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+Project Gutenberg's Trent's Last Case, by E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Trent's Last Case
+       The Woman in Black
+
+Author: E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+Release Date: 2001
+Posting Date: November 14, 2009 [EBook #2568]
+Last updated: September 18, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRENT'S LAST CASE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stuart E. Thiel
+
+
+
+
+
+TRENT'S LAST CASE
+
+THE WOMAN IN BLACK
+
+
+By E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I: Bad News
+
+Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we
+know judge wisely?
+
+When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered
+by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single
+tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity
+of such wealth as this dead man had piled up--without making one loyal
+friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to
+the least honour. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those
+living in the great vortices of business as if the earth too shuddered
+under a blow.
+
+In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no
+figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He
+had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and
+augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions
+for their labour, had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there
+had been this singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a
+thing especially dear to the hearts of his countrymen, had remained
+incongruously about his head through the years when he stood in every
+eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability, the stamper-out of
+manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding chieftains that infest the
+borders of Wall Street.
+
+The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those
+chieftains on the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him
+with accretion through his father, who during a long life had quietly
+continued to lend money and never had margined a stock. Manderson, who
+had at no time known what it was to be without large sums to his hand,
+should have been altogether of that newer American plutocracy which is
+steadied by the tradition and habit of great wealth. But it was not so.
+While his nurture and education had taught him European ideas of a rich
+man's proper external circumstance; while they had rooted in him an
+instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which does not
+shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
+him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his
+forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been
+called his early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of
+genius, his hand against every man's--an infant prodigy--who brought to
+the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than
+any opposed to it. At St Helena it was laid down that war is une belle
+occupation; and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and
+complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New York.
+
+Then came his change. At his father's death, when Manderson was thirty
+years old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god
+he served seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic
+adaptability of his nation he turned to steady labour in his father's
+banking business, closing his ears to the sound of the battles of the
+Street. In a few years he came to control all the activity of the great
+firm whose unimpeached conservatism, safety, and financial weight lifted
+it like a cliff above the angry sea of the markets. All mistrust founded
+on the performances of his youth had vanished. He was quite plainly a
+different man. How the change came about none could with authority say,
+but there was a story of certain last words spoken by his father, whom
+alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
+
+He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was
+current in the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of Manderson
+called up a vision of all that was broad-based and firm in the vast
+wealth of the United States. He planned great combinations of capital,
+drew together and centralized industries of continental scope, financed
+with unerring judgement the large designs of state or of private
+enterprise. Many a time when he 'took hold' to smash a strike, or to
+federate the ownership of some great field of labour, he sent ruin upon
+a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or steelworkers or cattlemen
+defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more lawless and ruthless
+than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate business ends.
+Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the financier
+and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to protect
+or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country.
+Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the
+national lust for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the
+Colossus.
+
+But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
+unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants
+and certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little
+circle knew that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability
+in the markets, had his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when
+the Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if
+Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the
+spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly
+out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his
+hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous
+raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the
+offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried
+out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go
+soberly down to his counting-house--humming a stave or two of 'Spanish
+Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the
+harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of
+pointing out to some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a million to
+the depredator might have been made. 'Seems to me,' he would say almost
+wistfully, 'the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place since I
+quit.' By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus became
+known to the business world, which exulted greatly in the knowledge.
+
+***
+
+At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a
+hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed
+like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous
+inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever
+speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide.
+In Europe also not a few took with their own hands lives that had become
+pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them had
+never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the
+Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
+Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the
+Cathedral top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men
+stabbed and shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it
+as the air, because in a lonely corner of England the life had departed
+from one cold heart vowed to the service of greed.
+
+The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when
+Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'--suppressed, because
+for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually
+controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of
+the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of
+the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when
+the market had been 'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language
+of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been
+good, and there had been two or three railway statements which had been
+expected to be much better than they were. But at whatever point in the
+vast area of speculation the shudder of the threatened break had been
+felt, 'the Manderson crowd' had stepped in and held the market up.
+All through the week the speculator's mind, as shallow as it is
+quick-witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in this the hand of
+the giant stretched out in protection from afar. Manderson, said the
+newspapers in chorus, was in hourly communication with his lieutenants
+in the Street. One journal was able to give in round figures the sum
+spent on cabling between New York and Marlstone in the past twenty-four
+hours; it told how a small staff of expert operators had been sent down
+by the Post Office authorities to Marlstone to deal with the flood of
+messages. Another revealed that Manderson, on the first news of the
+Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon his holiday and return home by the
+Lusitania; but that he soon had the situation so well in hand that he
+had determined to remain where he was.
+
+All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the
+'finance editors', consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd
+business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better
+help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship--knew also that
+no word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that
+Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron fame, was the true organizer of
+victory. So they fought down apprehension through four feverish days,
+and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the ground beneath the
+feet of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with Etna-mutterings of
+disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was firm, and
+slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn out
+but thankfully at peace.
+
+In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the
+sixty acres of the financial district. It came into being as the
+lightning comes--a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be
+suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone--together with
+an urgent selling order by some employee in the cable service. A sharp
+spasm convulsed the convalescent share-list. In five minutes the dull
+noise of the kerbstone market in Broad Street had leapt to a high note
+of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself
+could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed hatless in and
+out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with trembling
+lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous 'short' interest
+seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a
+sudden and ruinous collapse of 'Yankees' in London at the close of
+the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours'
+trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the
+saviour and warden of the markets had recoiled upon its authors with
+annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone,
+listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had
+lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and
+falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding
+of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumour that it was suicide, was
+printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached Wall
+Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
+and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
+
+***
+
+All this sprang out of nothing.
+
+Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
+ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power
+to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
+unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various servitudes to which
+they were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona
+tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all
+mankind save a million or two of half-crazed gamblers, blind to all
+reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the
+world went on. Weeks before he died strong hands had been in control
+of every wire in the huge network of commerce and industry that he
+had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his countrymen had made a
+strange discovery--that the existence of the potent engine of monopoly
+that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a condition of
+even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days, the
+pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
+'recovered a normal tone'.
+
+While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic
+scandal in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents.
+Next morning the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable
+politician was shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the
+streets of New Orleans. Within a week of its rising, 'the Manderson
+story', to the trained sense of editors throughout the Union, was
+'cold'. The tide of American visitors pouring through Europe made eddies
+round the memorial or statue of many a man who had died in poverty; and
+never thought of their most famous plutocrat. Like the poet who died
+in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was buried far away
+from his own land; but for all the men and women of Manderson's people
+who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the Monte
+Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever Will be, to stand in reverence by
+the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II: Knocking the Town Endways
+
+In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the
+telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a motion
+with his pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over
+to the instrument.
+
+'Who is that?' he said. 'Who?... I can't hear you.... Oh, it's Mr.
+Bunner, is it?... Yes, but... I know, but he's fearfully busy this
+afternoon. Can't you... Oh, really? Well, in that case--just hold on,
+will you?'
+
+He placed the receiver before Sir James. 'It's Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
+Manderson's right-hand man,' he said concisely. 'He insists on speaking
+to you personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking
+from the house down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak
+clearly.'
+
+Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
+receiver. 'Well?' he said in his strong voice, and listened. 'Yes,' he
+said. The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of
+amazement and horror. 'Good God!' murmured Sir James. Clutching the
+instrument, he slowly rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At
+intervals he repeated 'Yes.' Presently, as he listened, he glanced
+at the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr. Silver over the top of the
+transmitter. 'Go and hunt up Figgis and young Williams. Hurry.' Mr.
+Silver darted from the room.
+
+The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart
+and black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in
+the world, which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the
+half-cynical competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the
+charlatan: he made no mysteries, and no pretences of knowledge, and
+he saw instantly through these in others. In his handsome, well-bred,
+well-dressed appearance there was something a little sinister when anger
+or intense occupation put its imprint about his eyes and brow; but when
+his generous nature was under no restraint he was the most cordial
+of men. He was managing director of the company which owned that most
+powerful morning paper, the Record, and also that most indispensable
+evening paper, the Sun, which had its offices on the other side of the
+street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of the Record, to which he had
+in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in
+the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts,
+you must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great
+deal of both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a
+profession not favourable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
+
+'You're sure that's all?' asked Sir James, after a few minutes of
+earnest listening and questioning. 'And how long has this been known?...
+Yes, of course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it's all over
+the place down there by now.... Well, we'll have a try.... Look here,
+Bunner, I'm infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you a good turn.
+You know I mean what I say. Come and see me the first day you get to
+town.... All right, that's understood. Now I must act on your news.
+Goodbye.'
+
+Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the
+rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it
+down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed
+by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
+
+'I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,' said Sir James, banishing
+all signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. 'When you
+have them, put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special
+edition of the Sun.' The hard-featured man nodded and glanced at the
+clock, which pointed to a few minutes past three; he pulled out a
+notebook and drew a chair up to the big writing-table. 'Silver,' Sir
+James went on, 'go and tell Jones to wire our local correspondent very
+urgently, to drop everything and get down to Marlstone at once. He is
+not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an unnecessary
+word about this news until the Sun is on the streets with it--you all
+understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
+himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways.
+Just tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a
+scoop. Say that Figgis will be over in five minutes with the facts, and
+that he had better let him write up the story in his private room. As
+you go, ask Miss Morgan to see me here at once, and tell the telephone
+people to see if they can get Mr. Trent on the wire for me. After
+seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.' The alert-eyed young man
+vanished like a spirit.
+
+Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over
+the paper. 'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,' he began quickly
+and clearly, pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis
+scratched down a line of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had
+been told that the day was fine--the pose of his craft. 'He and his wife
+and two secretaries have been for the past fortnight at the house called
+White Gables, at Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years
+ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since spent a part of each summer there.
+Last night he went to bed about half-past eleven, just as usual. No one
+knows when he got up and left the house. He was not missed until this
+morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a gardener. It was
+lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head, through the
+left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not robbed,
+but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a 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 Celestine.'
+
+'Naturally,' said Trent with businesslike calm. 'Now what I want you
+to tell me, Celestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress
+yesterday morning at seven o'clock, was the door between the two
+bedrooms--this door here--open?'
+
+Celestine became intensely animated in an instant. 'Oh yes!' she
+said, using her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always,
+monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain.
+Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in
+there--ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other
+room, all explains itself.' She tripped across to the door, and urged
+Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. 'See! I
+enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I come
+quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand--open always--so!
+But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of Monsieur
+Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from down
+there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it was
+as ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like an
+angel--she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau--I open the
+curtains--I prepare the toilette--I retire--voila!' Celestine paused for
+breath and spread her hands abroad.
+
+Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
+gravity, nodded his head. 'I see exactly how it was now,' he said.
+'Thank you, Celestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still in
+his room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having
+breakfast in her boudoir?'
+
+'Oui, monsieur.'
+
+'Nobody missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I am
+very much obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
+
+'It is nothing, monsieur,' said Celestine, as she crossed the small
+room. 'I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur
+Manderson. But I not regret him too much,' she added with sudden and
+amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer
+door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose in
+her small dark face. English departed from her. 'Je ne le regrette pas
+du tout, du tout!' she cried with a flood of words. 'Madame--ah! je me
+jetterais au leu pour madame--une femme si charmante, si adorable! Mais
+un homme comme monsieur--maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!--de
+ma vie! J'en avais par-dessus la tete, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce
+insupportable, tout de meme, qu'il existe des types comme ca? Je vous
+jure que--'
+
+'Finissez ce chahut, Celestine!' Trent broke in sharply. Celestine's
+tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush.
+'En voila une scene! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ca,
+mademoiselle. Du reste, c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have
+some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that
+kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don't wave your fists
+about so much; you might hit something. You seem,' he went on more
+pleasantly, as Celestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, 'to be
+even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the way. I
+could almost suspect, Celestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take as much
+notice of you as you thought necessary and right.'
+
+'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.
+
+'Ca, c'est un comble!' observed Trent. 'You are a nice young woman for a
+small tea-party, I don't think. A star upon your birthday burned,
+whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven,
+Celestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a
+beauty!'
+
+Celestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise
+restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at
+Trent over her shoulder, the lady's maid opened the door and swiftly
+disappeared.
+
+Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two
+forcible descriptive terms in Celestine's language, and turned to his
+problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and
+placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself
+on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat
+with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled,
+almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subdued
+twittering came from the trees through the open window. From time to
+time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill.
+But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now with his
+thoughts, never moved.
+
+So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his
+feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out
+upon the landing.
+
+Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened
+that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means
+austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one
+corner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid's hand had failed to
+give a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the
+dressing-table and on the mantelshelf--pipes, penknives, pencils, keys,
+golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles.
+Two fine etchings and some water-colour sketches hung on the walls;
+leaning against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framed
+engravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window.
+Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he measured some
+of them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on the
+side of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.
+
+The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose and
+examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two others
+were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of three
+youths--one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blue
+eyes--clothed in tatterdemalion soldier's gear of the sixteenth century.
+Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resembling
+Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on the
+mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned his
+attention to a flat leathern case that lay by the cigarette-box.
+
+It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship,
+was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock were
+engraved the initials 'J. M.'
+
+A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and
+peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the
+open door of the room. 'I was wondering--' he began; then stopped as
+he saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly.
+'Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?' he asked in a conversational tone.
+
+'Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe,' replied
+Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. 'I found this
+lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me,
+and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last
+time it was used. But I know little about firearms.'
+
+'Well, I know a good deal,' rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the
+revolver from Trent's outstretched hand. 'It's a bit of a speciality
+with me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don't
+require an expert to tell one thing.' He replaced the revolver in its
+case on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it
+on the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from
+his waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little
+leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some
+bright new scratches.
+
+'Is that the one?' Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector's hand.
+
+'That's him,' replied Mr. Murch. 'Lodged in the bone at the back of the
+skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the
+local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you
+see were made by the doctor's instruments. These other marks were made
+by the rifling of the barrel--a barrel like this one.' He tapped the
+revolver. 'Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks the
+bullet just like this.'
+
+With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector looked
+into each other's eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to speak.
+'This mystery is all wrong,' he observed. 'It is insanity. The symptoms
+of mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not in any
+doubt, I believe, about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in the car
+to Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late last night,
+many hours after the murder was committed.'
+
+'There is no doubt whatever about all that,' said Mr. Murch, with a
+slight emphasis on the verb.
+
+'And now,' pursued Trent, 'we are invited by this polished and
+insinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that
+Marlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the
+night; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else,
+got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds;
+that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminating
+pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the house
+and, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in a
+favourable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he then
+withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding--with a large motor
+car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole affair,
+at--what time was it?'
+
+'A little after 9 p.m.' The inspector still stared moodily at Trent. 'As
+you say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this find, and
+it seems wild enough--at least it would do if it didn't fall to pieces
+at the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have been fifty
+to a hundred miles away. He did go to Southampton.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in
+Southampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.'
+
+'Come off' exclaimed Trent bitterly. 'What do I care about his story?
+What do you care about his story? I want to know how you know he went to
+Southampton.'
+
+Mr. Murch chuckled. 'I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr
+Trent,' he said. 'Well, there's no harm in telling you. After I arrived
+yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from
+Mrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the
+telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had
+told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and sent
+Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some one
+who was crossing by the next day's boat. It seemed right enough, but,
+you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn't under
+my hand, so to speak. He didn't return in the car until later in the
+evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to
+Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this
+reply.' He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:
+
+PERSON ANSWERING DESCRIPTION IN MOTOR ANSWERING DESCRIPTION ARRIVED
+BEDFORD HOTEL HERE 6.30 THIS MORNING GAVE NAME MARLOWE LEFT CAR HOTEL
+GARAGE TOLD ATTENDANT CAR BELONGED MANDERSON HAD BATH AND BREAKFAST WENT
+OUT HEARD OF LATER AT DOCKS ENQUIRING FOR PASSENGER NAME HARRIS ON HAVRE
+BOAT ENQUIRED REPEATEDLY UNTIL BOAT LEFT AT NOON NEXT HEARD OF AT HOTEL
+WHERE HE LUNCHED ABOUT 1.15 LEFT SOON AFTERWARDS IN CAR COMPANY'S AGENTS
+INFORM BERTH WAS BOOKED NAME HARRIS LAST WEEK BUT HARRIS DID NOT TRAVEL
+BY BOAT BURKE INSPECTOR.
+
+'Simple and satisfactory,' observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twice
+reading the message, returned it to him. 'His own story corroborated in
+every particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or
+so on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back, lunched,
+and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to Manderson--"Harris not
+turned up missed boat returning Marlowe," which was duly delivered here
+in the afternoon, and placed among the dead man's letters. He motored
+back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired. When he heard of Manderson's
+death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What with that and the being
+without sleep for so long, he was rather a wreck when I came to
+interview him last night; but he was perfectly coherent.'
+
+Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few
+moments. 'It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and
+cartridges about so carelessly,' he remarked at length, as he put it
+back in the case. 'It was throwing temptation in somebody's way, don't
+you think?'
+
+Mr. Murch shook his head. 'There isn't really much to lay hold of about
+the revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver
+is common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half
+the people who buy a revolver today for self-defence or mischief provide
+themselves with that make, of that calibre. It is very reliable, and
+easily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands of them in
+the possession of crooks and honest men. For instance,' continued the
+inspector with an air of unconcern, 'Manderson himself had one, the
+double of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of the desk
+downstairs, and it's in my overcoat pocket now.'
+
+'Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.'
+
+'I was,' said the inspector; 'but as you've found one revolver, you may
+as well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any
+good. The people in the house--'
+
+Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the
+half-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood
+in the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the
+faces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to
+herald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet. He
+wore rubber-soled tennis shoes.
+
+'You must be Mr. Bunner,' said Trent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI: Mr. Bunner on the Case
+
+'Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,' amended the newcomer, with a touch
+of punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was
+used to finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with strangers, and
+Trent's quick remark plainly disconcerted him a little. 'You are Mr
+Trent, I expect,' he went on. 'Mrs. Manderson was telling me a while ago.
+Captain, good-morning.' Mr. Murch acknowledged the outlandish greeting
+with a nod. 'I was coming up to my room, and I heard a strange voice in
+here, so I thought I would take a look in.' Mr. Bunner laughed easily.
+'You thought I might have been eavesdropping, perhaps,' he said. 'No,
+sir; I heard a word or two about a pistol--this one, I guess--and that's
+all.'
+
+Mr. Bunner was a thin, rather short young man with a shaven, pale, bony,
+almost girlish face, and large, dark, intelligent eyes. His waving dark
+hair was parted in the middle. His lips, usually occupied with a cigar,
+in its absence were always half open with a curious expression as of
+permanent eagerness. By smoking or chewing a cigar this expression was
+banished, and Mr. Bunner then looked the consummately cool and sagacious
+Yankee that he was.
+
+Born in Connecticut, he had gone into a broker's office on leaving
+college, and had attracted the notice of Manderson, whose business with
+his firm he had often handled. The Colossus had watched him for some
+time, and at length offered him the post of private secretary. Mr. Bunner
+was a pattern business man, trustworthy, long-headed, methodical, and
+accurate. Manderson could have found many men with those virtues; but he
+engaged Mr. Bunner because he was also swift and secret, and had besides
+a singular natural instinct in regard to the movements of the stock
+market.
+
+Trent and the American measured one another coolly with their eyes. Both
+appeared satisfied with what they saw. 'I was having it explained to
+me,' said Trent pleasantly, 'that my discovery of a pistol that might
+have shot Manderson does not amount to very much. I am told it is a
+favourite weapon among your people, and has become quite popular over
+here.'
+
+Mr. Bunner stretched out a bony hand and took the pistol from its case.
+'Yes, sir,' he said, handling it with an air of familiarity; 'the
+captain is right. This is what we call out home a Little Arthur, and I
+dare say there are duplicates of it in a hundred thousand hip-pockets
+this minute. I consider it too light in the hand myself,' Mr. Bunner went
+on, mechanically feeling under the tail of his jacket, and producing an
+ugly looking weapon. 'Feel of that, now, Mr. Trent--it's loaded, by the
+way. Now this Little Arthur--Marlowe bought it just before we came over
+this year to please the old man. Manderson said it was ridiculous for a
+man to be without a pistol in the twentieth century. So he went out and
+bought what they offered him, I guess--never consulted me. Not but
+what it's a good gun,' Mr. Bunner conceded, squinting along the sights.
+'Marlowe was poor with it at first, but I've coached him some in the
+last month or so, and he's practised until he is pretty good. But he
+never could get the habit of carrying it around. Why, it's as natural to
+me as wearing my pants. I have carried one for some years now, because
+there was always likely to be somebody laying for Manderson. And now,'
+Mr. Bunner concluded sadly, 'they got him when I wasn't around. Well,
+gentlemen, you must excuse me. I am going into Bishopsbridge. There is
+a lot to do these days, and I have to send off a bunch of cables big
+enough to choke a cow.'
+
+'I must be off too,' said Trent. 'I have an appointment at the "Three
+Tuns" inn.'
+
+Let me give you a lift in the automobile,' said Mr. Bunner cordially. 'I
+go right by that joint. Say, cap., are you coming my way too? No? Then
+come along, Mr. Trent, and help me get out the car. The chauffeur is out
+of action, and we have to do 'most everything ourselves except clean the
+dirt off her.'
+
+Still tirelessly talking in his measured drawl, Mr. Bunner led Trent
+downstairs and through the house to the garage at the back. It stood at
+a little distance from the house, and made a cool retreat from the blaze
+of the midday sun.
+
+Mr. Bunner seemed to be in no hurry to get out the car. He offered Trent
+a cigar, which was accepted, and for the first time lit his own. Then
+he seated himself on the footboard of the car, his thin hands clasped
+between his knees, and looked keenly at the other.
+
+'See here, Mr. Trent,' he said, after a few moments. 'There are some
+things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record. You
+are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don't know if I
+have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I would
+answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me--I have done so,
+in fact--but I don't feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine
+without his asking. See?'
+
+Trent nodded. 'That is a feeling many people have in the presence of our
+police,' he said. 'It's the official manner, I suppose. But let me tell
+you, Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the shrewdest
+officers in Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but he is very
+sure. And his experience is immense. My forte is imagination, but I
+assure you in police work experience outweighs it by a great deal.'
+
+'Outweigh nothing!' replied Mr. Bunner crisply. 'This is no ordinary
+case, Mr. Trent. I will tell you one reason why. I believe the old man
+knew there was something coming to him. Another thing: I believe it was
+something he thought he couldn't dodge.'
+
+Trent pulled a crate opposite to Mr. Bunner's place on the footboard
+and seated himself. 'This sounds like business,' he said. 'Tell me your
+ideas.'
+
+'I say what I do because of the change in the old man's manner this last
+few weeks. I dare say you have heard, Mr. Trent, that he was a man who
+always kept himself well in hand. That was so. I have always considered
+him the coolest and hardest head in business. That man's calm was just
+deadly--I never saw anything to beat it. And I knew Manderson as nobody
+else did. I was with him in the work he really lived for. I guess I knew
+him a heap better than his wife did, poor woman. I knew him better than
+Marlowe could--he never saw Manderson in his office when there was a big
+thing on. I knew him better than any of his friends.'
+
+'Had he any friends?' interjected Trent.
+
+Mr. Bunner glanced at him sharply. 'Somebody has been putting you next, I
+see that,' he remarked. 'No: properly speaking, I should say not. He
+had many acquaintances among the big men, people he saw, most every day;
+they would even go yachting or hunting together. But I don't believe
+there ever was a man that Manderson opened a corner of his heart to. But
+what I was going to say was this. Some months ago the old man began to
+get like I never knew him before--gloomy and sullen, just as if he was
+everlastingly brooding over something bad, something that he couldn't
+fix. This went on without any break; it was the same down town as it
+was up home, he acted just as if there was something lying heavy on his
+mind. But it wasn't until a few weeks back that his self-restraint began
+to go; and let me tell you this, Mr. Trent'--the American laid his bony
+claw on the other's knee--'I'm the only man that knows it. With every
+one else he would be just morose and dull; but when he was alone with
+me in his office, or anywhere where we would be working together, if the
+least little thing went wrong, by George! he would fly off the handle to
+beat the Dutch. In this library here I have seen him open a letter with
+something that didn't just suit him in it, and he would rip around and
+carry on like an Indian, saying he wished he had the man that wrote
+it here, he wouldn't do a thing to him, and so on, till it was just
+pitiful. I never saw such a change. And here's another thing. For a week
+before he died Manderson neglected his work, for the first time in my
+experience. He wouldn't answer a letter or a cable, though things looked
+like going all to pieces over there. I supposed that this anxiety of
+his, whatever it was, had got on to his nerves till they were worn out.
+Once I advised him to see a doctor, and he told me to go to hell. But
+nobody saw this side of him but me. If he was having one of these rages
+in the library here, for example, and Mrs. Manderson would come into the
+room, he would be all calm and cold again in an instant.'
+
+'And you put this down to some secret anxiety, a fear that somebody had
+designs on his life?' asked Trent.
+
+The American nodded.
+
+'I suppose,' Trent resumed, 'you had considered the idea of there being
+something wrong with his mind--a break-down from overstrain, say. That
+is the first thought that your account suggests to me. Besides, it is
+what is always happening to your big business men in America, isn't it?
+That is the impression one gets from the newspapers.'
+
+'Don't let them slip you any of that bunk,' said Mr. Bunner earnestly.
+'It's only the ones who have got rich too quick, and can't make good,
+who go crazy. Think of all our really big men--the men anywhere near
+Manderson's size: did you ever hear of any one of them losing his
+senses? They don't do it--believe me. I know they say every man has
+his loco point,' Mr. Bunner added reflectively, 'but that doesn't mean
+genuine, sure-enough craziness; it just means some personal eccentricity
+in a man ... like hating cats ... or my own weakness of not being able to
+touch any kind of fish-food.'
+
+'Well, what was Manderson's?'
+
+'He was full of them--the old man. There was his objection to all the
+unnecessary fuss and luxury that wealthy people don't kick at much, as
+a general rule. He didn't have any use for expensive trifles and
+ornaments. He wouldn't have anybody do little things for him; he
+hated to have servants tag around after him unless he wanted them. And
+although Manderson was as careful about his clothes as any man I ever
+knew, and his shoes--well, sir, the amount of money he spent on shoes
+was sinful--in spite of that, I tell you, he never had a valet. He never
+liked to have anybody touch him. All his life nobody ever shaved him.'
+
+'I've heard something of that,' Trent remarked. 'Why was it, do you
+think?'
+
+'Well,' Mr. Bunner answered slowly, 'it was the Manderson habit of mind,
+I guess; a sort of temper of general suspicion and jealousy.
+
+'They say his father and grandfather were just the same.... Like a dog
+with a bone, you know, acting as if all the rest of creation was laying
+for a chance to steal it. He didn't really think the barber would start
+in to saw his head off; he just felt there was a possibility that he
+might, and he was taking no risks. Then again in business he was always
+convinced that somebody else was after his bone--which was true enough a
+good deal of the time; but not all the time. The consequence of that was
+that the old man was the most cautious and secret worker in the world
+of finance; and that had a lot to do with his success, too.... But that
+doesn't amount to being a lunatic, Mr. Trent; not by a long way. You ask
+me if Manderson was losing his mind before he died. I say I believe
+he was just worn out with worrying over something, and was losing his
+nerve.'
+
+Trent smoked thoughtfully. He wondered how much Mr. Bunner knew of the
+domestic difficulty in his chief's household, and decided to put out a
+feeler. 'I understood that he had trouble with his wife.'
+
+'Sure,' replied Mr. Bunner. 'But do you suppose a thing like that was
+going to upset Sig Manderson that way? No, sir! He was a sight too big a
+man to be all broken up by any worry of that kind.'
+
+Trent looked half-incredulously into the eyes of the young man. But
+behind all their shrewdness and intensity he saw a massive innocence. Mr
+Bunner really believed a serious breach between husband and wife to be a
+minor source of trouble for a big man.
+
+'What was the trouble between them, anyhow?' Trent enquired.
+
+'You can search me,' Mr. Bunner replied briefly. He puffed at his cigar.
+'Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never make out
+a solution. I had a notion at first,' said Mr. Bunner in a lower voice,
+leaning forward, 'that the old man was disappointed and vexed because
+he had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the disappointment
+on that score was the other way around, likely as not. His idea was all
+right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by Mrs. Manderson's
+French maid.'
+
+Trent looked up at him quickly. 'Celestine!' he said; and his thought
+was, 'So that was what she was getting at!'
+
+Mr. Bunner misunderstood his glance. 'Don't you think I'm giving a man
+away, Mr. Trent,' he said. 'Marlowe isn't that kind. Celestine just took
+a fancy to him because he talks French like a native, and she would
+always be holding him up for a gossip. French servants are quite unlike
+English that way. And servant or no servant,' added Mr. Bunner with
+emphasis, 'I don't see how a woman could mention such a subject to a
+man. But the French beat me.' He shook his head slowly.
+
+'But to come back to what you were telling me just now,' Trent said.
+'You believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some
+time. Who should threaten it? I am quite in the dark.'
+
+'Terror--I don't know,' replied Mr. Bunner meditatively. 'Anxiety, if you
+like. Or suspense--that's rather my idea of it. The old man was hard
+to terrify, anyway; and more than that, he wasn't taking any
+precautions--he was actually avoiding them. It looked more like he was
+asking for a quick finish--supposing there's any truth in my idea. Why,
+he would sit in that library window, nights, looking out into the dark,
+with his white shirt just a target for anybody's gun. As for who should
+threaten his life well, sir,' said Mr. Bunner with a faint smile, 'it's
+certain you have not lived in the States. To take the Pennsylvania coal
+hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with women and children
+to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole through
+the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms.
+Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr. Trent. There's
+a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been known to
+lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten what he did.
+They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had done them dirt
+in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the Atlantic is going to
+stop them?... It takes some sand, I tell you, to be a big business man
+in our country. No, sir: the old man knew--had always known--that there
+was a whole crowd of dangerous men scattered up and down the States who
+had it in for him. My belief is that he had somehow got to know that
+some of them were definitely after him at last. What licks me altogether
+is why he should have just laid himself open to them the way he did--why
+he never tried to dodge, but walked right down into the garden yesterday
+morning to be shot at.'
+
+Mr. Bunner ceased to speak, and for a little while both men sat with
+wrinkled brows, faint blue vapours rising from their cigars. Then Trent
+rose. 'Your theory is quite fresh to me,' he said. 'It's perfectly
+rational, and it's only a question of whether it fits all the facts. I
+mustn't give away what I'm doing for my newspaper, Mr. Bunner, but I will
+say this: I have already satisfied myself that this was a premeditated
+crime, and an extraordinarily cunning one at that. I'm deeply obliged to
+you. We must talk it over again.' He looked at his watch. 'I have been
+expected for some time by my friend. Shall we make a move?'
+
+'Two o'clock,' said Mr. Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from
+the foot-board. 'Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don't know Wall
+Street, Mr. Trent. Let's you and I hope we never see anything nearer hell
+than what's loose in the Street this minute.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII: The Lady in Black
+
+The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze;
+the sun flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this
+perfection of English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went down before
+eight o'clock to a pool among the rocks, the direction of which had been
+given him, and dived deep into clear water. Between vast grey boulders
+he swam out to the tossing open, forced himself some little way against
+a coast-wise current, and then returned to his refuge battered and
+refreshed. Ten minutes later he was scaling the cliff again, and his
+mind, cleared for the moment of a heavy disgust for the affair he had in
+hand, was turning over his plans for the morning.
+
+It was the day of the inquest, the day after his arrival in the place.
+He had carried matters not much further after parting with the American
+on the road to Bishopsbridge. In the afternoon he had walked from the
+inn into the town, accompanied by Mr. Cupples, and had there made certain
+purchases at a chemist's shop, conferred privately for some time with a
+photographer, sent off a reply-paid telegram, and made an enquiry at the
+telephone exchange. He had said but little about the case to Mr. Cupples,
+who seemed incurious on his side, and nothing at all about the results
+of his investigation or the steps he was about to take. After their
+return from Bishopsbridge, Trent had written a long dispatch for the
+Record and sent it to be telegraphed by the proud hands of the paper's
+local representative. He had afterwards dined with Mr. Cupples, and had
+spent the rest of the evening in meditative solitude on the veranda.
+
+This morning as he scaled the cliff he told himself that he had never
+taken up a case he liked so little, or which absorbed him so much. The
+more he contemplated it in the golden sunshine of this new day, the more
+evil and the more challenging it appeared. All that he suspected and
+all that he almost knew had occupied his questing brain for hours to the
+exclusion of sleep; and in this glorious light and air, though washed
+in body and spirit by the fierce purity of the sea, he only saw the more
+clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and was more
+bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now at least
+his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened. He would
+neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the course of
+the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to do in the
+morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much serious hope,
+he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot into the sky, as
+it were, the day before.
+
+The path back to the hotel wound for some way along the top of the
+cliff, and on nearing a spot he had marked from the sea level, where the
+face had fallen away long ago, he approached the edge and looked down,
+hoping to follow with his eyes the most delicately beautiful of all the
+movements of water--the wash of a light sea over broken rock. But no
+rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a rough
+platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass and
+walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where the
+cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about her
+drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant liner,
+her face full of some dream.
+
+This woman seemed to Trent, whose training had taught him to live in his
+eyes, to make the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. Her face
+of southern pallor, touched by the kiss of the wind with colour on the
+cheek, presented to him a profile of delicate regularity in which there
+was nothing hard; nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the
+point where they almost met gave her in repose a look of something like
+severity, strangely redeemed by the open curves of the mouth. Trent said
+to himself that the absurdity or otherwise of a lover writing sonnets to
+his mistress's eyebrow depended after all on the quality of the eyebrow.
+Her nose was of the straight and fine sort, exquisitely escaping the
+perdition of too much length, which makes a conscientious mind ashamed
+that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the tip-tilted. Her hat lay
+pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze played with her
+thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad bandeaux that should
+have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a hundred tiny curls
+from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about this lady was
+black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had discarded;
+lustreless black covered her to her bare throat. All she wore was fine
+and well put on. Dreamy and delicate of spirit as her looks declared
+her, it was very plain that she was long-practised as only a woman grown
+can be in dressing well, the oldest of the arts, and had her touch of
+primal joy in the excellence of the body that was so admirably curved
+now in the attitude of embraced knees. With the suggestion of French
+taste in her clothes, she made a very modern figure seated there, until
+one looked at her face and saw the glow and triumph of all vigorous
+beings that ever faced sun and wind and sea together in the prime of
+the year. One saw, too, a womanhood so unmixed and vigorous, so
+unconsciously sure of itself, as scarcely to be English, still less
+American.
+
+Trent, who had halted only for a moment in the surprise of seeing the
+woman in black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and
+feeling as he went the things set down. At all times his keen vision and
+active brain took in and tasted details with an easy swiftness that was
+marvellous to men of slower chemistry; the need to stare, he held,
+was evidence of blindness. Now the feeling of beauty was awakened
+and exultant, and doubled the power of his sense. In these instants a
+picture was printed on his memory that would never pass away.
+
+As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her
+thoughts, suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from about her
+knees, stretched her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly
+raised her head and extended her arms with open, curving fingers, as if
+to gather to her all the glory and overwhelming sanity of the morning.
+This was a gesture not to be mistaken: it was a gesture of freedom,
+the movement of a soul's resolution to be, to possess, to go forward,
+perhaps to enjoy.
+
+So he saw her for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. He knew
+suddenly who the woman must be, and it was as if a curtain of gloom were
+drawn between him and the splendour of the day.
+
+***
+
+During breakfast at the hotel Mr. Cupples found Trent little inclined to
+talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr. Cupples, on
+the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The prospect
+of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent with a
+disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy
+tribunal, the coroner's court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom
+of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he
+passed to the case that was to come before it that morning.
+
+'Young Bunner mentioned to me last night,' he said, 'when I went up
+there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard
+to the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is
+occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded
+knowledge of the world quite unusual in one of his apparent age. Indeed,
+his promotion by Manderson to the position of his principal lieutenant
+speaks for itself. He seems to have assumed with perfect confidence the
+control at this end of the wire, as he expresses it, of the complicated
+business situation caused by the death of his principal, and he has
+advised very wisely as to the steps I should take on Mabel's behalf,
+and the best course for her to pursue until effect has been given to
+the provisions of the will. I was accordingly less disposed than I might
+otherwise have been to regard his suggestion of an industrial vendetta
+as far-fetched. When I questioned him he was able to describe a
+number of cases in which attacks of one sort or another--too often
+successful--had been made upon the lives of persons who had incurred the
+hostility of powerful labour organizations. This is a terrible time in
+which we live, my dear boy. There is none recorded in history, I
+think, in which the disproportion between the material and the moral
+constituents of society has been so great or so menacing to the
+permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement, is the prospect
+so dark as it is in the United States.'
+
+'I thought,' said Trent listlessly, 'that Puritanism was about as strong
+there as the money-getting craze.'
+
+'Your remark,' answered Mr. Cupples, with as near an approach to humour
+as was possible to him, 'is not in the nature of a testimonial to what
+you call Puritanism--a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I
+need not remind you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party
+which aimed at the purging of the services and ritual of their Church
+from certain elements repugnant to them. The sense of your observation,
+however, is none the less sound, and its truth is extremely well
+illustrated by the case of Manderson himself, who had, I believe, the
+virtues of purity, abstinence, and self-restraint in their strongest
+form. No, Trent, there are other and more worthy things among the moral
+constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite nature, the more
+we preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of external
+apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
+left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
+Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
+Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I
+need not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,' pursued
+Mr. Cupples, placidly buttering a piece of toast, 'is regarded as
+fundamentally erroneous by many of those who think generally as I
+do about the deeper concerns of life, but I am nevertheless firmly
+persuaded of its truth.'
+
+'It needs epigrammatic expression,' said Trent, rising from the table.
+'If only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like "No
+Popery", or "Tax the Foreigner", you would find multitudes to go to the
+stake for it. But you were planning to go to White Gables before the
+inquest, I think. You ought to be off if you are to get back to the
+court in time. I have something to attend to there myself, so we might
+walk up together. I will just go and get my camera.'
+
+'By all means,' Mr. Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the
+ever-growing warmth of the morning. The roof of White Gables, a surly
+patch of dull red against the dark trees, seemed to harmonize with
+Trent's mood; he felt heavy, sinister, and troubled. If a blow must fall
+that might strike down that creature radiant of beauty and life whom
+he had seen that morning, he did not wish it to come from his hand. An
+exaggerated chivalry had lived in Trent since the first teachings of his
+mother; but at this moment the horror of bruising anything so lovely was
+almost as much the artist's revulsion as the gentleman's. On the other
+hand, was the hunt to end in nothing? The quality of the affair was such
+that the thought of forbearance was an agony. There never was such a
+case; and he alone, he was confident, held the truth of it under his
+hand. At least, he determined, that day should show whether what he
+believed was a delusion. He would trample his compunction underfoot
+until he was quite sure that there was any call for it. That same
+morning he would know.
+
+As they entered at the gate of the drive they saw Marlowe and the
+American standing in talk before the front door. In the shadow of the
+porch was the lady in black.
+
+She saw them, and came gravely forward over the lawn, moving as Trent
+had known that she would move, erect and balanced, stepping lightly.
+When she welcomed him on Mr. Cupples's presentation her eyes of
+golden-flecked brown observed him kindly. In her pale composure, worn as
+the mask of distress, there was no trace of the emotion that had
+seemed a halo about her head on the ledge of the cliff. She spoke the
+appropriate commonplace in a low and even voice. After a few words to Mr
+Cupples she turned her eyes on Trent again.
+
+'I hope you will succeed,' she said earnestly. 'Do you think you will
+succeed?'
+
+He made his mind up as the words left her lips. He said, 'I believe I
+shall do so, Mrs. Manderson. When I have the case sufficiently complete
+I shall ask you to let me see you and tell you about it. It may be
+necessary to consult you before the facts are published.'
+
+She looked puzzled, and distress showed for an instant in her eyes. 'If
+it is necessary, of course you shall do so,' she said.
+
+On the brink of his next speech Trent hesitated. He remembered that
+the lady had not wished to repeat to him the story already given to the
+inspector--or to be questioned at all. He was not unconscious that he
+desired to hear her voice and watch her face a little longer, if it
+might be; but the matter he had to mention really troubled his mind,
+it was a queer thing that fitted nowhere into the pattern within whose
+corners he had by this time brought the other queer things in the case.
+It was very possible that she could explain it away in a breath; it was
+unlikely that any one else could. He summoned his resolution.
+
+'You have been so kind,' he said, 'in allowing me access to the house
+and every opportunity of studying the case, that I am going to ask leave
+to put a question or two to yourself--nothing that you would rather not
+answer, I think. May I?'
+
+She glanced at him wearily. 'It would be stupid of me to refuse, Ask
+your questions, Mr. Trent.' 'It's only this,' said Trent hurriedly. 'We
+know that your husband lately drew an unusually large sum of ready money
+from his London bankers, and was keeping it here. It is here now, in
+fact. Have you any idea why he should have done that?'
+
+She opened her eyes in astonishment. 'I cannot imagine,' she said. 'I
+did not know he had done so. I am very much surprised to hear it.'
+
+'Why is it surprising?'
+
+'I thought my husband had very little money in the house. On Sunday
+night, just before he went out in the motor, he came into the
+drawing-room where I was sitting. He seemed to be irritated about
+something, and asked me at once if I had any notes or gold I could let
+him have until next day. I was surprised at that, because he was never
+without money; he made it a rule to carry a hundred pounds or so about
+him always in a note-case. I unlocked my escritoire, and gave him all I
+had by me. It was nearly thirty pounds.'
+
+'And he did not tell you why he wanted it?'
+
+'No. He put it in his pocket, and then said that Mr. Marlowe had
+persuaded him to go for a run in the motor by moonlight, and he thought
+it might help him to sleep. He had been sleeping badly, as perhaps you
+know. Then he went off with Mr. Marlowe. I thought it odd he should need
+money on Sunday night, but I soon forgot about it. I never remembered it
+again until now.'
+
+'It was curious, certainly,' said Trent, staring into the distance. Mr
+Cupples began to speak to his niece of the arrangements for the inquest,
+and Trent moved away to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon the lawn.
+The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming business of the
+day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he showed himself not
+without a quiet humour in describing the pomposities of the local police
+and the portentous airs of Dr Stock. Trent turned the conversation
+gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all Marlowe's gravity
+returned.
+
+'Bunner has told me what he thinks,' he said when Trent referred to
+the American's theory. 'I don't find myself convinced by it, because it
+doesn't really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long
+enough in the United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done
+in a secret, melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a
+characteristic feature of certain sections of the labour movement there.
+Americans have a taste and a talent for that sort of business. Do you
+know Huckleberry Finn?'
+
+'Do I know my own name?' exclaimed Trent.
+
+'Well, I think the most American thing in that great American epic is
+Tom Sawyer's elaboration of an extremely difficult and romantic scheme,
+taking days to carry out, for securing the escape of the nigger Jim,
+which could have been managed quite easily in twenty minutes. You know
+how fond they are of lodges and brotherhoods. Every college club has its
+secret signs and handgrips. You've heard of the Know-Nothing movement in
+politics, I dare say, and the Ku Klux Klan. Then look at Brigham Young's
+penny-dreadful tyranny in Utah, with real blood. The founders of the
+Mormon State were of the purest Yankee stock in America; and you know
+what they did. It's all part of the same mental tendency. Americans make
+fun of it among themselves. For my part, I take it very seriously.'
+
+'It can have a very hideous side to it, certainly,' said Trent, 'when
+you get it in connection with crime--or with vice--or even mere luxury.
+But I have a sort of sneaking respect for the determination to make life
+interesting and lively in spite of civilization. To return to the matter
+in hand, however; has it struck you as a possibility that Manderson's
+mind was affected to some extent by this menace that Bunner believes in?
+For instance, it was rather an extraordinary thing to send you posting
+off like that in the middle of the night.'
+
+'About ten o'clock, to be exact,' replied Marlowe. 'Though, mind you, if
+he'd actually roused me out of my bed at midnight I shouldn't have been
+very much surprised. It all chimes in with what we've just been saying.
+Manderson had a strong streak of the national taste for dramatic
+proceedings. He was rather fond of his well-earned reputation for
+unexpected strokes and for going for his object with ruthless directness
+through every opposing consideration. He had decided suddenly that he
+wanted to have word from this man Harris--'
+
+'Who is Harris?' interjected Trent.
+
+'Nobody knows. Even Bunner never heard of him, and can't imagine what
+the business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London
+last week to attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at
+Manderson's request, for a Mr. George Harris on the boat that sailed
+on Monday. It seems that Manderson suddenly found he wanted news from
+Harris which presumably was of a character too secret for the telegraph;
+and there was no train that served; so I was sent off as you know.'
+
+Trent looked round to make sure that they were not overheard, then faced
+the other gravely, 'There is one thing I may tell you,' he said quietly,
+'that I don't think you know. Martin the butler caught a few words at
+the end of your conversation with Manderson in the orchard before you
+started with him in the car. He heard him say, "If Harris is there,
+every moment is of importance." Now, Mr. Marlowe, you know my business
+here. I am sent to make enquiries, and you mustn't take offence. I want
+to ask you if, in the face of that sentence, you will repeat that you
+know nothing of what the business was.'
+
+Marlowe shook his head. 'I know nothing, indeed. I'm not easily
+offended, and your question is quite fair. What passed during that
+conversation I have already told the detective. Manderson plainly said
+to me that he could not tell me what it was all about. He simply wanted
+me to find Harris, tell him that he desired to know how matters stood,
+and bring back a letter or message from him. Harris, I was further told,
+might not turn up. If he did, "every moment was of importance". And now
+you know as much as I do.'
+
+'That talk took place before he told his wife that you were taking
+him for a moonlight run. Why did he conceal your errand in that way, I
+wonder.'
+
+The young man made a gesture of helplessness. 'Why? I can guess no
+better than you.'
+
+'Why,' muttered Trent as if to himself, gazing on the ground, 'did he
+conceal it--from Mrs. Manderson?' He looked up at Marlowe.
+
+'And from Martin,' the other amended coolly. 'He was told the same
+thing.'
+
+With a sudden movement of his head Trent seemed to dismiss the subject.
+He drew from his breast-pocket a letter-case, and thence extracted two
+small leaves of clean, fresh paper.
+
+'Just look at these two slips, Mr. Marlowe,' he said. 'Did you ever
+see them before? Have you any idea where they come from?' he added as
+Marlowe took one in each hand and examined them curiously.
+
+'They seem to have been cut with a knife or scissors from a small diary
+for this year from the October pages,' Marlowe observed, looking them
+over on both sides. 'I see no writing of any kind on them. Nobody here
+has any such diary so far as I know. What about them?'
+
+'There may be nothing in it,' Trent said dubiously. 'Any one in the
+house, of course, might have such a diary without your having seen it.
+But I didn't much expect you would be able to identify the leaves--in
+fact, I should have been surprised if you had.'
+
+He stopped speaking as Mrs. Manderson came towards them. 'My uncle thinks
+we should be going now,' she said.
+
+'I think I will walk on with Mr. Bunner,' Mr. Cupples said as he joined
+them. 'There are certain business matters that must be disposed of as
+soon as possible. Will you come on with these two gentlemen, Mabel? We
+will wait for you before we reach the place.'
+
+Trent turned to her. 'Mrs. Manderson will excuse me, I hope,' he said.
+'I really came up this morning in order to look about me here for
+some indications I thought I might possibly find. I had not thought of
+attending the--the court just yet.'
+
+She looked at him with eyes of perfect candour. 'Of course, Mr. Trent.
+Please do exactly as you wish. We are all relying upon you. If you will
+wait a few moments, Mr. Marlowe, I shall be ready.'
+
+She entered the house. Her uncle and the American had already strolled
+towards the gate.
+
+Trent looked into the eyes of his companion. 'That is a wonderful
+woman,' he said in a lowered voice.
+
+'You say so without knowing her,' replied Marlowe in a similar tone.
+'She is more than that.'
+
+Trent said nothing to this. He stared out over the fields towards the
+sea. In the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A
+little distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them
+from the direction of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope,
+unmistakable afar off, of a telegram. Trent watched him with an
+indifferent eye as he met and passed the two others. Then he turned
+to Marlowe. 'A propos of nothing in particular,' he said, 'were you at
+Oxford?'
+
+'Yes,' said the young man. 'Why do you ask?'
+
+'I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It's one of the things you
+can very often tell about a man, isn't it?'
+
+'I suppose so,' Marlowe said. 'Well, each of us is marked in one way
+or another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn't
+known it.'
+
+'Why? Does my hair want cutting?'
+
+'Oh, no! It's only that you look at things and people as I've
+seen artists do, with an eye that moves steadily from detail to
+detail--rather looking them over than looking at them.'
+
+The boy came up panting. 'Telegram for you, sir,' he said to Trent.
+'Just come, sir.'
+
+Trent tore open the envelope with an apology, and his eyes lighted up
+so visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe's tired face softened in a
+smile.
+
+'It must be good news,' he murmured half to himself.
+
+Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. 'Not
+exactly news,' he said. 'It only tells me that another little guess of
+mine was a good one.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII: The Inquest
+
+The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as
+a provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had
+resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of
+jovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of
+his work, and the news of Manderson's mysterious death within his
+jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A respectable
+capacity for marshalling facts was fortified in him by a copiousness of
+impressive language that made juries as clay in his hands, and sometimes
+disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules of evidence.
+
+The court was held in a long, unfurnished room lately built on to the
+hotel, and intended to serve as a ballroom or concert-hall. A regiment
+of reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to
+be called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table
+behind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, with
+plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the other
+side. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, and
+listened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspaper
+men, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them who
+knew Trent by sight assured the rest that he was not in the court.
+
+The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness
+called, from whom the coroner, after some enquiry into the health and
+circumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last
+occasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson was
+taken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which every
+man felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil before
+beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure of
+the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an impression of
+hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in her
+presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear that the force
+of a powerful character was at work to master the emotions of her
+situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes with her
+handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.
+
+Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual
+hour for retiring on Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room
+attached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was
+usually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were
+entered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always had
+a preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom arrangements,
+and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been awake when he came
+up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened, when the light was
+switched on in her husband's room. She had spoken to him. She had no
+clear recollection of what she had said, as she had been very drowsy at
+the time; but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlight
+run in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had had a good
+run, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because
+she felt as if she had only been a very short time asleep, and she had
+expected her husband to be out very late. In answer to her question he
+had told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone on to say that he had
+changed his mind about going for a run.
+
+'Did he say why?' the coroner asked.
+
+'Yes,' replied the lady, 'he did explain why. I remember very well what
+he said, because--' she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.
+
+'Because--' the coroner insisted gently.
+
+'Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his business
+affairs,' answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch of
+defiance. 'He did not--did not think they would interest me, and as a
+rule referred to them as little as possible. That was why I was rather
+surprised when he told me that he had sent Mr. Marlowe to Southampton
+to bring back some important information from a man who was leaving for
+Paris by the next day's boat. He said that Mr. Marlowe could do it quite
+easily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the car,
+and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better for it.'
+
+'Did he say any more?'
+
+'Nothing, as well as I remember,' the witness said. 'I was very sleepy,
+and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband
+turning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive.'
+
+'And you heard nothing in the night?'
+
+'No: I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
+o'clock. She closed the door leading to my husband's room, as she always
+did, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a great
+deal of sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the morning. I
+had breakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I heard that
+my husband's body had been found.' The witness dropped her head and
+silently waited for her dismissal.
+
+But it was not to be yet.
+
+'Mrs. Manderson.' The coroner's voice was sympathetic, but it had a hint
+of firmness in it now. 'The question I am going to put to you must, in
+these sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty to ask it.
+Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband had not been,
+for some time past, relations of mutual affection and confidence? Is it
+the fact that there was an estrangement between you?'
+
+The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colour
+rising in her cheeks. 'If that question is necessary,' she said
+with cold distinctness, 'I will answer it so that there shall be no
+misunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband's life
+his attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He had
+changed towards me; he had become very reserved, and seemed mistrustful.
+I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to be alone. I
+can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to work against
+it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I thought.
+Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never told me.
+My own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so many
+words; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had always been,
+so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know now what it
+was.' The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of her self-control
+over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when she had said this,
+and stood erect and quiet.
+
+One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. 'Then
+was there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between
+you and your husband, ma'am?'
+
+'Never.' The word was colourlessly spoken; but every one felt that a
+crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a
+person like Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.
+
+Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have
+been preying upon her husband's mind recently?
+
+Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her
+ordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The
+general attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now eagerly
+directed upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.
+
+It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway and edged his
+way into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was observing
+the well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an opening
+path in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he stood aside
+from the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson address him by
+name in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into the hall.
+
+'I wanted to ask you,' she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken,
+'if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could
+not see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint.... I
+shall be better in the air.... No, no; I cannot stay here--please, Mr
+Trent!' she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. 'I must go
+to the house.' Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all
+her weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leaned
+heavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walked
+slowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White Gables.
+
+Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a
+chorus of 'Fool! fool!' All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and
+suspected of this affair, rushed through his brain in a rout; but the
+touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left
+his consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and
+bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the
+mask of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he
+had attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch in the
+morning-room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly,
+with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now,
+she said, and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped
+she had not taken him away from anything important. She was ashamed
+of herself; she thought she could go through with it, but she had not
+expected those last questions. 'I am glad you did not hear me,' she said
+when he explained. 'But of course you will read it all in the reports.
+It shook me so to have to speak of that,' she added simply; 'and to keep
+from making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And all those
+staring men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when I asked
+you.... I thought I might,' she ended queerly, with a little tired
+smile; and Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from the
+cool touch of her fingers.
+
+***
+
+The testimony of the servants and of the finder of the body brought
+nothing new to the reporters' net. That of the police was as colourless
+and cryptic as is usual at the inquest stage of affairs of the kind.
+Greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Bunner, his evidence afforded the
+sensation of the day, and threw far into the background the interesting
+revelation of domestic difficulty made by the dead man's wife. He
+told the court in substance what he had already told Trent. The flying
+pencils did not miss a word of the young American's story, and it
+appeared with scarcely the omission of a sentence in every journal of
+importance in Great Britain and the United States.
+
+Public opinion next day took no note of the faint suggestion of the
+possibility of suicide which the coroner, in his final address to
+the jury, had thought it right to make in connection with the lady's
+evidence. The weight of evidence, as the official had indeed pointed
+out, was against such a theory. He had referred with emphasis to the
+fact that no weapon had been found near the body.
+
+'This question, of course, is all-important, gentlemen,' he had said to
+the jury. 'It is, in fact, the main issue before you. You have seen the
+body for yourselves. You have just heard the medical evidence; but I
+think it would be well for me to read you my notes of it in so far as
+they bear on this point, in order to refresh your memories. Dr Stock
+told you--I am going to omit all technical medical language and repeat
+to you merely the plain English of his testimony--that in his opinion
+death had taken place six or eight hours previous to the finding of the
+body. He said that the cause of death was a bullet wound, the bullet
+having entered the left eye, which was destroyed, and made its way
+to the base of the brain, which was quite shattered. The external
+appearance of the wound, he said, did not support the hypothesis of its
+being self-inflicted, inasmuch as there were no signs of the firearm
+having been pressed against the eye, or even put very close to it; at
+the same time it was not physically impossible that the weapon should
+have been discharged by the deceased with his own hand, at some small
+distance from the eye. Dr Stock also told us that it was impossible to
+say with certainty, from the state of the body, whether any struggle had
+taken place at the time of death; that when seen by him, at which time
+he understood that it had not been moved since it was found, the body
+was lying in a collapsed position such as might very well result from
+the shot alone; but that the scratches and bruises upon the wrists and
+the lower part of the arms had been very recently inflicted, and were,
+in his opinion, marks of violence.
+
+'In connection with this same point, the remarkable evidence given by Mr
+Bunner cannot be regarded, I think, as without significance. It may have
+come as a surprise to some of you to hear that risks of the character
+described by this witness are, in his own country, commonly run by
+persons in the position of the deceased. On the other hand, it may have
+been within the knowledge of some of you that in the industrial world of
+America the discontent of labour often proceeds to lengths of which
+we in England happily know nothing. I have interrogated the witness
+somewhat fully upon this. At the same time, gentlemen, I am by no means
+suggesting that Mr. Bunner's personal conjecture as to the cause of death
+can fitly be adopted by you. That is emphatically not the case. What his
+evidence does is to raise two questions for your consideration. First,
+can it be said that the deceased was to any extent in the position of a
+threatened man--of a man more exposed to the danger of murderous attack
+than an ordinary person? Second, does the recent alteration in his
+demeanour, as described by this witness, justify the belief that
+his last days were overshadowed by a great anxiety? These points may
+legitimately be considered by you in arriving at a conclusion upon the
+rest of the evidence.'
+
+Thereupon the coroner, having indicated thus clearly his opinion that Mr
+Bunner had hit the right nail on the head, desired the jury to consider
+their verdict.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX: A Hot Scent
+
+
+'Come in!' called Trent.
+
+Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
+evening of the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box,
+had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown.
+Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study of what
+lay in a photographic dish of enamelled metal, which he moved slowly
+about in the light of the window. He looked very pale, and his movements
+were nervous.
+
+'Sit on the sofa,' he advised. 'The chairs are a job lot bought at the
+sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
+pretty good negative,' he went on, holding it up to the light with his
+head at the angle of discriminating judgement. 'Washed enough now, I
+think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess.'
+
+Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
+basins, dishes, racks, boxes, and bottles, picked up first one and then
+another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.
+
+'That is called hypo-eliminator,' said Trent, as Mr. Cupples uncorked and
+smelt at one of the bottles. 'Very useful when you're in a hurry with
+a negative. I shouldn't drink it, though, all the same. It eliminates
+sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn't wonder if it would eliminate human
+beings too.' He found a place for the last of the litter on the crowded
+mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr. Cupples on the table. 'The great
+thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its beauty does not distract
+the mind from work. It is no place for the mayfly pleasures of a mind at
+ease. Have you ever been in this room before, Cupples? I have, hundreds
+of times. It has pursued me all over England for years. I should feel
+lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel, they were to give
+me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there is the ink
+I spilt on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the
+carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended the glass
+over the picture of "Silent Sympathy", which I threw a boot at in
+Banbury. I do all my best work here. This afternoon, for instance, since
+the inquest, I have finished several excellent negatives. There is a
+very good dark room downstairs.'
+
+'The inquest--that reminds me,' said Mr. Cupples, who knew that this sort
+of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering what
+he could be about. 'I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for looking
+after Mabel this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel ill after
+leaving the box; she seemed quite unmoved, and, really, she is a woman
+of such extraordinary self-command, I thought I could leave her to her
+own devices and hear out the evidence, which I thought it important I
+should do. It was a very fortunate thing she found a friend to assist
+her, and she is most grateful. She is quite herself again now.'
+
+Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow,
+made no reply to this. 'I tell you what,' he said after a short pause,
+'I was just getting to the really interesting part of the job when you
+came in. Come; would you like to see a little bit of high-class police
+work? It's the very same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing
+at this moment. Perhaps he is; but I hope to glory he isn't.' He sprang
+off the table and disappeared into his bedroom. Presently he came out
+with a large drawing-board on which a number of heterogeneous objects
+was ranged.
+
+'First I must introduce you to these little things,' he said, setting
+them out on the table. 'Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two
+leaves cut out of a diary--my own diary; here is a bottle containing
+dentifrice; here is a little case of polished walnut. Some of these
+things have to be put back where they belong in somebody's bedroom at
+White Gables before night. That's the sort of man I am--nothing stops
+me. I borrowed them this very morning when every one was down at
+the inquest, and I dare say some people would think it rather an odd
+proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the board. Can
+you tell me, without touching it, what it is?'
+
+'Certainly I can,' said Mr. Cupples, peering at it with great interest.
+'It is an ordinary glass bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see
+nothing odd about it,' he added after some moments of close scrutiny.
+
+'I can't see much myself,' replied Trent, 'and that is exactly where the
+fun comes in. Now take this little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull out the
+cork. Do you recognize that powder inside it? You have swallowed pounds
+of it in your time, I expect. They give it to babies. Grey powder is its
+ordinary name--mercury and chalk. It is great stuff. Now, while I hold
+the basin sideways over this sheet of paper, I want you to pour a little
+powder out of the bottle over this part of the bowl--just here....
+Perfect! Sir Edward Henry himself could not have handled the powder
+better. You have done this before, Cupples, I can see. You are an old
+hand.'
+
+'I really am not,' said Mr. Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the
+fallen powder to the bottle. 'I assure you it is all a complete mystery
+to me. What did I do then?'
+
+'I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair
+brush. Now look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do you
+see anything now?'
+
+Mr. Cupples peered again. 'How curious!' he said. 'Yes, there are two
+large grey finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before.'
+
+'I am Hawkshaw the detective,' observed Trent. 'Would it interest you to
+hear a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you
+take one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually practically
+invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave the marks of
+your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is never quite dry,
+and sometimes--in moments of great anxiety, for instance, Cupples--it
+is very moist. It leaves a mark on any cold smooth surface it may touch.
+That bowl was moved by somebody with a rather moist hand quite lately.'
+He sprinkled the powder again. 'Here on the other side, you see, is the
+thumb-mark--very good impressions all of them.' He spoke without raising
+his voice, but Mr. Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with
+excitement as he stared at the faint grey marks. 'This one should be the
+index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that
+the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically
+disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a
+staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I
+have just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined
+in detail. Look!'--he held one of the negatives up to the light of the
+declining sun and demonstrated with a pencil point. 'You can see they're
+the same. You see the bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the
+other. You see that little scar near the centre. There it is in the
+other. There are a score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert
+would swear in the witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks
+I have photographed on this negative were made by the same hand.'
+
+'And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?' asked Mr
+Cupples, wide-eyed.
+
+'I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front window
+in Mrs. Manderson's bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I
+photographed them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of
+the glass for the purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson's room. It is
+the bowl in which his false teeth were placed at night. I could bring
+that away, so I did.'
+
+'But those cannot be Mabel's finger-marks.'
+
+'I should think not!' said Trent with decision. 'They are twice the size
+of any print Mrs. Manderson could make.'
+
+'Then they must be her husband's.'
+
+'Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I
+believe we can.' Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent
+opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder.
+'Lamp-black,' he explained. 'Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a
+second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your
+fingers.' He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the leaves
+cut from his diary, and held it out for the other to examine. No marks
+appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the powder out upon one surface
+of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the other; then shook the leaf
+gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it out to Mr. Cupples in
+silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably, clearly printed
+in black, the same two finger-prints that he had already seen on the
+bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the bowl and compared
+them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other side was a bold
+black replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in grey on the glass in
+his hand.
+
+'Same man, you see,' Trent said with a short laugh. 'I felt that it must
+be so, and now I know.' He walked to the window and looked out. 'Now
+I know,' he repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone was
+bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his motionless back
+for a few moments.
+
+'I am still completely in the dark,' he ventured presently. 'I have
+often heard of this fingerprint business, and wondered how the police
+went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon
+my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson's fingerprints are
+going--'
+
+'I am very sorry, Cupples,' Trent broke in upon his meditative speech
+with a swift return to the table. 'When I began this investigation I
+meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn't think I
+have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my
+tongue about the whole thing, at least for a time. I will tell you this:
+I have come upon a fact that looks too much like having very painful
+consequences if it is discovered by any one else.' He looked at the
+other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his hand.
+'It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was hoping
+against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be wrong in
+the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way of finding
+out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it.' He smiled
+suddenly at Mr. Cupples's face of consternation. 'All right--I'm not
+going to be tragic any more, and I'll tell you all about it when I can.
+Look here, I'm not half through my game with the powder-bottles yet.'
+
+He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test
+the broad ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr. Cupples, swallowing his
+amazement, bent forward in an attitude of deep interest and handed Trent
+the bottle of lamp-black.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X: The Wife of Dives
+
+Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables
+gazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather
+had broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathings
+drifted up the fields from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken grey
+deadness shedding pin-point moisture that was now and then blown against
+the panes with a crepitation of despair. The lady looked out on the dim
+and chilling prospect with a woeful face. It was a bad day for a woman
+bereaved, alone, and without a purpose in life.
+
+There was a knock, and she called 'Come in,' drawing herself up with
+an unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that the
+weariness of the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr. Trent had
+called, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an early
+hour, but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent
+importance. Mrs. Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror,
+looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at
+herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent
+was shown in.
+
+His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of
+the sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick
+sensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his half
+smile of fixed good-humour.
+
+'May I come to the point at once?' he said, when she had given him her
+hand. 'There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelve
+o'clock, but I cannot go until I have settled this thing, which concerns
+you only, Mrs. Manderson. I have been working half the night and thinking
+the rest; and I know now what I ought to do.'
+
+'You look wretchedly tired,' she said kindly. 'Won't you sit down? This
+is a very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible business
+and your work as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I can
+properly tell you, Mr. Trent. I know that you won't make it worse for me
+than you can help in doing your duty here. If you say you must see me
+about something, I know it must be because, as you say, you ought to do
+it.'
+
+'Mrs. Manderson,' said Trent, slowly measuring his words, 'I won't make
+it worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad for
+you--only between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tell
+me what I shall ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on my
+word of honour: I shall ask you only as much as will decide me whether
+to publish or to withhold certain grave things that I have found out
+about your husband's death, things not suspected by any one else, nor,
+I think, likely to be so. What I have discovered--what I believe that I
+have practically proved--will be a great shock to you in any case. But
+it may be worse for you than that; and if you give me reason to think
+it would be so, then I shall suppress this manuscript,' he laid a long
+envelope on the small table beside him, 'and nothing of what it has
+to tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell you, of a short
+private note to my editor, followed by a long dispatch for publication
+in the Record. Now you may refuse to say anything to me. If you do
+refuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this up to
+London with me today and leave it with my editor to be dealt with at
+his discretion. My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled to
+suppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents itself
+to my imagination. But if I gather from you--and I can gather it from
+no other person--that there is substance in that imaginary possibility
+I speak of, then I have only one thing to do as a gentleman and as one
+who'--he hesitated for a phrase--'wishes you well. I shall not publish
+that dispatch of mine. In some directions I decline to assist the
+police. Have you followed me so far?' he asked with a touch of anxiety
+in his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave no sign
+as she regarded him, her hands clasped before her, and her shoulders
+drawn back in a pose of rigid calm. She looked precisely as she had
+looked at the inquest.
+
+'I understand quite well,' said Mrs. Manderson in a low voice. She drew
+a deep breath, and went on: 'I don't know what dreadful thing you have
+found out, or what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, but
+it was good, it was honourable of you to come to me about it. Now will
+you please tell me?'
+
+'I cannot do that,' Trent replied. 'The secret is my newspaper's if it
+is not yours. If I find it is yours, you shall have my manuscript to
+read and destroy. Believe me,' he broke out with something of his old
+warmth, 'I detest such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul; but it
+is not I who have made this mystery. This is the most painful hour of my
+life, and you make it worse by not treating me like a hound. The
+first thing I ask you to tell me,' he reverted with an effort to his
+colourless tone, 'is this: is it true, as you stated at the inquest,
+that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late husband had
+changed his attitude toward you, and become mistrustful and reserved,
+during the last few months of his life?'
+
+Mrs. Manderson's dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly rose
+from her chair. Trent got up at the same moment, and took his envelope
+from the table; his manner said that he perceived the interview to be at
+an end. But she held up a hand, and there was colour in her cheeks and
+quick breathing in her voice as she said: 'Do you know what you ask, Mr
+Trent? You ask me if I perjured myself.'
+
+'I do,' he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause, 'you knew
+already that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs
+Manderson. The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could
+withhold a part of the truth under any circumstances is a polite
+fiction.' He still stood as awaiting dismissal, but she was silent.
+She walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slight
+movement of her shoulders until it subsided. Then with face averted,
+looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last clearly.
+
+'Mr. Trent,' she said, 'you inspire confidence in people, and I feel that
+things which I don't want known or talked about are safe with you. And
+I know you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are doing,
+though I don't know what it is. I suppose it would be assisting justice
+in some way if I told you the truth about what you asked just now. To
+understand that truth you ought to know about what went before--I mean
+about my marriage. After all, a good many people could tell you as well
+as I can that it was not... a very successful union. I was only twenty.
+I admired his force and courage and certainty; he was the only strong
+man I had ever known. But it did not take me long to find out that he
+cared for his business more than for me, and I think I found out even
+sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself, promising
+myself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own feelings,
+because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than an
+English girl ever dreams of. I have been despising myself for that
+for five years. My husband's feeling for me... well, I cannot speak of
+that... what I want to say is that along with it there had always been
+a belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place in
+society, and that I should throw myself into it with enjoyment, and
+become a sort of personage and do him great credit--that was his idea;
+and the idea remained with him after other delusions had gone. I was a
+part of his ambition. That was his really bitter disappointment, that
+I failed him as a social success. I think he was too shrewd not to have
+known in his heart that such a man as he was, twenty years older than I,
+with great business responsibilities that filled every hour of his life,
+and caring for nothing else--he must have felt that there was a risk
+of great unhappiness in marrying the sort of girl I was, brought up to
+music and books and unpractical ideas, always enjoying myself in my own
+way. But he had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honours
+of his position in the world; and I found I couldn't.'
+
+Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she had
+yet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun to
+ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto have
+been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past few
+days. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as she went
+on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, her
+hands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she surrendered herself to
+the impulse of giving speech to things long pent up.
+
+'The people,' she said. 'Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must
+be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative
+work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women
+with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe
+in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; can
+you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you
+have to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all--where money
+is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's
+thoughts--where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work,
+that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they
+have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller
+than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display
+and silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you know how awful that
+life is? Of course I know there are clever people, and people of taste
+in that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing
+in the end; empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make
+friends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after it
+all. The seasons in New York and London--how I hated them! And our
+house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest--the same people,
+the same emptiness.
+
+'And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of all
+this. His life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and when
+he was in society he had always his business plans and difficulties to
+occupy his mind. He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never
+let him know; I couldn't, it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must
+do something to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position and
+fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live up
+to his idea about my social qualities... I did try. I acted my best. And
+it became harder year by year... I never was what they call a popular
+hostess, how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying... I used
+to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I was not doing my
+part of a bargain--it sounds horrid to put it like that, I know, but it
+was so--when I took one of my old school-friends, who couldn't afford to
+travel, away to Italy for a month or two, and we went about cheaply all
+by ourselves, and were quite happy; or when I went and made a long stay
+in London with some quiet people who had known me all my life, and we
+all lived just as in the old days, when we had to think twice about
+seats at the theatre, and told each other about cheap dressmakers. Those
+and a few other expeditions of the same sort were my best times after
+I was married, and they helped me to go through with it the rest of the
+time. But I felt my husband would have hated to know how much I enjoyed
+every hour of those returns to the old life.
+
+'And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to know....
+He could see through anything, I think, once his attention was turned to
+it. He had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling his idea of
+me as a figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought it was
+my misfortune rather than my fault. But the moment he began to see, in
+spite of my pretending, that I wasn't playing my part with any spirit,
+he knew the whole story; he divined how I loathed and was weary of the
+luxury and the brilliancy and the masses of money just because of the
+people who lived among them--who were made so by them, I suppose....
+It happened last year. I don't know just how or when. It may have been
+suggested to him by some woman--for they all understood, of course. He
+said nothing to me, and I think he tried not to change in his manner to
+me at first; but such things hurt--and it was working in both of us.
+I knew that he knew. After a time we were just being polite and
+considerate to each other. Before he found me out we had been on a
+footing of--how can I express it to you?--of intelligent companionship,
+I might say. We talked without restraint of many things of the kind
+we could agree or disagree about without its going very deep... if you
+understand. And then that came to an end. I felt that the only possible
+basis of our living in each other's company was going under my feet. And
+at last it was gone.
+
+'It had been like that,' she ended simply, 'for months before he died.'
+She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing
+her body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent
+was hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at
+the frankness of Mrs. Manderson's story. He was amazed at the vigorous
+expressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried away
+by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seen
+the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the real
+woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion. In both
+she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty that
+she had been to the world. With that amazement of his went something
+like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into an
+appearance scarcely mortal in his eyes. Incongruously there rushed into
+his mind, occupied as it was with the affair of the moment, a little
+knot of ideas... she was unique not because of her beauty but because
+of its being united with intensity of nature; in England all the very
+beautiful women were placid, all the fiery women seemed to have burnt up
+the best of their beauty; that was why no beautiful woman had ever cast
+this sort of spell on him before; when it was a question of wit in
+women he had preferred the brighter flame to the duller, without much
+regarding the lamp. 'All this is very disputable,' said his reason; and
+instinct answered, 'Yes, except that I am under a spell'; and a deeper
+instinct cried out, 'Away with it!' He forced his mind back to her
+story, and found growing swiftly in him an irrepressible conviction. It
+was all very fine; but it would not do.
+
+'I feel as if I had led you into saying more than you meant to say,
+or than I wanted to learn,' he said slowly. 'But there is one brutal
+question which is the whole point of my enquiry.' He braced his frame
+like one preparing for a plunge into cold waters. 'Mrs. Manderson, will
+you assure me that your husband's change toward you had nothing to do
+with John Marlowe?'
+
+And what he had dreaded came. 'Oh!' she cried with a sound of anguish,
+her face thrown up and open hands stretched out as if for pity; and then
+the hands covered the burning face, and she flung herself aside among
+the cushions at her elbow, so that he saw nothing but her heavy crown of
+black hair, and her body moving with sobs that stabbed his heart, and a
+foot turned inward gracelessly in an abandonment of misery. Like a
+tall tower suddenly breaking apart she had fallen in ruins, helplessly
+weeping.
+
+Trent stood up, his face white and calm. With a senseless particularity
+he placed his envelope exactly in the centre of the little polished
+table. He walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, and
+in a few minutes was tramping through the rain out of sight of White
+Gables, going nowhere, seeing nothing, his soul shaken in the fierce
+effort to kill and trample the raving impulse that had seized him in the
+presence of her shame, that clamoured to him to drag himself before her
+feet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words--he knew not what words,
+but he knew that they had been straining at his lips--to wreck his
+self-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose that
+had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, by
+babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband not
+yet buried, to a woman who loved another man.
+
+Such was the magic of her tears, quickening in a moment the thing which,
+as his heart had known, he must not let come to life. For Philip Trent
+was a young man, younger in nature even than his years, and a way of
+life that kept his edge keen and his spirit volcanic had prepared him
+very ill for the meeting that comes once in the early manhood of most of
+us, usually--as in his case, he told himself harshly--to no purpose but
+the testing of virtue and the power of the will.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI: Hitherto Unpublished
+
+My Dear Molloy:--This is in case I don't find you at your office. I
+have found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. This
+was my problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It definitely
+charges an unsuspected person with having a hand in the crime, and
+practically accuses him of being the murderer, so I don't suppose you
+will publish it before his arrest, and I believe it is illegal to do so
+afterwards until he has been tried and found guilty. You may decide to
+publish it then; and you may find it possible to make some use or other
+before then of the facts I have given. That is your affair. Meanwhile,
+will you communicate with Scotland Yard, and let them see what I have
+written? I have done with the Manderson mystery, and I wish to God I had
+never touched it. Here follows my dispatch.  P.T.
+
+Marlstone, June 16th.
+
+I begin this, my third and probably my final
+dispatch to the Record upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting
+feelings. I have a strong sense of relief, because in my two previous
+dispatches I was obliged, in the interests of justice, to withhold facts
+ascertained by me which would, if published then, have put a certain
+person upon his guard and possibly have led to his escape; for he is
+a man of no common boldness and resource. These facts I shall now set
+forth. But I have, I confess, no liking for the story of treachery and
+perverted cleverness which I have to tell. It leaves an evil taste
+in the mouth, a savour of something revolting in the deeper puzzle of
+motive underlying 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 hysterique, merciless as a cat in her hate and her love,
+a zealous abettor, perhaps even the ruling spirit in the crime.
+
+Then he had seen her, had spoken with her, had helped her in her
+weakness; and such suspicions, since their first meeting, had seemed the
+vilest of infamy. He had seen her eyes and her mouth; he had breathed
+the woman's atmosphere. Trent was one of those who fancy they can
+scent true wickedness in the air. In her presence he had felt an inward
+certainty of her ultimate goodness of heart; and it was nothing against
+this that she had abandoned herself a moment, that day on the cliff, to
+the sentiment of relief at the ending of her bondage, of her years of
+starved sympathy and unquickened motherhood. That she had turned to
+Marlowe in her destitution he believed; that she had any knowledge of
+his deadly purpose he did not believe.
+
+And yet, morning and evening the sickening doubts returned, and he
+recalled again that it was almost in her presence that Marlowe had made
+his preparations in the bedroom of the murdered man, that it was by the
+window of her own chamber that he had escaped from the house. Had he
+forgotten his cunning and taken the risk of telling her then? Or had he,
+as Trent thought more likely, still played his part with her then,
+and stolen off while she slept? He did not think she had known of the
+masquerade when she gave evidence at the inquest; it read like honest
+evidence. Or--the question would never be silenced, though he scorned
+it--had she lain expecting the footsteps in the room and the whisper
+that should tell her that it was done? Among the foul possibilities of
+human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit
+as well were hidden behind that good and straight and gentle seeming?
+
+These thoughts would scarcely leave him when he was alone.
+
+***
+
+Trent served Sir James, well earning his pay for six months, and then
+returned to Paris where he went to work again with a better heart. His
+powers had returned to him, and he began to live more happily than
+he had expected among a tribe of strangely assorted friends, French,
+English, and American, artists, poets, journalists, policemen,
+hotel-keepers, soldiers, lawyers, business men, and others. His old
+faculty of sympathetic interest in his fellows won for him, just as in
+his student days, privileges seldom extended to the Briton. He enjoyed
+again the rare experience of being taken into the bosom of a Frenchman's
+family. He was admitted to the momentous confidence of les jeunes, and
+found them as sure that they had surprised the secrets of art and life
+as the departed jeunes of ten years before had been.
+
+The bosom of the Frenchman's family was the same as those he had known
+in the past, even to the patterns of the wallpaper and movables. But
+the jeunes, he perceived with regret, were totally different from their
+forerunners. They were much more shallow and puerile, much less really
+clever. The secrets they wrested from the Universe were not such
+important and interesting secrets as had been wrested by the old jeunes.
+This he believed and deplored until one day he found himself seated at
+a restaurant next to a too well-fed man whom, in spite of the ravages
+of comfortable living, he recognized as one of the jeunes of his own
+period. This one had been wont to describe himself and three or four
+others as the Hermits of the New Parnassus. He and his school had talked
+outside cafes and elsewhere more than solitaries do as a rule; but,
+then, rules were what they had vowed themselves to destroy. They
+proclaimed that verse, in particular, was free. The Hermit of the
+New Parnassus was now in the Ministry of the Interior, and already
+decorated: he expressed to Trent the opinion that what France needed
+most was a hand of iron. He was able to quote the exact price paid for
+certain betrayals of the country, of which Trent had not previously
+heard.
+
+Thus he was brought to make the old discovery that it was he who had
+changed, like his friend of the Administration, and that les jeunes were
+still the same. Yet he found it hard to say what precisely he had lost
+that so greatly mattered; unless indeed it were so simple a thing as his
+high spirits.
+
+One morning in June, as he descended the slope of the Rue des Martyrs,
+he saw approaching a figure that he remembered. He glanced quickly
+round, for the thought of meeting Mr. Bunner again was unacceptable. For
+some time he had recognized that his wound was healing under the spell
+of creative work; he thought less often of the woman he loved, and with
+less pain. He would not have the memory of those three days reopened.
+
+But the straight and narrow thoroughfare offered no refuge, and the
+American saw him almost at once.
+
+His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man.
+They sat long over a meal, and Mr. Bunner talked. Trent listened to
+him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then
+contributing a question or remark. Besides liking his companion, he
+enjoyed his conversation, with its unending verbal surprises, for its
+own sake.
+
+Bunner was, it appeared, resident in Paris as the chief Continental
+agent of the Manderson firm, and fully satisfied with his position and
+prospects. He discoursed on these for some twenty minutes. This subject
+at length exhausted, he went on to tell Trent, who confessed that he had
+been away from England for a year, that Marlowe had shortly after the
+death of Manderson entered his father's business, which was now again in
+a flourishing state, and had already come to be practically in control
+of it. They had kept up their intimacy, and were even now planning a
+holiday for the summer. Mr. Bunner spoke with generous admiration of his
+friend's talent for affairs. 'Jack Marlowe has a natural big head,' he
+declared, 'and if he had more experience, I wouldn't want to have him up
+against me. He would put a crimp in me every time.'
+
+As the American's talk flowed on, Trent listened with a slowly growing
+perplexity. It became more and more plain that something was very wrong
+in his theory of the situation; there was no mention of its central
+figure. Presently Mr. Bunner mentioned that Marlowe was engaged to
+be married to an Irish girl, whose charms he celebrated with native
+enthusiasm.
+
+Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table. What could
+have happened? His ideas were sliding and shifting. At last he forced
+himself to put a direct question.
+
+Mr. Bunner was not very fully informed. He knew that Mrs. Manderson had
+left England immediately after the settlement of her husband's affairs,
+and had lived for some time in Italy. She had returned not long ago to
+London, where she had decided not to live in the house in Mayfair,
+and had bought a smaller one in the Hampstead neighbourhood; also, he
+understood, one somewhere in the country. She was said to go but little
+into society. 'And all the good hard dollars just waiting for some one
+to spraddle them around,' said Mr. Bunner, with a note of pathos in his
+voice. 'Why, she has money to burn--money to feed to the birds--and
+nothing doing. The old man left her more than half his wad. And think of
+the figure she might make in the world. She is beautiful, and she is the
+best woman I ever met, too. But she couldn't ever seem to get the habit
+of spending money the way it ought to be spent.'
+
+His words now became a soliloquy: Trent's thoughts were occupying all
+his attention. He pleaded business soon, and the two men parted with
+cordiality.
+
+Half an hour later Trent was in his studio, swiftly and mechanically
+'cleaning up'. He wanted to know what had happened; somehow he must find
+out. He could never approach herself, he knew; he would never bring back
+to her the shame of that last encounter with him; it was scarcely likely
+that he would even set eyes on her. But he must get to know!... Cupples
+was in London, Marlowe was there.... And, anyhow, he was sick of Paris.
+
+Such thoughts came and went; and below them all strained the fibres of
+an unseen cord that dragged mercilessly at his heart, and that he cursed
+bitterly in the moments when he could not deny to himself that it was
+there. The folly, the useless, pitiable folly of it!
+
+In twenty-four hours his feeble roots in Paris had been torn out. He
+was looking over a leaden sea at the shining fortress-wall of the Dover
+cliffs.
+
+***
+
+But though he had instinctively picked out the lines of a set purpose
+from among the welter of promptings in his mind, he found it delayed at
+the very outset.
+
+He had decided that he must first see Mr. Cupples, who would be in a
+position to tell him much more than the American knew. But Mr. Cupples
+was away on his travels, not expected to return for a month; and Trent
+had no reasonable excuse for hastening his return. Marlowe he would not
+confront until he had tried at least to reconnoitre the position. He
+constrained himself not to commit the crowning folly of seeking out Mrs
+Manderson's house in Hampstead; he could not enter it, and the thought
+of the possibility of being seen by her lurking in its neighbourhood
+brought the blood to his face.
+
+He stayed at an hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr. Cupples's
+return attempted vainly to lose himself in work.
+
+At the end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager
+precipitancy. She had let fall some word at their last meeting, of a
+taste for music. Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly,
+to the opera. He might see her; and if, in spite of his caution,
+she caught sight of him, they could be blind to each other's
+presence--anybody might happen to go to the opera.
+
+So he went alone each evening, passing as quickly as he might through
+the people in the vestibule; and each evening he came away knowing that
+she had not been in the house. It was a habit that yielded him a sort of
+satisfaction along with the guilty excitement of his search; for he too
+loved music, and nothing gave him so much peace while its magic endured.
+
+One night as he entered, hurrying through the brilliant crowd, he felt a
+touch on his arm. Flooded with an incredible certainty at the touch, he
+turned.
+
+It was she: so much more radiant in the absence of grief and anxiety, in
+the fact that she was smiling, and in the allurement of evening dress,
+that he could not speak. She, too, breathed a little quickly, and there
+was a light of daring in her eyes and cheeks as she greeted him.
+
+Her words were few. 'I wouldn't miss a note of Tristan,' she said, 'nor
+must you. Come and see me in the interval.' She gave him the number of
+the box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII: Eruption
+
+The following two months were a period in Trent's life that he has never
+since remembered without shuddering. He met Mrs. Manderson half a dozen
+times, and each time her cool friendliness, a nicely calculated mean
+between mere acquaintance and the first stage of intimacy, baffled and
+maddened him. At the opera he had found her, to his further amazement,
+with a certain Mrs. Wallace, a frisky matron whom he had known from
+childhood. Mrs. Manderson, it appeared, on her return from Italy, had
+somehow wandered into circles to which he belonged by nurture and
+disposition. It came, she said, of her having pitched her tent in their
+hunting-grounds; several of his friends were near neighbours. He had
+a dim but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlike
+himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacity
+of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to time
+that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs. Wallace. The other
+lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearance
+of agitation with which she had stopped him in the vestibule. She had
+spoken pleasantly to him of her travels, of her settlement in London,
+and of people whom they both knew.
+
+During the last half of the opera, which he had stayed in the box to
+hear, he had been conscious of nothing, as he sat behind them, but the
+angle of her cheek and the mass of her hair, the lines of her shoulder
+and arm, her hand upon the cushion. The black hair had seemed at last
+a forest, immeasurable, pathless and enchanted, luring him to a fatal
+adventure.... At the end he had been pale and subdued, parting with them
+rather formally.
+
+The next time he saw her--it was at a country house where both were
+guests--and the subsequent times, he had had himself in hand. He had
+matched her manner and had acquitted himself, he thought, decently,
+considering--
+
+Considering that he lived in an agony of bewilderment and remorse and
+longing. He could make nothing, absolutely nothing, of her attitude.
+That she had read his manuscript and understood the suspicion indicated
+in his last question to her at White Gables was beyond the possibility
+of doubt. Then how could she treat him thus and frankly, as she treated
+all the world of men who had done no injury?
+
+For it had become clear to his intuitive sense, for all the absence of
+any shade of differentiation in her outward manner, that an injury had
+been done, and that she had felt it. Several times, on the rare and
+brief occasions when they had talked apart, he had warning from the same
+sense that she was approaching this subject; and each time he had turned
+the conversation with the ingenuity born of fear. Two resolutions he
+made. The first was that when he had completed a commissioned work which
+tied him to London he would go away and stay away. The strain was too
+great. He no longer burned to know the truth; he wanted nothing to
+confirm his fixed internal conviction by faith, that he had blundered,
+that he had misread the situation, misinterpreted her tears, written
+himself down a slanderous fool. He speculated no more on Marlowe's
+motive in the killing of Manderson. Mr. Cupples returned to London, and
+Trent asked him nothing. He knew now that he had been right in those
+words--Trent remembered them for the emphasis with which they were
+spoken--'So long as she considered herself bound to him... no power on
+earth could have persuaded her.' He met Mrs. Manderson at dinner at her
+uncle's large and tomb-like house in Bloomsbury, and there he conversed
+most of the evening with a professor of archaeology from Berlin.
+
+His other resolution was that he would not be with her alone.
+
+But when, a few days after, she wrote asking him to come and see her on
+the following afternoon, he made no attempt to excuse himself. This was
+a formal challenge.
+
+***
+
+While she celebrated the rites of tea, and for some little time
+thereafter, she joined with such natural ease in his slightly fevered
+conversation on matters of the day that he began to hope she had changed
+what he could not doubt had been her resolve, to corner him and speak to
+him gravely. She was to all appearance careless now, smiling so that he
+recalled, not for the first time since that night at the opera, what was
+written long ago of a Princess of Brunswick: 'Her mouth has ten thousand
+charms that touch the soul.' She made a tour of the beautiful room where
+she had received him, singling out this treasure or that from the spoils
+of a hundred bric-a-brac shops, laughing over her quests, discoveries,
+and bargainings. And when he asked if she would delight him again with a
+favourite piece of his which he had heard her play at another house, she
+consented at once.
+
+She played with a perfection of execution and feeling that moved him now
+as it had moved him before. 'You are a musician born,' he said quietly
+when she had finished, and the last tremor of the music had passed away.
+'I knew that before I first heard you.'
+
+'I have played a great deal ever since I can remember. It has been a
+great comfort to me,' she said simply, and half-turned to him smiling.
+'When did you first detect music in me? Oh, of course: I was at the
+opera. But that wouldn't prove much, would it?'
+
+'No,' he said abstractedly, his sense still busy with the music that
+had just ended. 'I think I knew it the first time I saw you.' Then
+understanding of his own words came to him, and turned him rigid. For
+the first time the past had been invoked.
+
+There was a short silence. Mrs. Manderson looked at Trent, then hastily
+looked away. Colour began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her lips
+as if for whistling. Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders which
+he remembered she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself in a
+chair opposite to him.
+
+'That speech of yours will do as well as anything,' she began slowly,
+looking at the point of her shoe, 'to bring us to what I wanted to say.
+I asked you here today on purpose, Mr. Trent, because I couldn't bear it
+any longer. Ever since the day you left me at White Gables I have been
+saying to myself that it didn't matter what you thought of me in that
+affair; that you were certainly not the kind of man to speak to others
+of what you believed about me, after what you had told me of your
+reasons for suppressing your manuscript. I asked myself how it could
+matter. But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter. It mattered
+horribly. Because what you thought was not true.' She raised her eyes
+and met his gaze calmly. Trent, with a completely expressionless face,
+returned her look.
+
+'Since I began to know you,' he said, 'I have ceased to think it.'
+'Thank you,' said Mrs. Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply. Then,
+playing with a glove, she added, 'But I want you to know what was true.
+
+'I did not know if I should ever see you again,' she went on in a lower
+voice, 'but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this. I
+thought it would not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me an
+understanding person; and besides, a woman who has been married isn't
+expected to have the same sort of difficulty as a young girl in speaking
+about such things when it is necessary. And then we did meet again, and
+I discovered that it was very difficult indeed. You made it difficult.'
+
+'How?' he asked quietly.
+
+'I don't know,' said the lady. 'But yes--I do know. It was just because
+you treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anything
+of that sort about me. I had always supposed that if I saw you again you
+would turn on me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you asked
+me that last question--do you remember?--at White Gables. Instead of
+that you were just like any other acquaintance. You were just'--she
+hesitated and spread out her hands--'nice. You know. After that first
+time at the opera when I spoke to you I went home positively wondering
+if you had really recognized me. I mean, I thought you might have
+recognized my face without remembering who it was.'
+
+A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.
+
+She smiled deprecatingly. 'Well, I couldn't remember if you had spoken
+my name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the
+Iretons', you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those
+few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began
+to feel that you wouldn't let me, that you would slip away from the
+subject if I approached it. Wasn't I right? Tell me, please.' He nodded.
+'But why?' He remained silent.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'I will finish what I had to say, and then you
+will tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began to
+understand that you wouldn't let me talk of the matter to you, it made
+me more determined than ever. I suppose you didn't realize that I would
+insist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging. I dare say I
+couldn't have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought. You walked
+into my parlour today, never thinking I should dare. Well, now you see.'
+
+Mrs. Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she was
+wont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardour of her
+purpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so long
+she felt herself mistress of the situation.
+
+'I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made,' she
+continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked
+at her enigmatically. 'You will have to believe it, Mr. Trent; it
+is utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and
+cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twice
+about taking for facts. Please understand that I don't blame you in the
+least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knew
+that I was estranged from my husband, and you knew what that so often
+means. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an
+injured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain
+it away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself
+at first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was
+disappointed in me because I couldn't take a brilliant lead in society.
+Well, that was true; he was so. But I could see you weren't convinced.
+You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew how
+irrational it was. Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; you
+divined that.
+
+'Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it
+was such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliation
+and strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. You
+practically asked me if my husband's secretary was not my lover, Mr
+Trent--I have to say it, because I want you to understand why I broke
+down and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you thought I was
+guilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a party to
+the crime, that I had consented.... That did hurt me; but perhaps you
+couldn't have thought anything else--I don't know.'
+
+Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head
+at the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. 'But really it
+was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of
+all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled
+myself together again you had gone.'
+
+She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer,
+and drew out a long, sealed envelope.
+
+'This is the manuscript you left with me,' she said. 'I have read it
+through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at
+your cleverness in things of this kind.' A faintly mischievous smile
+flashed upon her face, and was gone. 'I thought it was splendid, Mr
+Trent--I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested.
+And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank
+you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of
+yours rather than put a woman's reputation in peril. If all had been as
+you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the
+case you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just what you had
+done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed by
+your suspicion.'
+
+As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were
+bright. Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. He
+did not seem to hear. She put the envelope into his hand as it lay open,
+palm upwards, on his knee. There was a touch of gentleness about the act
+which made him look up.
+
+'Can you--' he began slowly.
+
+She raised her hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr. Trent; let me
+finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me
+to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am
+still feeling the triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofa
+from which she had first risen. 'I am telling you a thing that nobody
+else knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come between
+us, though I did everything in my power to hide it. But I don't think
+any one in the world ever guessed what my husband's notion was. People
+who know me don't think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And his
+fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what the
+situation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he came
+to us. For all his cleverness--my husband said he had a keener brain
+than any man he knew--I looked upon him as practically a boy. You know
+I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of
+ambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me what
+I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about
+it I said, "His manners." He surprised me very much by looking black at
+that, and after a silence he said, "Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman; that's
+so", not looking at me.
+
+'Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when
+I found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected he would
+do--fallen desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgust
+he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those
+whom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she
+did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well educated, very good at
+games--what they call a woman-athlete--and caring for nothing on earth
+but her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I
+ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Every one knew it, and Mr. Marlowe
+must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all.
+I don't know how she managed it, but I can imagine. She liked him, of
+course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. The
+whole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious. One day I asked
+him to row me in a boat on the lake--all this happened at our house by
+Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time
+before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think,
+and he took it admirably, but he didn't believe me a bit. He had the
+impudence to tell me that I misunderstood Alice's nature. When I hinted
+at his prospects--I knew he had scarcely anything of his own--he said
+that if she loved him he could make himself a position in the world. I
+dare say that was true, with his abilities and his friends--he is rather
+well connected, you know, as well as popular. But his enlightenment came
+very soon after that.
+
+'My husband helped me out of the boat when we got back. He joked with
+Mr. Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed he
+never once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why I
+took so long to realize what he thought about him and myself. But to
+me he was reserved and silent that evening--not angry. He was always
+perfectly cold and expressionless to me after he took this idea into his
+head. After dinner he only spoke to me once. Mr. Marlowe was telling him
+about some horse he had bought for the farm in Kentucky, and my husband
+looked at me and said, "Marlowe may be a gentleman, but he seldom quits
+loser in a horse-trade." I was surprised at that, but at that time--and
+even on the next occasion when he found us together--I didn't understand
+what was in his mind. That next time was the morning when Mr
+Marlowe received a sweet little note from the girl asking for his
+congratulations on her engagement. It was in our New York house.
+He looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, and
+afterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was the
+matter. He didn't say anything, but just handed me the note, and turned
+away to the window. I was very glad that was all over, but terribly
+sorry for him too, of course. I don't remember what I said, but I
+remember putting my hand on his arm as he stood there staring out on
+the garden and just then my husband appeared at the open door with some
+papers. He just glanced at us, and then turned and walked quietly back
+to his study. I thought that he might have heard what I was saying to
+comfort Mr. Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of him to slip away.
+Mr. Marlowe neither saw nor heard him. My husband left the house that
+morning for the West while I was out. Even then I did not understand. He
+used often to go off suddenly like that, if some business project called
+him.
+
+'It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the situation.
+He was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me he asked
+me where Mr. Marlowe was. Somehow the tone of his question told me
+everything in a flash.
+
+'I almost gasped; I was wild with indignation. You know, Mr. Trent,
+I don't think I should have minded at all if any one had thought me
+capable of openly breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebody
+else. I dare say I might have done that. But that coarse suspicion...
+a man whom he trusted... and the notion of concealment. It made me see
+scarlet. Every shred of pride in me was strung up till I quivered, and I
+swore to myself on the spot that I would never show by any word or sign
+that I was conscious of his having such a thought about me. I would
+behave exactly as I always had behaved, I determined--and that I did, up
+to the very last. Though I knew that a wall had been made between us now
+that could never be broken down--even if he asked my pardon and obtained
+it--I never once showed that I noticed any change.
+
+'And so it went on. I never could go through such a time again. My
+husband showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we were
+alone--and that was only when it was unavoidable. He never once alluded
+to what was in his mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it. Both
+of us were stubborn in our different attitudes. To Mr. Marlowe he was
+more friendly, if anything, than before--Heaven only knows why. I
+fancied he was planning some sort of revenge; but that was only a fancy.
+Certainly Mr. Marlowe never knew what was suspected of him. He and I
+remained good friends, though we never spoke of anything intimate after
+that disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no less of him
+than I had always done. Then we came to England and to White Gables, and
+after that followed--my husband's dreadful end.'
+
+She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality. 'You know about
+the rest--so much more than any other man,' she added, and glanced up at
+him with a quaint expression.
+
+Trent wondered at that look, but the wonder was only a passing shadow on
+his thought. Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness. All
+the vivacity had returned to his face. Long before the lady had ended
+her story he had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from the
+first days of their renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story that
+his imagination had built up at White Gables, upon foundations that
+seemed so good to him.
+
+He said, 'I don't know how to begin the apologies I have to make. There
+are no words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I realize
+what a crude, cock-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion was.
+Yes, I suspected--you! I had almost forgotten that I was ever such
+a fool. Almost--not quite. Sometimes when I have been alone I have
+remembered that folly, and poured contempt on it. I have tried to
+imagine what the facts were. I have tried to excuse myself.'
+
+She interrupted him quickly. 'What nonsense! Do be sensible, Mr. Trent.
+You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to me
+with your solution of the mystery.' Again the quaint expression came and
+was gone. 'If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like you
+to pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all over
+me in large letters--so large that you couldn't believe very strong
+evidence against me after seeing me twice.'
+
+'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he demanded with a sort of
+fierceness. 'Do you take me for a person without any normal instincts?
+I don't say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort of
+character--what Mr. Calvin Bunner calls a case of open-work; I don't say
+a stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was good
+evidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and being
+in your atmosphere, could associate you with the particular kind of
+abomination I imagined, is a fool--the kind of fool who is afraid to
+trust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approach
+the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I
+understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at
+the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you
+by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would
+pardon me without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall.
+And yet if you could know--' He stopped short, and then added quietly,
+'Well, will you accept all that as an apology? The very scrubbiest
+sackcloth made, and the grittiest ashes on the heap.... I didn't mean to
+get worked up,' he ended lamely.
+
+Mrs. Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knew
+well by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the
+perfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her
+merely for his delight in the sound of it.
+
+'But I love to see you worked up,' she said. 'The bump with which you
+always come down as soon as you realize that you are up in the air
+at all is quite delightful. Oh, we're actually both laughing. What a
+triumphant end to our explanations, after all my dread of the time when
+I should have it out with you. And now it's all over, and you know; and
+we'll never speak of it any more.'
+
+'I hope not,' Trent said in sincere relief. 'If you're resolved to be so
+kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your
+blasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs. Manderson, I had
+better go. Changing the subject after this would be like playing
+puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake.' He rose to his feet.
+
+'You are right,' she said. 'But no! Wait. There is another thing--part
+of the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while we
+are about it. Please sit down.' She took the envelope containing Trent's
+manuscript dispatch from the table where he had laid it. 'I want to
+speak about this.'
+
+His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. 'So do I, if you
+do,' he said slowly. 'I want very much to know one thing.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy,
+why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I had
+been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that
+you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round
+a man's neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand that
+feeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of was
+that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusing
+Marlowe's act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apart
+from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with
+a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be
+practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there is
+defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.'
+
+Mrs. Manderson tapped her lips with the envelope without quite concealing
+a smile. 'You didn't think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr. Trent,'
+she said.
+
+'No.' He looked puzzled.
+
+'I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr. Marlowe as
+well as about me. No, no; you needn't tell me that the chain of evidence
+is complete. I know it is. But evidence of what? Of Mr. Marlowe having
+impersonated my husband that night, and having escaped by way of my
+window, and built up an alibi. I have read your dispatch again and
+again, Mr. Trent, and I don't see that those things can be doubted.'
+
+Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the brief
+pause that followed. Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupied
+air, as one collecting her ideas.
+
+'I did not make any use of the facts found out by you,' she slowly said
+at last, 'because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal
+to Mr. Marlowe.'
+
+'I agree with you,' Trent remarked in a colourless tone.
+
+'And,' pursued the lady, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in
+her eyes, 'as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him
+to that risk.'
+
+There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an
+affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself,
+somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite
+feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to
+her--more than permitted--to set her loyal belief in the character of a
+friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect. Nevertheless,
+it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith a little less
+positive in form. It was too irrational to say she 'knew'. In fact
+(he put it to himself bluntly), it was quite unlike her. If to be
+unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine
+trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up
+better than any woman he had known.
+
+'You suggest,' he said at length, 'that Marlowe constructed an alibi for
+himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted,
+to clear himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell 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 marmoreal attitude
+in his chair.
+
+'I have played the game from my childhood, and with good players,' said
+Marlowe simply. 'It is an hereditary gift, if you can call it a gift. At
+the University I was nearly as good as anybody there, and I gave most of
+my brains to that and the OUDS and playing about generally. At Oxford,
+as I dare say you know, inducements to amuse oneself at the expense of
+one's education are endless, and encouraged by the authorities. Well,
+one day toward the end of my last term, Dr Munro of Queen's, whom I had
+never defeated, sent for me. He told me that I played a fairish game
+of chess. I said it was very good of him to say so. Then he said, "They
+tell me you hunt, too." I said, "Now and then." He asked, "Is there
+anything else you can do?" "No," I said, not much liking the tone of the
+conversation--the old man generally succeeded in putting people's backs
+up. He grunted fiercely, and then told me that enquiries were being made
+on behalf of a wealthy American man of business who wanted an English
+secretary. Manderson was the name, he said. He seemed never to have
+heard it before, which was quite possible, as he never opened a
+newspaper and had not slept a night outside the college for thirty
+years. If I could rub up my spelling--as the old gentleman put it--I
+might have a good chance for the post, as chess and riding and an Oxford
+education were the only indispensable points.
+
+'Well, I became Manderson's secretary. For a long time I liked the
+position greatly. When one is attached to an active American plutocrat
+in the prime of life one need not have many dull moments. Besides, it
+made me independent. My father had some serious business reverses about
+that time, and I was glad to be able to do without an allowance from
+him. At the end of the first year Manderson doubled my salary. "It's big
+money," he said, "but I guess I don't lose." You see, by that time I was
+doing a great deal more than accompany him on horseback in the morning
+and play chess in the evening, which was mainly what he had required.
+I was attending to his houses, his farm in Ohio, his shooting in
+Maine, his horses, his cars, and his yacht. I had become a walking
+railway-guide and an expert cigar-buyer. I was always learning
+something.
+
+'Well, now you understand what my position was in regard to Manderson
+during the last two or three years of my connection with him. It was
+a happy life for me on the whole. I was busy, my work was varied and
+interesting; I had time to amuse myself too, and money to spend. At
+one time I made a fool of myself about a girl, and that was not a
+happy time; but it taught me to understand the great goodness of Mrs
+Manderson.' Marlowe inclined his head to Mr. Cupples as he said this.
+'She may choose to tell you about it. As for her husband, he had never
+varied in his attitude towards me, in spite of the change that came over
+him in the last months of his life, as you know. He treated me well and
+generously in his unsympathetic way, and I never had a feeling that he
+was less than satisfied with his bargain--that was the sort of footing
+we lived upon. And it was that continuance of his attitude right up to
+the end that made the revelation so shocking when I was suddenly shown,
+on the night on which he met his end, the depth of crazy hatred of
+myself that was in Manderson's soul.'
+
+The eyes of Trent and Mr. Cupples met for an instant.
+
+'You never suspected that he hated you before that time?' asked Trent;
+and Mr. Cupples asked at the same moment, 'To what did you attribute it?'
+
+'I never guessed until that night,' answered Marlowe, 'that he had the
+smallest ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know.
+I cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I
+considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a
+case of a madman's delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against
+him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at
+the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can
+you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death with
+the object of delivering some one he hates to the hangman?'
+
+Mr. Cupples moved sharply in his chair. 'You say Manderson was
+responsible for his own death?' he asked.
+
+Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent
+watch upon the face of Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less
+pale and drawn.
+
+'I do say so,' Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in
+the face. Mr. Cupples nodded.
+
+'Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement,' observed the
+old gentleman, in a tone of one discussing a point of abstract science,
+'it may be remarked that the state of mind which you attribute to
+Manderson--'
+
+'Suppose we have the story first,' Trent interrupted, gently laying a
+hand on Mr. Cupples's arm. 'You were telling us,' he went on, turning to
+Marlowe, 'how things stood between you and Manderson. Now 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.
+
+'Touche,' Trent said, with a dry smile. 'I found a large empty
+letter-case with a burst lock lying with other odds and ends on the
+dressing-table in Manderson's room. Your statement is that you put it
+there. I could make nothing of it.' He closed his lips.
+
+'There was no reason for hiding it,' said Marlowe. 'But to get back to
+my story. I burst the lock of the strap. I opened the case before one
+of the lamps of the car. The first thing I found in it I ought to have
+expected, of course, but I hadn't.' He paused and glanced at Trent.
+
+'It was--' began Trent mechanically, and then stopped himself. 'Try
+not to bring me in any more, if you don't mind,' he said, meeting the
+other's eye. 'I have complimented you already in that document on your
+cleverness. You need not prove it by making the judge help you out with
+your evidence.'
+
+'All right,' agreed Marlowe. 'I couldn't resist just that much. If you
+had been in my place you would have known before I did that Manderson's
+little pocket-case was there. As soon as I saw it, of course, I
+remembered his not having had it about him when I asked for money, and
+his surprising anger. He had made a false step. He had already fastened
+his note-case up with the rest of what was to figure as my plunder, and
+placed it in my hands. I opened it. It contained a few notes as usual, I
+didn't count them.
+
+'Tucked into the flaps of the big case in packets were the other notes,
+just as I had brought them from London. And with them were two small
+wash-leather bags, the look of which I knew well. My heart jumped
+sickeningly again, for this, too, was utterly unexpected. In those bags
+Manderson kept the diamonds in which he had been investing for some time
+past. I didn't open them; I could feel the tiny stones shifting under
+the pressure of my fingers. How many thousands of pounds' worth there
+were there I have no idea. We had regarded Manderson's diamond-buying
+as merely a speculative fad. I believe now that it was the earliest
+movement in the scheme for my ruin. For any one like myself to be
+represented as having robbed him, there ought to be a strong inducement
+shown. That had been provided with a vengeance.
+
+'Now, I thought, I have the whole thing plain, and I must act. I saw
+instantly what I must do. I had left Manderson about a mile from the
+house. It would take him twenty minutes, fifteen if he walked fast, to
+get back to the house, where he would, of course, immediately tell
+his story of robbery, and probably telephone at once to the police in
+Bishopsbridge. I had left him only five or six minutes ago; for all that
+I have just told you was as quick thinking as I ever did. It would be
+easy to overtake him in the car before he neared the house. There would
+be an awkward interview. I set my teeth as I thought of it, and all my
+fears vanished as I began to savour the gratification of telling him my
+opinion of him. There are probably few people who ever positively looked
+forward to an awkward interview with Manderson; but I was mad with
+rage. My honour and my liberty had been plotted against with detestable
+treachery. I did not consider what would follow the interview. That
+would arrange itself.
+
+'I had started and turned the car, I was already going fast toward White
+Gables, when I heard the sound of a shot in front of me, to the right.
+
+'Instantly I stopped the car. My first wild thought was that Manderson
+was shooting at me. Then I realized that the noise had not been close at
+hand. I could see nobody on the road, though the moonlight flooded it. I
+had left Manderson at a spot just round the corner that was now about a
+hundred yards ahead of me. After half a minute or so, I started again,
+and turned the corner at a slow pace. Then I stopped again with a jar,
+and for a moment I sat perfectly still.
+
+'Manderson lay dead a few steps from me on the turf within the gate,
+clearly visible to me in the moonlight.'
+
+Marlowe made another pause, and Trent, with a puckered brow, enquired,
+'On the golf-course?'
+
+'Obviously,' remarked Mr. Cupples. 'The eighth green is just there.'
+He had grown more and more interested as Marlowe went on, and was now
+playing feverishly with his thin beard.
+
+'On the green, quite close to the flag,' said Marlowe. 'He lay on his
+back, his arms were stretched abroad, his jacket and heavy overcoat were
+open; the light shone hideously on his white face and his shirt-front;
+it glistened on his bared teeth and one of the eyes. The other... you
+saw it. The man was certainly dead. As I sat there stunned, unable for
+the moment to think at all, I could even see a thin dark line of blood
+running down from the shattered socket to the ear. Close by lay his soft
+black hat, and at his feet a pistol.
+
+'I suppose it was only a few seconds that I sat helplessly staring at
+the body. Then I rose and moved to it with dragging feet; for now
+the truth had come to me at last, and I realized the fullness of my
+appalling danger. It was not only my liberty or my honour that the
+maniac had undermined. It was death that he had planned for me; death
+with the degradation of the scaffold. To strike me down with certainty,
+he had not hesitated to end his life; a life which was, no doubt,
+already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and the
+last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps, to a devilish joy by
+the thought that he dragged down my life with his. For as far as I could
+see at the moment my situation was utterly hopeless. If it had been
+desperate on the assumption that Manderson meant to denounce me as a
+thief, what was it now that his corpse denounced me as a murderer?
+
+'I picked up the revolver and saw, almost without emotion, that it was
+my own. Manderson had taken it from my room, I suppose, while I was
+getting out the car. At the same moment I remembered that it was by
+Manderson's suggestion that I had had it engraved with my initials, to
+distinguish it from a precisely similar weapon which he had of his own.
+
+'I bent over the body and satisfied myself that there was no life left
+in it. I must tell you here that I did not notice, then or afterwards,
+the scratches and marks on the wrists, which were taken as evidence of
+a struggle with an assailant. But I have no doubt that Manderson
+deliberately injured himself in this way before firing the shot; it was
+a part of his plan.
+
+'Though I never perceived that detail, however, it was evident enough as
+I looked at the body that Manderson had not forgotten, in his last act
+on earth, to tie me tighter by putting out of court the question of
+suicide. He had clearly been at pains to hold the pistol at arm's
+length, and there was not a trace of smoke or of burning on the face.
+The wound was absolutely clean, and was already ceasing to bleed
+outwardly. I rose and paced the green, reckoning up the points in the
+crushing case against me.
+
+'I was the last to be seen with Manderson. I had persuaded him--so he
+had lied to his wife and, as I afterwards knew, to the butler--to go
+with me for the drive from which he never returned. My pistol had killed
+him. It was true that by discovering his plot I had saved myself
+from heaping up further incriminating facts--flight, concealment, the
+possession of the treasure. But what need of them, after all? As I
+stood, what hope was there? What could I do?'
+
+Marlowe came to the table and leaned forward with his hands upon it. 'I
+want,' he said very earnestly, 'to try to make you understand what was
+in my mind when I decided to do what I did. I hope you won't be bored,
+because I must do it. You may both have thought I acted like a fool.
+But after all the police never suspected me. I walked that green for
+a quarter of an hour, I suppose, thinking the thing out like a game of
+chess. I had to think ahead and think coolly; for my safety depended on
+upsetting the plans of one of the longest-headed men who ever lived. And
+remember that, for all I knew, there were details of the scheme still
+hidden from me, waiting to crush me.
+
+'Two plain courses presented themselves at once. Either of them, I
+thought, would certainly prove fatal. I could, in the first place, do
+the completely straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my
+story, hand over the notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power
+of truth and innocence. I could have laughed as I thought of it. I
+saw myself bringing home the corpse and giving an account of myself,
+boggling with sheer shame over the absurdity of my wholly unsupported
+tale, as I brought a charge of mad hatred and fiendish treachery against
+a man who had never, as far as I knew, had a word to say against me.
+At every turn the cunning of Manderson had forestalled me. His careful
+concealment of such a hatred was a characteristic feature of the
+stratagem; only a man of his iron self-restraint could have done it. You
+can see for yourselves how every fact in my statement would appear, in
+the shadow of Manderson's death, a clumsy lie. I tried to imagine myself
+telling such a story to the counsel for my defence. I could see the face
+with which he would listen to it; I could read in the lines of it his
+thought, that to put forward such an impudent farrago would mean merely
+the disappearance of any chance there might be of a commutation of the
+capital sentence.
+
+'True, I had not fled. I had brought back the body; I had handed over
+the property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I had
+yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to
+clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had
+not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that when I found that I
+had done murder the heart went out of me. Turn it which way I would, I
+could see no hope of escape by this plan of action.
+
+'The second of the obvious things that I might do was to take the hint
+offered by the situation, and to fly at once. That too must prove fatal.
+There was the body. I had no time to hide it in such a way that it would
+not be found at the first systematic search. But whatever I should
+do with the body, Manderson's not returning to the house would cause
+uneasiness in two or three hours at most. Martin would suspect an
+accident to the car, and would telephone to the police. At daybreak the
+roads would be scoured and enquiries telegraphed in every direction. The
+police would act on the possibility of there being foul play. They
+would spread their nets with energy in such a big business as the
+disappearance of Manderson. Ports and railway termini would be watched.
+Within twenty-four hours the body would be found, and the whole country
+would be on the alert for me--all Europe, scarcely less; I did not
+believe there was a spot in Christendom where the man accused of
+Manderson's murder could pass unchallenged, with every newspaper crying
+the fact of his death into the ears of all the world. Every stranger
+would be suspect; every man, woman, and child would be a detective. The
+car, wherever I should abandon it, would put people on my track. If I
+had to choose between two utterly hopeless courses, I decided, I would
+take that of telling the preposterous truth.
+
+'But now I cast about desperately for some tale that would seem more
+plausible than the truth. Could I save my neck by a lie? One after
+another came into my mind; I need not trouble to remember them now. Each
+had its own futilities and perils; but every one split upon the fact--or
+what would be taken for fact--that I had induced Manderson to go out
+with me, and the fact that he had never returned alive. Notion after
+notion I swiftly rejected as I paced there by the dead man, and doom
+seemed to settle down upon me more heavily as the moments passed. Then a
+strange thought came to me.
+
+'Several times I had repeated to myself half-consciously, as a sort of
+refrain, the words in which I had heard Manderson tell his wife that
+I had induced him to go out. "Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a
+moonlight run in the car. He is very urgent about it." All at once
+it struck me that, without meaning to do so, I was saying this in
+Manderson's voice.
+
+'As you found out for yourself, Mr. Trent, I have a natural gift of
+mimicry. I had imitated Manderson's voice many times so successfully as
+to deceive even Bunner, who had been much more in his company than
+his own wife. It was, you remember'--Marlowe turned to Mr. Cupples--'a
+strong, metallic voice, of great carrying power, so unusual as to make
+it a very fascinating voice to imitate, and at the same time very easy.
+I said the words carefully to myself again, like this--' he uttered
+them, and Mr. Cupples opened his eyes in amazement--'and then I struck
+my hand upon the low wall beside me. "Manderson never returned alive?" I
+said aloud. "But Manderson shall return alive!"'
+
+'In thirty seconds the bare outline of the plan was complete in my mind.
+I did not wait to think over details. Every instant was precious now. I
+lifted the body and laid it on the floor of the car, covered with a rug.
+I took the hat and the revolver. Not one trace remained on the green, I
+believe, of that night's work. As I drove back to White Gables my design
+took shape before me with a rapidity and ease that filled me with a wild
+excitement. I should escape yet! It was all so easy if I kept my pluck.
+Putting aside the unusual and unlikely, I should not fail. I wanted to
+shout, to scream!
+
+'Nearing the house I slackened speed, and carefully reconnoitred the
+road. Nothing was moving. I turned the car into the open field on the
+other side of the road, about twenty paces short of the little door at
+the extreme corner of the grounds. I brought it to rest behind a stack.
+When, with Manderson's hat on my head and the pistol in my pocket, I had
+staggered with the body across the moonlit road and through that door,
+I left much of my apprehension behind me. With swift action and an
+unbroken nerve I thought I ought to succeed.'
+
+With a long sigh Marlowe threw himself into one of the deep chairs at
+the fireside and passed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. Each of
+his hearers, too, drew a deep breath, but not audibly.
+
+'Everything else you know,' he said. He took a cigarette from a box
+beside him and lighted it. Trent watched the very slight quiver of the
+hand that held the match, and privately noted that his own was at the
+moment not so steady.
+
+'The shoes that betrayed me to you,' pursued Marlowe after a short
+silence, 'were painful all the time I wore them, but I never dreamed
+that they had given anywhere. I knew that no footstep of mine must
+appear by any accident in the soft ground about the hut where I laid
+the body, or between the hut and the house, so I took the shoes off and
+crammed my feet into them as soon as I was inside the little door. I
+left my own shoes, with my own jacket and overcoat, near the body, ready
+to be resumed later. I made a clear footmark on the soft gravel outside
+the French window, and several on the drugget round the carpet. The
+stripping off of the outer clothing of the body, and the dressing of it
+afterwards in the brown suit and shoes, and putting the things into the
+pockets, was a horrible business; and getting the teeth out of the mouth
+was worse. The head--but you don't want to hear about it. I didn't feel
+it much at the time. I was wriggling my own head out of a noose, you
+see. I wish I had thought of pulling down the cuffs, and had tied the
+shoes more neatly. And putting the watch in the wrong pocket was a bad
+mistake. It had all to be done so hurriedly.
+
+'You were wrong, by the way, about the whisky. After one stiffish drink
+I had no more; but I filled up a flask that was in the cupboard, and
+pocketed it. I had a night of peculiar anxiety and effort in front of
+me and I didn't know how I should stand it. I had to take some once or
+twice during the drive. Speaking of that, you give rather a generous
+allowance of time in your document for doing that run by night. You
+say that to get to Southampton by half-past six in that car, under
+the conditions, a man must, even if he drove like a demon, have left
+Marlstone by twelve at latest. I had not got the body dressed in the
+other suit, with tie and watch-chain and so forth, until nearly ten
+minutes past; and then I had to get to the car and start it going. But
+then I don't suppose any other man would have taken the risks I did in
+that car at night, without a headlight. It turns me cold to think of it
+now.
+
+'There's nothing much to say about what I did in the house. I spent the
+time after Martin had left me in carefully thinking over the remaining
+steps in my plan, while I unloaded and thoroughly cleaned the revolver
+using my handkerchief and a penholder from the desk. I also placed the
+packets of notes, the note-case, and the diamonds in the roll-top desk,
+which I opened and relocked with Manderson's key. When I went upstairs
+it was a trying moment, for though I was safe from the eyes of Martin,
+as he sat in his pantry, there was a faint possibility of somebody
+being about on the bedroom floor. I had sometimes found the French maid
+wandering about there when the other servants were in bed. Bunner, I
+knew, was a deep sleeper. Mrs. Manderson, I had gathered from things
+I had heard her say, was usually asleep by eleven; I had thought it
+possible that her gift of sleep had helped her to retain all her beauty
+and vitality in spite of a marriage which we all knew was an unhappy
+one. Still it was uneasy work mounting the stairs, and holding myself
+ready to retreat to the library again at the least sound from above. But
+nothing happened.
+
+'The first thing I did on reaching the corridor was to enter my room and
+put the revolver and cartridges back in the case. Then I turned off the
+light and went quietly into Manderson's room.
+
+'What I had to do there you know. I had to take off the shoes and put
+them outside the door, leave Manderson's jacket, waistcoat, trousers,
+and black tie, after taking everything out of the pockets, select a suit
+and tie and shoes for the body, and place the dental plate in the bowl,
+which I moved from the washing-stand to the bedside, leaving those
+ruinous finger-marks as I did so. The marks on the drawer must have been
+made when I shut it after taking out the tie. Then I had to lie down
+in the bed and tumble it. You know all about it--all except my state of
+mind, which you couldn't imagine and I couldn't describe.
+
+'The worst came when I had hardly begun my operations: the moment when
+Mrs. Manderson spoke from the room where I supposed her asleep. I was
+prepared for it happening; it was a possibility; but I nearly lost my
+nerve all the same. However....
+
+'By the way, I may tell you this: in the extremely unlikely contingency
+of Mrs. Manderson remaining awake, and so putting out of the question my
+escape by way of her window, I had planned simply to remain where I was
+a few hours, and then, not speaking to her, to leave the house quickly
+and quietly by the ordinary way. Martin would have been in bed by that
+time. I might have been heard to leave, but not seen. I should have done
+just as I had planned with the body, and then made the best time I
+could in the car to Southampton. The difference would have been that
+I couldn't have furnished an unquestionable alibi by turning up at the
+hotel at 6.30. I should have made the best of it by driving straight to
+the docks, and making my ostentatious enquiries there. I could in any
+case have got there long before the boat left at noon. I couldn't see
+that anybody could suspect me of the supposed murder in any case; but if
+any one had, and if I hadn't arrived until ten o'clock, say, I shouldn't
+have been able to answer, "It is impossible for me to have got to
+Southampton so soon after shooting him." I should simply have had to say
+I was delayed by a breakdown after leaving Manderson at half-past ten,
+and challenged any one to produce any fact connecting me with the crime.
+They couldn't have done it. The pistol, left openly in my room,
+might have been used by anybody, even if it could be proved that that
+particular pistol was used. Nobody could reasonably connect me with
+the shooting so long as it was believed that it was Manderson who had
+returned to the house. The suspicion could not, I was confident, enter
+any one's mind. All the same, I wanted to introduce the element of
+absolute physical impossibility; I knew I should feel ten times as
+safe with that. So when I knew from the sound of her breathing that
+Mrs. Manderson was asleep again, I walked quickly across her room in my
+stocking feet, and was on the grass with my bundle in ten seconds. I
+don't think I made the least noise. The curtain before the window was of
+soft, thick stuff and didn't rustle, and when I pushed the glass doors
+further open there was not a sound.'
+
+'Tell me,' said Trent, as the other stopped to light a new cigarette,
+'why you took the risk of going through Mrs. Manderson's room to escape
+from the house. I could see when I looked into the thing on the spot why
+it had to be on that side of the house; there was a danger of being seen
+by Martin, or by some servant at a bedroom window, if you got out by a
+window on one of the other sides. But there were three unoccupied rooms
+on that side; two spare bedrooms and Mrs. 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
+Celestine prowling about quite as late as it was then. None of these
+things was very likely; but they were all too likely for me. They were
+uncertainties. Shut off from the household in Manderson's room I knew
+exactly what I had to face. As I lay in my clothes in Manderson's bed
+and listened for the almost inaudible breathing through the open door, I
+felt far more ease of mind, terrible as my anxiety was, than I had felt
+since I saw the dead body on the turf. I even congratulated myself
+that I had had the chance, through Mrs. Manderson's speaking to me, of
+tightening one of the screws in my scheme by repeating the statement
+about my having been sent to Southampton.'
+
+Marlowe looked at Trent, who nodded as who should say that his point was
+met.
+
+'As for Southampton,' pursued Marlowe, 'you know what I did when I got
+there, I have no doubt. I had decided to take Manderson's story about
+the mysterious Harris and act it out on my own lines. It was a carefully
+prepared lie, better than anything I could improvise. I even went so
+far as to get through a trunk call to the hotel at Southampton from the
+library before starting, and ask if Harris was there. 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 some-how--rigid. For a few
+moments he remained in this tense attitude, then all of a sudden his
+right arm moved swiftly, and his hand was at the pocket of his overcoat.
+I saw his face raised in the moonlight, the teeth bared, and the eyes
+glittering, and all at once I knew that the man was not sane. Almost as
+quickly as that flashed across my mind, something else flashed in the
+moonlight. He held the pistol before him, pointing at his breast.
+
+'Now I may say here I shall always be doubtful whether Manderson really
+meant to kill himself then. Marlowe naturally thinks so, knowing nothing
+of my intervention. But I think it quite likely he only meant to wound
+himself, and to charge Marlowe with attempted murder and robbery.
+
+'At that moment, however, I assumed it was suicide. Before I knew what I
+was doing I had leapt out of the shadows and seized his arm. He shook
+me off with a furious snarling noise, giving me a terrific blow in the
+chest, and presenting the revolver at my head. But I seized his wrists
+before he could fire, and clung with all my strength--you remember how
+bruised and scratched they were. I knew I was fighting for my own life
+now, for murder was in his eyes. We struggled like two beasts, without
+an articulate word, I holding his pistol-hand down and keeping a grip
+on the other. I never dreamed that I had the strength for such an
+encounter. Then, with a perfectly instinctive movement--I never knew I
+meant to do it--I flung away his free hand and clutched like lightning
+at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers. By a miracle it did not go
+off. I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat like a wild cat,
+and I fired blindly in his face. He would have been about a yard away,
+I suppose. His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on the
+turf.
+
+'I flung the pistol down and bent over him. The heart's action ceased
+under my hand. I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don't
+know how long it was before I heard the noise of the car returning.
+
+'Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight
+on his white and working face, I was within a few yards of him,
+crouching in the shadow of the furze by the ninth tee. I dared not
+show myself. I was thinking. My public quarrel with Manderson the same
+morning was, I suspected, the talk of the hotel. I assure you that every
+horrible possibility of the situation for me had rushed across my mind
+the moment I saw Manderson fall. I became cunning. I knew what I must
+do. I must get back to the hotel as fast as I could, get in somehow
+unperceived, and play a part to save myself. I must never tell a word to
+any one. Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell every one how
+he had found the body. I knew he would suppose it was suicide; I thought
+every one would suppose so.
+
+'When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the wall
+and got out into the road by the clubhouse, where he could not see me.
+I felt perfectly cool and collected. I crossed the road, climbed the
+fence, and ran across the meadow to pick up the field path I had come by
+that runs to the hotel behind White Gables. I got back to the hotel very
+much out of breath.'
+
+'Out of breath,' repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his
+companion as if hypnotized.
+
+'I had had a sharp run,' Mr. Cupples reminded him. 'Well, approaching the
+hotel from the back I could see into the writing-room through the open
+window. There was nobody in there, so I climbed over the sill, walked to
+the bell and rang it, and then sat down to write a letter I had meant to
+write the next day. I saw by the clock that it was a little past eleven.
+When the waiter answered the bell I asked for a glass of milk and a
+postage stamp. Soon afterwards I went up to bed. But I could not sleep.'
+
+Mr. Cupples, having nothing more to say, ceased speaking. He looked in
+mild surprise at Trent, who now sat silent, supporting his bent head in
+his hands.
+
+'He could not sleep,' murmured Trent at last in a hollow tone. 'A
+frequent result of over-exertion during the day. Nothing to be alarmed
+about.' He was silent again, then looked up with a pale face. 'Cupples,
+I am cured. I will never touch a crime-mystery again. The Manderson
+affair shall be Philip Trent's last case. His high-blown pride at length
+breaks under him.' Trent's smile suddenly returned. 'I could have borne
+everything but that last revelation of the impotence of human reason.
+Cupples, I have absolutely nothing left to say, except this: you have
+beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of self-abasement. And you
+shall pay for the dinner.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Trent's Last Case, by
+E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
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