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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Trent’s Last Case, by E.C. Bentley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Trent’s Last Case
+       The Woman in Black
+
+Author: E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2000 [eBook #2568]
+[Most recently updated: February 8, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Stuart E. Thiel and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRENT’S LAST CASE ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Trent’s Last Case
+
+THE WOMAN IN BLACK
+
+By E.C. Bentley
+
+
+To
+GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON.
+
+My dear Gilbert,
+
+I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble
+motive I had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it.
+Second: because I owe you a book in return for “The Man Who Was
+Thursday.” Third: because I said I would when I unfolded the plan of it
+to you, surrounded by Frenchmen, two years ago. Fourth: because I
+remember the past.
+
+I have been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when
+neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy in
+the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea, and our elders’
+patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves
+produced such light reading as was necessary; when (in the words of
+Canada’s poet) we studied the works of nature, also those little frogs;
+when, in short, we were extremely young. For the sake of that age I
+offer you this book.
+
+Yours always,
+E. C. BENTLEY
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I. Bad News
+ II. Knocking the Town Endways
+ III. Breakfast
+ IV. Handcuffs in the Air
+ V. Poking About
+ VI. Mr. Bunner on the Case
+ VII. The Lady in Black
+ VIII. The Inquest
+ IX. A Hot Scent
+ X. The Wife of Dives
+ XI. Hitherto Unpublished
+ XII. Evil Days
+ XIII. Eruption
+ XIV. Writing a Letter
+ XV. Double Cunning
+ XVI. The Last Straw
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+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 struggle 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 to be, 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 Havley, 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 case 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, nothing 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. 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 Célestine.”
+
+“Naturally,” said Trent with businesslike calm. “Now what I want you to
+tell me, Célestine, 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?”
+
+Célestine 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—voilà!”
+Célestine 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, Célestine. 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, Célestine, I am
+very much obliged to you.” He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
+
+“It is nothing, monsieur,” said Célestine, 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 feu 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 tête, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce
+insupportable, tout de même, qu’il existe des types comme ça? Je vous
+jure que—”
+
+“Finissez ce chahut, Célestine!” Trent broke in sharply. Célestine’s
+tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. “En
+voilà une scène! C’est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ça,
+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 Célestine 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, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take
+as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.”
+
+“A peine s’il m’avait regardé!” Célestine answered simply.
+
+“Ça, 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,
+Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a
+beauty!”
+
+Célestine 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 Célestine’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 inquiring for passenger name Harris on
+Havre boat inquired 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 inquired.
+
+“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. “Célestine!” 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. Célestine 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_ 16_th_.
+
+
+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 the
+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. Someone 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 all, 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 _hystérique_, 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-à-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 you 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 hell’s 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 from 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 it was 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 his
+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 O.U.D.S. 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 will 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-room,
+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.
+
+“_Touché_,” 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. Manderson’s
+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 Célestine 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. As 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 somehow—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.”
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
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