's language, and turned to his problem. He took
+the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and placed them on one of the
+two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other opposite to this.
+With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed upon those two dumb
+witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very
+still in the room. A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open
+window. From time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper
+about the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now
+with his thoughts, never moved.
+
+So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his feet. He
+replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out upon the landing.
+
+Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened that
+which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means austerely
+tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one corner, a pile of
+books in another. The housemaid's hand had failed to give a look of order to
+the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the dressing-table and on the
+mantelshelf--pipes, penknives, pencils, keys, golf-balls, old letters,
+photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles. Two fine etchings and some water-
+colour sketches hung on the walls; leaning against the end of the wardrobe,
+unhung, were a few framed engravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged
+beneath the window. Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he
+measured some of them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat
+on the side of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.
+
+The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose and
+examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two others were
+views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of three
+youths--one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blue
+eyes--clothed in tatterdemalion soldier's gear of the sixteenth century.
+Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resembling Marlowe.
+Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on the mantel-shelf,
+lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned his attention to a flat
+leathern case that lay by the cigarette-box.
+
+It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship, was
+disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock were engraved
+the initials 'J. M.'
+
+A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and peered into
+the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the open door of the
+room. 'I was wondering--' he began; then stopped as he saw what the other was
+about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly. 'Whose is the revolver, Mr
+Trent?' he asked in a conversational tone.
+
+'Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr Marlowe,' replied Trent
+with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. 'I found this lying about on
+the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me, and it has been very
+carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last time it was used. But I know
+little about firearms.'
+
+'Well, I know a good deal,' rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the
+revolver from Trent's outstretched hand. 'It's a bit of a speciality with me,
+is firearms, as I think you know, Mr Trent. But it don't require an expert to
+tell one thing.' He replaced the revolver in its case on the mantel-shelf,
+took out one of the cartridges, and laid it on the spacious palm of one hand;
+then, taking a small object from his waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the
+cartridge. It was a little leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose,
+and having upon it some bright new scratches.
+
+'Is that the one?' Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector's hand.
+
+'That's him,' replied Mr Murch. 'Lodged in the bone at the back of the skull.
+Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the local officer,
+who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you see were made by the
+doctor's instruments. These other marks were made by the rifling of the barrel
+a barrel like this one.' He tapped the revolver. 'Same make, same calibre.
+There is no other that marks the bullet just like this.'
+
+With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector looked into
+each other's eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to speak. 'This
+mystery is all wrong,' he observed. 'It is insanity. The symptoms of mania are
+very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not in any doubt, I believe,
+about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in the car to Southampton, or about
+Marlowe having gone, returning late last night, many hours after the murder
+was committed.'
+
+'There is no doubt whatever about all that,' said Mr Murch, with a slight
+emphasis on the verb.
+
+'And now,' pursued Trent, 'we are invited by this polished and insinuating
+firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that Marlowe never went
+to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the night; that he somehow,
+without waking Mrs Manderson or anybody else, got Manderson to get up, dress
+himself, and go out into the grounds; that he then and there shot the said
+Manderson with his incriminating pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said
+pistol, returned to the house and, again without disturbing any one, replaced
+it in its case in a favourable position to be found by the officers of the
+law; that he then withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding--with a
+large motor car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole
+affair, at-- what time was it?'
+
+'A little after 9 p.m.' The inspector still stared moodily at Trent. 'As you
+say, Mr Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this find, and it seems
+wild enough--at least it would do if it didn't fall to pieces at the very
+start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have been fifty to a hundred
+miles away. He did go to Southampton.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in
+Southampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.'
+
+'Come off' exclaimed Trent bitterly. 'What do I care about his story? What do
+you care about his story? I want to know how you know he went to Southampton.'
+
+Mr Murch chuckled. 'I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr Trent,' he
+said. 'Well, there's no harm in telling you. After I arrived yesterday
+evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from Mrs Manderson and
+the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the telegraph office and wire
+to our people in Southampton. Manderson had told his wife when he went to bed
+that he had changed his mind, and sent Marlowe to Southampton to get some
+important information from some one who was crossing by the next day's boat.
+It seemed right enough, but, you see, Marlowe was the only one of the
+household who wasn't under my hand, so to speak. He didn't return in the car
+until later in the evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I
+wired to Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this
+reply.' He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:
+
+PERSON ANSWERING DESCRIPTION IN MOTOR ANSWERING DESCRIPTION ARRIVED BEDFORD
+HOTEL HERE 6.30 THIS MORNING GAVE NAME MARLOWE LEFT CAR HOTEL GARAGE TOLD
+ATTENDANT CAR BELONGED MANDERSON HAD BATH AND BREAKFAST WENT OUT HEARD OF
+LATER AT DOCKS ENQUIRING FOR PASSENGER NAME HARRIS ON HAVRE BOAT ENQUIRED
+REPEATEDLY UNTIL BOAT LEFT AT NOON NEXT HEARD OF AT HOTEL WHERE HE LUNCHED
+ABOUT 1.15 LEFT SOON AFTERWARDS IN CAR COMPANY'S AGENTS INFORM BERTH WAS
+BOOKED NAME HARRIS LAST WEEK BUT HARRIS DID NOT TRAVEL BY BOAT BURKE
+INSPECTOR.
+
+'Simple and satisfactory,' observed Mr Murch as Trent, after twice reading the
+message, returned it to him. 'His own story corroborated in every particular.
+He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or so on the chance of
+Harris turning up late, then strolled back, lunched, and decided to return at
+once. He sent a wire to Manderson--"Harris not turned up missed boat returning
+Marlowe," which was duly delivered here in the afternoon, and placed among the
+dead man's letters. He motored back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired.
+When he heard of Manderson's death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What with
+that and the being without sleep for so long, he was rather a wreck when I
+came to interview him last night; but he was perfectly coherent.'
+
+Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few moments.
+'It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and cartridges
+about so carelessly,' he remarked at length, as he put it back in the case.
+'It was throwing temptation in somebody's way, don't you think?'
+
+Mr Murch shook his head. 'There isn't really much to lay hold of about the
+revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver is common
+enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half the people who buy
+a revolver today for self-defence or mischief provide themselves with that
+make, of that calibre. It is very reliable, and easily carried in the
+hip-pocket. There must be thousands of them in the possession of crooks and
+honest men. For instance,' continued the inspector with an air of unconcern,
+'Manderson himself had one, the double of this. I found it in one of the top
+drawers of the desk downstairs, and it's in my overcoat pocket now.'
+
+'Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.'
+
+'I was,' said the inspector; 'but as you've found one revolver, you may as
+well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any good. The
+people in the house--'
+
+Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the half-
+closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood in the
+doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the faces of
+Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to herald this
+entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet. He wore rubber-soled
+tennis shoes.
+
+'You must be Mr Bunner,' said Trent.
+
+CHAPTER VI: Mr Bunner on the Case
+
+'Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,' amended the newcomer, with a touch of
+punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was used to
+finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with strangers, and Trent's quick
+remark plainly disconcerted him a little. 'You are Mr Trent, I expect,' he
+went on. 'Mrs Manderson was telling me a while ago. Captain, good-morning.' Mr
+Murch acknowledged the outlandish greeting with a nod. 'I was coming up to my
+room, and I heard a strange voice in here, so I thought I would take a look
+in.' Mr Bunner laughed easily. 'You thought I might have been eavesdropping,
+perhaps,' he said. 'No, sir; I heard a word or two about a pistol--this one, I
+guess--and that's all.'
+
+Mr Bunner was a thin, rather short young man with a shaven, pale, bony, almost
+girlish face, and large, dark, intelligent eyes. His waving dark hair was
+parted in the middle. His lips, usually occupied with a cigar, in its absence
+were always half open with a curious expression as of permanent eagerness. By
+smoking or chewing a cigar this expression was banished, and Mr Bunner then
+looked the consummately cool and sagacious Yankee that he was.
+
+Born in Connecticut, he had gone into a broker's office on leaving college,
+and had attracted the notice of Manderson, whose business with his firm he had
+often handled. The Colossus had watched him for some time, and at length
+offered him the post of private secretary. Mr Bunner was a pattern business
+man, trustworthy, long-headed, methodical, and accurate. Manderson could have
+found many men with those virtues; but he engaged Mr Bunner because he was
+also swift and secret, and had besides a singular natural instinct in regard
+to the movements of the stock market.
+
+Trent and the American measured one another coolly with their eyes. Both
+appeared satisfied with what they saw. 'I was having it explained to me,' said
+Trent pleasantly, 'that my discovery of a pistol that might have shot
+Manderson does not amount to very much. I am told it is a favourite weapon
+among your people, and has become quite popular over here.'
+
+Mr Bunner stretched out a bony hand and took the pistol from its case. 'Yes,
+sir,' he said, handling it with an air of familiarity; 'the captain is right.
+This is what we call out home a Little Arthur, and I dare say there are
+duplicates of it in a hundred thousand hip-pockets this minute. I consider it
+too light in the hand myself,' Mr Bunner went on, mechanically feeling under
+the tail of his jacket, and producing an ugly looking weapon. 'Feel of that,
+now, Mr Trent--it's loaded, by the way. Now this Little Arthur--Marlowe bought
+it just before we came over this year to please the old man. Manderson said it
+was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth century. So
+he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess--never consulted me. Not
+but what it's a good gun,' Mr Bunner conceded, squinting along the sights.
+'Marlowe was poor with it at first, but I've coached him some in the last
+month or so, and he's practised until he is pretty good. But he never could
+get the habit of carrying it around. Why, it's as natural to me as wearing my
+pants. I have carried one for some years now, because there was always likely
+to be somebody laying for Manderson. And now,' Mr Bunner concluded sadly,
+'they got him when I wasn't around. Well, gentlemen, you must excuse me. I am
+going into Bishopsbridge. There is a lot to do these days, and I have to send
+off a bunch of cables big enough to choke a cow.'
+
+'I must be off too,' said Trent. 'I have an appointment at the "Three Tuns"
+inn.'
+
+Let me give you a lift in the automobile,' said Mr Bunner cordially. 'I go
+right by that joint. Say, cap., are you coming my way too? No? Then come
+along, Mr Trent, and help me get out the car. The chauffeur is out of action,
+and we have to do 'most everything ourselves except clean the dirt off her.'
+
+Still tirelessly talking in his measured drawl, Mr Bunner led Trent downstairs
+and through the house to the garage at the back. It stood at a little distance
+from the house, and made a cool retreat from the blaze of the midday sun.
+
+Mr Bunner seemed to be in no hurry to get out the car. He offered Trent a
+cigar, which was accepted, and for the first time lit his own. Then he seated
+himself on the footboard of the car, his thin hands clasped between his knees,
+and looked keenly at the other.
+
+'See here, Mr Trent,' he said, after a few moments. 'There are some things I
+can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record. You are a smart
+man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don't know if I have that detective
+sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I would answer any questions he
+had the gumption to ask me--I have done so, in fact--but I don't feel
+encouraged to give him any notions of mine without his asking. See?'
+
+Trent nodded. 'That is a feeling many people have in the presence of our
+police,' he said. 'It's the official manner, I suppose. But let me tell you,
+Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the shrewdest officers in
+Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but he is very sure. And his
+experience is immense. My forte is imagination, but I assure you in police
+work experience outweighs it by a great deal.'
+
+'Outweigh nothing!' replied Mr Bunner crisply. 'This is no ordinary case, Mr
+Trent. I will tell you one reason why. I believe the old man knew there was
+something coming to him. Another thing: I believe it was something he thought
+he couldn't dodge.'
+
+Trent pulled a crate opposite to Mr Bunner's place on the footboard and seated
+himself. 'This sounds like business,' he said. 'Tell me your ideas.'
+
+'I say what I do because of the change in the old man's manner this last few
+weeks. I dare say you have heard, Mr Trent, that he was a man who always kept
+himself well in hand. That was so. I have always considered him the coolest
+and hardest head in business. That man's calm was just deadly--I never saw
+anything to beat it. And I knew Manderson as nobody else did. I was with him
+in the work he really lived for. I guess I knew him a heap better than his
+wife did, poor woman. I knew him better than Marlowe could--he never saw
+Manderson in his office when there was a big thing on. I knew him better than
+any of his friends.'
+
+'Had he any friends?' interjected Trent.
+
+Mr Bunner glanced at him sharply. 'Somebody has been putting you next, I see
+that,' he remarked. 'No: properly speaking, I should say not. He had many
+acquaintances among the big men, people he saw, most every day; they would
+even go yachting or hunting together. But I don't believe there ever was a man
+that Manderson opened a corner of his heart to. But what I was going to say
+was this. Some months ago the old man began to get like I never knew him
+before--gloomy and sullen, just as if he was everlastingly brooding over
+something bad, something that he couldn't fix. This went on without any break;
+it was the same down town as it was up home, he acted just as if there was
+something lying heavy on his mind. But it wasn't until a few weeks back that
+his self-restraint began to go; and let me tell you this, Mr Trent'--the
+American laid his bony claw on the other's knee--'I'm the only man that knows
+it. With every one else he would be just morose and dull; but when he was
+alone with me in his office, or anywhere where we would be working together,
+if the least little thing went wrong, by George! he would fly off the handle
+to beat the Dutch. In this library here I have seen him open a letter with
+something that didn't just suit him in it, and he would rip around and carry
+on like an Indian, saying he wished he had the man that wrote it here, he
+wouldn't do a thing to him, and so on, till it was just pitiful. I never saw
+such a change. And here's another thing. For a week before he died Manderson
+neglected his work, for the first time in my experience. He wouldn't answer a
+letter or a cable, though things looked like going all to pieces over there. I
+supposed that this anxiety of his, whatever it was, had got on to his nerves
+till they were worn out. Once I advised him to see a doctor, and he told me to
+go to hell. But nobody saw this side of him but me. If he was having one of
+these rages in the library here, for example, and Mrs Manderson would come
+into the room, he would be all calm and cold again in an instant.'
+
+'And you put this down to some secret anxiety, a fear that somebody had
+designs on his life?' asked Trent.
+
+The American nodded.
+
+'I suppose,' Trent resumed, 'you had considered the idea of there being
+something wrong with his mind--a break-down from overstrain, say. That is the
+first thought that your account suggests to me. Besides, it is what is always
+happening to your big business men in America, isn't it? That is the
+impression one gets from the newspapers.'
+
+'Don't let them slip you any of that bunk,' said Mr Bunner earnestly. 'It's
+only the ones who have got rich too quick, and can't make good, who go crazy.
+Think of all our really big men--the men anywhere near Manderson's size: did
+you ever hear of any one of them losing his senses? They don't do it--believe
+me. I know they say every man has his loco point,' Mr Bunner added
+reflectively, 'but that doesn't mean genuine, sure-enough craziness; it just
+means some personal eccentricity in a man...like hating cats...or my own
+weakness of not being able to touch any kind of fish-food.'
+
+'Well, what was Manderson's?'
+
+'He was full of them--the old man. There was his objection to all the
+unnecessary fuss and luxury that wealthy people don't kick at much, as a
+general rule. He didn't have any use for expensive trifles and ornaments. He
+wouldn't have anybody do little things for him; he hated to have servants tag
+around after him unless he wanted them. And although Manderson was as careful
+about his clothes as any man I ever knew, and his shoes--well, sir, the amount
+of money he spent on shoes was sinful--in spite of that, I tell you, he never
+had a valet. He never liked to have anybody touch him. All his life nobody
+ever shaved him.'
+
+'I've heard something of that,' Trent remarked. 'Why was it, do you think?'
+
+'Well,' Mr Bunner answered slowly, 'it was the Manderson habit of mind, I
+guess; a sort of temper of general suspicion and jealousy.
+
+They say his father and grandfather were just the same ....Like a dog with a
+bone, you know, acting as if all the rest of creation was laying for a chance
+to steal it. He didn't really think the barber would start in to saw his head
+off; he just felt there was a possibility that he might, and he was taking no
+risks. Then again in business he was always convinced that somebody else was
+after his bone--which was true enough a good deal of the time; but not all the
+time. The consequence of that was that the old man was the most cautious and
+secret worker in the world of finance; and that had a lot to do with his
+success, too .... But that doesn't amount to being a lunatic, Mr Trent; not by
+a long way. You ask me if Manderson was losing his mind before he died. I say
+I believe he was just worn out with worrying over something, and was losing
+his nerve.'
+
+Trent smoked thoughtfully. He wondered how much Mr Bunner knew of the domestic
+difficulty in his chief's household, and decided to put out a feeler. 'I
+understood that he had trouble with his wife.'
+
+'Sure,' replied Mr Bunner. 'But do you suppose a thing like that was going to
+upset Sig Manderson that way? No, sir! He was a sight too big a man to be all
+broken up by any worry of that kind.'
+
+Trent looked half-incredulously into the eyes of the young man. But behind all
+their shrewdness and intensity he saw a massive innocence. Mr Bunner really
+believed a serious breach between husband and wife to be a minor source of
+trouble for a big man.
+
+'What was the trouble between them, anyhow?' Trent enquired.
+
+'You can search me,' Mr Bunner replied briefly. He puffed at his cigar.
+'Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never make out a
+solution. I had a notion at first,' said Mr Bunner in a lower voice, leaning
+forward, 'that the old man was disappointed and vexed because he had expected
+a child; but Marlowe told me that the disappointment on that score was the
+other way around, likely as not. His idea was all right, I guess; he gathered
+it from something said by Mrs Manderson's French maid.'
+
+Trent looked up at him quickly. 'Celestine!' he said; and his thought was, 'So
+that was what she was getting at!'
+
+Mr Bunner misunderstood his glance. 'Don't you think I'm giving a man away, Mr
+Trent,' he said. 'Marlowe isn't that kind. Celestine just took a fancy to him
+because he talks French like a native, and she would always be holding him up
+for a gossip. French servants are quite unlike English that way. And servant
+or no servant,' added Mr Bunner with emphasis, 'I don't see how a woman could
+mention such a subject to a man. But the French beat me.' He shook his head
+slowly.
+
+'But to come back to what you were telling me just now,' Trent said. 'You
+believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some time. Who
+should threaten it? I am quite in the dark.'
+
+'Terror--I don't know,' replied Mr Bunner meditatively. 'Anxiety, if you like.
+Or suspense--that's rather my idea of it. The old man was hard to terrify,
+anyway; and more than that, he wasn't taking any precautions--he was actually
+avoiding them. It looked more like he was asking for a quick finish--supposing
+there's any truth in my idea. Why, he would sit in that library window,
+nights, looking out into the dark, with his white shirt just a target for
+anybody's gun. As for who should threaten his life well, sir,' said Mr Bunner
+with a faint smile, 'it's certain you have not lived in the States. To take
+the Pennsylvania coal hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with
+women and children to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a
+hole through the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his
+terms. Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr Trent.
+There's a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been known
+to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten what he did.
+They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had done them dirt in New
+Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the Atlantic is going to stop them?...
+It takes some sand, I tell you, to be a big business man in our country. No,
+sir: the old man knew--had always known--that there was a whole crowd of
+dangerous men scattered up and down the States who had it in for him. My
+belief is that he had somehow got to know that some of them were definitely
+after him at last. What licks me altogether is why he should have just laid
+himself open to them the way he did--why he never tried to dodge, but walked
+right down into the garden yesterday morning to be shot at.'
+
+Mr Bunner ceased to speak, and for a little while both men sat with wrinkled
+brows, faint blue vapours rising from their cigars. Then Trent rose. 'Your
+theory is quite fresh to me,' he said. 'It's perfectly rational, and it's only
+a question of whether it fits all the facts, I mustn't give away what I'm
+doing for my newspaper, Mr Bunner, but I will say this: I have already
+satisfied myself that this was a premeditated crime, and an extraordinarily
+cunning one at that. I'm deeply obliged to you. We must talk it over again.'
+He looked at his watch. 'I have been expected for some time by my friend.
+Shall we make a move?'
+
+'Two o'clock,' said Mr Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from the foot-
+board. 'Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don't know Wall Street, Mr Trent.
+Let's you and I hope we never see anything nearer hell than what's loose in
+the Street this minute.'
+
+CHAPTER VII: The Lady in Black
+
+The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze; the sun
+flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this perfection of
+English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went down before eight o'clock to a
+pool among the rocks, the direction of which had been given him, and dived
+deep into clear water. Between vast grey boulders he swam out to the tossing
+open, forced himself some little way against a coast-wise current, and then
+returned to his refuge battered and refreshed. Ten minutes later he was
+scaling the cliff again, and his mind, cleared for the moment of a heavy
+disgust for the affair he had in hand, was turning over his plans for the
+morning.
+
+It was the day of the inquest, the day after his arrival in the place. He had
+carried matters not much further after parting with the American on the road
+to Bishopsbridge. In the afternoon he had walked from the inn into the town,
+accompanied by Mr Cupples, and had there made certain purchases at a chemist's
+shop, conferred privately for some time with a photographer, sent off a reply-
+paid telegram, and made an enquiry at the telephone exchange. He had said but
+little about the case to Mr Cupples, who seemed incurious on his side, and
+nothing at all about the results of his investigation or the steps he was
+about to take. After their return from Bishopsbridge, Trent had written a long
+dispatch for the Record and sent it to be telegraphed by the proud hands of
+the paper's local representative. He had afterwards dined with Mr Cupples, and
+had spent the rest of the evening in meditative solitude on the veranda.
+
+This morning as he scaled the cliff he told himself that he had never taken up
+a case he liked so little, or which absorbed him so much. The more he
+contemplated it in the golden sunshine of this new day, the more evil and the
+more challenging it appeared. All that he suspected and all that he almost
+knew had occupied his questing brain for hours to the exclusion of sleep; and
+in this glorious light and air, though washed in body and spirit by the fierce
+purity of the sea, he only saw the more clearly the darkness of the guilt in
+which he believed, and was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he
+guessed. But now at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt
+quickened. He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In
+the course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to do
+in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much serious hope,
+he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot into the sky, as it
+were, the day before.
+
+The path back to the hotel wound for some way along the top of the cliff, and
+on nearing a spot he had marked from the sea level, where the face had fallen
+away long ago, he approached the edge and looked down, hoping to follow with
+his eyes the most delicately beautiful of all the movements of water--the wash
+of a light sea over broken rock. But no rock was there. A few feet below him a
+broad ledge stood out, a rough platform as large as a great room, thickly
+grown with wiry grass and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to
+the verge where the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms
+about her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant
+liner, her face full of some dream.
+
+This woman seemed to Trent, whose training had taught him to live in his eyes,
+to make the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. Her face of southern
+pallor, touched by the kiss of the wind with colour on the cheek, presented to
+him a profile of delicate regularity in which there was nothing hard;
+nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the point where they almost
+met gave her in repose a look of something like severity, strangely redeemed
+by the open curves of the mouth. Trent said to himself that the absurdity or
+otherwise of a lover writing sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow depended after
+all on the quality of the eyebrow. Her nose was of the straight and fine sort,
+exquisitely escaping the perdition of too much length, which makes a
+conscientious mind ashamed that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the
+tip-tilted. Her hat lay pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze
+played with her thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad bandeaux that
+should have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a hundred tiny curls
+from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about this lady was black, from
+her shoes of suede to the hat that she had discarded; lustreless black covered
+her to her bare throat. All she wore was fine and well put on. Dreamy and
+delicate of spirit as her looks declared her, it was very plain that she was
+long-practised as only a woman grown can be in dressing well, the oldest of
+the arts, and had her touch of primal joy in the excellence of the body that
+was so admirably curved now in the attitude of embraced knees. With the
+suggestion of French taste in her clothes, she made a very modern figure
+seated there, until one looked at her face and saw the glow and triumph of all
+vigorous beings that ever faced sun and wind and sea together in the prime of
+the year. One saw, too, a womanhood so unmixed and vigorous, so unconsciously
+sure of itself, as scarcely to be English, still less American.
+
+Trent, who had halted only for a moment in the surprise of seeing the woman in
+black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and feeling as he went
+the things set down. At all times his keen vision and active brain took in and
+tasted details with an easy swiftness that was marvellous to men of slower
+chemistry; the need to stare, he held, was evidence of blindness. Now the
+feeling of beauty was awakened and exultant, and doubled the power of his
+sense. In these instants a picture was printed on his memory that would never
+pass away.
+
+As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her thoughts,
+suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from about her knees, stretched
+her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly raised her head and extended
+her arms with open, curving fingers, as if to gather to her all the glory and
+overwhelming sanity of the morning. This was a gesture not to be mistaken: it
+was a gesture of freedom, the movement of a soul's resolution to be, to
+possess, to go forward, perhaps to enjoy.
+
+So he saw her for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. He knew
+suddenly who the woman must be, and it was as if a curtain of gloom were drawn
+between him and the splendour of the day.
+
+During breakfast at the hotel Mr Cupples found Trent little inclined to talk.
+He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr Cupples, on the other
+hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The prospect of the inquest
+seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent with a disquisition upon the
+history of that most ancient and once busy tribunal, the coroner's court, and
+remarked upon the enviable freedom of its procedure from the shackles of rule
+and precedent. From this he passed to the case that was to come before it that
+morning.
+
+'Young Bunner mentioned to me last night,' he said, 'when I went up there
+after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to the crime. A
+very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is occasionally obscure, but in
+my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded knowledge of the world quite
+unusual in one of his apparent age. Indeed, his promotion by Manderson to the
+position of his principal lieutenant speaks for itself. He seems to have
+assumed with perfect confidence the control at this end of the wire, as he
+expresses it, of the complicated business situation caused by the death of his
+principal, and he has advised very wisely as to the steps I should take on
+Mabel's behalf, and the best course for her to pursue until effect has been
+given to the provisions of the will. I was accordingly less disposed than I
+might otherwise have been to regard his suggestion of an industrial vendetta
+as far-fetched. When I questioned him he was able to describe a number of
+cases in which attacks of one sort or another--too often successful--had been
+made upon the lives of persons who had incurred the hostility of powerful
+labour organizations. This is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy.
+There is none recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between
+the material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so
+menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement, is the
+prospect so dark as it is in the United States.'
+
+'I thought,' said Trent listlessly, 'that Puritanism was about as strong there
+as the money-getting craze.'
+
+'Your remark,' answered Mr Cupples, with as near an approach to humour as was
+possible to him, 'is not in the nature of a testimonial to what you call
+Puritanism--a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I need not remind
+you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party which aimed at the
+purging of the services and ritual of their Church from certain elements
+repugnant to them. The sense of your observation, however, is none the less
+sound, and its truth is extremely well illustrated by the case of Manderson
+himself, who had, I believe, the virtues of purity, abstinence, and
+self-restraint in their strongest form. No, Trent, there are other and more
+worthy things among the moral constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite
+nature, the more we preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of
+external apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
+left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
+Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
+Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I need
+not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,' pursued Mr Cupples,
+placidly buttering a piece of toast, 'is regarded as fundamentally erroneous
+by many of those who think generally as I do about the deeper concerns of
+life, but I am nevertheless firmly persuaded of its truth.'
+
+'It needs epigrammatic expression,' said Trent, rising from the table. 'If
+only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like "No Popery", or
+"Tax the Foreigner", you would find multitudes to go to the stake for it. But
+you were planning to go to White Gables before the inquest, I think. You ought
+to be off if you are to get back to the court in time. I have something to
+attend to there myself, so we might walk up together. I will just go and get
+my camera.'
+
+'By all means,' Mr Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the ever-
+growing warmth of the morning. The roof of White Gables, a surly patch of dull
+red against the dark trees, seemed to harmonize with Trent's mood; he felt
+heavy, sinister, and troubled. If a blow must fall that might strike down that
+creature radiant of beauty and life whom he had seen that morning, he did not
+wish it to come from his hand. An exaggerated chivalry had lived in Trent
+since the first teachings of his mother; but at this moment the horror of
+bruising anything so lovely was almost as much the artist's revulsion as the
+gentleman's. On the other hand, was the hunt to end in nothing? The quality of
+the affair was such that the thought of forbearance was an agony. There never
+was such a case; and he alone, he was confident, held the truth of it under
+his hand. At least, he determined, that day should show whether what he
+believed was a delusion. He would trample his compunction underfoot until he
+was quite sure that there was any call for it. That same morning he would
+know.
+
+As they entered at the gate of the drive they saw Marlowe and the American
+standing in talk before the front door. In the shadow of the porch was the
+lady in black.
+
+She saw them, and came gravely forward over the lawn, moving as Trent had
+known that she would move, erect and balanced, stepping lightly. When she
+welcomed him on Mr Cupples's presentation her eyes of golden-flecked brown
+observed him kindly. In her pale composure, worn as the mask of distress,
+there was no trace of the emotion that had seemed a halo about her head on the
+ledge of the cliff. She spoke the appropriate commonplace in a low and even
+voice. After a few words to Mr Cupples she turned her eyes on Trent again.
+
+'I hope you will succeed,' she said earnestly. 'Do you think you will
+succeed?'
+
+He made his mind up as the words left her lips. He said, 'I believe I shall do
+so, Mrs Manderson. When I have the case sufficiently complete I shall ask you
+to let me see you and tell you about it. It may be necessary to consult you
+before the facts are published.'
+
+She looked puzzled, and distress showed for an instant in her eyes. 'If it is
+necessary, of course you shall do so,' she said.
+
+On the brink of his next speech Trent hesitated. He remembered that the lady
+had not wished to repeat to him the story already given to the inspector--or
+to be questioned at all. He was not unconscious that he desired to hear her
+voice and watch her face a little longer, if it might be; but the matter he
+had to mention really troubled his mind, it was a queer thing that fitted
+nowhere into the pattern within whose corners he had by this time brought the
+other queer things in the case. It was very possible that she could explain it
+away in a breath; it was unlikely that any one else could. He summoned his
+resolution.
+
+'You have been so kind,' he said, 'in allowing me access to the house and
+every opportunity of studying the case, that I am going to ask leave to put a
+question or two to yourself--nothing that you would rather not answer, I
+think. May I?'
+
+She glanced at him wearily. 'It would be stupid of me to refuse, Ask your
+questions, Mr Trent.' 'It's only this,' said Trent hurriedly. 'We know that
+your husband lately drew an unusually large sum of ready money from his London
+bankers, and was keeping it here. It is here now, in fact. Have you any idea
+why he should have done that?'
+
+She opened her eyes in astonishment. 'I cannot imagine,' she said. 'I did not
+know he had done so. I am very much surprised to hear it.'
+
+'Why is it surprising?'
+
+'I thought my husband had very little money in the house. On Sunday night,
+just before he went out in the motor, he came into the drawing-room where I
+was sitting. He seemed to be irritated about something, and asked me at once
+if I had any notes or gold I could let him have until next day. I was
+surprised at that, because he was never without money; he made it a rule to
+carry a hundred pounds or so about him always in a note-case. I unlocked my
+escritoire, and gave him all I had by me. It was nearly thirty pounds.'
+
+'And he did not tell you why he wanted it?'
+
+'No. He put it in his pocket, and then said that Mr Marlowe had persuaded him
+to go for a run in the motor by moonlight, and he thought it might help him to
+sleep. He had been sleeping badly, as perhaps you know. Then he went off with
+Mr Marlowe. I thought it odd he should need money on Sunday night, but I soon
+forgot about it. I never remembered it again until now.'
+
+'It was curious, certainly,' said Trent, staring into the distance. Mr Cupples
+began to speak to his niece of the arrangements for the inquest, and Trent
+moved away to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon the lawn. The young man
+seemed relieved to talk about the coming business of the day. Though he still
+seemed tired out and nervous, he showed himself not without a quiet humour in
+describing the pomposities of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr
+Stock. Trent turned the conversation gradually toward the problem of the
+crime, and all Marlowe's gravity returned.
+
+'Bunner has told me what he thinks,' he said when Trent referred to the
+American's theory. 'I don't find myself convinced by it, because it doesn't
+really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long enough in the
+United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done in a secret,
+melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a characteristic
+feature of certain sections of the labour movement there. Americans have a
+taste and a talent for that sort of business. Do you know Huckleberry Finn?'
+
+'Do I know my own name?' exclaimed Trent.
+
+'Well, I think the most American thing in that great American epic is Tom
+Sawyer's elaboration of an extremely difficult and romantic scheme, taking
+days to carry out, for securing the escape of the nigger Jim, which could have
+been managed quite easily in twenty minutes. You know how fond they are of
+lodges and brotherhoods. Every college club has its secret signs and
+handgrips. You've heard of the Know-Nothing movement in politics, I dare say,
+and the Ku Klux Klan. Then look at Brigham Young's penny-dreadful tyranny in
+Utah, with real blood. The founders of the Mormon State were of the purest
+Yankee stock in America; and you know what they did. It's all part of the same
+mental tendency. Americans make fun of it among themselves. For my part, I
+take it very seriously.'
+
+'It can have a very hideous side to it, certainly,' said Trent, 'when you get
+it in connection with crime--or with vice--or even mere luxury. But I have a
+sort of sneaking respect for the determination to make life interesting and
+lively in spite of civilization. To return to the matter in hand, however; has
+it struck you as a possibility that Manderson's mind was affected to some
+extent by this menace that Bunner believes in? For instance, it was rather an
+extraordinary thing to send you posting off like that in the middle of the
+night.'
+
+'About ten o'clock, to be exact,' replied Marlowe. 'Though, mind you, if he'd
+actually roused me out of my bed at midnight I shouldn't have been very much
+surprised. It all chimes in with what we've just been saying. Manderson had a
+strong streak of the national taste for dramatic proceedings. He was rather
+fond of his well-earned reputation for unexpected strokes and for going for
+his object with ruthless directness through every opposing consideration. He
+had decided suddenly that he wanted to have word from this man Harris--'
+
+'Who is Harris?' interjected Trent.
+
+'Nobody knows. Even Bunner never heard of him, and can't imagine what the
+business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London last week to
+attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at Manderson's request, for a
+Mr George Harris on the boat that sailed on Monday. It seems that Manderson
+suddenly found he wanted news from Harris which presumably was of a character
+too secret for the telegraph; and there was no train that served; so I was
+sent off as you know.'
+
+Trent looked round to make sure that they were not overheard, then faced the
+other gravely, 'There is one thing I may tell you,' he said quietly, 'that I
+don't think you know. Martin the butler caught a few words at the end of your
+conversation with Manderson in the orchard before you started with him in the
+car, He heard him say, "If Harris is there, every moment is of importance."
+Now, Mr Marlowe, you know my business here. I am sent to make enquiries, and
+you mustn't take offence. I want to ask you if, in the face of that sentence,
+you will repeat that you know nothing of what the business was.'
+
+Marlowe shook his head. 'I know nothing, indeed. I'm not easily offended, and
+your question is quite fair. What passed during that conversation I have
+already told the detective. Manderson plainly said to me that he could not
+tell me what it was all about. He simply wanted me to find Harris, tell him
+that he desired to know how matters stood, and bring back a letter or message
+from him. Harris, I was further told, might not turn up. If he did, "every
+moment was of importance". And now you know as much as I do.'
+
+'That talk took place before he told his wife that you were taking him for a
+moonlight run. Why did he conceal your errand in that way, I wonder.'
+
+The young man made a gesture of helplessness. 'Why? I can guess no better than
+you.'
+
+'Why,' muttered Trent as if to himself, gazing on the ground, 'did he conceal
+it--from Mrs Manderson?' He looked up at Marlowe.
+
+'And from Martin,' the other amended coolly. 'He was told the same thing.'
+
+With a sudden movement of his head Trent seemed to dismiss the subject. He
+drew from his breast-pocket a letter-case, and thence extracted two small
+leaves of clean, fresh paper.
+
+'Just look at these two slips, Mr Marlowe,' he said. 'Did you ever see them
+before? Have you any idea where they come from?' he added as Marlowe-took one
+in each hand and examined them curiously.
+
+'They seem to have been cut with a knife or scissors from a small diary for
+this year from the October pages,' Marlowe observed, looking them over on both
+sides. 'I see no writing of any kind on them. Nobody here has any such diary
+so far as I know. What about them?'
+
+'There may be nothing in it,' Trent said dubiously. 'Any one in the house, of
+course, might have such a diary without your having seen it. But I didn't much
+expect you would be able to identify the leaves--in fact, I should have been
+surprised if you had.'
+
+He stopped speaking as Mrs Manderson came towards them. 'My uncle thinks we
+should be going now,' she said.
+
+'I think I will walk on with Mr Bunner,' Mr Cupples said as he joined them.
+'There are certain business matters that must be disposed of as soon as
+possible. Will you come on with these two gentlemen, Mabel? We will wait for
+you before we reach the place.'
+
+Trent turned to her. 'Mrs Manderson will excuse me, I hope,' he said. 'I
+really came up this morning in order to look about me here for some
+indications I thought I might possibly find. I had not thought of attending
+the--the court just yet.'
+
+She looked at him with eyes of perfect candour. 'Of course, Mr Trent. Please
+do exactly as you wish. We are all relying upon you. If you will wait a few
+moments, Mr Marlowe, I shall be ready.'
+
+She entered the house. Her uncle and the American had already strolled towards
+the gate.
+
+Trent looked into the eyes of his companion. 'That is a wonderful woman,' he
+said in a lowered voice.
+
+'You say so without knowing her,' replied Marlowe in a similar tone. 'She is
+more than that.'
+
+Trent said nothing to this. He stared out over the fields towards the sea. In
+the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A little
+distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them from the direction
+of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope, unmistakable afar off, of a
+telegram. Trent watched him with an indifferent eye as he met and passed the
+two others. Then he turned to Marlowe. 'A propos of nothing in particular,' he
+said, 'were you at Oxford?'
+
+'Yes,' said the young man. 'Why do you ask?'
+
+'I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It's one of the things you can
+very often tell about a man, isn't it?'
+
+'I suppose so,' Marlowe said. 'Well, each of us is marked in one way or
+another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn't known
+it.'
+
+'Why? Does my hair want cutting?'
+
+'Oh, no! It's only that you look at things and people as I've seen artists do,
+with an eye that moves steadily from detail to detail--rather looking them
+over than looking at them.'
+
+The boy came up panting. 'Telegram for you, sir,' he said to Trent. 'Just
+come, sir.'
+
+Trent tore open the envelope with an apology, and his eyes lighted up so
+visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe's tired face softened in a smile.
+
+'It must be good news,' he murmured half to himself.
+
+Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. 'Not exactly
+news,' he said. 'It only tells me that another little guess of mine was a good
+one.'
+
+CHAPTER VIII: The Inquest
+
+The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a
+provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had resolved to
+be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of jovial temper, with
+a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his work, and the news of
+Manderson's mysterious death within his jurisdiction had made him the happiest
+coroner in England. A respectable capacity for marshalling facts was fortified
+in him by a copiousness of impressive language that made juries as clay in his
+hands, and sometimes disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules of
+evidence.
+
+The court was held in a long, unfurnished room lately built on to the hotel,
+and intended to serve as a ballroom or concert-hall. A regiment of reporters
+was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to be called on to give
+evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table behind which the coroner
+sat, while the jury, in double row, with plastered hair and a spurious ease of
+manner, flanked him on the other side. An undistinguished public filled the
+rest of the space, and listened, in an awed silence, to the opening
+solemnities. The newspaper men, well used to these, muttered among themselves.
+Those of them who knew Trent by sight assured the rest that he was not in the
+court.
+
+The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness called,
+from whom the coroner, after some enquiry into the health and circumstances of
+the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last occasion on which she
+had seen her husband alive. Mrs Manderson was taken through her evidence by
+the coroner with the sympathy which every man felt for that dark figure of
+grief. She lifted her thick veil before beginning to speak, and the extreme
+paleness and unbroken composure of the lady produced a singular impression.
+This was not an impression of hardness. Interesting femininity was the first
+thing to be felt in her presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only
+clear that the force of a powerful character was at work to master the
+emotions of her situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes
+with her handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.
+
+Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour for
+retiring on Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room attached to her
+own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was usually kept open
+during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were entered by other doors
+giving on the passage. Her husband had always had a preference for the
+greatest simplicity in his bedroom arrangements, and liked to sleep in a small
+room. She had not been awake when he came up, but had been half-aroused, as
+usually happened, when the light was switched on in her husband's room. She
+had spoken to him. She had no clear recollection of what she had said, as she
+had been very drowsy at the time; but she had remembered that he had been out
+for a moonlight run in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had
+had a good run, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because
+she felt as if she had only been a very short time asleep, and she had
+expected her husband to be out very late. In answer to her question he had
+told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone on to say that he had changed
+his mind about going for a run.
+
+'Did he say why?' the coroner asked.
+
+'Yes,' replied the lady, 'he did explain why. I remember very well what he
+said, because--' she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.
+
+'Because--' the coroner insisted gently.
+
+'Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his business
+affairs,' answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch of
+defiance. 'He did not--did not think they would interest me, and as a rule
+referred to them as little as possible. That was why I was rather surprised
+when he told me that he had sent Mr Marlowe to Southampton to bring back some
+important information from a man who was leaving for Paris by the next day's
+boat. He said that Mr Marlowe could do it quite easily if he had no accident.
+He said that he had started in the car, and then walked back home a mile or
+so, and felt all the better for it.'
+
+'Did he say any more?'
+
+'Nothing, as well as I remember,' the witness said. 'I was very sleepy, and I
+dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband turning his
+light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive.'
+
+'And you heard nothing in the night?'
+
+'No: I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
+o'clock. She closed the door leading to my husband's room, as she always did,
+and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a great deal of sleep.
+He sometimes slept until quite late in the morning. I had breakfast in my
+sitting- room. It was about ten when I heard that my husband's body had been
+found.' The witness dropped her head and silently waited for her dismissal.
+
+But it was not to be yet.
+
+'Mrs Manderson.' The coroner's voice was sympathetic, but it had a hint of
+firmness in it now. 'The question I am going to put to you must, in these sad
+circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty to ask it. Is it the fact
+that your relations with your late husband had not been, for some time past,
+relations of mutual affection and confidence? Is it the fact that there was an
+estrangement between you?'
+
+The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colour rising in
+her cheeks. 'If that question is necessary,' she said with cold distinctness,
+'I will answer it so that there shall be no misunderstanding. During the last
+few months of my husband's life his attitude towards me had given me great
+anxiety and sorrow. He had changed towards me; he had become very reserved,
+and seemed mistrustful. I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to
+prefer to be alone. I can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to
+work against it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I
+thought. Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never told me.
+My own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so many words;
+I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had always been, so far as he
+would allow me. I suppose I shall never know now what it was.' The witness,
+whose voice had trembled in spite of her self-control over the last few
+sentences, drew down her veil when she had said this, and stood erect and
+quiet.
+
+One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. 'Then was
+there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between you and
+your husband, ma'am?'
+
+'Never.' The word was colourlessly spoken; but every one felt that a crass
+misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a person like
+Mrs Manderson had been visited with some severity.
+
+Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have been
+preying upon her husband's mind recently?
+
+Mrs Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her ordeal was
+at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The general
+attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now eagerly directed upon
+Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.
+
+It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway and edged his way
+into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was observing the well-
+balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an opening path in the
+crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he stood aside from the door
+with a slight bow, to hear Mrs Manderson address him by name in a low voice.
+He followed her a pace or two into the hall.
+
+'I wanted to ask you,' she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken, 'if you
+would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could not see my
+uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint .... I shall be better
+in the air .... No, no; I cannot stay here--please, Mr Trent!' she said, as he
+began to make an obvious suggestion. 'I must go to the house.' Her hand
+tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all her weakness, she could drag
+him from the place; then again she leaned heavily upon it, and with that
+support, and with bent head, she walked slowly from the hotel and along the
+oak-shaded path toward White Gables.
+
+Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a chorus of
+'Fool! fool!' All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and suspected of
+this affair, rushed through his brain in a rout; but the touch of her unnerved
+hand upon his arm never for an instant left his consciousness, filling him
+with an exaltation that enraged and bewildered him. He was still cursing
+himself furiously behind the mask of conventional solicitude that he turned to
+the lady when he had attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch
+in the morning-room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly,
+with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now, she
+said, and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she had not
+taken him away from anything important. She was ashamed of herself; she
+thought she could go through with it, but she had not expected those last
+questions. 'I am glad you did not hear me,' she said when he explained. 'But
+of course you will read it all in the reports. It shook me so to have to speak
+of that,' she added simply; 'and to keep from making an exhibition of myself
+took it out of me. And all those staring men by the door! Thank you again for
+helping me when I asked you .... I thought I might,' she ended queerly, with a
+little tired smile; and Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from
+the cool touch of her fingers.
+
+The testimony of the servants and of the finder of the body brought nothing
+new to the reporters' net. That of the police was as colourless and cryptic as
+is usual at the inquest stage of affairs of the kind. Greatly to the
+satisfaction of Mr Bunner, his evidence afforded the sensation of the day, and
+threw far into the background the interesting revelation of domestic
+difficulty made by the dead man's wife. He told the court in substance what he
+had already told Trent. The flying pencils did not miss a word of the young
+American's story, and it appeared with scarcely the omission of a sentence in
+every journal of importance in Great Britain and the United States.
+
+Public opinion next day took no note of the faint suggestion of the
+possibility of suicide which the coroner, in his final address to the jury,
+had thought it right to make in connection with the lady's evidence. The
+weight of evidence, as the official had indeed pointed out, was against such a
+theory. He had referred with emphasis to the fact that no weapon had been
+found near the body.
+
+'This question, of course, is all-important, gentlemen,' he had said to the
+jury. 'It is, in fact, the main issue before you. You have seen the body for
+yourselves. You have just heard the medical evidence; but I think it would be
+well for me to read you my notes of it in so far as they bear on this point,
+in order to refresh your memories. Dr Stock told you--I am going to omit all
+technical medical language and repeat to you merely the plain English of his
+testimony--that in his opinion death had taken place six or eight hours
+previous to the finding of the body. He said that the cause of death was a
+bullet wound, the bullet having entered the left eye, which was destroyed, and
+made its way to the base of the brain, which was quite shattered. The external
+appearance of the wound, he said, did not support the hypothesis of its being
+self-inflicted, inasmuch as there were no signs of the firearm having been
+pressed against the eye, or even put very close to it; at the same time it was
+not physically impossible that the weapon should have been discharged by the
+deceased with his own hand, at some small distance from the eye. Dr Stock also
+told us that it was impossible to say with certainty, from the state of the
+body, whether any struggle had taken place at the time of death; that when
+seen by him, at which time he understood that it had not been moved since it
+was found, the body was lying in a collapsed position such as might very well
+result from the shot alone; but that the scratches and bruises upon the wrists
+and the lower part of the arms had been very recently inflicted, and were, in
+his opinion, marks of violence.
+
+'In connection with this same point, the remarkable evidence given by Mr
+Bunner cannot be regarded, I think, as without significance. It may have come
+as a surprise to some of you to hear that risks of the character described by
+this witness are, in his own country, commonly run by persons in the position
+of the deceased. On the other hand, it may have been within the knowledge of
+some of you that in the industrial world of America the discontent of labour
+often proceeds to lengths of which we in England happily know nothing. I have
+interrogated the witness somewhat fully upon this. At the same time,
+gentlemen, I am by no means suggesting that Mr Bunner's personal conjecture as
+to the cause of death can fitly be adopted by you. That is emphatically not
+the case. What his evidence does is to raise two questions for your
+consideration. First, can it be said that the deceased was to any extent in
+the position of a threatened man--of a man more exposed to the danger of
+murderous attack than an ordinary person? Second, does the recent alteration
+in his demeanour, as described by this witness, justify the belief that his
+last days were overshadowed by a great anxiety? These points may legitimately
+be considered by you in arriving at a conclusion upon the rest of the
+evidence.'
+
+Thereupon the coroner, having indicated thus clearly his opinion that Mr
+Bunner had hit the right nail on the head, desired the jury to consider their
+verdict.
+
+CHAPTER IX: A Hot Scent
+
+'Come in!' called Trent.
+
+Mr Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early evening of
+the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box, had pronounced
+the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown. Trent, with a hasty
+glance upward, continued his intent study of what lay in a photographic dish
+of enamelled metal, which he moved slowly about in the light of the window. He
+looked very pale, and his movements were nervous.
+
+'Sit on the sofa,' he advised. 'The chairs are a job lot bought at the sale
+after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a pretty good
+negative,' he went on, holding it up to the light with his head at the angle
+of discriminating judgement. 'Washed enough now, I think. Let us leave it to
+dry, and get rid of all this mess.'
+
+Mr Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of basins,
+dishes, racks, boxes, and bottles, picked up first one and then another of the
+objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.
+
+'That is called hypo-eliminator,' said Trent, as Mr Cupples uncorked and smelt
+at one of the bottles. 'Very useful when you're in a hurry with a negative. I
+shouldn't drink it, though, all the same. It eliminates sodium hypophosphite,
+but I shouldn't wonder if it would eliminate human beings too.' He found a
+place for the last of the litter on the crowded mantel-shelf, and came to sit
+before Mr Cupples on the table. 'The great thing about a hotel sitting-room is
+that its beauty does not distract the mind from work. It is no place for the
+mayfly pleasures of a mind at ease. Have you ever been in this room before,
+Cupples? I have, hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over England for
+years. I should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel,
+they were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there
+is the ink I spilt on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that hole in
+the carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended the glass over
+the picture of "Silent Sympathy", which I threw a boot at in Banbury. I do all
+my best work here. This afternoon, for instance, since the inquest, I have
+finished several excellent negatives. There is a very good dark room
+downstairs.'
+
+'The inquest--that reminds me,' said Mr Cupples, who knew that this sort of
+talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering what he could
+be about. 'I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for looking after Mabel
+this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel ill after leaving the box;
+she seemed quite unmoved, and, really, she is a woman of such extraordinary
+self- command, I thought I could leave her to her own devices and hear out the
+evidence, which I thought it important I should do. It was a very fortunate
+thing she found a friend to assist her, and she is most grateful. She is quite
+herself again now.'
+
+Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow, made no
+reply to this. 'I tell you what,' he said after a short pause, 'I was just
+getting to the really interesting part of the job when you came in. Come;
+would you like to see a little bit of high-class police work? It's the very
+same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing at this moment. Perhaps he
+is; but I hope to glory he isn't.' He sprang off the table and disappeared
+into his bedroom. Presently he came out with a large drawing-board on which a
+number of heterogeneous objects was ranged.
+
+'First I must introduce you to these little things,' he said, setting them out
+on the table. 'Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two leaves cut out of
+a diary--my own diary; here is a bottle containing dentifrice; here is a
+little case of polished walnut. Some of these things have to be put back where
+they belong in somebody's bedroom at White Gables before night. That's the
+sort of man I am--nothing stops me. I borrowed them this very morning when
+every one was down at the inquest, and I dare say some people would think it
+rather an odd proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the
+board. Can you tell me, without touching it, what it is?'
+
+'Certainly I can,' said Mr Cupples, peering at it with great interest. 'It is
+an ordinary glass bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see nothing odd about
+it,' he added after some moments of close scrutiny.
+
+'I can't see much myself,' replied Trent, 'and that is exactly where the fun
+comes in. Now take this little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull out the cork. Do
+you recognize that powder inside it? You have swallowed pounds of it in your
+time, I expect. They give it to babies. Grey powder is its ordinary name--
+mercury and chalk. It is great stuff. Now, while I hold the basin sideways
+over this sheet of paper, I want you to pour a little powder out of the bottle
+over this part of the bowl--just here .... Perfect! Sir Edward Henry himself
+could not have handled the powder better. You have done this before, Cupples,
+I can see. You are an old hand.'
+
+'I really am not,' said Mr Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the fallen
+powder to the bottle. 'I assure you it is all a complete mystery to me. What
+did I do then?'
+
+'I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair brush. Now
+look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do you see anything
+now?'
+
+Mr Cupples peered again. 'How curious!' he said. 'Yes, there are two large
+grey finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before.'
+
+'I am Hawkshaw the detective,' observed Trent. 'Would it interest you to hear
+a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you take one up
+with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually practically invisible, which
+may remain for days or months. You leave the marks of your fingers. The human
+hand, even when quite clean, is never quite dry, and sometimes--in moments of
+great anxiety, for instance, Cupples--it is very moist. It leaves a mark on
+any cold smooth surface it may touch. That bowl was moved by somebody with a
+rather moist hand quite lately.' He sprinkled the powder again. 'Here on the
+other side, you see, is the thumb-mark very good impressions all of them.' He
+spoke without raising his voice, but Mr Cupples could perceive that he was
+ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint grey marks. 'This one should
+be the index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that
+the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically
+disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a
+staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just
+the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail.
+Look!'--he held one of the negatives up to the light of the declining sun and
+demonstrated with a pencil point. 'You can see they're the same. You see the
+bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the other. You see that little scar
+near the centre. There it is in the other. There are a score of
+ridge-characteristics on which an expert would swear in the witness-box that
+the marks on that bowl and the marks I have photographed on this negative were
+made by the same hand.'
+
+'And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?' asked Mr Cupples,
+wide-eyed.
+
+'I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front window in Mrs
+Manderson's bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I photographed
+them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of the glass for the
+purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson's room. It is the bowl in which his
+false teeth were placed at night. I could bring that away, so I did.'
+
+'But those cannot be Mabel's finger-marks.'
+
+'I should think not!' said Trent with decision. 'They are twice the size of
+any print Mrs Manderson could make.'
+
+'Then they must be her husband's.'
+
+'Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I believe
+we can.' Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent opened another
+small squat bottle containing a dense black powder. 'Lamp-black,' he
+explained. 'Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a second or two, and this
+little chap will show you the pattern of your fingers.' He carefully took up
+with a pair of tweezers one of the leaves cut from his diary, and held it out
+for the other to examine. No marks appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the
+powder out upon one surface of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the
+other; then shook the leaf gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it
+out to Mr Cupples in silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably,
+clearly printed in black, the same two finger-prints that he had already seen
+on the bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the bowl and compared
+them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other side was a bold black
+replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in grey on the glass in his hand.
+
+'Same man, you see,' Trent said with a short laugh. 'I felt that it must be
+so, and now I know.' He walked to the window and looked out. 'Now I know,' he
+repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone was bitter. Mr Cupples,
+understanding nothing, stared at his motionless back for a few moments.
+
+'I am still completely in the dark,' he ventured presently. 'I have often
+heard of this fingerprint business, and wondered how the police went to work
+about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon my life I cannot see
+how in this case Manderson's fingerprints are going--'
+
+'I am very sorry, Cupples,' Trent broke in upon his meditative speech with a
+swift return to the table. 'When I began this investigation I meant to take
+you with me every step of the way. You mustn't think I have any doubts about
+your discretion if I say now that I must hold my tongue about the whole thing,
+at least for a time. I will tell you this: I have come upon a fact that looks
+too much like having very painful consequences if it is discovered by any one
+else.' He looked at the other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the
+table with his hand. 'It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I
+was hoping against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be wrong
+in the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way of finding
+out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it.' He smiled
+suddenly at Mr Cupples's face of consternation. 'All right--I'm not going to
+be tragic any more, and I'll tell you all about it when I can. Look here, I'm
+not half through my game with the powder-bottles yet.'
+
+He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test the broad
+ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr Cupples, swallowing his amazement, bent
+forward in an attitude of deep interest and handed Trent the bottle of lamp-
+black.
+
+CHAPTER X: The Wife of Dives
+
+Mrs Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables gazing
+out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather had broken as
+it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathings drifted up the fields
+from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken grey deadness shedding pin-point
+moisture that was now and then blown against the panes with a crepitation of
+despair. The lady looked out on the dim and chilling prospect with a woeful
+face. It was a bad day for a woman bereaved, alone, and without a purpose in
+life.
+
+There was a knock, and she called 'Come in,' drawing herself up with an
+unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that the weariness of
+the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr Trent had called, the maid
+said; he apologized for coming at such an early hour, but hoped that Mrs
+Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would
+see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw
+reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and
+turned to the door as Trent was shown in.
+
+His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of the
+sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick sensibilities
+felt something not propitious, took the place of his half smile of fixed
+good-humour.
+
+'May I come to the point at once?' he said, when she had given him her hand.
+'There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelve o'clock, but I
+cannot go until I have settled this thing, which concerns you only, Mrs
+Manderson. I have been working half the night and thinking the rest; and I
+know now what I ought to do.'
+
+'You look wretchedly tired,' she said kindly. 'Won't you sit down? This is a
+very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible business and your work
+as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I can properly tell you, Mr
+Trent. I know that you won't make it worse for me than you can help in doing
+your duty here. If you say you must see me about something, I know it must be
+because, as you say, you ought to do it.'
+
+'Mrs Manderson,' said Trent, slowly measuring his words, 'I won't make it
+worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad for you--only
+between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tell me what I shall
+ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on my word of honour: I
+shall ask you only as much as will decide me whether to publish or to withhold
+certain grave things that I have found out about your husband's death, things
+not suspected by any one else, nor, I think, likely to be so. What I have
+discovered--what I believe that I have practically proved--will be a great
+shock to you in any case. But it may be worse for you than that; and if you
+give me reason to think it would be so, then I shall suppress this
+manuscript,' he laid a long envelope on the small table beside him, 'and
+nothing of what it has to tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell
+you, of a short private note to my editor, followed by a long dispatch for
+publication in the Record. Now you may refuse to say anything to me. If you do
+refuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this up to London
+with me today and leave it with my editor to be dealt with at his discretion.
+My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled to suppress it on the
+strength of a mere possibility that presents itself to my imagination. But if
+I gather from you--and I can gather it from no other person- -that there is
+substance in that imaginary possibility I speak of, then I have only one thing
+to do as a gentleman and as one who'--he hesitated for a phrase-- 'wishes you
+well. I shall not publish that dispatch of mine. In some directions I decline
+to assist the police. Have you followed me so far?' he asked with a touch of
+anxiety in his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave no
+sign as she regarded him, her hands clasped before her, and her shoulders
+drawn back in a pose of rigid calm. She looked precisely as she had looked at
+the inquest.
+
+'I understand quite well,' said Mrs Manderson in a low voice. She drew a deep
+breath, and went on: 'I don't know what dreadful thing you have found out, or
+what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, but it was good, it was
+honourable of you to come to me about it. Now will you please tell me?'
+
+'I cannot do that,' Trent replied. 'The secret is my newspaper's if it is not
+yours. If I find it is yours, you shall have my manuscript to read and
+destroy. Believe me,' he broke out with something of his old warmth, 'I detest
+such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul; but it is not I who have made
+this mystery. This is the most painful hour of my life, and you make it worse
+by not treating me like a hound. The first thing I ask you to tell me,' he
+reverted with an effort to his colourless tone, 'is this: is it true, as you
+stated at the inquest, that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late
+husband had changed his attitude toward you, and become mistrustful and
+reserved, during the last few months of his life?'
+
+Mrs Manderson's dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly rose from
+her chair. Trent got up at the same moment, and took his envelope from the
+table; his manner said that he perceived the interview to be at an end. But
+she held up a hand, and there was colour in her cheeks and quick breathing in
+her voice as she said: 'Do you know what you ask, Mr Trent? You ask me if I
+perjured myself.'
+
+'I do,' he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause, 'you knew already
+that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs Manderson. The
+theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could withhold a part of the
+truth under any circumstances is a polite fiction.' He still stood as awaiting
+dismissal, but she was silent. She walked to the window, and he stood
+miserably watching the slight movement of her shoulders until it subsided.
+Then with face averted, looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last
+clearly.
+
+'Mr Trent,' she said, 'you inspire confidence in people, and I feel that
+things which I don't want known or talked about are safe with you. And I know
+you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are doing, though I
+don't know what it is. I suppose it would be assisting justice in some way if
+I told you the truth about what you asked just now. To understand that truth
+you ought to know about what went before--I mean about my marriage. After all,
+a good many people could tell you as well as I can that it was not... a very
+successful union. I was only twenty. I admired his force and courage and
+certainty; he was the only strong man I had ever known. But it did not take me
+long to find out that he cared for his business more than for me, and I think
+I found out even sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself,
+promising myself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own
+feelings, because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than
+an English girl ever dreams of. I have been despising myself for that for five
+years. My husband's feeling for me... well, I cannot speak of that ... what I
+want to say is that along with it there had always been a belief of his that I
+was the sort of woman to take a great place in society, and that I should
+throw myself into it with enjoyment, and become a sort of personage and do him
+great credit--that was his idea; and the idea remained with him after other
+delusions had gone. I was a part of his ambition. That was his really bitter
+disappointment, that I failed him as a social success. I think he was too
+shrewd not to have known in his heart that such a man as he was, twenty years
+older than I, with great business responsibilities that filled every hour of
+his life, and caring for nothing else--he must have felt that there was a risk
+of great unhappiness in marrying the sort of girl I was, brought up to music
+and books and unpractical ideas, always enjoying myself in my own way. But he
+had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honours of his position
+in the world; and I found I couldn't.'
+
+Mrs Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she had yet
+shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun to ring and
+give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto have been dulled, he
+thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past few days. Now she turned
+swiftly from the window and faced him as she went on, her beautiful face
+flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, her hands moving in slight emphatic
+gestures, as she surrendered herself to the impulse of giving speech to things
+long pent up.
+
+'The people,' she said. 'Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must be for
+any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative work in the
+background, work with some dignity about it, men and women with professions or
+arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in and quarrel about, some
+of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; can you think what it means to step
+out of that into another world where you have to be very rich, shamefully
+rich, to exist at all--where money is the only thing that counts and the first
+thing in everybody's thoughts--where the men who make the millions are so
+jaded by the work, that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves
+with when they have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even
+duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for
+display and silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you know how awful
+that life is? Of course I know there are clever people, and people of taste in
+that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing in the end;
+empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make friends and have
+some happy times; but that's how I feel after it all. The seasons in New York
+and London--how I hated them! And our house-parties and cruises in the yacht
+and the rest--the same people, the same emptiness.
+
+'And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of all this.
+His life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and when he was in
+society he had always his business plans and difficulties to occupy his mind.
+He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never let him know; I couldn't, it
+wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must do something to justify myself as his
+wife, sharing his position and fortune; and the only thing I could do was to
+try, and try, to live up to his idea about my social qualities... I did try. I
+acted my best. And it became harder year by year... I never was what they call
+a popular hostess, how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying... I
+used to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I was not doing my
+part of a bargain--it sounds horrid to put it like that, I know, but it was
+so--when I took one of my old school-friends, who couldn't afford to travel,
+away to Italy for a month or two, and we went about cheaply all by ourselves,
+and were quite happy; or when I went and made a long stay in London with some
+quiet people who had known me all my life, and we all lived just as in the old
+days, when we had to think twice about seats at the theatre, and told each
+other about cheap dressmakers. Those and a few other expeditions of the same
+sort were my best times after I was married, and they helped me to go through
+with it the rest of the time. But I felt my husband would have hated to know
+how much I enjoyed every hour of those returns to the old life.
+
+'And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to know .... He
+could see through anything, I think, once his attention was turned to it. He
+had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling his idea of me as a
+figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought it was my misfortune
+rather than my fault. But the moment he began to see, in spite of my
+pretending, that I wasn't playing my part with any spirit, he knew the whole
+story; he divined how I loathed and was weary of the luxury and the brilliancy
+and the masses of money just because of the people who lived among them--who
+were made so by them, I suppose .... It happened last year. I don't know just
+how or when. It may have been suggested to him by some woman--for they all
+understood, of course. He said nothing to me, and I think he tried not to
+change in his manner to me at first; but such things hurt--and it was working
+in both of us. I knew that he knew. After a time we were just being polite and
+considerate to each other. Before he found me out we had been on a footing
+of--how can I express it to you?--of intelligent companionship, I might say.
+We talked without restraint of many things of the kind we could agree or
+disagree about without its going very deep... if you understand. And then that
+came to an end. I felt that the only possible basis of our living in each
+other's company was going under my feet. And at last it was gone.
+
+'It had been like that,' she ended simply, 'for months before he died.' She
+sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing her body
+after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent was hastily sorting
+out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at the frankness of Mrs Manderson's
+story. He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it. In
+this vivid being, carried away by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole
+personality, he had seen the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had
+already seen the real woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded
+emotion. In both she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of
+majesty that she had been to the world. With that amazement of his went
+something like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into an
+appearance scarcely mortal in his eyes. Incongruously there rushed into his
+mind, occupied as it was with the affair of the moment, a little knot of
+ideas... she was unique not because of her beauty but because of its being
+united with intensity of nature; in England all the very beautiful women were
+placid, all the fiery women seemed to have burnt up the best of their beauty;
+that was why no beautiful woman had ever cast this sort of spell on him
+before; when it was a question of wit in women he had preferred the brighter
+flame to the duller, without much regarding the lamp. 'All this is very
+disputable,' said his reason; and instinct answered, 'Yes, except that I am
+under a spell'; and a deeper instinct cried out, 'Away with it!' He forced his
+mind back to her story, and found growing swiftly in him an irrepressible
+conviction. It was all very fine; but it would not do.
+
+'I feel as if I had led you into saying more than you meant to say, or than I
+wanted to learn,' he said slowly. 'But there is one brutal question which is
+the whole point of my enquiry.' He braced his frame like one preparing for a
+plunge into cold waters. 'Mrs Manderson, will you assure me that your
+husband's change toward you had nothing to do with John Marlowe?'
+
+And what he had dreaded came. 'Oh!' she cried with a sound of anguish, her
+face thrown up and open hands stretched out as if for pity; and then the hands
+covered the burning face, and she flung herself aside among the cushions at
+her elbow, so that he saw nothing but her heavy crown of black hair, and her
+body moving with sobs that stabbed his heart, and a foot turned inward
+gracelessly in an abandonment of misery. Like a tall tower suddenly breaking
+apart she had fallen in ruins, helplessly weeping.
+
+Trent stood up, his face white and calm. With a senseless particularity he
+placed his envelope exactly in the centre of the little polished table. He
+walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, and in a few minutes
+was tramping through the rain out of sight of White Gables, going nowhere,
+seeing nothing, his soul shaken in the fierce effort to kill and trample the
+raving impulse that had seized him in the presence of her shame, that
+clamoured to him to drag himself before her feet, to pray for pardon, to pour
+out words-- he knew not what words, but he knew that they had been straining
+at his lips--to wreck his self-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even
+the crazy purpose that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness
+in disgust, by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a
+husband not yet buried, to a woman who loved another man.
+
+Such was the magic of her tears, quickening in a moment the thing which, as
+his heart had known, he must not let come to life. For Philip Trent was a
+young man, younger in nature even than his years, and a way of life that kept
+his edge keen and his spirit volcanic had prepared him very ill for the
+meeting that comes once in the early manhood of most of us, usually--as in his
+case, he told himself harshly--to no purpose but the testing of virtue and the
+power of the will.
+
+CHAPTER XI: Hitherto Unpublished
+
+My Dear Molloy:---This is in case I don't find you at your office. I have
+found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. This was my
+problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It definitely charges an
+unsuspected person with having a hand in the crime, and practically accuses
+him of being the murderer, so I don't suppose you will publish it before his
+arrest, and I believe it is illegal to do so afterwards until he has been
+tried and found guilty. You may decide to publish it then; and you may find it
+possible to make some use or other before then of the facts I have given. That
+is your affair. Meanwhile, will you communicate with Scotland Yard, and let
+them see what I have written? I have done with the Manderson mystery, and I
+wish to God I had never touched it. Here follows my dispatch.--P.T.
+
+Marlstone, June 16th. I begin this, my third and probably my final dispatch to
+the Record upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting feelings. I have a
+strong sense of relief, because in my two previous dispatches I was obliged,
+in the interests of justice, to withhold facts ascertained by me which would,
+if published then, have put a certain person upon his guard and possibly have
+led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness and resource. These
+facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess, no liking for the story of
+treachery and perverted cleverness which I have to tell. It leaves an evil
+taste in the mouth, a savour of something revolting in the deeper puzzle of
+motive underlying thc puzzle of the crime itself, which I believe I have
+solved.
+
+It will be remembered that in my first dispatch I described the situation as I
+found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday morning. I told how the body
+was found, and in what state; dwelt upon the complete mystery surrounding the
+crime, and mentioned one or two local theories about it; gave some account of
+the dead man's domestic surroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed
+description of his movements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a
+little fact which may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of
+whisky much larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappeared
+from his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. On the
+following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than an abstract of
+the proceedings in the coroner's court, of which a verbatim report was made at
+my request by other representatives of the Record. That day is not yet over as
+I write these lines; and I have now completed an investigation which has led
+me directly to the man who must be called upon to clear himself of the guilt
+of the death of Manderson.
+
+Apart from the central mystery of Manderson's having arisen long before his
+usual hour to go out and meet his death, there were two minor points of oddity
+about this affair which, I suppose, must have occurred to thousands of those
+who have read the accounts in the newspapers: points apparent from the very
+beginning. The first of these was that, whereas the body was found at a spot
+not thirty yards from the house, all the people of the house declared that
+they had heard no cry or other noise in the night. Manderson had not been
+gagged; the marks on his wrists pointed to a struggle with his assailant; and
+there had been at least one pistol-shot. (I say at least one, because it is
+the fact that in murders with firearms, especially if there has been a
+struggle, the criminal commonly misses his victim at least once.) This odd
+fact seemed all the more odd to me when I learned that Martin the butler was a
+bad sleeper, very keen of hearing, and that his bedroom, with the window open,
+faced almost directly toward the shed by which the body was found.
+
+The second odd little fact that was apparent from the outset was Manderson's
+leaving his dental plate by the bedside. It appeared that he had risen and
+dressed himself fully, down to his necktie and watch and chain, and had gone
+out of doors without remembering to put in this plate, which he had carried in
+his mouth every day for years, and which contained all the visible teeth of
+the upper jaw. It had evidently not been a case of frantic hurry; and even if
+it had been, he would have been more likely to forget almost anything than
+this denture. Any one who wears such a removable plate will agree that the
+putting it in on rising is a matter of second nature. Speaking as well as
+eating, to say nothing of appearances, depend upon it.
+
+Neither of these queer details, however, seemed to lead to anything at the
+moment. They only awakened in me a suspicion of something lurking in the
+shadows, something that lent more mystery to the already mysterious question
+how and why and through whom Manderson met his end.
+
+With this much of preamble I come at once to the discovery which, in the first
+few hours of my investigation, set me upon the path which so much ingenuity
+had been directed to concealing.
+
+I have already described Manderson's bedroom, the rigorous simplicity of its
+furnishing, contrasted so strangely with the multitude of clothes and shoes,
+and the manner of its communication with Mrs Manderson's room. On the upper of
+the two long shelves on which the shoes were ranged I found, where I had been
+told I should find them, the pair of patent leather shoes which Manderson had
+worn on the evening before his death. I had glanced over the row, not with any
+idea of their giving me a clue, but merely because it happens that I am a
+judge of shoes, and all these shoes were of the very best workmanship. But my
+attention was at once caught by a little peculiarity in this particular pair.
+They were the lightest kind of lace-up dress shoes, very thin in the sole,
+without toe- caps, and beautifully made, like all the rest. These shoes were
+old and well worn; but being carefully polished, and fitted, as all the shoes
+were, upon their trees, they looked neat enough. What caught my eye was a
+slight splitting of the leather in that part of the upper known as the vamp--a
+splitting at the point where the two laced parts of the shoe rise from the
+upper. It is at this point that the strain comes when a tight shoe of this
+sort is forced upon the foot, and it is usually guarded with a strong
+stitching across the bottom of the opening. In both the shoes I was examining
+this stitching had parted, and the leather below had given way. The splitting
+was a tiny affair in each case, not an eighth of an inch long, and the torn
+edges having come together again on the removal of the strain, there was
+nothing that a person who was not something of a connoisseur of shoe-leather
+would have noticed. Even less noticeable, and indeed not to be seen at all
+unless one were looking for it, was a slight straining of the stitches uniting
+the upper to the sole. At the toe and on the outer side of each shoe this
+stitching had been dragged until it was visible on a close inspection of the
+join.
+
+These indications, of course, could mean only one thing--the shoes had been
+worn by some one for whom they were too small.
+
+Now it was clear at a glance that Manderson was always thoroughly well shod,
+and careful, perhaps a little vain, of his small and narrow feet. Not one of
+the other shoes in the collection, as I soon ascertained, bore similar marks;
+they had not belonged to a man who squeezed himself into tight shoe-leather.
+Some one who was not Manderson had worn these shoes, and worn them recently;
+the edges of the tears were quite fresh.
+
+The possibility of some one having worn them since Manderson's death was not
+worth considering; the body had only been found about twenty-six hours when I
+was examining the shoes; besides, why should any one wear them? The
+possibility of some one having borrowed Manderson's shoes and spoiled them for
+him while he was alive seemed about as negligible. With others to choose from
+he would not have worn these. Besides, the only men in the place were the
+butler and the two secretaries. But I do not say that I gave those
+possibilities even as much consideration as they deserved, for my thoughts
+were running away with me, and I have always found it good policy, in cases of
+this sort, to let them have their heads. Ever since I had got out of the train
+at Marlstone early that morning I had been steeped in details of the Manderson
+affair; the thing had not once been out of my head. Suddenly the moment had
+come when the daemon wakes and begins to range.
+
+Let me put it less fancifully. After all, it is a detail of psychology
+familiar enough to all whose business or inclination brings them in contact
+with difficult affairs of any kind. Swiftly and spontaneously, when chance or
+effort puts one in possession of the key-fact in any system of baffling
+circumstances, one's ideas seem to rush to group themselves anew in relation
+to that fact, so that they are suddenly rearranged almost before one has
+consciously grasped the significance of the key-fact itself. In the present
+instance, my brain had scarcely formulated within itself the thought,
+'Somebody who was not Manderson has been wearing these shoes,' when there flew
+into my mind a flock of ideas, all of the same character and all bearing upon
+this new notion. It was unheard- of for Manderson to drink much whisky at
+night. It was very unlike him to be untidily dressed, as the body was when
+found--the cuffs dragged up inside the sleeves, the shoes unevenly laced; very
+unlike him not to wash when he rose, and to put on last night's evening shirt
+and collar and underclothing; very unlike him to have his watch in the
+waistcoat pocket that was not lined with leather for its reception. (In my
+first dispatch I mentioned all these points, but neither I nor any one else
+saw anything significant in them when examining the body.) It was very
+strange, in the existing domestic situation, that Manderson should be
+communicative to his wife about his doings, especially at the time of his
+going to bed, when he seldom spoke to her at all. It was extraordinary that
+Manderson should leave his bedroom without his false teeth.
+
+All these thoughts, as I say, came flocking into my mind together, drawn from
+various parts of my memory of the morning's enquiries and observations. They
+had all presented themselves, in far less time than it takes to read them as
+set down here, as I was turning over the shoes, confirming my own certainty on
+the main point. And yet when I confronted the definite idea that had sprung up
+suddenly and unsupported before me--'It was not Manderson who was in the house
+that night'--it seemed a stark absurdity at the first formulating. It was
+certainly Manderson who had dined at the house and gone out with Marlowe in
+the car. People had seen him at close quarters. But was it he who returned at
+ten? That question too seemed absurd enough. But I could not set it aside. It
+seemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the whole expanse
+of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be
+rising. I set myself to think over, one by one, the points that had just
+occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as
+Manderson should have done these things that Manderson would not have done.
+
+I had not to cast about very long for the motive a man might have in forcing
+his feet into Manderson's narrow shoes. The examination of footmarks is very
+well understood by the police. But not only was the man concerned to leave no
+footmarks of his own: he was concerned to leave Manderson's, if any; his whole
+plan, if my guess was right, must have been directed to producing the belief
+that Manderson was in the place that night. Moreover, his plan did not turn
+upon leaving footmarks. He meant to leave the shoes themselves, and he did so.
+The maidservant had found them outside the bedroom door, as Manderson always
+left his shoes, and had polished them, replacing them on the shoe-shelves
+later in the morning, after the body had been found.
+
+When I came to consider in this new light the leaving of the false teeth, an
+explanation of what had seemed the maddest part of the affair broke upon me at
+once. A dental plate is not inseparable from its owner. If my guess was right,
+the unknown had brought the denture to the house with him, and left it in the
+bedroom, with the same object as he had in leaving the shoes: to make it
+impossible that any one should doubt that Manderson had been in the house and
+had gone to bed there. This, of course, led me to the inference that Manderson
+was dead before the false Manderson came to the house, and other things
+confirmed this.
+
+For instance, the clothing, to which I now turned in my review of the
+position. If my guess was right, the unknown in Manderson's shoes had
+certainly had possession of Manderson's trousers, waistcoat, and shooting
+jacket. They were there before my eyes in the bedroom; and Martin had seen the
+jacket--which nobody could have mistaken--upon the man who sat at the
+telephone in the library. It was now quite plain (if my guess was right) that
+this unmistakable garment was a cardinal feature of the unknown's plan. He
+knew that Martin would take him for Manderson at the first glance.
+
+And there my thinking was interrupted by the realization of a thing that had
+escaped me before. So strong had been the influence of the unquestioned
+assumption that it was Manderson who was present that night, that neither I
+nor, as far as I know, any one else had noted the point. Martin had not seen
+the man's face, nor had Mrs Manderson.
+
+Mrs Manderson (judging by her evidence at the inquest, of which, as I have
+said, I had a full report made by the Record stenographers in court) had not
+seen the man at all. She hardly could have done, as I shall show presently.
+She had merely spoken with him as she lay half asleep, resuming a conversation
+which she had had with her living husband about an hour before. Martin, I
+perceived, could only have seen the man's back, as he sat crouching over the
+telephone; no doubt a characteristic pose was imitated there. And the man had
+worn his hat, Manderson's broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in
+the back of a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been
+of about Manderson's build, had had no need for any disguise, apart from the
+jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry.
+
+I paused there to contemplate the coolness and ingenuity of the man. The
+thing, I now began to see, was so safe and easy, provided that his mimicry was
+good enough, and that his nerve held. Those two points assured, only some
+wholly unlikely accident could unmask him.
+
+To come back to my puzzling out of the matter as I sat in the dead man's
+bedroom with the tell-tale shoes before me. The reason for the entrance by the
+window instead of by the front door will already have occurred to any one
+reading this. Entering by the door, the man would almost certainly have been
+heard by the sharp-eared Martin in his pantry just across the hall; he might
+have met him face to face.
+
+Then there was the problem of the whisky. I had not attached much importance
+to it; whisky will sometimes vanish in very queer ways in a household of eight
+or nine persons; but it had seemed strange that it should go in that way on
+that evening. Martin had been plainly quite dumbfounded by the fact. It seemed
+to me now that many a man--fresh, as this man in all likelihood was, from a
+bloody business, from the unclothing of a corpse, and with a desperate part
+still to play--would turn to that decanter as to a friend. No doubt he had a
+drink before sending for Martin; after making that trick with ease and
+success, he probably drank more.
+
+But he had known when to stop. The worst part of the enterprise was before
+him: the business--clearly of such vital importance to him, for whatever
+reason--of shutting himself in Manderson's room and preparing a body of
+convincing evidence of its having been occupied by Manderson; and this with
+the risk--very slight, as no doubt he understood, but how unnerving!--of the
+woman on the other side of the half-open door awaking and somehow discovering
+him. True, if he kept out of her limited field of vision from the bed, she
+could only see him by getting up and going to the door. I found that to a
+person lying in her bed, which stood with its head to the wall a little beyond
+the door, nothing was visible through the doorway but one of the cupboards by
+Manderson's bed-head. Moreover, since this man knew the ways of the household,
+he would think it most likely that Mrs Manderson was asleep. Another point
+with him, I guessed, might have been the estrangement between the husband and
+wife, which they had tried to cloak by keeping up, among other things, their
+usual practice of sleeping in connected rooms, but which was well known to all
+who had anything to do with them. He would hope from this that if Mrs
+Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the supposed presence of her
+husband.
+
+So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom, and saw
+him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my own breath that I
+thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heard the sound of all
+others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice from the adjoining room.
+
+What Mrs Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at the inquest.
+She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had a good run in the
+car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think, we come to a supremely
+significant point. Not only does he--standing rigid there, as I picture him,
+before the dressing-table, listening to the sound of his own leaping
+heart--not only does he answer the lady in the voice of Manderson; he
+volunteers an explanatory statement. He tells her that he has, on a sudden
+inspiration, sent Marlowe in the car to Southampton; that he has sent him to
+bring back some important information from a man leaving for Paris by the
+steamboat that morning. Why these details from a man who had long been
+uncommunicative to his wife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest
+her? Why these details about Marlowe?
+
+Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definite
+propositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the car started,
+and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot--probably at a
+considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; that the body was
+brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outer clothing; that at
+some time round about eleven o'clock a man who was not Manderson, wearing
+Manderson's shoes, hat, and jacket, entered the library by the garden window;
+that he had with him Manderson's black trousers, waistcoat, and motor-coat,
+the denture taken from Manderson's mouth, and the weapon with which he had
+been murdered; that he concealed these, rang the bell for the butler, and sat
+down at the telephone with his hat on and his back to the door; that he was
+occupied with the telephone all the time Martin was in the room; that on going
+up to the bedroom floor he quietly entered Marlowe's room and placed the
+revolver with which the crime had been committed--Marlowe's revolver--in the
+case on the mantelpiece from which it had been taken; and that he then went to
+Manderson's room, placed Manderson's shoes outside the door, threw Manderson's
+garments on a chair, placed the denture in the bowl by the bedside, and
+selected a suit of clothes, a pair of shoes, and a tie from those in the
+bedroom.
+
+Here I will pause in my statement of this man's proceedings to go into a
+question for which the way is now sufficiently prepared:
+
+Who was the false Manderson?
+
+Reviewing what was known to me, or might almost with certainty be surmised,
+about that person, I set down the following five conclusions:
+
+(1.) He had been in close relations with the dead man. In his acting before
+Martin and his speaking to Mrs Manderson he had made no mistake.
+
+(2.) He was of a build not unlike Manderson's, especially as to height and
+breadth of shoulder, which mainly determine the character of the back of a
+seated figure when the head is concealed and the body loosely clothed. But his
+feet were larger, though not greatly larger, than Manderson's.
+
+(3.) He had considerable aptitude for mimicry and acting--probably some
+experience too.
+
+(4.) He had a minute acquaintance with the ways of the Manderson household.
+
+(5.) He was under a vital necessity of creating the belief that Manderson was
+alive and in that house until some time after midnight on the Sunday night.
+
+So much I took as either certain or next door to it. It was as far as I could
+see. And it was far enough.
+
+I proceed to give, in an order corresponding with the numbered paragraphs
+above, such relevant facts as I was able to obtain about Mr John Marlowe, from
+himself and other sources:
+
+(1.) He had been Mr Manderson's private secretary, upon a footing of great
+intimacy, for nearly four years.
+
+(2.) The two men were nearly of the same height, about five feet eleven
+inches; both were powerfully built and heavy in the shoulder. Marlowe, who was
+the younger by some twenty years, was rather slighter about the body, though
+Manderson was a man in good physical condition. Marlowe's shoes (of which I
+examined several pairs) were roughly about one shoemaker's size longer and
+broader than Manderson's.
+
+(3.) In the afternoon of the first day of my investigation, after arriving at
+the results already detailed, I sent a telegram to a personal friend, a Fellow
+of a college at Oxford, whom I knew to be interested in theatrical matters, in
+these terms:
+
+PLEASE WIRE JOHN MARLOWE'S RECORD IN CONNECTION WITH ACTING AT OXFORD SOME
+TIME PAST DECADE VERY URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.
+
+My friend replied in the following telegram, which reached me next morning
+(the morning of the inquest):
+
+MARLOWE WAS MEMBER O.U.D.S FOR THREE YEARS AND PRESIDENT 19- PLAYED BARDOLPH
+CLEON AND MERCUTIO EXCELLED IN CHARACTER ACTING AND IMITATIONS IN GREAT DEMAND
+AT SMOKERS WAS HERO OF SOME HISTORIC HOAXES.
+
+I had been led to send the telegram which brought this very helpful answer by
+seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe's bedroom a photograph of himself and
+two others in the costume of Falstaff's three followers, with an inscription
+from The Merry Wives, and by noting that it bore the imprint of an Oxford firm
+of photographers.
+
+(4.) During his connection with Manderson, Marlowe had lived as one of the
+family. No other person, apart from the servants, had his opportunities for
+knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in detail.
+
+(5.) I ascertained beyond doubt that Marlowe arrived at a hotel in Southampton
+on the Monday morning at 6.30, and there proceeded to carry out the commission
+which, according to his story, and according to the statement made to Mrs
+Manderson in the bedroom by the false Manderson, had been entrusted to him by
+his employer. He had then returned in the car to Marlstone, where he had shown
+great amazement and horror at the news of the murder.
+
+These, I say, are the relevant facts about Marlowe. We must now examine fact
+number 5 (as set out above) in connection with conclusion number 5 about the
+false Manderson.
+
+I would first draw attention to one important fact. The only person who
+professed to have heard Manderson mention Southampton at all before he started
+in the car was Marlowe. His story--confirmed to some extent by what the butler
+overheard--was that the journey was all arranged in a private talk before they
+set out, and he could not say, when I put the question to him, why Manderson
+should have concealed his intentions by giving out that he was going with
+Marlowe for a moonlight drive. This point, however, attracted no attention.
+Marlowe had an absolutely air-tight alibi in his presence at Southampton by
+6.30; nobody thought of him in connection with a murder which must have been
+committed after 12.30--the hour at which Martin the butler had gone to bed.
+But it was the Manderson who came back from the drive who went out of his way
+to mention Southampton openly to two persons. He even went so far as to ring
+up a hotel at Southampton and ask questions which bore out Marlowe's story of
+his errand. This was the call he was busy with when Martin was in the library.
+
+Now let us consider the alibi. If Manderson was in the house that night, and
+if he did not leave it until some time after 12.30, Marlowe could not by any
+possibility have had a direct hand in the murder. It is a question of the
+distance between Marlstone and Southampton. If he had left Marlstone in the
+car at the hour when he is supposed to have done so--between 10 and
+10.30--with a message from Manderson, the run would be quite an easy one to do
+in the time. But it would be physically impossible for the car--a 15 h.p.
+four-cylinder Northumberland, an average medium-power car--to get to
+Southampton by half-past six unless it left Marlstone by midnight at latest.
+Motorists who will examine the road-map and make the calculations required, as
+I did in Manderson's library that day, will agree that on the facts as they
+appeared there was absolutely no case against Marlowe.
+
+But even if they were not as they appeared; if Manderson was dead by eleven
+o'clock, and if at about that time Marlowe impersonated him at White Gables;
+if Marlowe retired to Manderson's bedroom--how can all this be reconciled with
+his appearance next morning at Southampton? He had to get out of the house,
+unseen and unheard, and away in the car by midnight. And Martin, the
+sharp-eared Martin, was sitting up until 12.30 in his pantry, with the door
+open, listening for the telephone bell. Practically he was standing sentry
+over the foot of the staircase, the only staircase leading down from the
+bedroom floor.
+
+With this difficulty we arrive at the last and crucial phase of my
+investigation. Having the foregoing points clearly in mind, I spent the rest
+of the day before the inquest in talking to various persons and in going over
+my story, testing it link by link. I could only find the one weakness which
+seemed to be involved in Martin's sitting up until 12.30; and since his having
+been instructed to do so was certainly a part of the plan, meant to clinch the
+alibi for Marlowe, I knew there must be an explanation somewhere. If I could
+not find that explanation, my theory was valueless. I must be able to show
+that at the time Martin went up to bed the man who had shut himself in
+Manderson's bedroom might have been many miles away on the road to
+Southampton.
+
+I had, however, a pretty good idea already--as perhaps the reader of these
+lines has by this time, if I have made myself clear--of how the escape of the
+false Manderson before midnight had been contrived. But I did not want what I
+was now about to do to be known. If I had chanced to be discovered at work,
+there would have been no concealing the direction of my suspicions. I resolved
+not to test them on this point until the next day, during the opening
+proceedings at the inquest. This was to be held, I knew, at the hotel, and I
+reckoned upon having White Gables to myself so far as the principal inmates
+were concerned.
+
+So in fact it happened. By the time the proceedings at the hotel had begun I
+was hard at work at White Gables. I had a camera with me. I made search, on
+principles well known to and commonly practised by the police, and often
+enough by myself, for certain indications. Without describing my search, I may
+say at once that I found and was able to photograph two fresh fingerprints,
+very large and distinct, on the polished front of the right-hand top drawer of
+the chest of drawers in Manderson's bedroom; five more (among a number of
+smaller and less recent impressions made by other hands) on the glasses of the
+French window in Mrs Manderson's room, a window which always stood open at
+night with a curtain before it; and three more upon the glass bowl in which
+Manderson's dental plate had been found lying.
+
+I took the bowl with me from White Gables. I took also a few articles which I
+selected from Marlowe's bedroom, as bearing the most distinct of the
+innumerable fingerprints which are always to be found upon toilet articles in
+daily use. I already had in my possession, made upon leaves cut from my pocket
+diary, some excellent fingerprints of Marlowe's which he had made in my
+presence without knowing it. I had shown him the leaves, asking if he
+recognized them; and the few seconds during which he had held them in his
+fingers had sufficed to leave impressions which I was afterwards able to bring
+out.
+
+By six o'clock in the evening, two hours after the jury had brought in their
+verdict against a person or persons unknown, I had completed my work, and was
+in a position to state that two of the five large prints made on the window-
+glasses, and the three on the bowl, were made by the left hand of Marlowe;
+that the remaining three on the window and the two on the drawer were made by
+his right hand.
+
+By eight o'clock I had made at the establishment of Mr H. T. Copper,
+photographer, of Bishopsbridge, and with his assistance, a dozen enlarged
+prints of the finger-marks of Marlowe, clearly showing the identity of those
+which he unknowingly made in my presence and those left upon articles in his
+bedroom, with those found by me as I have described, and thus establishing the
+facts that Marlowe was recently in Manderson's bedroom, where he had in the
+ordinary way no business, and in Mrs Manderson's room, where he had still
+less. I hope it may be possible to reproduce these prints for publication with
+this dispatch.
+
+At nine o'clock I was back in my room at the hotel and sitting down to begin
+this manuscript. I had my story complete. I bring it to a close by advancing
+these further propositions: that on the night of the murder the impersonator
+of Manderson, being in Manderson's bedroom, told Mrs Manderson, as he had
+already told Martin, that Marlowe was at that moment on his way to
+Southampton; that having made his dispositions in the room, he switched off
+the light, and lay in the bed in his clothes; that he waited until he was
+assured that Mrs Manderson was asleep; that he then arose and stealthily
+crossed Mrs Manderson's bedroom in his stocking feet, having under his arm the
+bundle of clothing and shoes for the body; that he stepped behind the curtain,
+pushing the doors of the window a little further open with his hands, strode
+over the iron railing of the balcony, and let himself down until only a drop
+of a few feet separated him from the soft turf of the lawn.
+
+All this might very well have been accomplished within half an hour of his
+entering Manderson's bedroom, which, according to Martin, he did at about
+half- past eleven.
+
+What followed your readers and the authorities may conjecture for themselves.
+The corpse was found next morning clothed--rather untidily. Marlowe in the car
+appeared at Southampton by half-past six.
+
+I bring this manuscript to an end in my sitting-room at the hotel at
+Marlstone. It is four o'clock in the morning. I leave for London by the noon
+train from Bishopsbridge, and immediately after arriving I shall place these
+pages in your hands. I ask you to communicate the substance of them to the
+Criminal Investigation Department.
+
+PHILIP TRENT.
+
+CHAPTER XII: Evil Days
+
+'I am returning the cheque you sent for what I did on the Manderson case,'
+Trent wrote to Sir James Molloy from Munich, whither he had gone immediately
+after handing in at the Record office a brief dispatch bringing his work on
+the case to an unexciting close. 'What I sent you wasn't worth one-tenth of
+the amount; but I should have no scruple about pocketing it if I hadn't taken
+a fancy--never mind why--not to touch any money at all for this business. I
+should like you, if there is no objection, to pay for the stuff at your
+ordinary space-rate, and hand the money to some charity which does not devote
+itself to bullying people, if you know of any such. I have come to this place
+to see some old friends and arrange my ideas, and the idea that comes out
+uppermost is that for a little while I want some employment with activity in
+it. I find I can't paint at all: I couldn't paint a fence. Will you try me as
+your Own Correspondent somewhere? If you can find me a good adventure I will
+send you good accounts. After that I could settle down and work.'
+
+Sir James sent him instructions by telegram to proceed at once to Kurland and
+Livonia, where Citizen Browning was abroad again, and town and countryside
+blazed in revolt. It was a roving commission, and for two months Trent
+followed his luck. It served him not less well than usual. He was the only
+correspondent who saw General Dragilew killed in the street at Volmar by a
+girl of eighteen. He saw burnings, lynchings, fusillades, hangings; each day
+his soul sickened afresh at the imbecilities born of misrule. Many nights he
+lay down in danger. Many days he went fasting. But there was never an evening
+or a morning when he did not see the face of the woman whom he hopelessly
+loved.
+
+He discovered in himself an unhappy pride at the lasting force of this
+infatuation. It interested him as a phenomenon; it amazed and enlightened him.
+Such a thing had not visited him before. It confirmed so much that he had
+found dubious in the recorded experience of men.
+
+It was not that, at thirty-two, he could pretend to ignorance of this world of
+emotion. About his knowledge let it be enough to say that what he had learned
+had come unpursued and unpurchased, and was without intolerable memories;
+broken to the realities of sex, he was still troubled by its inscrutable
+history. He went through life full of a strange respect for certain feminine
+weakness and a very simple terror of certain feminine strength. He had held to
+a rather lukewarm faith that something remained in him to be called forth, and
+that the voice that should call would be heard in its own time, if ever, and
+not through any seeking.
+
+But he had not thought of the possibility that, if this proved true some day,
+the truth might come in a sinister shape. The two things that had taken him
+utterly by surprise in the matter of his feeling towards Mabel Manderson were
+the insane suddenness of its uprising in full strength and its extravagant
+hopelessness. Before it came, he had been much disposed to laugh at the
+permanence of unrequited passion as a generous boyish delusion. He knew now
+that he had been wrong, and he was living bitterly in the knowledge.
+
+Before the eye of his fancy the woman always came just as she was when he had
+first had sight of her, with the gesture which he had surprised as he walked
+past unseen on the edge of the cliff; that great gesture of passionate joy in
+her new liberty which had told him more plainly than speech that her widowhood
+was a release from torment, and had confirmed with terrible force the
+suspicion, active in his mind before, that it was her passport to happiness
+with a man whom she loved. He could not with certainty name to himself the
+moment when he had first suspected that it might be so. The seed of the
+thought must have been sown, he believed, at his first meeting with Marlowe;
+his mind would have noted automatically that such evident strength and grace,
+with the sort of looks and manners that the tall young man possessed, might go
+far with any woman of unfixed affections. And the connection of this with what
+Mr Cupples had told him of the Mandersons' married life must have formed
+itself in the unconscious depths of his mind. Certainly it had presented
+itself as an already established thing when he began, after satisfying himself
+of the identity of the murderer, to cast about for the motive of the crime.
+Motive, motive! How desperately he had sought for another, turning his back
+upon that grim thought, that Marlowe-- obsessed by passion like himself, and
+privy perhaps to maddening truths about the wife's unhappiness--had taken a
+leaf, the guiltiest, from the book of Bothwell. But in all his investigations
+at the time, in all his broodings on the matter afterwards, he had been able
+to discover nothing that could prompt Marlowe to such a deed--nothing but that
+temptation, the whole strength of which he could not know, but which if it had
+existed must have pressed urgently upon a bold spirit in which scruple had
+been somehow paralysed. If he could trust his senses at ail, the young man was
+neither insane nor by nature evil. But that could not clear him. Murder for a
+woman's sake, he thought, was not a rare crime, Heaven knew! If the modern
+feebleness of impulse in the comfortable classes, and their respect for the
+modern apparatus of detection, had made it rare among them, it was yet far
+from impossible. It only needed a man of equal daring and intelligence, his
+soul drugged with the vapours of an intoxicating intrigue, to plan and perform
+such a deed.
+
+A thousand times, with a heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason away
+the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been intended
+against her husband's life. That she knew all the truth after the thing was
+done he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in his presence when the
+question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly put, had swept away his last
+hope that there was no love between the pair, and had seemed to him, moreover,
+to speak of dread of discovery. In any case, she knew the truth after reading
+what he had left with her; and it was certain that no public suspicion had
+been cast upon Marlowe since. She had destroyed his manuscript, then, and
+taken him at his word to keep the secret that threatened her lover's life.
+
+But it was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was brewing,
+and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent's mind. She might have
+suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that she was aware of
+the whole plot, that she connived? He could never forget that his first
+suspicion of Marlowe's motive in the crime had been roused by the fact that
+his escape was made through the lady's room. At that time, when he had not yet
+seen her, he had been ready enough to entertain the idea of her equal guilt
+and her co-operation. He had figured to himself some passionate hysterique,
+merciless as a cat in her hate and her love, a zealous abettor, perhaps even
+the ruling spirit in the crime.
+
+Then he had seen her, had spoken with her, had helped her in her weakness; and
+such suspicions, since their first meeting, had seemed the vilest of infamy.
+He had seen her eyes and her mouth; he had breathed the woman's atmosphere.
+Trent was one of those who fancy they can scent true wickedness in the air. In
+her presence he had felt an inward certainty of her ultimate goodness of
+heart; and it was nothing against this that she had abandoned herself a
+moment, that day on the cliff, to the sentiment of relief at the ending of her
+bondage, of her years of starved sympathy and unquickened motherhood. That she
+had turned to Marlowe in her destitution he believed; that she had any
+knowledge of his deadly purpose he did not believe.
+
+And yet, morning and evening the sickening doubts returned, and he recalled
+again that it was almost in her presence that Marlowe had made his
+preparations in the bedroom of the murdered man, that it was by the window of
+her own chamber that he had escaped from the house. Had he forgotten his
+cunning and taken the risk of telling her then? Or had he, as Trent thought
+more likely, still played his part with her then, and stolen off while she
+slept? He did not think she had known of the masquerade when she gave evidence
+at the inquest; it read like honest evidence. Or--the question would never be
+silenced, though he scorned it- -had she lain expecting the footsteps in the
+room and the whisper that should tell her that it was done? Among the foul
+possibilities of human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and
+black deceit as well were hidden behind that good and straight and gentle
+seeming?
+
+These thoughts would scarcely leave him when he was alone.
+
+Trent served Sir James, well earning his pay for six months, and then returned
+to Paris where he went to work again with a better heart. His powers had
+returned to him, and he began to live more happily than he had expected among
+a tribe of strangely assorted friends, French, English, and American, artists,
+poets, journalists, policemen, hotel-keepers, soldiers, lawyers, business men,
+and others. His old faculty of sympathetic interest in his fellows won for
+him, just as in his student days, privileges seldom extended to the Briton. He
+enjoyed again the rare experience of being taken into the bosom of a
+Frenchman's family. He was admitted to the momentous confidence of les jeunes,
+and found them as sure that they had surprised the secrets of art and life as
+the departed jeunes of ten years before had been.
+
+The bosom of the Frenchman's family was the same as those he had known in the
+past, even to the patterns of the wallpaper and movables. But the jeunes, he
+perceived with regret, were totally different from their forerunners. They
+were much more shallow and puerile, much less really clever. The secrets they
+wrested from the Universe were not such important and interesting secrets as
+had been wrested by the old jeunes. This he believed and deplored until one
+day he found himself seated at a restaurant next to a too well-fed man whom,
+in spite of the ravages of comfortable living, he recognized as one of the
+jeunes of his own period. This one had been wont to describe himself and three
+or four others as the Hermits of the New Parnassus. He and his school had
+talked outside cafes and elsewhere more than solitaries do as a rule; but,
+then, rules were what they had vowed themselves to destroy. They proclaimed
+that verse, in particular, was free. The Hermit of the New Parnassus was now
+in the Ministry of the Interior, and already decorated: he expressed to Trent
+the opinion that what France needed most was a hand of iron. He was able to
+quote the exact price paid for certain betrayals of the country, of which
+Trent had not previously heard.
+
+Thus he was brought to make the old discovery that it was he who had changed,
+like his friend of the Administration, and that les jeunes were still the
+same. Yet he found it hard to say what precisely he had lost that so greatly
+mattered; unless indeed it were so simple a thing as his high spirits.
+
+One morning in June, as he descended the slope of the Rue des Martyrs, he saw
+approaching a figure that he remembered. He glanced quickly round, for the
+thought of meeting Mr Bunner again was unacceptable. For some time he had
+recognized that his wound was healing under the spell of creative work; he
+thought less often of the woman he loved, and with less pain. He would not
+have the memory of those three days reopened.
+
+But the straight and narrow thoroughfare offered no refuge, and the American
+saw him almost at once.
+
+His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man. They sat
+long over a meal, and Mr Bunner talked. Trent listened to him, now that he was
+in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then contributing a question or
+remark. Besides liking his companion, he enjoyed his conversation, with its
+unending verbal surprises, for its own sake.
+
+Bunner was, it appeared, resident in Paris as the chief Continental agent of
+the Manderson firm, and fully satisfied with his position and prospects. He
+discoursed on these for some twenty minutes. This subject at length exhausted,
+he went on to tell Trent, who confessed that he had been away from England for
+a year, that Marlowe had shortly after the death of Manderson entered his
+father's business, which was now again in a flourishing state, and had already
+come to be practically in control of it. They had kept up their intimacy, and
+were even now planning a holiday for the summer. Mr Bunner spoke with generous
+admiration of his friend's talent for affairs. 'Jack Marlowe has a natural big
+head,' he declared, 'and if he had more experience, I wouldn't want to have
+him up against me. He would put a crimp in me every time.'
+
+As the American's talk flowed on, Trent listened with a slowly growing
+perplexity. It became more and more plain that something was very wrong in his
+theory of the situation; there was no mention of its central figure. Presently
+Mr Bunner mentioned that Marlowe was engaged to be married to an Irish girl,
+whose charms he celebrated with native enthusiasm.
+
+Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table. What could have
+happened? His ideas were sliding and shifting. At last he forced himself to
+put a direct question.
+
+Mr Bunner was not very fully informed. He knew that Mrs Manderson had left
+England immediately after the settlement of her husband's affairs, and had
+lived for some time in Italy. She had returned not long ago to London, where
+she had decided not to live in the house in Mayfair, and had bought a smaller
+one in the Hampstead neighbourhood; also, he understood, one somewhere in the
+country. She was said to go but little into society. 'And all the good hard
+dollars just waiting for some one to spraddle them around,' said Mr Bunner,
+with a note of pathos in his voice. 'Why, she has money to burn--money to feed
+to the birds-- and nothing doing. The old man left her more than half his wad.
+And think of the figure she might make in the world. She is beautiful, and she
+is the best woman I ever met, too. But she couldn't ever seem to get the habit
+of spending money the way it ought to be spent.'
+
+His words now became a soliloquy: Trent's thoughts were occupying all his
+attention. He pleaded business soon, and the two men parted with cordiality.
+
+Half an hour later Trent was in his studio, swiftly and mechanically 'cleaning
+up'. He wanted to know what had happened; somehow he must find out. He could
+never approach herself, he knew; he would never bring back to her the shame of
+that last encounter with him; it was scarcely likely that he would even set
+eyes on her. But he must get to know!... Cupples was in London, Marlowe was
+there .... And, anyhow, he was sick of Paris.
+
+Such thoughts came and went; and below them all strained the fibres of an
+unseen cord that dragged mercilessly at his heart, and that he cursed bitterly
+in the moments when he could not deny to himself that it was there. The folly,
+the useless, pitiable folly of it!
+
+In twenty-four hours his feeble roots in Paris had been torn out. He was
+looking over a leaden sea at the shining fortress-wall of the Dover cliffs.
+
+But though he had instinctively picked out the lines of a set purpose from
+among the welter of promptings in his mind, he found it delayed at the very
+outset.
+
+He had decided that he must first see Mr Cupples, who would be in a position
+to tell him much more than the American knew. But Mr Cupples was away on his
+travels, not expected to return for a month; and Trent had no reasonable
+excuse for hastening his return. Marlowe he would not confront until he had
+tried at least to reconnoitre the position. He constrained himself not to
+commit the crowning folly of seeking out Mrs Manderson's house in Hampstead;
+he could not enter it, and the thought of the possibility of being seen by her
+lurking in its neighbourhood brought the blood to his face.
+
+He stayed at an hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr Cupples's return
+attempted vainly to lose himself in work.
+
+At the end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager
+precipitancy. She had let fall some word at their last meeting, of a taste for
+music. Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly, to the opera. He
+might see her; and if, in spite of his caution, she caught sight of him, they
+could be blind to each other's presence--anybody might happen to go to the
+opera.
+
+So he went alone each evening, passing as quickly as he might through the
+people in the vestibule; and each evening he came away knowing that she had
+not been in the house. It was a habit that yielded him a sort of satisfaction
+along with the guilty excitement of his search; for he too loved music, and
+nothing gave him so much peace while its magic endured.
+
+One night as he entered, hurrying through the brilliant crowd, he felt a touch
+on his arm. Flooded with an incredible certainty at the touch, he turned.
+
+It was she: so much more radiant in the absence of grief and anxiety, in the
+fact that she was smiling, and in the allurement of evening dress, that he
+could not speak. She, too, breathed a little quickly, and there was a light of
+daring in her eyes and cheeks as she greeted him.
+
+Her words were few. 'I wouldn't miss a note of Tristan,' she said, 'nor must
+you. Come and see me in the interval.' She gave him the number of the box.
+
+CHAPTER XIII: Eruption
+
+The following two months were a period in Trent's life that he has never since
+remembered without shuddering. He met Mrs Manderson half a dozen times, and
+each time her cool friendliness, a nicely calculated mean between mere
+acquaintance and the first stage of intimacy, baffled and maddened him. At the
+opera he had found her, to his further amazement, with a certain Mrs Wallace,
+a frisky matron whom he had known from childhood. Mrs Manderson, it appeared,
+on her return from Italy, had somehow wandered into circles to which he
+belonged by nurture and disposition. It came, she said, of her having pitched
+her tent in their hunting- grounds; several of his friends were near
+neighbours. He had a dim but horrid recollection of having been on that
+occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot
+loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to
+time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs Wallace. The other
+lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearance of
+agitation with which she had stopped him in the vestibule. She had spoken
+pleasantly to him of her travels, of her settlement in London, and of people
+whom they both knew.
+
+During the last half of the opera, which he had stayed in the box to hear, he
+had been conscious of nothing, as he sat behind them, but the angle of her
+cheek and the mass of her hair, the lines of her shoulder and arm, her hand
+upon the cushion. The black hair had seemed at last a forest, immeasurable,
+pathless and enchanted, luring him to a fatal adventure .... At the end he had
+been pale and subdued, parting with them rather formally.
+
+The next time he saw her--it was at a country house where both were
+guests--and the subsequent times, he had had himself in hand. He had matched
+her manner and had acquitted himself, he thought, decently, considering--
+
+Considering that he lived in an agony of bewilderment and remorse and longing.
+He could make nothing, absolutely nothing, of her attitude. That she had read
+his manuscript and understood the suspicion indicated in his last question to
+her at White Gables was beyond the possibility of doubt. Then how could she
+treat him thus and frankly, as she treated all the world of men who had done
+no injury?
+
+For it had become clear to his intuitive sense, for all the absence of any
+shade of differentiation in her outward manner, that an injury had been done,
+and that she had felt it. Several times, on the rare and brief occasions when
+they had talked apart, he had warning from the same sense that she was
+approaching this subject; and each time he had turned the conversation with
+the ingenuity born of fear. Two resolutions he made. The first was that when
+he had completed a commissioned work which tied him to London he would go away
+and stay away. The strain was too great. He no longer burned to know the
+truth; he wanted nothing to confirm his fixed internal conviction by faith,
+that he had blundered, that he had misread the situation, misinterpreted her
+tears, written himself down a slanderous fool. He speculated no more on
+Marlowe's motive in the killing of Manderson. Mr Cupples returned to London,
+and Trent asked him nothing. He knew now that he had been right in those
+words--Trent remembered them for the emphasis with which they were spoken--'So
+long as she considered herself bound to him... no power on earth could have
+persuaded her.' He met Mrs Manderson at dinner at her uncle's large and
+tomb-like house in Bloomsbury, and there he conversed most of the evening with
+a professor of archaeology from Berlin.
+
+His other resolution was that he would not be with her alone.
+
+But when, a few days after, she wrote asking him to come and see her on the
+following afternoon, he made no attempt to excuse himself. This was a formal
+challenge.
+
+While she celebrated the rites of tea, and for some little time thereafter,
+she joined with such natural ease in his slightly fevered conversation on
+matters of the day that he began to hope she had changed what he could not
+doubt had been her resolve, to corner him and speak to him gravely. She was to
+all appearance careless now, smiling so that he recalled, not for the first
+time since that night at the opera, what was written long ago of a Princess of
+Brunswick: 'Her mouth has ten thousand charms that touch the soul.' She made a
+tour of the beautiful room where she had received him, singling out this
+treasure or that from the spoils of a hundred bric-a-brac shops, laughing over
+her quests, discoveries, and bargainings. And when he asked if she would
+delight him again with a favourite piece of his which he had heard her play at
+another house, she consented at once.
+
+She played with a perfection of execution and feeling that moved him now as it
+had moved him before. 'You are a musician born,' he said quietly when she had
+finished, and the last tremor of the music had passed away. 'I knew that
+before I first heard you.'
+
+'I have played a great deal ever since I can remember. It has been a great
+comfort to me,' she said simply, and half-turned to him smiling. 'When did you
+first detect music in me? Oh, of course: I was at the opera. But that wouldn't
+prove much, would it?'
+
+'No,' he said abstractedly, his sense still busy with the music that had just
+ended. 'I think I knew it the first time I saw you.' Then understanding of his
+own words came to him, and turned him rigid. For the first time the past had
+been invoked.
+
+There was a short silence. Mrs Manderson looked at Trent, then hastily looked
+away. Colour began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her lips as if for
+whistling. Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders which he remembered
+she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself in a chair opposite to
+him.
+
+'That speech of yours will do as well as anything,' she began slowly, looking
+at the point of her shoe, 'to bring us to what I wanted to say. I asked you
+here today on purpose, Mr Trent, because I couldn't bear it any longer. Ever
+since the day you left me at White Gables I have been saying to myself that it
+didn't matter what you thought of me in that affair; that you were certainly
+not the kind of man to speak to others of what you believed about me, after
+what you had told me of your reasons for suppressing your manuscript. I asked
+myself how it could matter. But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter.
+It mattered horribly. Because what you thought was not true.' She raised her
+eyes and met his gaze calmly. Trent, with a completely expressionless face,
+returned her look.
+
+'Since I began to know you,' he said, 'I have ceased to think it.' 'Thank
+you,' said Mrs Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply. Then, playing with
+a glove, she added, 'But I want you to know what was true.
+
+I did not know if I should ever see you again,' she went on in a lower voice,
+'but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this. I thought it would
+not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me an understanding person; and
+besides, a woman who has been married isn't expected to have the same sort of
+difficulty as a young girl in speaking about such things when it is necessary.
+And then we did meet again, and I discovered that it was very difficult
+indeed. You made it difficult.'
+
+'How?' he asked quietly.
+
+'I don't know,' said the lady. 'But yes--I do know. It was just because you
+treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anything of that
+sort about me. I had always supposed that if I saw you again you would turn on
+me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you asked me that last
+question-- do you remember?--at White Gables. Instead of that you were just
+like any other acquaintance. You were just'--she hesitated and spread out her
+hands--'nice. You know. After that first time at the opera when I spoke to you
+I went home positively wondering if you had really recognized me. I mean, I
+thought you might have recognized my face without remembering who it was.'
+
+A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.
+
+She smiled deprecatingly. 'Well, I couldn't remember if you had spoken my
+name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the Iretons', you
+did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those few days I almost
+brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began to feel that you wouldn't
+let me, that you would slip away from the subject if I approached it. Wasn't I
+right? Tell me, please.' He nodded. 'But why?' He remained silent.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'I will finish what I had to say, and then you will tell me,
+I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began to understand that you
+wouldn't let me talk of the matter to you, it made me more determined than
+ever. I suppose you didn't realize that I would insist on speaking even if you
+were quite discouraging. I dare say I couldn't have done it if I had been
+guilty, as you thought. You walked into my parlour today, never thinking I
+should dare. Well, now you see.'
+
+Mrs Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she was wont to
+say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardour of her purpose to
+annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so long she felt herself
+mistress of the situation.
+
+'I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made,' she continued, as
+Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked at her enigmatically.
+'You will have to believe it, Mr Trent; it is utterly true to life, with its
+confusions and hidden things and cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes
+that nobody thinks twice about taking for facts. Please understand that I
+don't blame you in the least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you
+did. You knew that I was estranged from my husband, and you knew what that so
+often means. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an
+injured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain it
+away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself at first,
+before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was disappointed in me
+because I couldn't take a brilliant lead in society. Well, that was true; he
+was so. But I could see you weren't convinced. You had guessed what it took me
+much longer to see, because I knew how irrational it was. Yes; my husband was
+jealous of John Marlowe; you divined that.
+
+'Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it was
+such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliation and
+strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. You practically
+asked me if my husband's secretary was not my lover, Mr Trent--I have to say
+it, because I want you to understand why I broke down and made a scene. You
+took that for a confession; you thought I was guilty of that, and I think you
+even thought I might be a party to the crime, that I had consented .... That
+did hurt me; but perhaps you couldn't have thought anything else--I don't
+know.'
+
+Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head at the
+words. He did not raise it again as she continued. 'But really it was simple
+shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of all the misery
+that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled myself together again
+you had gone.'
+
+She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer, and
+drew out a long, sealed envelope.
+
+'This is the manuscript you left with me,' she said. 'I have read it through
+again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness
+in things of this kind.' A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face,
+and was gone. I thought it was splendid, Mr Trent--I almost forgot that the
+story was my own, I was so interested. And I want to say now, while I have
+this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act in
+sacrificing this triumph of yours rather than put a woman's reputation in
+peril. If all had been as you supposed, the facts must have come out when the
+police took up the case you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just
+what you had done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most
+crushed by your suspicion.'
+
+As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were bright.
+Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. He did not seem to
+hear. She put the envelope into his hand as it lay open, palm upwards, on his
+knee. There was a touch of gentleness about the act which made him look up.
+
+'Can you--' he began slowly.
+
+She raised her hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr Trent; let me finish
+before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken
+the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the
+triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofa from which she had first
+risen. 'I am telling you a thing that nobody else knows. Everybody knew, I
+suppose, that something had come between us, though I did everything in my
+power to hide it. But I don't think any one in the world ever guessed what my
+husband's notion was. People who know me don't think that sort of thing about
+me, I believe. And his fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will
+tell you what the situation was. Mr Marlowe and I had been friendly enough
+since he came to us. For all his cleverness--my husband said he had a keener
+brain than any man he knew--I looked upon him as practically a boy. You know I
+am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of ambition
+that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me what I thought was
+the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about it I said, "His
+manners." He surprised me very much by looking black at that, and after a
+silence he said, "Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman; that's so", not looking at me.
+
+'Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when I found
+that Mr Marlowe had done what I always expected he would do--fallen
+desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgust he had picked out
+the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those whom we used to meet. She
+was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very
+beautiful, well educated, very good at games--what they call a
+woman-athlete--and caring for nothing on earth but her own amusement. She was
+one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest.
+Every one knew it, and Mr Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete
+fool of him, brain and all. I don't know how she managed it, but I can
+imagine. She liked him, of course; but it was quite plain to me that she was
+playing with him. The whole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious.
+One day I asked him to row me in a boat on the lake--all this happened at our
+house by Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time
+before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think, and he
+took it admirably, but he didn't believe me a bit. He had the impudence to
+tell me that I misunderstood Alice's nature. When I hinted at his prospects--I
+knew he had scarcely anything of his own--he said that if she loved him he
+could make himself a position in the world. I dare say that was true, with his
+abilities and his friends--he is rather well connected, you know, as well as
+popular. But his enlightenment came very soon after that.
+
+'My husband helped me out of the boat when we got back. He joked with Mr
+Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed he never
+once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why I took so long
+to realize what he thought about him and myself. But to me he was reserved and
+silent that evening--not angry. He was always perfectly cold and
+expressionless to me after he took this idea into his head. After dinner he
+only spoke to me once. Mr Marlowe was telling him about some horse he had
+bought for the farm in Kentucky, and my husband looked at me and said,
+"Marlowe may be a gentleman, but he seldom quits loser in a horse-trade." I
+was surprised at that, but at that time--and even on the next occasion when he
+found us together--I didn't understand what was in his mind. That next time
+was the morning when Mr Marlowe received a sweet little note from the girl
+asking for his congratulations on her engagement. It was in our New York
+house. He looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, and
+afterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was the matter.
+He didn't say anything, but just handed me the note, and turned away to the
+window. I was very glad that was all over, but terribly sorry for him too, of
+course. I don't remember what I said, but I remember putting my hand on his
+arm as he stood there staring out on the garden and just then my husband
+appeared at the open door with some papers. He just glanced at us, and then
+turned and walked quietly back to his study. I thought that he might have
+heard what I was saying to comfort Mr Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of
+him to slip away. Mr Marlowe neither saw nor heard him. My husband left the
+house that morning for the West while I was out. Even then I did not
+understand. He used often to go off suddenly like that, if some business
+project called him.
+
+'It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the situation. He
+was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me he asked me where Mr
+Marlowe was. Somehow the tone of his question told me everything in a flash.
+
+'I almost gasped; I was wild with indignation. You know, Mr Trent, I don't
+think I should have minded at all if any one had thought me capable of openly
+breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebody else. I dare say I might
+have done that. But that coarse suspicion... a man whom he trusted... and the
+notion of concealment. It made me see scarlet. Every shred of pride in me was
+strung up till I quivered, and I swore to myself on the spot that I would
+never show by any word or sign that I was conscious of his having such a
+thought about me. I would behave exactly as I always had behaved, I
+determined--and that I did, up to the very last. Though I knew that a wall had
+been made between us now that could never be broken down--even if he asked my
+pardon and obtained it--I never once showed that I noticed any change.
+
+'And so it went on. I never could go through such a time again. My husband
+showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we were alone--and that
+was only when it was unavoidable. He never once alluded to what was in his
+mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it. Both of us were stubborn in
+our different attitudes. To Mr Marlowe he was more friendly, if anything, than
+before--Heaven only knows why. I fancied he was planning some sort of revenge;
+but that was only a fancy. Certainly Mr Marlowe never knew what was suspected
+of him. He and I remained good friends, though we never spoke of anything
+intimate after that disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no
+less of him than I had always done. Then we came to England and to White
+Gables, and after that followed--my husband's dreadful end.'
+
+She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality. 'You know about the
+rest- -so much more than any other man,' she added, and glanced up at him with
+a quaint expression.
+
+Trent wondered at that look, but the wonder was only a passing shadow on his
+thought. Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness. All the
+vivacity had returned to his face. Long before the lady had ended her story he
+had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from the first days of their
+renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story that his imagination had built
+up at White Gables, upon foundations that seemed so good to him.
+
+He said, 'I don't know how to begin the apologies I have to make. There are no
+words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I realize what a
+crude, cock-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion was. Yes, I
+suspected--you! I had almost forgotten that I was ever such a fool.
+Almost--not quite. Sometimes when I have been alone I have remembered that
+folly, and poured contempt on it. I have tried to imagine what the facts were.
+I have tried to excuse myself.'
+
+She interrupted him quickly. 'What nonsense! Do be sensible, Mr Trent. You had
+only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to me with your
+solution of the mystery.' Again the quaint expression came and was gone. 'If
+you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like you to pretend to a woman
+like me that I had innocence written all over me in large letters--so large
+that you couldn't believe very strong evidence against me after seeing me
+twice.'
+
+'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he demanded with a sort of fierceness.
+'Do you take me for a person without any normal instincts? I don't say you
+impress people as a simple, transparent sort of character--what Mr Calvin
+Bunner calls a case of open-work; I don't say a stranger might not think you
+capable of wickedness, if there was good evidence for it: but I say that a man
+who, after seeing you and being in your atmosphere, could associate you with
+the particular kind of abomination I imagined, is a fool--the kind of fool who
+is afraid to trust his senses .... As for my making it hard for you to
+approach the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I
+understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at the
+notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you by my
+actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would pardon me
+without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall. And yet if you
+could know--' He stopped short, and then added quietly, 'Well, will you accept
+all that as an apology? The very scrubbiest sackcloth made, and the grittiest
+ashes on the heap....I didn't mean to get worked up,' he ended lamely.
+
+Mrs Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knew well by
+this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the perfect expression
+of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her merely for his delight in
+the sound of it.
+
+'But I love to see you worked up,' she said. 'The bump with which you always
+come down as soon as you realize that you are up in the air at all is quite
+delightful. Oh, we're actually both laughing. What a triumphant end to our
+explanations, after all my dread of the time when I should have it out with
+you. And now it's all over, and you know; and we'll never speak of it any
+more.'
+
+'I hope not,' Trent said in sincere relief. 'If you're resolved to be so kind
+as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your blasting
+me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs Manderson, I had better go. Changing the
+subject after this would be like playing puss-in-the-corner after an
+earthquake.' He rose to his feet.
+
+'You are right,' she said. 'But no! Wait. There is another thing--part of the
+same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while we are about
+it. Please sit down.' She took the envelope containing Trent's manuscript
+dispatch from the table where he had laid it. 'I want to speak about this.'
+
+His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. 'So do I, if you do,' he
+said slowly. 'I want very much to know one thing.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy, why did
+you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I had been wrong
+about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that you could not
+bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round a man's neck,
+whatever he might have done. I can quite understand that feeling. Was that
+what it was? Another possibility I thought of was that you knew of something
+that was by way of justifying or excusing Marlowe's act. Or I thought you
+might have a simple horror, quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of
+appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses
+in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They
+feel there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.'
+
+Mrs Manderson tapped her lips with the envelope without quite concealing a
+smile. 'You didn't think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr Trent,' she
+said.
+
+'No.' He looked puzzled.
+
+'I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr Marlowe as well as
+about me. No, no; you needn't tell me that the chain of evidence is complete.
+I know it is. But evidence of what? Of Mr Marlowe having impersonated my
+husband that night, and having escaped by way of my window, and built up an
+alibi. I have read your dispatch again and again, Mr Trent, and I don't see
+that those things can be doubted.'
+
+Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the brief pause
+that followed. Mrs Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupied air, as one
+collecting her ideas.
+
+'I did not make any use of the facts found out by you,' she slowly said at
+last, 'because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal to Mr
+Marlowe.'
+
+'I agree with you,' Trent remarked in a colourless tone.
+
+'And,' pursued the lady, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in her
+eyes, 'as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him to that
+risk.'
+
+There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an affectation of
+turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself, somewhat feebly, that
+this was very right and proper; that it was quite feminine, and that he liked
+her to be feminine. It was permitted to her--more than permitted--to set her
+loyal belief in the character of a friend above the clearest demonstrations of
+the intellect. Nevertheless, it chafed him. He would have had her declaration
+of faith a little less positive in form. It was too irrational to say she
+'knew'. In fact (he put it to himself bluntly), it was quite unlike her. If to
+be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine
+trait, and if Mrs Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up better
+than any woman he had known.
+
+'You suggest,' he said at length, 'that Marlowe constructed an alibi for
+himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted, to clear
+himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell he was innocent?'
+
+She uttered a little laugh of impatience. 'So you think he has been talking me
+round. No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it. Ah! I see you
+think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, Mr Trent! Just now you
+were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was foolishness in you to have a
+certain suspicion of me after seeing me and being in my atmosphere, as you
+said.' Trent started in his chair. She glanced at him, and went on: 'Now, I
+and my atmosphere are much obliged to you, but we must stand up for the rights
+of other atmospheres. I know a great deal more about Mr Marlowe's atmosphere
+than you know about mine even now. I saw him constantly for several years. I
+don't pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a
+crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me
+as the idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr Trent. I can imagine you
+killing a man, you know... if the man deserved it and had an equal chance of
+killing you. I could kill a person myself in some circumstances. But Mr
+Marlowe was incapable of doing it, I don't care what the provocation might be.
+He had a temper that nothing could shake, and he looked upon human nature with
+a sort of cold magnanimity that would find excuses for absolutely anything. It
+wasn't a pose; you could see it was a part of him. He never put it forward,
+but it was there always. It was quite irritating at times .... Now and then in
+America, I remember, I have heard people talking about lynching, for instance,
+when he was there. He would sit quite silent and expressionless, appearing not
+to listen; but you could feel disgust coming from him in waves. He really
+loathed and hated physical violence. He was a very strange man in some ways,
+Mr Trent. He gave one a feeling that he might do unexpected things--do you
+know that feeling one has about some people? What part he really played in the
+events of that night I have never been able to guess. But nobody who knew
+anything about him could possibly believe in his deliberately taking a man's
+life.' Again the movement of her head expressed finality, and she leaned back
+in the sofa, calmly regarding him.
+
+'Then,' said Trent, who had followed this with earnest attention, 'we are
+forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thought worth much
+consideration until this moment. Accepting what you say, he might still
+conceivably have killed in self-defence; or he might have done so by
+accident.'
+
+The lady nodded. 'Of course I thought of those two explanations when I read
+your manuscript.'
+
+'And I suppose you felt, as I did myself, that in either of those cases the
+natural thing, and obviously the safest thing, for him to do was to make a
+public statement of the truth, instead of setting up a series of deceptions
+which would certainly stamp him as guilty in the eyes of the law, if anything
+went wrong with them.'
+
+'Yes,' she said wearily, 'I thought over all that until my head ached. And I
+thought somebody else might have done it, and that he was somehow screening
+the guilty person. But that seemed wild. I could see no light in the mystery,
+and after a while I simply let it alone. All I was clear about was that Mr
+Marlowe was not a murderer, and that if I told what you had found out, the
+judge and jury would probably think he was. I promised myself that I would
+speak to you about it if we should meet again; and now I've kept my promise.'
+
+Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet. The excitement
+of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him. He had not in his own
+mind accepted Mrs Manderson's account of Marlowe's character as
+unquestionable. But she had spoken forcibly; he could by no means set it
+aside, and his theory was much shaken.
+
+'There is only one thing for it,' he said, looking up. 'I must see Marlowe. It
+worries me too much to have the thing left like this. I will get at the truth.
+Can you tell me,' he broke off, 'how he behaved after the day I left White
+Gables?'
+
+'I never saw him after that,' said Mrs Manderson simply. 'For some days after
+you went away I was ill, and didn't go out of my room. When I got down he had
+left and was in London, settling things with the lawyers. He did not come down
+to the funeral. Immediately after that I went abroad. After some weeks a
+letter from him reached me, saying he had concluded his business and given the
+solicitors all the assistance in his power. He thanked me very nicely for what
+he called all my kindness, and said goodbye. There was nothing in it about his
+plans for the future, and I thought it particularly strange that he said not a
+word about my husband's death. I didn't answer. Knowing what I knew, I
+couldn't. In those days I shuddered whenever I thought of that masquerade in
+the night. I never wanted to see or hear of him again.'
+
+'Then you don't know what has become of him?'
+
+'No, but I dare say Uncle Burton--Mr Cupples, you know-could tell you. Some
+time ago he told me that he had met Mr Marlowe in London, and had some talk
+with him. I changed the conversation.' She paused and smiled with a trace of
+mischief. 'I rather wonder what you supposed had happened to Mr Marlowe after
+you withdrew from the scene of the drama that you had put together so much to
+your satisfaction.'
+
+Trent flushed. 'Do you really want to know?' he said.
+
+'I ask you,' she retorted quietly.
+
+'You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs Manderson. Very well. I will tell
+you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned to London after
+my travels: that you had married Marlowe to live abroad.'
+
+She heard him with unmoved composure. 'We certainly couldn't have lived very
+comfortably in England on his money and mine,' she observed thoughtfully. 'He
+had practically nothing then.'
+
+He stared at her--'gaped', she told him some time afterwards. At the moment
+she laughed with a little embarrassment.
+
+'Dear me, Mr Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely must know .... I
+thought everybody understood by now .... I'm sure I've had to explain it often
+enough... if I marry again I lose everything that my husband left me.'
+
+The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was
+flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew
+himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as
+she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared
+for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than
+his usual tone, was, I had no idea of it.'
+
+'It is so,' she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger. 'Really, Mr
+Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I am glad of it. For one
+thing, it has secured me--at least since it became generally known--from a
+good many attentions of a kind that a woman in my position has to put up with
+as a rule.'
+
+'No doubt,' he said gravely. 'And... the other kind?'
+
+She looked at him questioningly. 'Ah!' she laughed. 'The other kind trouble me
+even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to marry a widow with
+a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and tastes, and nothing but the
+little my father left me.'
+
+She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the last remnants
+of Trent's self-possession.
+
+'Haven't you, by Heaven!' he exclaimed, rising with a violent movement and
+advancing a step towards her. 'Then I am going to show you that human passion
+is not always stifled by the smell of money. I am going to end the
+business--my business. I am going to tell you what I dare say scores of better
+men have wanted to tell you, but couldn't summon up what I have summoned
+up--the infernal cheek to do it. They were afraid of making fools of
+themselves. I am not. You have accustomed me to the feeling this afternoon.'
+He laughed aloud in his rush of words, and spread out his hands. 'Look at me!
+It is the sight of the century! It is one who says he loves you, and would ask
+you to give up very great wealth to stand at his side.'
+
+She was hiding her face in her hands. He heard her say brokenly, 'Please...
+don't speak in that way.'
+
+He answered: 'It will make a great difference to me if you will allow me to
+say all I have to say before I leave you. Perhaps it is in bad taste, but I
+will risk that; I want to relieve my soul; it needs open confession. This is
+the truth. You have troubled me ever since the first time I saw you--and you
+did not know it--as you sat under the edge of the cliff at Marlstone, and held
+out your arms to the sea. It was only your beauty that filled my mind then. As
+I passed by you it seemed as if all the life in the place were crying out a
+song about you in the wind and the sunshine. And the song stayed in my ears;
+but even your beauty would be no more than an empty memory to me by now if
+that had been all. It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house,
+with your hand on my arm, that--what was it that happened? I only knew that
+your stronger magic had struck home, and that I never should forget that day,
+whatever the love of my life should be. Till that day I had admired as I
+should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but that day I felt the spell of
+the divinity of the lake. And next morning the waters were troubled, and she
+rose--the morning when I came to you with my questions, tired out with doubts
+that were as bitter as pain, and when I saw you without your pale, sweet mask
+of composure--when I saw you moved and glowing, with your eyes and your hands
+alive, and when you made me understand that for such a creature as you there
+had been emptiness and the mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose in
+me then, and my spirit was clamouring to say what I say at last now: that life
+would never seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I was
+taken for ever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation of your
+voice-'
+
+'Oh, stop!' she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face flaming and
+her hands clutching the cushions beside her. She spoke fast and disjointedly,
+her breath coming quick. 'You shall not talk me into forgetting common sense.
+What does all this mean? Oh, I do not recognize you at all--you seem another
+man. We are not children; have you forgotten that? You speak like a boy in
+love for the first time. It is foolish, unreal--I know that if you do not. I
+will not hear it. What has happened to you?' She was half sobbing. 'How can
+these sentimentalities come from a man like you? Where is your
+self-restraint?'
+
+'Gone!' exclaimed Trent, with an abrupt laugh. 'It has got right away. I am
+going after it in a minute.' He looked gravely down into her eyes. 'I don't
+care so much now. I never could declare myself to you under the cloud of your
+great fortune. It was too heavy. There's nothing creditable in that feeling,
+as I look at it; as a matter of simple fact it was a form of cowardice--fear
+of what you would think, and very likely say--fear of the world's comment too,
+I suppose. But the cloud being rolled away, I have spoken, and I don't care so
+much. I can face things with a quiet mind now that I have told you the truth
+in its own terms. You may call it sentimentality or any other nickname you
+like. It is quite true that it was not intended for a scientific statement.
+Since it annoys you, let it be extinguished. But please believe that it was
+serious to me if it was comedy to you. I have said that I love you, and honour
+you, and would hold you dearest of all the world. Now give me leave to go.'
+
+But she held out her hands to him.
+
+CHAPTER XIV: Writing a Letter
+
+'If you insist,' Trent said, 'I suppose you will have your way. But I had much
+rather write it when I am not with you. However, if I must, bring me a tablet
+whiter than a star, or hand of hymning angel; I mean a sheet of note-paper not
+stamped with your address. Don't underestimate the sacrifice I am making. I
+never felt less like correspondence in my life.'
+
+She rewarded him.
+
+'What shall I say?' he enquired, his pen hovering over the paper. 'Shall I
+compare him to a summer's day? What shall I say?'
+
+'Say what you want to say,' she suggested helpfully.
+
+He shook his head. 'What I want to say--what I have been wanting for the past
+twenty-four hours to say to every man, woman, and child I met--is "Mabel and I
+are betrothed, and all is gas and gaiters." But that wouldn't be a very good
+opening for a letter of strictly formal, not to say sinister, character. I
+have got as far as "Dear Mr Marlowe." What comes next?'
+
+'I am sending you a manuscript,' she prompted, 'which I thought you might like
+to see.'
+
+'Do you realize,' he said, 'that in that sentence there are only two words of
+more than one syllable? This letter is meant to impress, not to put him at his
+ease. We must have long words.'
+
+'I don't see why,' she answered. 'I know it is usual, but why is it? I have
+had a great many letters from lawyers and business people, and they always
+begin, "with reference to our communication", or some such mouthful, and go on
+like that all the way through. Yet when I see them they don't talk like that.
+It seems ridiculous to me.'
+
+'It is not at all ridiculous to them.' Trent laid aside the pen with an
+appearance of relief and rose to his feet. 'Let me explain. A people like our
+own, not very fond of using its mind, gets on in the ordinary way with a very
+small and simple vocabulary. Long words are abnormal, and like everything else
+that is abnormal, they are either very funny or tremendously solemn. Take the
+phrase "intelligent anticipation", for instance. If such a phrase had been
+used in any other country in Europe, it would not have attracted the slightest
+attention. With us it has become a proverb; we all grin when we hear it in a
+speech or read it in a leading article; it is considered to be one of the best
+things ever said. Why? Just because it consists of two long words. The idea
+expressed is as commonplace as cold mutton. Then there's "terminological
+inexactitude". How we all roared, and are still roaring, at that! And the
+whole of the joke is that the words are long. It's just the same when we want
+to be very serious; we mark it by turning to long words. When a solicitor can
+begin a sentence with, "pursuant to the instructions communicated to our
+representative, or some such gibberish, he feels that he is earning his
+six-and-eightpence. Don't laugh! It is perfectly true. Now Continentals
+haven't got that feeling. They are always bothering about ideas, and the
+result is that every shopkeeper or peasant has a vocabulary in daily use that
+is simply Greek to the vast majority of Britons. I remember some time ago I
+was dining with a friend of mine who is a Paris cabman. We had dinner at a
+dirty little restaurant opposite the central post office, a place where all
+the clients were cabmen or porters. Conversation was general, and it struck me
+that a London cabman would have felt a little out of his depth. Words like
+"functionary" and "unforgettable" and "exterminate" and "independence" hurtled
+across the table every instant. And these were just ordinary, vulgar, jolly,
+red-faced cabmen. Mind you,' he went on hurriedly, as the lady crossed the
+room and took up his pen, 'I merely mention this to illustrate my point. I'm
+not saying that cab-men ought to be intellectuals. I don't think so; I agree
+with Keats--happy is England, sweet her artless cabmen, enough their simple
+loveliness for me. But when you come to the people who make up the collective
+industrial brain-power of the country .... Why, do you know--'
+
+'Oh no, no, no!' cried Mrs Manderson. 'I don't know anything at the moment,
+except that your talking must be stopped somehow, if we are to get any further
+with that letter to Mr Marlowe. You shall not get out of it. Come!' She put
+the pen into his hand.
+
+Trent looked at it with distaste. 'I warn you not to discourage my talking,'
+he said dejectedly. 'Believe me, men who don't talk are even worse to live
+with than men who do. O have a care of natures that are mute. I confess I'm
+shirking writing this thing. It is almost an indecency. It's mixing two moods
+to write the sort of letter I mean to write, and at the same time to be
+sitting in the same room with you.'
+
+She led him to his abandoned chair before the escritoire and pushed him gently
+into it. 'Well, but please try. I want to see what you write, and I want it to
+go to him at once. You see, I would be contented enough to leave things as
+they are; but you say you must get at the truth, and if you must, I want it to
+be as soon as possible. Do it now--you know you can if you will--and I'll send
+it off the moment it's ready. Don't you ever feel that--the longing to get the
+worrying letter into the post and off your hands, so that you can't recall it
+if you would, and it's no use fussing any more about it?'
+
+'I will do as you wish,' he said, and turned to the paper, which he dated as
+from his hotel. Mrs Manderson looked down at his bent head with a gentle light
+in her eyes, and made as if to place a smoothing hand upon his rather untidy
+crop of hair. But she did not touch it. Going in silence to the piano, she
+began to play very softly. It was ten minutes before Trent spoke.
+
+'If he chooses to reply that he will say nothing?'
+
+Mrs Manderson looked over her shoulder. 'Of course he dare not take that line.
+He will speak to prevent you from denouncing him.'
+
+'But I'm not going to do that anyhow. You wouldn't allow it--you said so;
+besides, I won't if you would. The thing's too doubtful now.'
+
+'But,' she laughed, 'poor Mr Marlowe doesn't know you won't, does he?'
+
+Trent sighed. 'What extraordinary things codes of honour are!' he remarked
+abstractedly. 'I know that there are things I should do, and never think twice
+about, which would make you feel disgraced if you did them--such as giving any
+one who grossly insulted me a black eye, or swearing violently when I barked
+my shin in a dark room. And now you are calmly recommending me to bluff
+Marlowe by means of a tacit threat which I don't mean; a thing which hews most
+abandoned fiend did never, in the drunkenness of guilt--well, anyhow, I won't
+do it.' He resumed his writing, and the lady, with an indulgent smile,
+returned to playing very softly.
+
+In a few minutes more, Trent said: 'At last I am his faithfully. Do you want
+to see it?' She ran across the twilight room, and turned on a reading lamp
+beside the escritoire. Then, leaning on his shoulder, she read what follows:
+
+DEAR MR MARLOWE,--YOU WILL PERHAPS REMEMBER THAT WE MET, UNDER UNHAPPY
+CIRCUMSTANCES, IN JUNE OF LAST YEAR AT MARLSTONE.
+
+ON THAT OCCASION IT WAS MY DUTY, AS REPRESENTING A NEWSPAPER, TO MAKE AN
+INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE DEATH OF THE LATE
+SIGSBEE MANDERSON. I DID SO, AND I ARRIVED AT CERTAIN CONCLUSIONS. YOU MAY
+LEARN FROM THE ENCLOSED MANUSCRIPT, WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS A DISPATCH
+FOR MY NEWSPAPER, WHAT THOSE CONCLUSIONS WERE. FOR REASONS WHICH IT IS NOT
+NECESSARY TO STATE I DECIDED AT THE LAST MOMENT NOT TO MAKE THEM PUBLIC, OR TO
+COMMUNICATE THEM TO YOU, AND THEY ARE KNOWN TO ONLY TWO PERSONS BESIDE MYSELF.
+
+At this point Mrs Manderson raised her eyes quickly from the letter. Her dark
+brows were drawn together. 'Two persons?' she said with a note of enquiry.
+
+'Your uncle is the other. I sought him out last night and told him the whole
+story. Have you anything against it? I always felt uneasy at keeping it from
+him as I did, because I had led him to expect I should tell him all I
+discovered, and my silence looked like mystery-making. Now it is to be cleared
+up finally, and there is no question of shielding you, I wanted him to know
+everything. He is a very shrewd adviser, too, in a way of his own; and I
+should like to have him with me when I see Marlowe. I have a feeling that two
+heads will be better than one on my side of the interview.'
+
+She sighed. 'Yes, of course, uncle ought to know the truth. I hope there is
+nobody else at all.' She pressed his hand. 'I so much want all that horror
+buried--buried deep. I am very happy now, dear, but I shall be happier still
+when you have satisfied that curious mind of yours and found out everything,
+and stamped down the earth upon it all.' She continued her reading.
+
+QUITE RECENTLY, HOWEVER [the letter went on], FACTS HAVE COME TO MY KNOWLEDGE
+WHICH HAVE LED ME TO CHANGE MY DECISION. I DO NOT MEAN THAT I SHALL PUBLISH
+WHAT I DISCOVERED, BUT THAT I HAVE DETERMINED TO APPROACH YOU AND ASK YOU FOR
+A PRIVATE STATEMENT. IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY WHICH WOULD PLACE THE MATTER
+IN ANOTHER LIGHT, I CAN IMAGINE NO REASON WHY YOU SHOULD WITHHOLD IT.
+
+I EXPECT, THEN, TO HEAR FROM YOU WHEN AND WHERE I MAY CALL UPON YOU; UNLESS
+YOU PREFER THE INTERVIEW TO TAKE PLACE AT MY HOTEL. IN EITHER CASE I DESIRE
+THAT MR CUPPLES, WHOM YOU WILL REMEMBER, AND WHO HAS READ THE ENCLOSED
+DOCUMENT, SHOULD BE PRESENT ALSO.--FAITHFULLY YOURS, PHILIP TRENT.
+
+What a very stiff letter!' she said. 'Now I am sure you couldn't have made it
+any stiffer in your own rooms.'
+
+Trent slipped the letter and enclosure into a long envelope. 'Yes,' he said,
+'I think it will make him sit up suddenly. Now this thing mustn't run any risk
+of going wrong. It would be best to send a special messenger with orders to
+deliver it into his own hands. If he's away it oughtn't to be left.'
+
+She nodded. 'I can arrange that. Wait here for a little.'
+
+When Mrs Manderson returned, he was hunting through the music cabinet. She
+sank on the carpet beside him in a wave of dark brown skirts. 'Tell me
+something, Philip,' she said.
+
+'If it is among the few things that I know.'
+
+'When you saw uncle last night, did you tell him about--about us?' 'I did
+not,' he answered. 'I remembered you had said nothing about telling any one.
+It is for you--isn't it?--to decide whether we take the world into our
+confidence at once or later on.'
+
+'Then will you tell him?' She looked down at her clasped hands. 'I wish you to
+tell him. Perhaps if you think you will guess why .... There! that is
+settled.' She lifted her eyes again to his, and for a time there was silence
+between them.
+
+He leaned back at length in the deep chair. 'What a world!' he said. 'Mabel,
+will you play something on the piano that expresses mere joy, the genuine
+article, nothing feverish or like thorns under a pot, but joy that has decided
+in favour of the universe? It's a mood that can't last altogether, so we had
+better get all we can out of it.'
+
+She went to the instrument and struck a few chords while she thought. Then she
+began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last movement of the Ninth
+Symphony which is like the sound of the opening of the gates of Paradise.
+
+CHAPTER XV: Double Cunning
+
+An old oaken desk with a deep body stood by the window in a room that
+overlooked St James s Park from a height. The room was large, furnished and
+decorated by some one who had brought taste to the work; but the hand of the
+bachelor lay heavy upon it. John Marlowe unlocked the desk and drew a long,
+stout envelope the back of the well.
+
+'I understand,' he said to Mr Cupples, 'that you have read this.'
+
+'I read it for the first time two days ago,' replied Mr Cupples, who, seated
+on a sofa, was peering about the room with a benignant face. 'We have
+discussed it fully.'
+
+Marlowe turned to Trent. 'There is your manuscript,' he said, laying the
+envelope on the table. 'I have gone over it three times. I do not believe
+there is another man who could have got at as much of the truth as you have
+set down there.'
+
+Trent ignored the compliment. He sat by the table gazing stonily at the fire,
+his long legs twisted beneath his chair. 'You mean, of course, he said,
+drawing the envelope towards him, 'that there is more of the truth to be
+disclosed now. We are ready to hear you as soon as you like. I expect it will
+be a long story, and the longer the better, so far as I am concerned; I want
+to understand thoroughly. What we should both like, I think, is some
+preliminary account of Manderson and your relations with him. It seemed to me
+from the first that the character of the dead man must be somehow an element
+in the business.'
+
+'You were right, Marlowe answered grimly. He crossed the room and seated
+himself on a corner of the tall cushion-topped fender. 'I will begin as you
+suggest.'
+
+'I ought to tell you beforehand, said Trent, looking him in the eyes, 'that
+although I am here to listen to you, I have not as yet any reason to doubt the
+conclusions I have stated here.' He tapped the envelope. 'It is a defence that
+you will be putting forward--you understand that?'
+
+'Perfectly.' Marlowe was cool and in complete possession of himself, a man
+different indeed from the worn-out, nervous being Trent remembered at
+Marlstone a year and a half ago. His tall, lithe figure was held with the
+perfection of muscular tone. His brow was candid, his blue eyes were clear,
+though they still had, as he paused collecting his ideas, the look that had
+troubled Trent at their first meeting. Only the lines of his mouth showed that
+he knew himself in a position of difficulty, and meant to face it.
+
+'Sigsbee Manderson was not a man of normal mind,' Marlowe began in his quiet
+voice. 'Most of the very rich men I met with in America had become so by
+virtue of abnormal greed, or abnormal industry, or abnormal personal force, or
+abnormal luck. None of them had remarkable intellects. Manderson delighted too
+in heaping up wealth; he worked incessantly at it; he was a man of dominant
+will; he had quite his share of luck; but what made him singular was his
+brainpower. In his own country they would perhaps tell you that it was his
+ruthlessness in pursuit of his aims that was his most striking characteristic;
+but there are hundreds of them who would have carried out his plans with just
+as little consideration for others if they could have formed the plans.
+
+'I'm not saying Americans aren't clever; they are ten times cleverer than we
+are, as a nation; but I never met another who showed such a degree of sagacity
+and foresight, such gifts of memory and mental tenacity, such sheer force of
+intelligence, as there was behind everything Manderson did in his money-making
+career. They called him the "Napoleon of Wall Street" often enough in the
+papers; but few people knew so well as I did how much truth there was in the
+phrase. He seemed never to forget a fact that might be of use to him, in the
+first place; and he did systematically with the business facts that concerned
+him what Napoleon did, as I have read, with military facts. He studied them in
+special digests which were prepared for him at short intervals, and which he
+always had at hand, so that he could take up his report on coal or wheat or
+railways, or whatever it might be, in any unoccupied moment. Then he could
+make a bolder and cleverer plan than any man of them all. People got to know
+that Manderson would never do the obvious thing, but they got no further; the
+thing he did do was almost always a surprise, and much of his success flowed
+from that. The Street got rattled, as they used to put it, when known that the
+old man was out with his gun, and often his opponents seemed to surrender as
+easily as Colonel Crockett's coon in the story. The scheme I am going to
+describe to you would have occupied most men long enough. Manderson could have
+plotted the thing, down to the last detail, while he shaved himself.
+
+'I used to think that his strain of Indian blood, remote as it was, might have
+something to do with the cunning and ruthlessness of the man. Strangely
+enough, its existence was unknown to any one but himself and me. It was when
+he asked me to apply my taste for genealogical work to his own obscure family
+history that I made the discovery that he had in him a share of the blood of
+the Iroquois chief Montour and his French wife, a terrible woman who ruled the
+savage politics of the tribes of the Wilderness two hundred years ago. The
+Mandersons were active in the fur trade on the Pennsylvanian border in those
+days, and more than one of them married Indian women. Other Indian blood than
+Montour's may have descended to Manderson, for all I can say, through previous
+and subsequent unions; some of the wives' antecedents were quite untraceable,
+and there were so many generations of pioneering before the whole country was
+brought under civilization. My researches left me with the idea that there is
+a very great deal of the aboriginal blood present in the genealogical make-up
+of the people of America, and that it is very widely spread. The newer
+families have constantly intermarried with the older, and so many of them had
+a strain of the native in them-and were often rather proud of it, too, in
+those days. But Manderson had the idea about the disgracefulness of mixed
+blood, which grew much stronger, I fancy, with the rise of the negro question
+after the war. He was thunderstruck at what I told him, and was anxious to
+conceal it from every soul. Of course I never gave it away while he lived, and
+I don't think he supposed I would; but I have thought since that his mind took
+a turn against me from that time onward. It happened about a year before his
+death.'
+
+'Had Manderson,' asked Mr Cupples, so unexpectedly that the others started,
+'any definable religious attitude?'
+
+Marlowe considered a moment. 'None that ever I heard of,' he said. 'Worship
+and prayer were quite unknown to him, so far as I could see, and I never heard
+him mention religion. I should doubt if he had any real sense of God at all,
+or if he was capable of knowing God through the emotions. But I understood
+that as a child he had had a religious upbringing with a strong moral side to
+it. His private life was, in the usual limited sense, blameless. He was almost
+ascetic in his habits, except as to smoking. I lived with him four years
+without ever knowing him to tell a direct verbal falsehood, constantly as he
+used to practise deceit in other forms. Can you understand the soul of a man
+who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking
+people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at
+the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant
+matter? Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one. I suppose you
+might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a
+truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of
+the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men
+regard it. Only with them it is always wartime.'
+
+'It is a sad world,' observed Mr Cupples.
+
+'As you say,' Marlowe agreed. 'Now I was saying that one could always take
+Manderson's word if he gave it in a definite form. The first time I ever heard
+him utter a downright lie was on the night he died; and hearing it, I believe,
+saved me from being hanged as his murderer.'
+
+Marlowe stared at the light above his head and Trent moved impatiently in his
+chair. 'Before we come to that,' he said, 'will you tell us exactly on what
+footing you were with Manderson during the years you were with him?'
+
+'We were on very good terms from beginning to end,' answered Marlowe. 'Nothing
+like friendship--he was not a man for making friends---but the best of terms
+as between a trusted employee and his chief. I went to him as private
+secretary just after getting my degree at Oxford. I was to have gone into my
+father's business, where I am now, but my father suggested that I should see
+the world for a year or two. So I took this secretaryship, which seemed to
+promise a good deal of varied experience, and I had let the year or two run on
+to four years before the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing
+in the world I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post,
+and that was chess.'
+
+At the word Trent struck his hands together with a muttered exclamation. The
+others looked at him in surprise.
+
+'Chess!' repeated Trent. 'Do you know,' he said, rising and approaching
+Marlowe, 'what was the first thing I noted about you at our first meeting? It
+was your eye, Mr Marlowe. I couldn't place it then, but I know now where I had
+seen your eyes before. They were in the head of no less a man than the great
+Nikolay Korchagin, with whom I once sat in the same railway carriage for two
+days. I thought I should never forget the chess eye after that, but I could
+not put a name to it when I saw it in you. I beg your pardon,' he ended
+suddenly, resuming marmoreal attitude in his chair.
+
+'I have played the game from my childhood, and with good players,' said
+Marlowe simply. 'It is an hereditary gift, if you can call it a gift. At the
+University I was nearly as good as anybody there, and I gave most of my brains
+to that and the OUDS and playing about generally. At Oxford, as I dare say you
+know, inducements to amuse oneself at the expense of one's education are
+endless, and encouraged by the authorities. Well, one day toward the end of my
+last term, Dr Munro of Queen's, whom I had never defeated, sent for me. He
+told me that I played a fairish game of chess. I said it was very good of him
+to say so. Then he said, "They tell me you hunt, too." I said, "Now and then."
+He asked, "Is there anything else you can do? "No," I said, not much liking
+the tone of the conversation-the old man generally succeeded in putting
+people's backs up. He grunted fiercely, and then told me that enquiries were
+being made on behalf of a wealthy American man of business who wanted an
+English secretary. Manderson was the name, he said. He seemed never to have
+heard it before, which was quite possible, as he never opened a newspaper and
+had not slept a night outside the college for thirty years. If I could rub up
+my spelling-as the old gentleman put it--I might have a good chance for the
+post, as chess and riding and an Oxford education were the only indispensable
+points.
+
+'Well, I became Manderson's secretary. For a long time I liked the position
+greatly. When one is attached to an active American plutocrat in the prime of
+life one need not have many dull moments. Besides, it made me independent. My
+father had some serious business reverses about that time, and I was glad to
+be able to do without an allowance from him. At the end of the first year
+Manderson doubled my salary. "It's big money," he said, "but I guess I don't
+lose." You see, by that time I was doing a great deal more than accompany him
+on horseback in the morning and play chess in the evening, which was mainly
+what he had required. I was attending to his houses, his farm in Ohio, his
+shooting in Maine, his horses, his cars, and his yacht. I had become a walking
+railway-guide and an expert cigar-buyer. I was always learning something.
+
+'Well, now you understand what my position was in regard to Manderson during
+the last two or three years of my connection with him. It was a happy life for
+me on the whole. I was busy, my work was varied and interesting; I had time to
+amuse myself too, and money to spend. At one time I made a fool of myself
+about a girl, and that was not a happy time; but it taught me to understand
+the great goodness of Mrs Manderson.' Marlowe inclined his head to Mr Cupples
+as he said this. 'She may choose to tell you about it. As for her husband, he
+had never varied in his attitude towards me, in spite of the change that came
+over him in the last months of his life, as you know. He treated me well and
+generously in his unsympathetic way, and I never had a feeling that he was
+less than satisfied with his bargain--that was the sort of footing we lived
+upon. And it was that continuance of his attitude right up to the end that
+made the revelation so shocking when I was suddenly shown, on the night on
+which he met his end, the depth of crazy hatred of myself that was in
+Manderson's soul.'
+
+The eyes of Trent and Mr Cupples met for an instant.
+
+'You never suspected that he hated you before that time?' asked Trent; and Mr
+Cupples asked at the same moment, 'To what did you attribute it?'
+
+'I never guessed until that night,' answered Marlowe, 'that he had the
+smallest ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know. I
+cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I considered the
+thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a case of a madman's
+delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against him, as they so often do.
+Some such insane conviction must have been at the root of it. But who can
+sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can you imagine the state of mind in
+which a man dooms himself to death with the object of delivering some one he
+hates to the hangman?'
+
+Mr Cupples moved sharply in his chair. 'You say Manderson was responsible for
+his own death?' he asked.
+
+Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent watch
+upon the face of Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less pale and
+drawn.
+
+'I do say so,' Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in the
+face. Mr Cupples nodded.
+
+'Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement,' observed the old
+gentleman, in a tone of one discussing a point of abstract science, 'it may be
+remarked that the state of mind which you attribute to Manderson-'
+
+'Suppose we have the story first,' Trent interrupted, gently laying a hand on
+Mr Cupples's arm. 'You were telling us,' he went on, turning to Marlowe, 'how
+things stood between you and Manderson. Now you tell us the facts of what
+happened that night?'
+
+Marlowe flushed at the barely perceptible emphasis which Trent laid upon the
+word 'facts'. He drew himself up.
+
+Bunner and myself dined with Mr and Mrs Manderson that Sunday evening,' he
+began, speaking carefully. 'It was just like other dinners at which the four
+of us had been together. Manderson was taciturn and gloomy, as we had latterly
+been accustomed to see him. We others kept a conversation going. We rose from
+the table, I suppose, about nine. Mrs Manderson went to the drawing-room, and
+Bunner went up to the hotel to see an acquaintance. Manderson asked me to come
+into the orchard behind the house, saying he wished to have a talk. We paced
+up and down the pathway there, out of earshot from the house, and Manderson,
+as he smoked his cigar, spoke to me in his cool, deliberate way. He had never
+seemed more sane, or more well-disposed to me. He said he wanted me to do him
+an important service. There was a big thing on. It was a secret affair. Bunner
+knew nothing of it, and the less I knew the better. He wanted me to do exactly
+as he directed, and not bother my head about reasons.
+
+'This, I may say, was quite characteristic of Manderson's method of going to
+work. If at times he required a man to be a mere tool in his hand, he would
+tell him so. He had used me in the same kind of way a dozen times. I assured
+him he could rely on me, and said I was ready. "Right now?" he asked. I said
+of course I was.
+
+'He nodded, and said--I tell you his words as well as I can recollect them--
+attend to this. There is a man in England now who is in this thing with me. He
+was to have left tomorrow for Paris by the noon boat from Southampton to
+Havre. His name is George Harris--at least that's the name he is going by. Do
+you remember that name?" "Yes," I said, "when I went up to London a week ago
+you asked me to book a cabin in that name on the boat that goes tomorrow. I
+gave you the ticket." "Here it is," he said, producing it from his pocket.
+
+'"Now," Manderson said to me, poking his cigar-butt at me with each sentence
+in a way he used to have, "George Harris cannot leave England tomorrow. I find
+I shall want him where he is. And I want Bunner where he is. But somebody has
+got to go by that boat and take certain papers to Paris. Or else my plan is
+going to fall to pieces. Will you go?" I said, "Certainly. I am here to obey
+orders."
+
+'He bit his cigar, and said, "That's all right; but these are not just
+ordinary orders. Not the kind of thing one can ask of a man in the ordinary
+way of his duty to an employer. The point is this. The deal I am busy with is
+one in which neither myself nor any one known to be connected with me must
+appear as yet. That is vital. But these people I am up against know your face
+as well as they know mine. If my secretary is known in certain quarters to
+have crossed to Paris at this time and to have interviewed certain people--and
+that would be known as soon as it happened--then the game is up." He threw
+away his cigar-end and looked at me questioningly.
+
+'I didn't like it much, but I liked failing Manderson at a pinch still less. I
+spoke lightly. I said I supposed I should have to conceal my identity, and I
+would do my best. I told him I used to be pretty good at make-up.
+
+'He nodded in approval. He said, "That's good. I judged you would not let me
+down." Then he gave me my instructions. "You take the car right now," he said,
+"and start for Southampton--there's no train that will fit in. You'll be
+driving all night. Barring accidents, you ought to get there by six in the
+morning. But whenever you arrive, drive straight to the Bedford Hotel and ask
+for George Harris. If he's there, tell him you are to go over instead of him,
+and ask him to telephone me here. It is very important he should know that at
+the earliest moment possible. But if he isn't there, that means he has got the
+instructions I wired today, and hasn't gone to Southampton. In that case you
+don't want to trouble about him any more, but just wait for the boat. You can
+leave the car at a garage under a fancy name--mine must not be given. See
+about changing your appearance--I don't care how, so you do it well. Travel by
+the boat as George Harris. Let on to be anything you like, but be careful, and
+don't talk much to anybody. When you arrive, take a room at the Hotel St
+Petersbourg. You will receive a note or message there, addressed to George
+Harris, telling you where to take the wallet I shall give you. The wallet is
+locked, and you want to take good care of it. Have you got that all clear?"
+
+'I repeated the instructions. I asked if I should return from Paris after
+handing over the wallet. "As soon as you like," he said. "And mind this--
+whatever happens, don't communicate with me at any stage of the journey. If
+you don't get the message in Paris at once, just wait until you do--days, if
+necessary. But not a line of any sort to me. Understand? Now get ready as
+quick as you can. I'll go with you in the car a little way. Hurry."
+
+'That is, as far as I can remember, the exact substance of what Manderson said
+to me that night. I went to my room, changed into day clothes, and hastily
+threw a few necessaries into a kit-bag. My mind was in a whirl, not so much at
+the nature of the business as at the suddenness of it. I think I remember
+telling you the last time we met'-he turned to Trent--'that Manderson shared
+the national fondness for doings things in a story-book style. Other things
+being equal, he delighted in a bit of mystification and melodrama, and I told
+myself that this was Manderson all over. I hurried downstairs with my bag and
+rejoined him in the library. He handed me a stout leather letter-case, about
+eight inches by six, fastened with a strap with a lock on it. I could just
+squeeze it into my side-pocket. Then I went to get the car from the garage
+behind the house.
+
+'As I was bringing it round to the front a disconcerting thought struck me. I
+remembered that I had only a few shillings in my pocket.
+
+'For some time past I had been keeping myself very short of cash, and for this
+reason--which I tell you because it is a vital point, as you shall see in a
+minute. I was living temporarily on borrowed money. I had always been careless
+about money while I was with Manderson, and being a gregarious animal I had
+made many friends, some of them belonging to a New York set that had little to
+do but get rid of the large incomes given them by their parents. Still, I was
+very well paid, and I was too busy even to attempt to go very far with them in
+that amusing occupation. I was still well on the right side of the ledger
+until I began, merely out of curiosity, to play at speculation. It's a very
+old story-- particularly in Wall Street. I thought it was easy; I was lucky at
+first; I would always be prudent--and so on. Then came the day when I went out
+of my depth. In one week I was separated from my toll, as Bunner expressed it
+when I told him; and I owed money too. I had had my lesson. Now in this pass I
+went to Manderson and told him what I had done and how I stood. He heard me
+with a very grim smile, and then, with the nearest approach to sympathy I had
+ever found in him, he advanced me a sum on account of my salary that would
+clear me. "Don't play the markets any more," was all he said.
+
+'Now on that Sunday night Manderson knew that I was practically without any
+money in the world. He knew that Bunner knew it too. He may have known that I
+had even borrowed a little more from Bunner for pocket-money until my next
+cheque was due, which, owing to my anticipation of my salary, would not have
+been a large one. Bear this knowledge of Manderson's in mind.
+
+'As soon as I had brought the car round I went into the library and stated the
+difficulty to Manderson.
+
+'What followed gave me, slight as it was, my first impression of something odd
+being afoot. As soon as I mentioned the word "expenses'' his hand went
+mechanically to his left hip-pocket, where he always kept a little case
+containing notes to the value of about a hundred pounds in our money. This was
+such a rooted habit in him that I was astonished to see him check the movement
+suddenly. Then, to my greater amazement, he swore under his breath. I had
+never heard him do this before; but Bunner had told me that of late he had
+often shown irritation in this way when they were alone. "Has he mislaid his
+note-case?" was the question that flashed through my mind. But it seemed to me
+that it could not affect his plan at all, and I will tell you why. The week
+before, when I had gone up to London to carry out various commissions,
+including the booking of a berth for Mr George Harris, I had drawn a thousand
+pounds for Manderson from his bankers, and all, at his request, in notes of
+small amounts. I did not know what this unusually large sum in cash was for,
+but I did know that the packets of notes were in his locked desk in the
+library, or had been earlier in the day, when I had seen him fingering them as
+he sat at the desk.
+
+'But instead of turning to the desk, Manderson stood looking at me. There was
+fury in his face, and it was a strange sight to see him gradually master it
+until his eyes grew cold again. "Wait in the car," he said slowly. "I will get
+some money." We both went out, and as I was getting into my overcoat in the
+hall I saw him enter the drawing-which, you remember, was on the other side of
+the entrance hall.
+
+'I stepped out on to the lawn before the house and smoked a cigarette, pacing
+up and down. I was asking myself again and again where that thousand pounds
+was; whether it was in the drawing-room, and if so, why. Presently, as I
+passed one of the drawing-room windows, I noticed Mrs Manderson's shadow on
+the thin silk curtain. She was standing at her escritoire. The window was
+open, and as I passed I heard her say, "I have not quite thirty pounds here.
+Will that be enough?" I did not hear the answer, but next moment Manderson's
+shadow was mingled with hers, and I heard the chink of money. Then, as he
+stood by the window, and as I was moving away, these words of his came to my
+ears--and these at least I can repeat exactly, for astonishment stamped them
+on my memory--"I'm going out now. Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a
+moonlight run in the car. He is very urgent about it. He says it will help me
+to sleep, and I guess he is right."
+
+I have told you that in the course of four years I had never once heard
+Manderson utter a direct lie about anything, great or small. I believed that I
+understood the man's queer, skin-deep morality, and I could have sworn that if
+he was firmly pressed with a question that could not be evaded he would either
+refuse to answer or tell the truth. But what had I just heard? No answer to
+any question. A voluntary statement, precise in terms, that was utterly false.
+The unimaginable had happened. It was almost as if some one I knew well, in a
+moment of closest sympathy, had suddenly struck me in the face. The blood
+rushed to my head, and I stood still on the grass. I stood there until I heard
+his step at the front door, and then I pulled myself together and stepped
+quickly to the car. He handed me a banker's paper bag with gold and notes in
+it. "There's more than you'll want there," he said, and I pocketed it
+mechanically.
+
+'For a minute or so I stood discussing with Manderson--it was by one of those
+tours de force of which one's mind is capable under great excitement--points
+about the route of the long drive before me. I had made the run several times
+by day, and I believe I spoke quite calmly and naturally about it. But while I
+spoke my mind was seething in a flood of suddenly born suspicion and fear. I
+did not know what I feared. I simply felt fear, somehow--I did not know how--
+connected with Manderson. My soul once opened to it, fear rushed in like an
+assaulting army. I felt--I knew--that something was altogether wrong and
+sinister, and I felt myself to be the object of it. Yet Manderson was surely
+no enemy of mine. Then my thoughts reached out wildly for an answer to the
+question why he had told that lie. And all the time the blood hammered in my
+ears, "Where is that money?" Reason struggled hard to set up the suggestion
+that the two things were not necessarily connected. The instinct of a man in
+danger would not listen to it. As we started, and the car took the curve into
+the road, it was merely the unconscious part of me that steered and controlled
+it, and that made occasional empty remarks as we slid along in the moonlight.
+Within me was a confusion and vague alarm that was far worse than any definite
+terror I ever felt.
+
+'About a mile from the house, you remember, one passed on one's left a gate,
+on the other side of which was the golf-course. There Manderson said he would
+get down, and I stopped the car. "You've got it all clear?" he asked. With a
+sort of wrench I forced myself to remember and repeat the directions given me.
+"That's OK," he said. "Goodbye, then. Stay with that wallet." Those were the
+last words I heard him speak, as the car moved gently away from him.'
+
+Marlowe rose from his chair and pressed his hands to his eyes. He was flushed
+with the excitement of his own narrative, and there was in his look a horror
+of recollection that held both the listeners silent. He shook himself with a
+movement like a dog's, and then, his hands behind him, stood erect before the
+fire as he continued his tale.
+
+'I expect you both know what the back-reflector of a motor car is.'
+
+Trent nodded quickly, his face alive with anticipation; but Mr Cupples, who
+cherished a mild but obstinate prejudice against motor cars, readily confessed
+to ignorance.
+
+'It is a small round or more often rectangular mirror,' Marlowe explained,
+'rigged out from the right side of the screen in front of the driver, and
+adjusted in such a way that he can see, without turning round, if anything is
+coming up behind to pass him. It is quite an ordinary appliance, and there was
+one on this car. As the car moved on, and Manderson ceased speaking behind me,
+I saw in that mirror a thing that I wish I could forget.'
+
+Marlowe was silent for a moment, staring at the wall before him.
+
+'Manderson's face,' he said in a low tone. 'He was standing in the road,
+looking after me, only a few yards behind, and the moonlight was full on his
+face. The mirror happened to catch it for an instant.
+
+'Physical habit is a wonderful thing. I did not shift hand or foot on the
+controlling mechanism of the car. Indeed, I dare say it steadied me against
+the shock to have myself braced to the business of driving. You have read in
+books, no doubt, of hell looking out of a man's eyes, but perhaps you don't
+know what a good metaphor that is. If I had not known Manderson was there, I
+should not have recognized the face. It was that of a madman, distorted,
+hideous in the imbecility of hate, the teeth bared in a simian grin of
+ferocity and triumph; the eyes .... In the little mirror I had this glimpse of
+the face alone. I saw nothing of whatever gesture there may have been as that
+writhing white mask glared after me. And I saw it only for a flash. The car
+went on, gathering speed, and as it went, my brain, suddenly purged of the
+vapours of doubt and perplexity, was as busy as the throbbing engine before my
+feet. I knew.
+
+'You say something in that manuscript of yours, Mr Trent, about the swift
+automatic way in which one's ideas arrange themselves about some new
+illuminating thought. It is quite true. The awful intensity of ill-will that
+had flamed after me from those straining eyeballs poured over my mind like a
+searchlight. I was thinking quite clearly now, and almost coldly, for I knew
+what--at least I knew whom--I had to fear, and instinct warned me that it was
+not a time to give room to the emotions that were fighting to possess me. The
+man hated me insanely. That incredible fact I suddenly knew. But the face had
+told me, it would have told anybody, more than that. It was a face of hatred
+gratified, it proclaimed some damnable triumph. It had gloated over me driving
+away to my fate. This too was plain to me. And to what fate?
+
+'I stopped the car. It had gone about two hundred and fifty yards, and a sharp
+bend of the road hid the spot where I had set Manderson down. I lay back in
+the seat and thought it out. Something was to happen to me. In Paris?
+Probably--why else should I be sent there, with money and a ticket? But why
+Paris? That puzzled me, for I had no melodramatic ideas about Paris. I put the
+point aside for a moment. I turned to the other things that had roused my
+attention that evening. The lie about my "persuading him to go for a moonlight
+run". What was the intention of that? Manderson, I said to myself, will be
+returning without me while I am on my way to Southampton. What will he tell
+them about me? How account for his returning alone, and without the car? As I
+asked myself that sinister question there rushed into my mind the last of my
+difficulties: "Where are the thousand pounds?" And in the same instant came
+the answer: "The thousand pounds are in my pocket."
+
+'I got up and stepped from the car. My knees trembled and I felt very sick. I
+saw the plot now, as I thought. The whole of the story about the papers and
+the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind. With Manderson's
+money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed him, I was, to all
+appearance, attempting to escape from England, with every precaution that
+guilt could suggest. He would communicate with the police at once, and would
+know how to put them on my track. I should be arrested in Paris, if I got so
+far, living under a false name, after having left the car under a false name,
+disguised myself, and travelled in a cabin which I had booked in advance, also
+under a false name. It would be plainly the crime of a man without money, and
+for some reason desperately in want of it. As for my account of the affair, it
+would be too preposterous.
+
+'As this ghastly array of incriminating circumstances rose up before me, I
+dragged the stout letter-case from my pocket. In the intensity of the moment,
+I never entertained the faintest doubt that I was right, and that the money
+was there. It would easily hold the packets of notes. But as I felt it and
+weighed it in my hands it seemed to me there must be more than this. It was
+too bulky. What more was to be laid to my charge? After all, a thousand pounds
+was not much to tempt a man like myself to run the risk of penal servitude. In
+this new agitation, scarcely knowing what I did, I caught the surrounding
+strap in my fingers just above the fastening and tore the staple out of the
+lock. Those locks, you know, are pretty flimsy as a rule.'
+
+Here Marlowe paused and walked to the oaken desk before the window. Opening a
+drawer full of miscellaneous objects, he took out a box of odd keys, and
+selected a small one distinguished by a piece of pink tape.
+
+He handed it to Trent. 'I keep that by me as a sort of morbid memento. It is
+the key to the lock I smashed. I might have saved myself the trouble, if I had
+known that this key was at that moment in the left-hand side-pocket of my
+overcoat. Manderson must have slipped it in, either while the coat was hanging
+in the hall or while he sat at my side in the car. I might not have found the
+tiny thing there for weeks: as a matter of fact I did find it two days after
+Manderson was dead, but a police search would have found it in five minutes.
+And then I--I with the case and its contents in my pocket, my false name and
+my sham spectacles and the rest of it--I should have had no explanation to
+offer but the highly convincing one that I didn't know the key was there.'
+
+Trent dangled the key by its tape idly. Then: 'How do you know this is the key
+of that case?' he asked quickly.
+
+'I tried it. As soon as I found it I went up and fitted it to the lock. I knew
+where I had left the thing. So do you, I think, Mr Trent. Don't you?' There
+was a faint shade of mockery in Marlowe's voice.
+
+'Touche,' Trent said, with a dry smile. 'I found a large empty letter-case
+with a burst lock lying with other odds and ends on the dressing-table in
+Manderson's room. Your statement is that you put it there. I could make
+nothing of it.' He closed his lips.
+
+'There was no reason for hiding it,' said Marlowe. 'But to get back to my
+story. I burst the lock of the strap. I opened the case before one of the
+lamps of the car. The first thing I found in it I ought to have expected, of
+course, but I hadn't.' He paused and glanced at Trent.
+
+'It was--' began Trent mechanically, and then stopped himself. 'Try not to
+bring me in any more, if you don't mind,' he said, meeting the other's eye. 'I
+have complimented you already in that document on your cleverness. You need
+not prove it by making the judge help you out with your evidence.'
+
+'All right,' agreed Marlowe. 'I couldn't resist just that much. If you had
+been in my place you would have known before I did that Manderson's little
+pocket- case was there. As soon as I saw it, of course, I remembered his not
+having had it about him when I asked for money, and his surprising anger. He
+had made a false step. He had already fastened his note-case up with the rest
+of what was to figure as my plunder, and placed it in my hands. I opened it.
+It contained a few notes as usual, I didn't count them.
+
+'Tucked into the flaps of the big case in packets were the other notes, just
+as I had brought them from London. And with them were two small wash-leather
+bags, the look of which I knew well. My heart jumped sickeningly again, for
+this, too, was utterly unexpected. In those bags Manderson kept the diamonds
+in which he had been investing for some time past. I didn't open them; I could
+feel the tiny stones shifting under the pressure of my fingers. How many
+thousands of pounds' worth there were there I have no idea. We had regarded
+Manderson's diamond- buying as merely a speculative fad. I believe now that it
+was the earliest movement in the scheme for my ruin. For any one like myself
+to be represented as having robbed him, there ought to be a strong inducement
+shown. That had been provided with a vengeance.
+
+'Now, I thought, I have the whole thing plain, and I must act. I saw instantly
+what I must do. I had left Manderson about a mile from the house. It would
+take him twenty minutes, fifteen if he walked fast, to get back to the house,
+where he would, of course, immediately tell his story of robbery, and probably
+telephone at once to the police in Bishopsbridge. I had left him only five or
+six minutes ago; for all that I have just told you was as quick thinking as I
+ever did. It would be easy to overtake him in the car before he neared the
+house. There would be an awkward interview. I set my teeth as I thought of it,
+and all my fears vanished as I began to savour the gratification of telling
+him my opinion of him. There are probably few people who ever positively
+looked forward to an awkward interview with Manderson; but I was mad with
+rage. My honour and my liberty had been plotted against with detestable
+treachery. I did not consider what would follow the interview. That would
+arrange itself.
+
+'I had started and turned the car, I was already going fast toward White
+Gables, when I heard the sound of a shot in front of me, to the right.
+
+'Instantly I stopped the car. My first wild thought was that Manderson was
+shooting at me. Then I realized that the noise had not been close at hand. I
+could see nobody on the road, though the moonlight flooded it. I had left
+Manderson at a spot just round the corner that was now about a hundred yards
+ahead of me. After half a minute or so, I started again, and turned the corner
+at a slow pace. Then I stopped again with a jar, and for a moment I sat
+perfectly still.
+
+'Manderson lay dead a few steps from me on the turf within the gate, clearly
+visible to me in the moonlight.'
+
+Marlowe made another pause, and Trent, with a puckered brow, enquired, 'On the
+golf-course?'
+
+'Obviously,' remarked Mr Cupples. 'The eighth green is just there.' He had
+grown more and more interested as Marlowe went on, and was now playing
+feverishly with his thin beard.
+
+'On the green, quite close to the flag,' said Marlowe. 'He lay on his back,
+his arms were stretched abroad, his jacket and heavy overcoat were open; the
+light shone hideously on his white face and his shirt-front; it glistened on
+his bared teeth and one of the eyes. The other ... you saw it. The man was
+certainly dead. As I sat there stunned, unable for the moment to think at all,
+I could even see a thin dark line of blood running down from the shattered
+socket to the ear. Close by lay his soft black hat, and at his feet a pistol.
+
+'I suppose it was only a few seconds that I sat helplessly staring at the
+body. Then I rose and moved to it with dragging feet; for now the truth had
+come to me at last, and I realized the fullness of my appalling danger. It was
+not only my liberty or my honour that the maniac had undermined. It was death
+that he had planned for me; death with the degradation of the scaffold. To
+strike me down with certainty, he had not hesitated to end his life; a life
+which was, no doubt, already threatened by a melancholic impulse to
+self-destruction; and the last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps,
+to a devilish joy by the thought that he dragged down my life with his. For as
+far as I could see at the moment my situation was utterly hopeless. If it had
+been desperate on the assumption that Manderson meant to denounce me as a
+thief, what was it now that his corpse denounced me as a murderer?
+
+'I picked up the revolver and saw, almost without emotion, that it was my own.
+Manderson had taken it from my room, I suppose, while I was getting out the
+car. At the same moment I remembered that it was by Manderson's suggestion
+that I had had it engraved with my initials, to distinguish it from a
+precisely similar weapon which he had of his own.
+
+'I bent over the body and satisfied myself that there was no life left in it.
+I must tell you here that I did not notice, then or afterwards, the scratches
+and marks on the wrists, which were taken as evidence of a struggle with an
+assailant. But I have no doubt that Manderson deliberately injured himself in
+this way before firing the shot; it was a part of his plan.
+
+'Though I never perceived that detail, however, it was evident enough as I
+looked at the body that Manderson had not forgotten, in his last act on earth,
+to tie me tighter by putting out of court the question of suicide. He had
+clearly been at pains to hold the pistol at arm's length, and there was not a
+trace of smoke or of burning on the face. The wound was absolutely clean, and
+was already ceasing to bleed outwardly. I rose and paced the green, reckoning
+up the points in the crushing case against me.
+
+'I was the last to be seen with Manderson. I had persuaded him--so he had lied
+to his wife and, as I afterwards knew, to the butler--to go with me for the
+drive from which he never returned. My pistol had killed him. It was true that
+by discovering his plot I had saved myself from heaping up further
+incriminating facts--flight, concealment, the possession of the treasure. But
+what need of them, after all? As I stood, what hope was there? What could I
+do?'
+
+Marlowe came to the table and leaned forward with his hands upon it. 'I want,'
+he said very earnestly, 'to try to make you understand what was in my mind
+when I decided to do what I did. I hope you won't be bored, because I must do
+it. You may both have thought I acted like a fool. But after all the police
+never suspected me. I walked that green for a quarter of an hour, I suppose,
+thinking the thing out like a game of chess. I had to think ahead and think
+coolly; for my safety depended on upsetting the plans of one of the
+longest-headed men who ever lived. And remember that, for all I knew, there
+were details of the scheme still hidden from me, waiting to crush me.
+
+'Two plain courses presented themselves at once. Either of them, I thought,
+would certainly prove fatal. I could, in the first place, do the completely
+straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my story, hand over the
+notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power of truth and innocence. I
+could have laughed as I thought of it. I saw myself bringing home the corpse
+and giving an account of myself, boggling with sheer shame over the absurdity
+of my wholly unsupported tale, as I brought a charge of mad hatred and
+fiendish treachery against a man who had never, as far as I knew, had a word
+to say against me. At every turn the cunning of Manderson had forestalled me.
+His careful concealment of such a hatred was a characteristic feature of the
+stratagem; only a man of his iron self-restraint could have done it. You can
+see for yourselves how every fact in my statement would appear, in the shadow
+of Manderson's death, a clumsy lie. I tried to imagine myself telling such a
+story to the counsel for my defence. I could see the face with which he would
+listen to it; I could read in the lines of it his thought, that to put forward
+such an impudent farrago would mean merely the disappearance of any chance
+there might be of a commutation of the capital sentence.
+
+'True, I had not fled. I had brought back the body; I had handed over the
+property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I had yielded
+to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to clutch at the
+fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had not set out to kill
+but only to threaten, and that when I found that I had done murder the heart
+went out of me. Turn it which way I would, I could see no hope of escape by
+this plan of action.
+
+'The second of the obvious things that I might do was to take the hint offered
+by the situation, and to fly at once. That too must prove fatal. There was the
+body. I had no time to hide it in such a way that it would not be found at the
+first systematic search. But whatever I should do with the body, Manderson's
+not returning to the house would cause uneasiness in two or three hours at
+most. Martin would suspect an accident to the car, and would telephone to the
+police. At daybreak the roads would be scoured and enquiries telegraphed in
+every direction. The police would act on the possibility of there being foul
+play. They would spread their nets with energy in such a big business as the
+disappearance of Manderson. Ports and railway termini would be watched. Within
+twenty-four hours the body would be found, and the whole country would be on
+the alert for me--all Europe, scarcely less; I did not believe there was a
+spot in Christendom where the man accused of Manderson's murder could pass
+unchallenged, with every newspaper crying the fact of his death into the ears
+of all the world. Every stranger would be suspect; every man, woman, and child
+would be a detective. The car, wherever I should abandon it, would put people
+on my track. If I had to choose between two utterly hopeless courses, I
+decided, I would take that of telling the preposterous truth.
+
+'But now I cast about desperately for some tale that would seem more plausible
+than the truth. Could I save my neck by a lie? One after another came into my
+mind; I need not trouble to remember them now. Each had its own futilities and
+perils; but every one split upon the fact--or what would be taken for
+fact--that I had induced Manderson to go out with me, and the fact that he had
+never returned alive. Notion after notion I swiftly rejected as I paced there
+by the dead man, and doom seemed to settle down upon me more heavily as the
+moments passed. Then a strange thought came to me.
+
+'Several times I had repeated to myself half-consciously, as a sort of
+refrain, the words in which I had heard Manderson tell his wife that I had
+induced him to go out. "Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a moonlight run in
+the car. He is very urgent about it." All at once it struck me that, without
+meaning to do so, I was saying this in Manderson's voice.
+
+'As you found out for yourself, Mr Trent, I have a natural gift of mimicry. I
+had imitated Manderson's voice many times so successfully as to deceive even
+Bunner, who had been much more in his company than his own wife. It was, you
+remember'--Marlowe turned to Mr Cupples--'a strong, metallic voice, of great
+carrying power, so unusual as to make it a very fascinating voice to imitate,
+and at the same time very easy. I said the words carefully to myself again,
+like this--' he uttered them, and Mr Cupples opened his eyes in
+amazement--'and then I struck my hand upon the low wall beside me. "Manderson
+never returned alive?" I said aloud. "But Manderson shall return alive!" '
+
+'In thirty seconds the bare outline of the plan was complete in my mind. I did
+not wait to think over details. Every instant was precious now. I lifted the
+body and laid it on the floor of the car, covered with a rug. I took the hat
+and the revolver. Not one trace remained on the green, I believe, of that
+night's work. As I drove back to White Gables my design took shape before me
+with a rapidity and ease that filled me with a wild excitement. I should
+escape yet! It was all so easy if I kept my pluck. Putting aside the unusual
+and unlikely, I should not fail. I wanted to shout, to scream!
+
+'Nearing the house I slackened speed, and carefully reconnoitred the road.
+Nothing was moving. I turned the car into the open field on the other side of
+the road, about twenty paces short of the little door at the extreme corner of
+the grounds. I brought it to rest behind a stack. When, with Manderson's hat
+on my head and the pistol in my pocket, I had staggered with the body across
+the moonlit road and through that door, I left much of my apprehension behind
+me. With swift action and an unbroken nerve I thought I ought to succeed.'
+
+With a long sigh Marlowe threw himself into one of the deep chairs at the
+fireside and passed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. Each of his
+hearers, too, drew a deep breath, but not audibly.
+
+'Everything else you know,' he said. He took a cigarette from a box beside him
+and lighted it. Trent watched the very slight quiver of the hand that held the
+match, and privately noted that his own was at the moment not so steady.
+
+'The shoes that betrayed me to you,' pursued Marlowe after a short silence,
+'were painful all the time I wore them, but I never dreamed that they had
+given anywhere. I knew that no footstep of mine must appear by any accident in
+the soft ground about the hut where I laid the body, or between the hut and
+the house, so I took the shoes off and crammed my feet into them as soon as I
+was inside the little door. I left my own shoes, with my own jacket and
+overcoat, near the body, ready to be resumed later. I made a clear footmark on
+the soft gravel outside the French window, and several on the drugget round
+the carpet. The stripping off of the outer clothing of the body, and the
+dressing of it afterwards in the brown suit and shoes, and putting the things
+into the pockets, was a horrible business; and getting the teeth out of the
+mouth was worse. The head--but you don't want to hear about it. I didn't feel
+it much at the time. I was wriggling my own head out of a noose, you see. I
+wish I had thought of pulling down the cuffs, and had tied the shoes more
+neatly. And putting the watch in the wrong pocket was a bad mistake. It had
+all to be done so hurriedly.
+
+'You were wrong, by the way, about the whisky. After one stiffish drink I had
+no more; but I filled up a flask that was in the cupboard, and pocketed it. I
+had a night of peculiar anxiety and effort in front of me and I didn't know
+how I should stand it. I had to take some once or twice during the drive.
+Speaking of that, you give rather a generous allowance of time in your
+document for doing that run by night. You say that to get to Southampton by
+half-past six in that car, under the conditions, a man must, even if he drove
+like a demon, have left Marlstone by twelve at latest. I had not got the body
+dressed in the other suit, with tie and watch-chain and so forth, until nearly
+ten minutes past; and then I had to get to the car and start it going. But
+then I don't suppose any other man would have taken the risks I did in that
+car at night, without a headlight. It turns me cold to think of it now.
+
+'There's nothing much to say about what I did in the house. I spent the time
+after Martin had left me in carefully thinking over the remaining steps in my
+plan, while I unloaded and thoroughly cleaned the revolver using my
+handkerchief and a penholder from the desk. I also placed the packets of
+notes, the note- case, and the diamonds in the roll-top desk, which I opened
+and relocked with Manderson's key. When I went upstairs it was a trying
+moment, for though I was safe from the eyes of Martin, as he sat in his
+pantry, there was a faint possibility of somebody being about on the bedroom
+floor. I had sometimes found the French maid wandering about there when the
+other servants were in bed. Bunner, I knew, was a deep sleeper, Mrs Manderson,
+I had gathered from things I had heard her say, was usually asleep by eleven;
+I had thought it possible that her gift of sleep had helped her to retain all
+her beauty and vitality in spite of a marriage which we all knew was an
+unhappy one. Still it was uneasy work mounting the stairs, and holding myself
+ready to retreat to the library again at the least sound from above. But
+nothing happened.
+
+'The first thing I did on reaching the corridor was to enter my room and put
+the revolver and cartridges back in the case. Then I turned off the light and
+went quietly into Manderson's room.
+
+'What I had to do there you know. I had to take off the shoes and put them
+outside the door, leave Manderson's jacket, waistcoat, trousers, and black
+tie, after taking everything out of the pockets, select a suit and tie and
+shoes for the body, and place the dental plate in the bowl, which I moved from
+the washing-stand to the bedside, leaving those ruinous finger-marks as I did
+so. The marks on the drawer must have been made when I shut it after taking
+out the tie. Then I had to lie down in the bed and tumble it. You know all
+about it--all except my state of mind, which you couldn't imagine and I
+couldn't describe.
+
+'The worst came when I had hardly begun my operations: the moment when Mrs
+Manderson spoke from the room where I supposed her asleep. I was prepared for
+it happening; it was a possibility; but I nearly lost my nerve all the same.
+However ....
+
+'By the way, I may tell you this: in the extremely unlikely contingency of Mrs
+Manderson remaining awake, and so putting out of the question my escape by way
+of her window, I had planned simply to remain where I was a few hours, and
+then, not speaking to her, to leave the house quickly and quietly by the
+ordinary way. Martin would have been in bed by that time. I might have been
+heard to leave, but not seen. I should have done just as I had planned with
+the body, and then made the best time I could in the car to Southampton. The
+difference would have been that I couldn't have furnished an unquestionable
+alibi by turning up at the hotel at 6.30. I should have made the best of it by
+driving straight to the docks, and making my ostentatious enquiries there. I
+could in any case have got there long before the boat left at noon. I couldn't
+see that anybody could suspect me of the supposed murder in any case; but if
+any one had, and if I hadn't arrived until ten o'clock, say, I shouldn't have
+been able to answer, "It is impossible for me to have got to Southampton so
+soon after shooting him." I should simply have had to say I was delayed by a
+breakdown after leaving Manderson at half-past ten, and challenged any one to
+produce any fact connecting me with the crime. They couldn't have done it. The
+pistol, left openly in my room, might have been used by anybody, even if it
+could be proved that that particular pistol was used. Nobody could reasonably
+connect me with the shooting so long as it was believed that it was Manderson
+who had returned to the house. The suspicion could not, I was confident, enter
+any one's mind. All the same, I wanted to introduce the element of absolute
+physical impossibility; I knew I should feel ten times as safe with that. So
+when I knew from the sound of her breathing that Mrs Manderson was asleep
+again, I walked quickly across her room in my stocking feet, and was on the
+grass with my bundle in ten seconds. I don't think I made the least noise. The
+curtain before the window was of soft, thick stuff and didn't rustle, and when
+I pushed the glass doors further open there was not a sound.'
+
+'Tell me,' said Trent, as the other stopped to light a new cigarette, 'why you
+took the risk of going through Mrs Manderson's room to escape from the house.
+I could see when I looked into the thing on the spot why it had to be on that
+side of the house; there was a danger of being seen by Martin, or by some
+servant at a bedroom window, if you got out by a window on one of the other
+sides. But there were three unoccupied rooms on that side; two spare bedrooms
+and Mrs sitting-room. I should have thought it would have been safer, after
+you had done what was necessary to your plan in Manderson's room, to leave it
+quietly and escape through one of those three rooms .... The fact that you
+went through her window, you know,' he added coldly, 'would have suggested, if
+it became known, various suspicions in regard to the lady herself. I think you
+understand me.'
+
+Marlowe turned upon him with a glowing face. 'And I think you will understand
+me, Mr Trent,' he said in a voice that shook a little, 'when I say that if
+such a possibility had occurred to me then, I would have taken any risk rather
+than make my escape by that way.... Oh well!' he went on more coolly, 'I
+suppose that to any one who didn't know her, the idea of her being privy to
+her husband's murder might not seem so indescribably fatuous. Forgive the
+expression.' He looked attentively at the burning end of his cigarette,
+studiously unconscious of the red flag that flew in Trent's eyes for an
+instant at his words and the tone of them.
+
+That emotion, however, was conquered at once. 'Your remark is perfectly just,'
+Trent said with answering coolness. 'I can quite believe, too, that at the
+time you didn't think of the possibility I mentioned. But surely, apart from
+that, it would have been safer to do as I said; go by the window of an
+unoccupied room.'
+
+'Do you think so?' said Marlowe. 'All I can say is, I hadn't the nerve to do
+it. I tell you, when I entered Manderson's room I shut the door of it on more
+than half my terrors. I had the problem confined before me in a closed space,
+with only one danger in it, and that a known danger: the danger of Mrs
+Manderson. The thing was almost done; I had only to wait until she was
+certainly asleep after her few moments of waking up, for which, as I told you,
+I was prepared as a possibility. Barring accidents, the way was clear. But now
+suppose that I, carrying Manderson's clothes and shoes, had opened that door
+again and gone in my shirt-sleeves and socks to enter one of the empty rooms.
+The moonlight was flooding the corridor through the end window. Even if my
+face was concealed, nobody could mistake my standing figure for Manderson's.
+Martin might be going about the house in his silent way. Bunner might come out
+of his bedroom. One of the servants who were supposed to be in bed might come
+round the corner from the other passage--I had found Celestine prowling about
+quite as late as it was then. None of these things was very likely; but they
+were all too likely for me. They were uncertainties. Shut off from the
+household in Manderson's room I knew exactly what I had to face. As I lay in
+my clothes in Manderson's bed and listened for the almost inaudible breathing
+through the open door, I felt far more ease of mind, terrible as my anxiety
+was, than I had felt since I saw the dead body on the turf. I even
+congratulated myself that I had had the chance, through Mrs Manderson's
+speaking to me, of tightening one of the screws in my scheme by repeating the
+statement about my having been sent to Southampton.'
+
+Marlowe looked at Trent, who nodded as who should say that his point was met.
+
+'As for Southampton,' pursued Marlowe, 'you know what I did when I got there,
+I have no doubt. I had decided to take Manderson's story about the mysterious
+Harris and act it out on my own lines. It was a carefully prepared lie, better
+than anything I could improvise. I even went so far as to get through a trunk
+call to the hotel at Southampton from the library before starting, and ask if
+Harris was there. I expected, he wasn't.'
+
+Was that why you telephoned?' Trent enquired quickly.
+
+'The reason for telephoning was to get myself into an attitude in which Martin
+couldn't see my face or anything but the jacket and hat, yet which was a
+natural and familiar attitude. But while I was about it, it was obviously
+better to make a genuine call. If I had simply pretended to be telephoning,
+the people at the exchange could have told at once that there hadn't been a
+call from White Gables that night.'
+
+'One of the first things I did was to make that enquiry,' said Trent. 'That
+telephone call, and the wire you sent from Southampton to the dead man to say
+Harris hadn't turned up, and you were returning-I particularly appreciated
+both those.'
+
+A constrained smile lighted Marlowe's face for a moment. 'I don't know that
+there's anything more to tell. I returned to Marlstone, and faced your friend
+the detective with such nerve as I had left. The worst was when I heard you
+had been put on the case--no, that wasn't the worst. The worst was when I saw
+you walk out of the shrubbery the next day, coming away from the shed where I
+had laid the body. For one ghastly moment I thought you were going to give me
+in charge on the spot. Now I've told you everything, you don't look so
+terrible.'
+
+He closed his eyes, and there was a short silence. Then Trent got suddenly to
+his feet.
+
+'Cross-examination?' enquired Marlowe, looking at him gravely.
+
+'Not at all,' said Trent, stretching his long limbs. 'Only stiffness of the
+legs. I don't want to ask any questions. I believe what you have told us. I
+don't believe it simply because I always liked your face, or because it saves
+awkwardness, which are the most usual reasons for believing a person, but
+because my vanity will have it that no man could lie to me steadily for an
+hour without my perceiving it. Your story is an extraordinary one; but
+Manderson was an extraordinary man, and so are you. You acted like a lunatic
+in doing what you did; but I quite agree with you that if you had acted like a
+sane man you wouldn't have had the hundredth part of a dog's chance with a
+judge and jury. One thing is beyond dispute on any reading of the affair: you
+are a man of courage.'
+
+The colour rushed into Marlowe's face, and he hesitated for words. Before he
+could speak Mr Cupples arose with a dry cough.
+
+'For my part,' he said, 'I never supposed you guilty for a moment.' Marlowe
+turned to him in grateful amazement, Trent with an incredulous stare. 'But,'
+pursued Mr Cupples, holding up his hand, 'there is one question which I should
+like to put.'
+
+Marlowe bowed, saying nothing.
+
+'Suppose,' said Mr Cupples, 'that some one else had been suspected of the
+crime and put upon trial. What would you have done?'
+
+'I think my duty was clear. I should have gone with my story to the lawyers
+for the defence, and put myself in their hands.'
+
+Trent laughed aloud. Now that the thing was over, his spirits were rapidly
+becoming ungovernable. 'I can see their faces!' he said. 'As a matter of fact,
+though, nobody else was ever in danger. There wasn't a shred of evidence
+against any one. I looked up Murch at the Yard this morning, and he told me he
+had come round to Bunner's view, that it was a case of revenge on the part of
+some American black-hand gang. So there's the end of the Manderson case. Holy,
+suffering Moses! What an ass a man can make of himself when he thinks he's
+being preternaturally clever!' He seized the bulky envelope from the table and
+stuffed it into the heart of the fire. 'There's for you, old friend! For want
+of you the world's course will not fail. But look here! It's getting
+late--nearly seven, and Cupples and I have an appointment at half-past. We
+must go. Mr Marlowe, goodbye.' He looked into the other's eyes. 'I am a man
+who has worked hard to put a rope round your neck. Considering the
+circumstances, I don't know whether you will blame me. Will you shake hands?'
+
+CHAPTER XVI: The Last Straw
+
+'What was that you said about our having an appointment at half-past seven?'
+asked Mr Cupples as the two came out of the great gateway of the pile of
+flats. 'Have we such an appointment?'
+
+'Certainly we have,' replied Trent. 'You are dining with me. Only one thing
+can properly celebrate this occasion, and that is a dinner for which I pay.
+No, no! I asked you first. I have got right down to the bottom of a case that
+must be unique--a case that has troubled even my mind for over a year--and if
+that isn't a good reason for standing a dinner, I don't know what is. Cupples,
+we will not go to my club. This is to be a festival, and to be seen in a
+London club in a state of pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter
+any man's career. Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or, at
+least, they always make it taste the same, I know not how. The eternal dinner
+at my club hath bored millions of members like me, and shall bore; but tonight
+let the feast be spread in vain, so far as we are concerned. We will not go
+where the satraps throng the hall. We will go to Sheppard's.'
+
+'Who is Sheppard?' asked Mr Cupples mildly, as they proceeded up Victoria
+Street. His companion went with an unnatural lightness, and a policeman,
+observing his face, smiled indulgently at a look of happiness which he could
+only attribute to alcohol.
+
+'Who is Sheppard?' echoed Trent with bitter emphasis. 'That question, if you
+will pardon me for saying so, Cupples, is thoroughly characteristic of the
+spirit of aimless enquiry prevailing in this restless day. I suggest our
+dining at Sheppard's, and instantly you fold your arms and demand, in a frenzy
+of intellectual pride, to know who Sheppard is before you will cross the
+threshold of Sheppard's. I am not going to pander to the vices of the modern
+mind. Sheppard's is a place where one can dine. I do not know Sheppard. It
+never occurred to me that Sheppard existed. Probably he is a myth of
+totemistic origin. All I know is that you can get a bit of saddle of mutton at
+Sheppard's that has made many an American visitor curse the day that
+Christopher Columbus was born .... Taxi!'
+
+A cab rolled smoothly to the kerb, and the driver received his instructions
+with a majestic nod.
+
+'Another reason I have for suggesting Sheppard's,' continued Trent, feverishly
+lighting a cigarette, 'is that I am going to be married to the most wonderful
+woman in the world. I trust the connection of ideas is clear.'
+
+'You are going to marry Mabel!' cried Mr Cupples. 'My dear friend, what good
+news this is! Shake hands, Trent; this is glorious! I congratulate you both
+from the bottom of my heart. And may I say--I don't want to interrupt your
+flow of high spirits, which is very natural indeed, and I remember being just
+the same in similar circumstances long ago--but may I say how earnestly I have
+hoped for this? Mabel has seen so much unhappiness, yet she is surely a woman
+formed in the great purpose of humanity to be the best influence in the life
+of a good man. But I did not know her mind as regarded yourself. Your mind I
+have known for some time,' Mr Cupples went on, with a twinkle in his eye that
+would have done credit to the worldliest of creatures. 'I saw it at once when
+you were both dining at my house, and you sat listening to Professor
+Peppmuller and looking at her. Some of us older fellows have our wits about us
+still, my dear boy.'
+
+'Mabel says she knew it before that,' replied Trent, with a slightly
+crestfallen air. 'And I thought I was acting the part of a person who was not
+mad about her to the life. Well, I never was any good at dissembling. I
+shouldn't wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed something through his double
+convex lenses. But however crazy I may have been as an undeclared suitor,' he
+went on with a return to vivacity, 'I am going to be much worse now. As for
+your congratulations, thank you a thousand times, because I know you mean
+them. You are the sort of uncomfortable brute who would pull a face three feet
+long if you thought we were making a mistake. By the way, I can't help being
+an ass tonight; I'm obliged to go on blithering. You must try to bear it.
+Perhaps it would be easier if I sang you a song--one of your old favourites.
+What was that song you used always to be singing? Like this, wasn't it?' He
+accompanied the following stave with a dexterous clog-step on the floor of the
+cab:
+
+'There was an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg. He had no tobacco, no
+tobacco could he beg. Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox, And he
+always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box.
+
+'Now for the chorus!
+
+'Yes, he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box.
+
+'But you're not singing. I thought you would be making the welkin ring.'
+
+'I never sang that song in my life,' protested Mr Cupples. 'I never heard it
+before.'
+
+'Are you sure?' enquired Trent doubtfully. 'Well, I suppose I must take your
+word for it. It is a beautiful song, anyhow: not the whole warbling grove in
+concert heard can beat it. Somehow it seems to express my feelings at the
+present moment as nothing else could; it rises unbidden to the lips. Out of
+the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells
+said when listening to a speech of Mr Balfour's.'
+
+'When was that?' asked Mr Cupples.
+
+'On the occasion,' replied Trent, 'of the introduction of the Compulsory
+Notification of Diseases of Poultry Bill, which ill-fated measure you of
+course remember. Hullo!' he broke off, as the cab rushed down a side street
+and swung round a corner into a broad and populous thoroughfare, 'we're there
+already'. The cab drew up.
+
+'Here we are,' said Trent, as he paid the man, and led Mr Cupples into a long,
+panelled room set with many tables and filled with a hum of talk. 'This is the
+house of fulfilment of craving, this is the bower with the roses around it. I
+see there are three bookmakers eating pork at my favourite table. We will have
+that one in the opposite corner.'
+
+He conferred earnestly with a waiter, while Mr Cupples, in a pleasant
+meditation, warmed himself before the great fire. 'The wine here,' Trent
+resumed, as they seated themselves, 'is almost certainly made out of grapes.
+What shall we drink?'
+
+Mr Cupples came out of his reverie. 'I think,' he said, 'I will have milk and
+soda water.'
+
+'Speak lower!' urged Trent. 'The head-waiter has a weak heart, and might hear
+you. Milk and soda water! Cupples, you may think you have a strong
+constitution, and I don't say you have not, but I warn you that this habit of
+mixing drinks has been the death of many a robuster man than you. Be wise in
+time. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine, leave soda to the Turkish hordes.
+Here comes our food.' He gave another order to the waiter, who ranged the
+dishes before them and darted away. Trent was, it seemed, a respected
+customer. 'I have sent,' he said, 'for wine that I know, and I hope you will
+try it. If you have taken a vow, then in the name of all the teetotal saints
+drink water, which stands at your elbow, but don't seek a cheap notoriety by
+demanding milk and soda.'
+
+'I have never taken any pledge,' said Mr Cupples, examining his mutton with a
+favourable eye. 'I simply don't care about wine. I bought a bottle once and
+drank it to see what it was like, and it made me ill. But very likely it was
+bad wine. I will taste some of yours, as it is your dinner, and I do assure
+you, my dear Trent, I should like to do something unusual to show how strongly
+I feel on the present occasion. I have not been so delighted for many years.
+To think,' he reflected aloud as the waiter filled his glass, 'of the
+Manderson mystery disposed of, the innocent exculpated, and your own and
+Mabel's happiness crowned--all coming upon me together! I drink to you, my
+dear friend.' And Mr Cupples took a very small sip of the wine.
+
+'You have a great nature,' said Trent, much moved. 'Your outward semblance
+doth belie your soul's immensity. I should have expected as soon to see an
+elephant conducting at the opera as you drinking my health. Dear Cupples! May
+his beak retain ever that delicate rose-stain!--No, curse it all!' he broke
+out, surprising a shade of discomfort that flitted over his companion's face
+as he tasted the wine again. 'I have no business to meddle with your tastes. I
+apologize. You shall have what you want, even if it causes the head-waiter to
+perish in his pride.'
+
+When Mr Cupples had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had
+retired, Trent looked across the table with significance. 'In this babble of
+many conversations,' he said, 'we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare
+hillside. The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young
+woman at the pay-desk. We are alone. What do you think of that interview of
+this afternoon?' He began to dine with an appetite.
+
+Without pausing in the task of cutting his mutton into very small pieces Mr
+Cupples replied: 'The most curious feature of it, in my judgement, was the
+irony of the situation. We both held the clue to that mad hatred of
+Manderson's which Marlowe found so mysterious. We knew of his jealous
+obsession; which knowledge we withheld, as was very proper, if only in
+consideration of Mabel's feelings. Marlowe will never know of what he was
+suspected by that person. Strange! Nearly all of us, I venture to think, move
+unconsciously among a network of opinions, often quite erroneous, which other
+people entertain about us. I remember, for instance, discovering quite by
+accident some years ago that a number of people of my acquaintance believed me
+to have been secretly received into the Church of Rome. This absurd fiction
+was based upon the fact, which in the eyes of many appeared conclusive, that I
+had expressed myself in talk as favouring the plan of a weekly abstinence from
+meat. Manderson's belief in regard to his secretary probably rested upon a
+much slighter ground. It was Mr Bunner, I think you said, who told you of his
+rooted and apparently hereditary temper of suspicious jealousy .... With
+regard to Marlowe's story, it appeared to me entirely straightforward, and
+not, in its essential features, especially remarkable, once we have admitted,
+as we surely must, that in the case of Manderson we have to deal with a more
+or less disordered mind.'
+
+Trent laughed loudly. 'I confess,' he said, 'that the affair struck me as a
+little unusual.
+
+'Only in the development of the details,' argued Mr Cupples. 'What is there
+abnormal in the essential facts? A madman conceives a crazy suspicion; he
+hatches a cunning plot against his fancied injurer; it involves his own
+destruction. Put thus, what is there that any man with the least knowledge of
+the ways of lunatics would call remarkable? Turn now to Marlowe's proceedings.
+He finds himself in a perilous position from which, though he is innocent,
+telling the truth will not save him. Is that an unheard-of situation? He
+escapes by means of a bold and ingenious piece of deception. That seems to me
+a thing that might happen every day, and probably does so.' He attacked his
+now unrecognizable mutton.
+
+'I should like to know,' said Trent, after an alimentary pause in the
+conversation, 'whether there is anything that ever happened on the face of the
+earth that you could not represent as quite ordinary and commonplace by such a
+line of argument as that.'
+
+A gentle smile illuminated Mr Cupples's face. 'You must not suspect me of
+empty paradox,' he said. 'My meaning will become clearer, perhaps, if I
+mention some things which do appear to me essentially remarkable. Let me see
+.... Well, I would call the life history of the liver-fluke, which we owe to
+the researches of Poulton, an essentially remarkable thing.'
+
+'I am unable to argue the point,' replied Trent. 'Fair science may have smiled
+upon the liver-fluke's humble birth, but I never even heard it mentioned.'
+
+'It is not, perhaps, an appetizing subject,' said Mr Cupples thoughtfully,
+'and I will not pursue it. All I mean is, my dear Trent, that there are really
+remarkable things going on all round us if we will only see them; and we do
+our perceptions no credit in regarding as remarkable only those affairs which
+are surrounded with an accumulation of sensational detail.'
+
+Trent applauded heartily with his knife-handle on the table, as Mr Cupples
+ceased and refreshed himself with milk and soda water. 'I have not heard you
+go on like this for years,' he said. 'I believe you must be almost as much
+above yourself as I am. It is a bad case of the unrest which men miscall
+delight. But much as I enjoy it, I am not going to sit still and hear the
+Manderson affair dismissed as commonplace. You may say what you like, but the
+idea of impersonating Manderson in those circumstances was an extraordinarily
+ingenious idea.'
+
+'Ingenious--certainly!' replied Mr Cupples. 'Extraordinarily so--no! In those
+circumstances (your own words) it was really not strange that it should occur
+to a clever man. It lay almost on the surface of the situation. Marlowe was
+famous for his imitation of Manderson's voice; he had a talent for acting; he
+had a chess-player's mind; he knew the ways of the establishment intimately. I
+grant you that the idea was brilliantly carried out; but everything favoured
+it. As for the essential idea, I do not place it, as regards ingenuity, in the
+same class with, for example, the idea of utilizing the force of recoil in a
+discharged firearm to actuate the mechanism of ejecting and reloading. I do,
+however, admit, as I did at the outset, that in respect of details the case
+had unusual features. It developed a high degree of complexity.'
+
+'Did it really strike you in that way?' enquired Trent with desperate sarcasm.
+
+'The affair became complicated,' went on Mr Cupples unmoved, 'because after
+Marlowe's suspicions were awakened, a second subtle mind came in to interfere
+with the plans of the first. That sort of duel often happens in business and
+politics, but less frequently, I imagine, in the world of crime.'
+
+'I should say never,' Trent replied; 'and the reason is, that even the
+cleverest criminals seldom run to strategic subtlety. When they do, they don't
+get caught, since clever policemen have if possible less strategic subtlety
+than the ordinary clever criminal. But that rather deep quality seems very
+rarely to go with the criminal make-up. Look at Crippen. He was a very clever
+criminal as they go. He solved the central problem of every clandestine
+murder, the disposal of the body, with extreme neatness. But how far did he
+see through the game? The criminal and the policeman are often swift and bold
+tacticians, but neither of them is good for more than a quite simple plan.
+After all, it's a rare faculty in any walk of life.'
+
+'One disturbing reflection was left on my mind,' said Mr Cupples, who seemed
+to have had enough of abstractions for the moment, 'by what we learned today.
+If Marlowe had suspected nothing and walked into the trap, he would almost
+certainly have been hanged. Now how often may not a plan to throw the guilt of
+murder on an innocent person have been practised successfully? There are, I
+imagine, numbers of cases in which the accused, being found guilty on
+circumstantial evidence, have died protesting their innocence. I shall never
+approve again of a death-sentence imposed in a case decided upon such
+evidence.'
+
+'I never have done so, for my part,' said Trent. 'To hang in such cases seems
+to me flying in the face of the perfectly obvious and sound principle
+expressed in the saying that "you never can tell". I agree with the American
+jurist who lays it down that we should not hang a yellow dog for stealing jam
+on circumstantial evidence, not even if he has jam all over his nose. As for
+attempts being made by malevolent persons to fix crimes upon innocent men, of
+course it is constantly happening. It's a marked feature, for instance, of all
+systems of rule by coercion, whether in Ireland or Russia or India or Korea;
+if the police cannot get hold of a man they think dangerous by fair means,
+they do it by foul. But there's one case in the State Trials that is
+peculiarly to the point, because not only was it a case of fastening a murder
+on innocent people, but the plotter did in effect what Manderson did; he gave
+up his own life in order to secure the death of his victims. Probably you have
+heard of the Campden Case.'
+
+Mr Cupples confessed his ignorance and took another potato.
+
+'John Masefield has written a very remarkable play about it,' said Trent, 'and
+if it ever comes on again in London, you should go and see it, if you like
+having the fan-tods. I have often seen women weeping in an undemonstrative
+manner at some slab of oleo-margarine sentiment in the theatre. By George!
+what everlasting smelling-bottle hysterics they ought to have if they saw that
+play decently acted! Well, the facts were that John Perry accused his mother
+and brother of murdering a man, and swore he had helped them to do it. He told
+a story full of elaborate detail, and had an answer to everything, except the
+curious fact that the body couldn't be found; but the judge, who was probably
+drunk at the time--this was in Restoration days--made nothing of that. The
+mother and brother denied the accusation. All three prisoners were found
+guilty and hanged, purely on John's evidence. Two years after, the man whom
+they were hanged for murdering came back to Campden. He had been kidnapped by
+pirates and taken to sea. His disappearance had given John his idea. The point
+about John is, that his including himself in the accusation, which amounted to
+suicide, was the thing in his evidence which convinced everybody of its truth.
+It was so obvious that no man would do himself to death to get somebody else
+hanged. Now that is exactly the answer which the prosecution would have made
+if Marlowe had told the truth. Not one juryman in a million would have
+believed in the Manderson plot.'
+
+Mr Cupples mused upon this a few moments. 'I have not your acquaintance with
+that branch of history,' he said at length; 'in fact, I have none at all. But
+certain recollections of my own childhood return to me in connection with this
+affair. We know from the things Mabel told you what may be termed the
+spiritual truth underlying this matter; the insane depth of jealous hatred
+which Manderson concealed. We can understand that he was capable of such a
+scheme. But as a rule it is in the task of penetrating to the spiritual truth
+that the administration of justice breaks down. Sometimes that truth is
+deliberately concealed, as in Manderson's case. Sometimes, I think, it is
+concealed because simple people are actually unable to express it, and nobody
+else divines it. When I was a lad in Edinburgh the whole country went mad
+about the Sandyford Place murder.'
+
+Trent nodded. 'Mrs M'Lachlan's case. She was innocent right enough.'
+
+'My parents thought so,' said Mr Cupples. 'I thought so myself when I became
+old enough to read and understand that excessively sordid story. But the
+mystery of the affair was so dark, and the task of getting at the truth behind
+the lies told by everybody concerned proved so hopeless, that others were just
+as fully convinced of the innocence of old James Fleming. All Scotland took
+sides on the question. It was the subject of debates in Parliament. The press
+divided into two camps, and raged with a fury I have never seen equalled. Yet
+it is obvious, is it not? for I see you have read of the case--that if the
+spiritual truth about that old man could have been known there would have been
+very little room for doubt in the matter. If what some surmised about his
+disposition was true, he was quite capable of murdering Jessie M'Pherson and
+then casting the blame on the poor feeble-minded creature who came so near to
+suffering the last penalty of the law.'
+
+'Even a commonplace old dotard like Fleming can be an unfathomable mystery to
+all the rest of the human race,' said Trent, 'and most of all in a court of
+justice. The law certainly does not shine when it comes to a case requiring
+much delicacy of perception. It goes wrong easily enough over the Flemings of
+this world. As for the people with temperaments who get mixed up in legal
+proceedings, they must feel as if they were in a forest of apes, whether they
+win or lose. Well, I dare say it's good for their sort to have their noses
+rubbed in reality now and again. But what would twelve red-faced realities in
+a jury-box have done to Marlowe? His story would, as he says, have been a
+great deal worse than no defence at all. It's not as if there were a single
+piece of evidence in support of his tale. Can't you imagine how the
+prosecution would tear it to rags? Can't you see the judge simply taking it in
+his stride when it came to the summing up? And the jury--you've served on
+juries, I expect--in their room, snorting with indignation over the feebleness
+of the lie, telling each other it was the clearest case they ever heard of,
+and that they'd have thought better of him if he hadn't lost his nerve at the
+crisis, and had cleared off with the swag as he intended. Imagine yourself on
+that jury, not knowing Marlowe, and trembling with indignation at the record
+unrolled before you-- cupidity, murder, robbery, sudden cowardice, shameless,
+impenitent, desperate lying! Why, you and I believed him to be guilty until--'
+
+'I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!' interjected Mr Cupples, laying down
+his knife and fork. 'I was most careful, when we talked it all over the other
+night, to say nothing indicating such a belief. I was always certain that he
+was innocent.'
+
+'You said something of the sort at Marlowe's just now. I wondered what on
+earth you could mean. Certain that he was innocent! How can you be certain?
+You are generally more careful about terms than that, Cupples.'
+
+'I said "certain",' Mr Cupples repeated firmly.
+
+Trent shrugged his shoulders. 'If you really were, after reading my manuscript
+and discussing the whole thing as we did,' he rejoined, 'then I can only say
+that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human
+reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal
+nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that
+system. Why, man--'
+
+'Let me say a word,' Mr Cupples interposed again, folding his hands above his
+plate. 'I assure you I am far from abandoning reason. I am certain he is
+innocent, and I always was certain of it, because of something that I know,
+and knew from the very beginning. You asked me just now to imagine myself on
+the jury at Marlowe's trial. That would be an unprofitable exercise of the
+mental powers, because I know that I should be present in another capacity. I
+should be in the witness-box, giving evidence for the defence. You said just
+now, "If there were a single piece of evidence in support of his tale." There
+is, and it is my evidence. And,' he added quietly, 'it is conclusive.' He took
+up his knife and fork and went contentedly on with his dinner.
+
+The pallor of sudden excitement had turned Trent to marble while Mr Cupples
+led laboriously up to this statement. At the last word the blood rushed to his
+face again, and he struck the table with an unnatural laugh. 'It can't be!' he
+exploded. 'It's something you fancied, something you dreamed after one of
+those debauches of soda and milk. You can't really mean that all the time I
+was working on the case down there you knew Marlowe was innocent.'
+
+Mr Cupples, busy with his last mouthful, nodded brightly. He made an end of
+eating, wiped his sparse moustache, and then leaned forward over the table.
+'It's very simple,' he said. 'I shot Manderson myself.'
+
+'I am afraid I startled you,' Trent heard the voice of Mr Cupples say. He
+forced himself out of his stupefaction like a diver striking upward for the
+surface, and with a rigid movement raised his glass. But half of the wine
+splashed upon the cloth, and he put it carefully down again untasted. He drew
+a deep breath, which was exhaled in a laugh wholly without merriment. 'Go on,'
+he said.
+
+'It was not murder,' began Mr Cupples, slowly measuring off inches with a fork
+on the edge of the table. 'I will tell you the whole story. On that Sunday
+night I was taking my before-bedtime constitutional, having set out from the
+hotel about a quarter past ten. I went along the field path that runs behind
+White Gables, cutting off the great curve of the road, and came out on the
+road nearly opposite that gate that is just by the eighth hole on the
+golf-course. Then I turned in there, meaning to walk along the turf to the
+edge of the cliff, and go back that way. I had only gone a few steps when I
+heard the car coming, and then I heard it stop near the gate. I saw Manderson
+at once. Do you remember my telling you I had seen him once alive after our
+quarrel in front of the hotel? Well, this was the time. You asked me if I had,
+and I did not care to tell a falsehood.'
+
+A slight groan came from Trent. He drank a little wine, and said stonily, 'Go
+on, please.'
+
+'It was, as you know,' pursued Mr Cupples, 'a moonlight night, but I was in
+shadow under the trees by the stone wall, and anyhow they could not suppose
+there was any one near them. I heard all that passed just as Marlowe has
+narrated it to us, and I saw the car go off towards Bishopsbridge. I did not
+see Manderson's face as it went, because his back was to me, but he shook the
+back of his left hand at the car with extraordinary violence, greatly to my
+amazement. Then I waited for him to go back to White Gables, as I did not want
+to meet him again. But he did not go. He opened the gate through which I had
+just passed, and he stood there on the turf of the green, quite still. His
+head was bent, his arms hung at his sides, and he looked some-how--rigid. For
+a few moments he remained in this tense attitude, then all of a sudden his
+right arm moved swiftly, and his hand was at the pocket of his overcoat. I saw
+his face raised in the moonlight, the teeth bared, and the eyes glittering,
+and all at once I knew that the man was not sane. Almost as quickly as that
+flashed across my mind, something else flashed in the moonlight. He held the
+pistol before him, pointing at his breast.
+
+'Now I may say here I shall always be doubtful whether Manderson really meant
+to kill himself then. Marlowe naturally thinks so, knowing nothing of my
+intervention. But I think it quite likely he only meant to wound himself, and
+to charge Marlowe with attempted murder and robbery.
+
+'At that moment, however, I assumed it was suicide. Before I knew what I was
+doing I had leapt out of the shadows and seized his arm. He shook me off with
+a furious snarling noise, giving me a terrific blow in the chest, and
+presenting the revolver at my head. But I seized his wrists before he could
+fire, and clung with all my strength--you remember how bruised and scratched
+they were. I knew I was fighting for my own life now, for murder was in his
+eyes. We struggled like two beasts, without an articulate word, I holding his
+pistol-hand down and keeping a grip on the other. I never dreamed that I had
+the strength for such an encounter. Then, with a perfectly instinctive
+movement--I never knew I meant to do it--I flung away his free hand and
+clutched like lightning at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers. By a
+miracle it did not go off. I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat
+like a wild cat, and I fired blindly in his face. He would have been about a
+yard away, I suppose. His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on
+the turf.
+
+'I flung the pistol down and bent over him. The heart's action ceased under my
+hand. I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don't know how long it
+was before I heard the noise of the car returning.
+
+'Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight on his
+white and working face, I was within a few yards of him, crouching in the
+shadow of the furze by the ninth tee. I dared not show myself. I was thinking.
+My public quarrel with Manderson the same morning was, I suspected, the talk
+of the hotel. I assure you that every horrible possibility of the situation
+for me had rushed across my mind the moment I saw Manderson fall. I became
+cunning. I knew what I must do. I must get back to the hotel as fast as I
+could, get in somehow unperceived, and play a part to save myself. I must
+never tell a word to any one. Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell
+every one how he had found the body. I knew he would suppose it was suicide; I
+thought every one would suppose so.
+
+'When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the wall and
+got out into the road by the clubhouse, where he could not see me. I felt
+perfectly cool and collected. I crossed the road, climbed the fence, and ran
+across the meadow to pick up the field path I had come by that runs to the
+hotel behind White Gables. I got back to the hotel very much out of breath.'
+
+'Out of breath,' repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his companion
+as if hypnotized.
+
+'I had had a sharp run,' Mr Cupples reminded him. 'Well, approaching the hotel
+from the back I could see into the writing-room through the open window. There
+was nobody in there, so I climbed over the sill, walked to the bell and rang
+it, and then sat down to write a letter I had meant to write the next day. I
+saw by the clock that it was a little past eleven. When the waiter answered
+the bell I asked for a glass of milk and a postage stamp. Soon afterwards I
+went up to bed. But I could not sleep.'
+
+Mr Cupples, having nothing more to say, ceased speaking. He looked in mild
+surprise at Trent, who now sat silent, supporting his bent head in his hands.
+
+'He could not sleep,' murmured Trent at last in a hollow tone. 'A frequent
+result of over-exertion during the day. Nothing to be alarmed about.' He was
+silent again, then looked up with a pale face. 'Cupples, I am cured. I will
+never touch a crime-mystery again. The Manderson affair shall be Philip
+Trent's last case. His high-blown pride at length breaks under him.' Trent's
+smile suddenly returned. 'I could have borne everything but that last
+revelation of the impotence of human reason. Cupples, I have absolutely
+nothing left to say, except this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a
+spirit of self- abasement. And you shall pay for the dinner.'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Last Case, by E. C. Bentley
+