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Trent's Last Case

by E. C. Bentley · English · Gutenberg #2568 · 424,332 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Trent's Last Case

Author: E. C. Bentley


        
Release date: March 1, 2001 [eBook #2568]
                Most recently updated: February 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2568

Credits: Stuart E. Thiel and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRENT'S LAST CASE ***

[Illustration]




Trent’s Last Case

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

By E.C. Bentley


To
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON.

My dear Gilbert,

I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble
motive I had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it.
Second: because I owe you a book in return for “The Man Who Was
Thursday.” Third: because I said I would when I unfolded the plan of it
to you, surrounded by Frenchmen, two years ago. Fourth: because I
remember the past.

I have been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when
neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy in
the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea, and our elders’
patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves
produced such light reading as was necessary; when (in the words of
Canada’s poet) we studied the works of nature, also those little frogs;
when, in short, we were extremely young. For the sake of that age I
offer you this book.

Yours always,
E. C. BENTLEY


Contents

 I. Bad News
 II. Knocking the Town Endways
 III. Breakfast
 IV. Handcuffs in the Air
 V. Poking About
 VI. Mr. Bunner on the Case
 VII. The Lady in Black
 VIII. The Inquest
 IX. A Hot Scent
 X. The Wife of Dives
 XI. Hitherto Unpublished
 XII. Evil Days
 XIII. Eruption
 XIV. Writing a Letter
 XV. Double Cunning
 XVI. The Last Straw

[Illustration]




Chapter I.
Bad News


Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we
know judge wisely?

When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered
by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single
tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity
of such wealth as this dead man had piled up—without making one loyal
friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to
the least honour. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those
living in the great vortices of business as if the earth too shuddered
under a blow.

In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no
figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world.
He had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct
and augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in
millions for their labour, had existed before; but in the case of
Manderson there had been this singularity, that a pale halo of
piratical romance, a thing especially dear to the hearts of his
countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head through the years
when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability,
the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding
chieftains that infest the borders of Wall Street.

The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those
chieftains on the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with
accretion through his father, who during a long life had quietly
continued to lend money and never had margined a stock. Manderson, who
had at no time known what it was to be without large sums to his hand,
should have been altogether of that newer American plutocracy which is
steadied by the tradition and habit of great wealth. But it was not so.
While his nurture and education had taught him European ideas of a rich
man’s proper external circumstance; while they had rooted in him an
instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which does not
shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his
forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been
called his early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of
genius, his hand against every man’s—an infant prodigy—who brought to
the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than any
opposed to it. At St Helena it was laid down that war is _une belle
occupation;_ and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and
complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New York.

Then came his change. At his father’s death, when Manderson was thirty
years old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he
served seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic
adaptability of his nation he turned to steady labour in his father’s
banking business, closing his ears to the sound of the battles of the
Street. In a few years he came to control all the activity of the great
firm whose unimpeached conservatism, safety, and financial weight
lifted it like a cliff above the angry sea of the markets. All mistrust
founded on the performances of his youth had vanished. He was quite
plainly a different man. How the change came about none could with
authority say, but there was a story of certain last words spoken by
his father, whom alone he had respected and perhaps loved.

He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was
current in the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of
Manderson called up a vision of all that was broad-based and firm in
the vast wealth of the United States. He planned great combinations of
capital, drew together and centralized industries of continental scope,
financed with unerring judgement the large designs of state or of
private enterprise. Many a time when he “took hold” to smash a strike,
or to federate the ownership of some great field of labour, he sent
ruin upon a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or steelworkers or
cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more lawless and
ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate
business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but
the financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a
hand to protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of
the country. Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered
to the national lust for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him
the Colossus.

But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants
and certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little
circle knew that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability
in the markets, had his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when
the Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if
Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the
spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out,
the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his
hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous
raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of
the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never
carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within
him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of
“Spanish Ladies”, perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow
himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had
gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a
million to the depredator might have been made. “Seems to me,” he would
say almost wistfully, “the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place
since I quit.” By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus
became known to the business world, which exulted greatly in the
knowledge.

At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a
hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed
like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous
inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever
speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide.
In Europe also not a few took with their own hands lives that had
become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them
had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the
Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the
Cathedral top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower.
Men stabbed and shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed
it as the air, because in a lonely corner of England the life had
departed from one cold heart vowed to the service of greed.

The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came
when Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed “scare”—suppressed,
because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be
actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the
effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his
plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen
at a time when the market had been “boosted” beyond its real strength.
In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the
corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three railway
statements which had been expected to be much better than they were.
But at whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of
the threatened break had been felt, “the Manderson crowd” had stepped
in and held the market up. All through the week the speculator’s mind,
as shallow as it is quick-witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in
this the hand of the giant stretched out in protection from afar.
Manderson, said the newspapers in chorus, was in hourly communication
with his lieutenants in the Street. One journal was able to give in
round figures the sum spent on cabling between New York and Marlstone
in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of expert
operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to
Marlstone to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that
Manderson, on the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon
his holiday and return home by the _Lusitania;_ but that he soon had
the situation so well in hand that he had determined to remain where he
was.

All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the
“finance editors”, consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd
business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better
help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship—knew also that no
word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that
Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron fame, was the true organizer of
victory. So they fought down apprehension through four feverish days,
and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the ground beneath the feet
of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with Etna-mutterings of
disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was firm, and
slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn out
but thankfully at peace.

In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the
sixty acres of the financial district. It came into being as the
lightning comes—a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be
suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone—together with
an urgent selling order by some employee in the cable service. A sharp
spasm convulsed the convalescent share-list. In five minutes the dull
noise of the kerbstone market in Broad Street had leapt to a high note
of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself
could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed hatless in and
out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous “short”
interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news
came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of “Yankees” in London at the
close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four
hours’ trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson
as the saviour and warden of the markets had recoiled upon its authors
with annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone,
listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had
lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and
falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding
of Manderson’s body, with the inevitable rumour that it was suicide,
was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached
Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B.
Jeffrey and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its
breath.

All this sprang out of nothing.

Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had
not ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave
power to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the
herds were unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various
servitudes to which they were born, and chafed not more than usual in
their bonds. Bellona tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her
uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a million or two of half-crazed
gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing;
the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before he died strong
hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of commerce
and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
countrymen had made a strange discovery—that the existence of the
potent engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson
had not been a condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew
itself out in two days, the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts
withdrew out of sight; the market “recovered a normal tone”.

While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic
scandal in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents.
Next morning the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a
notable politician was shot down in cold blood by his wife’s brother in
the streets of New Orleans. Within a week of its rising, “the Manderson
story”, to the trained sense of editors throughout the Union, was
“cold”. The tide of American visitors pouring through Europe made
eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man who had died in
poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat. Like the
poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
Manderson’s people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery
under the Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever will be, to stand
in reverence by the rich man’s grave beside the little church of
Marlstone.




Chapter II.
Knocking the Town Endways


In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the _Record,_
the telephone on Sir James Molloy’s table buzzed. Sir James made a
motion with his pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and
came over to the instrument.

“Who is that?” he said. “Who?... I can’t hear you.... Oh, it’s Mr.
Bunner, is it?... Yes, but... I know, but he’s fearfully busy this
afternoon. Can’t you... Oh, really? Well, in that case—just hold on,
will you?”

He placed the receiver before Sir James. “It’s Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
Manderson’s right-hand man,” he said concisely. “He insists on speaking
to you personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking
from the house down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak
clearly.”

Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
receiver. “Well?” he said in his strong voice, and listened. “Yes,” he
said. The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of
amazement and horror. “Good God!” murmured Sir James. Clutching the
instrument, he slowly rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At
intervals he repeated “Yes.” Presently, as he listened, he glanced at
the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr. Silver over the top of the
transmitter. “Go and hunt up Figgis and young Williams. Hurry.” Mr.
Silver darted from the room.

The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty,
swart and black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well
known in the world, which he understood very thoroughly, and played
upon with the half-cynical competence of his race. Yet was he without a
touch of the charlatan: he made no mysteries, and no pretences of
knowledge, and he saw instantly through these in others. In his
handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was something a
little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint about
his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint
he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company
which owned that most powerful morning paper, the _Record,_ and also
that most indispensable evening paper, the _Sun,_ which had its offices
on the other side of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of
the _Record,_ to which he had in the course of years attached the most
variously capable personnel in the country. It was a maxim of his that
where you could not get gifts, you must do the best you could with
solid merit; and he employed a great deal of both. He was respected by
his staff as few are respected in a profession not favourable to the
growth of the sentiment of reverence.

“You’re sure that’s all?” asked Sir James, after a few minutes of
earnest listening and questioning. “And how long has this been
known?... Yes, of course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it’s
all over the place down there by now.... Well, we’ll have a try....
Look here, Bunner, I’m infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you
a good turn. You know I mean what I say. Come and see me the first day
you get to town.... All right, that’s understood. Now I must act on
your news. Goodbye.”

Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the
rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it
down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed
by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.

“I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,” said Sir James, banishing
all signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. “When you
have them, put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special
edition of the _Sun_.” The hard-featured man nodded and glanced at the
clock, which pointed to a few minutes past three; he pulled out a
notebook and drew a chair up to the big writing-table. “Silver,” Sir
James went on, “go and tell Jones to wire our local correspondent very
urgently, to drop everything and get down to Marlstone at once. He is
not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an unnecessary word
about this news until the _Sun_ is on the streets with it—you all
understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town
endways. Just tell him that he must take all measures and precautions
for a scoop. Say that Figgis will be over in five minutes with the
facts, and that he had better let him write up the story in his private
room. As you go, ask Miss Morgan to see me here at once, and tell the
telephone people to see if they can get Mr. Trent on the wire for me.
After seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.” The alert-eyed
young man vanished like a spirit.

Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over
the paper. “Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,” he began quickly and
clearly, pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis
scratched down a line of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had
been told that the day was fine—the pose of his craft. “He and his wife
and two secretaries have been for the past fortnight at the house
called White Gables, at Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. He bought it
four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since spent a part of each
summer there. Last night he went to bed about half-past eleven, just as
usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was not
missed until this morning. About ten o’clock his body was found by a
gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the
head, through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The
body was not robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed
to a struggle having taken place. Dr Stock, of Marlstone, was at once
sent for, and will conduct the post-mortem examination. The police from
Bishopsbridge, who were soon on the spot, are reticent, but it is
believed that they are quite without a clue to the identity of the
murderer. There you are, Figgis. Mr. Anthony is expecting you. Now I
must telephone him and arrange things.”

Mr. Figgis looked up. “One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,”
he suggested, “has been put in charge of the case. It’s a safe
statement.”

“If you like,” said Sir James.

“And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?”

“Yes. What about her?”

“Prostrated by the shock,” hinted the reporter, “and sees nobody. Human
interest.”

“I wouldn’t put that in, Mr. Figgis,” said a quiet voice. It belonged
to Miss Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her
appearance while the dictation was going on. “I have seen Mrs.
Manderson,” she proceeded, turning to Sir James. “She looks quite
healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been murdered? I don’t think
the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to be doing all she
can to help the police.”

“Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan,” he said with a
momentary smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb.
“Cut it out, Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I
want.”

“Our Manderson biography happens to be well up to date,” replied Miss
Morgan, drooping her dark eyelashes as she considered the position. “I
was looking over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for
tomorrow’s paper. I should think the _Sun_ had better use the sketch of
his life they had about two years ago, when he went to Berlin and
settled the potash difficulty. I remember it was a very good sketch,
and they won’t be able to carry much more than that. As for our paper,
of course we have a great quantity of cuttings, mostly rubbish. The
sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then we have two
very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a drawing
Mr. Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is
better than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a
bad photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once,
and you can choose. As far as I can see, the Record is well ahead of
the situation, except that you will not be able to get a special man
down there in time to be of any use for tomorrow’s paper.”

Sir James sighed deeply. “What are we good for, anyhow?” he enquired
dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. “She even knows
Bradshaw by heart.”

Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. “Is there
anything else?” she asked, as the telephone bell rang.

“Yes, one thing,” replied Sir James, as he took up the receiver. “I
want you to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan—an everlasting
bloomer—just to put us in countenance.” She permitted herself the
fraction of what would have been a charming smile as she went out.

“Anthony?” asked Sir James, and was at once deep in consultation with
the editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the _Sun_
building in person; the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say,
was all very well if you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the
Murat of Fleet Street, who delighted in riding the whirlwind and
fighting a tumultuous battle against time, would say the same of a
morning paper.

It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that
Mr. Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr.
Anthony.

“They can put him through at once,” he said to the boy.

“Hullo!” he cried into the telephone after a few moments.

A voice in the instrument replied, “Hullo be blowed! What do you want?”

“This is Molloy,” said Sir James.

“I know it is,” the voice said. “This is Trent. He is in the middle of
painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment.
Well, I hope it’s something important, that’s all!”

“Trent,” said Sir James impressively, “it is important. I want you to
do some work for us.”

“Some play, you mean,” replied the voice. “Believe me, I don’t want a
holiday. The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent
things. Why can’t you leave a man alone?”

“Something very serious has happened.”

“What?”

“Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered—shot through the brain—and they
don’t know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It
happened at his place near Bishopsbridge.” Sir James proceeded to tell
his hearer, briefly and clearly, the facts that he had communicated to
Mr. Figgis. “What do you think of it?” he ended. A considering grunt
was the only answer. “Come now,” urged Sir James.

“Tempter!”

“You will go down?”

There was a brief pause.

“Are you there?” said Sir James.

“Look here, Molloy,” the voice broke out querulously, “the thing may be
a case for me, or it may not. We can’t possibly tell. It may be a
mystery; it may be as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being
robbed looks interesting, but he may have been outed by some wretched
tramp whom he found sleeping in the grounds and tried to kick out. It’s
the sort of thing he would do. Such a murderer might easily have sense
enough to know that to leave the money and valuables was the safest
thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t have a hand in hanging a poor
devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a measure
of social protest.”

Sir James smiled at the telephone—a smile of success. “Come, my boy,
you’re getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the
case. You know you do. If it’s anything you don’t want to handle,
you’re free to drop it. By the by, where are you?”

“I am blown along a wandering wind,” replied the voice irresolutely,
“and hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.”

“Can you get here within an hour?” persisted Sir James.

“I suppose I can,” the voice grumbled. “How much time have I?”

“Good man! Well, there’s time enough—that’s just the worst of it. I’ve
got to depend on our local correspondent for tonight. The only good
train of the day went half an hour ago. The next is a slow one, leaving
Paddington at midnight. You could have the Buster, if you like”—Sir
James referred to a very fast motor car of his—“but you wouldn’t get
down in time to do anything tonight.”

“And I’d miss my sleep. No, thanks. The train for me. I am quite fond
of railway travelling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker
and the stoked. I am the song the porter sings.”

“What’s that you say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the voice sadly. “I say,” it continued, “will
your people look out a hotel near the scene of action, and telegraph
for a room?”

“At once,” said Sir James. “Come here as soon as you can.”

He replaced the receiver. As he turned to his papers again a shrill
outcry burst forth in the street below. He walked to the open window. A
band of excited boys was rushing down the steps of the _Sun_ building
and up the narrow thoroughfare toward Fleet Street. Each carried a
bundle of newspapers and a large broadsheet with the simple legend:

MURDER OF SIGSBEE MANDERSON


Sir James smiled and rattled the money in his pockets cheerfully. “It
makes a good bill,” he observed to Mr. Silver, who stood at his elbow.

Such was Manderson’s epitaph.




Chapter III.
Breakfast


At about eight o’clock in the morning of the following day Mr.
Nathaniel Burton Cupples stood on the veranda of the hotel at
Marlstone. He was thinking about breakfast. In his case the
colloquialism must be taken literally: he really was thinking about
breakfast, as he thought about every conscious act of his life when
time allowed deliberation. He reflected that on the preceding day the
excitement and activity following upon the discovery of the dead man
had disorganized his appetite, and led to his taking considerably less
nourishment than usual. This morning he was very hungry, having already
been up and about for an hour; and he decided to allow himself a third
piece of toast and an additional egg; the rest as usual. The remaining
deficit must be made up at luncheon, but that could be gone into later.

So much being determined, Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment
of the view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a
connoisseur’s eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a
great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness
of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that
sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the distant moor. Mr. Cupples
delighted in landscape.

He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old,
by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his
age. A sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin
but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and
narrow jaw gave him very much of a clerical air, and this impression
was helped by his commonplace dark clothes and soft black hat. The
whole effect of him, indeed, was priestly. He was a man of unusually
conscientious, industrious, and orderly mind, with little imagination.
His father’s household had been used to recruit its domestic
establishment by means of advertisements in which it was truthfully
described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had
escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible
kindness of heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed
nothing to humour. In an earlier day and with a clerical training he
might have risen to the scarlet hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded
member of the London Positivist Society, a retired banker, a widower
without children. His austere but not unhappy life was spent largely
among books and in museums; his profound and patiently accumulated
knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects which had
stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the
quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of
research; at their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most
himself. His favourite author was Montaigne.

Just as Mr. Cupples was finishing his meal at a little table on the
veranda, a big motor car turned into the drive before the hotel. “Who
is this?” he enquired of the waiter. “Id is der manager,” said the
young man listlessly. “He have been to meed a gendleman by der train.”

The car drew up and the porter hurried from the entrance. Mr. Cupples
uttered an exclamation of pleasure as a long, loosely built man, much
younger than himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda,
flinging his hat on a chair. His high-boned, quixotic face wore a
pleasant smile; his rough tweed clothes, his hair and short moustache
were tolerably untidy.

“Cupples, by all that’s miraculous!” cried the man, pouncing upon Mr.
Cupples before he could rise, and seizing his outstretched hand in a
hard grip. “My luck is serving me today,” the newcomer went on
spasmodically. “This is the second slice within an hour. How are you,
my best of friends? And why are you here? Why sit’st thou by that
ruined breakfast? Dost thou its former pride recall, or ponder how it
passed away? I _am_ glad to see you!”

“I was half expecting you, Trent,” Mr. Cupples replied, his face
wreathed in smiles. “You are looking splendid, my dear fellow. I will
tell you all about it. But you cannot have had your own breakfast yet.
Will you have it at my table here?”

“Rather!” said the man. “An enormous great breakfast, too—with refined
conversation and tears of recognition never dry. Will you get young
Siegfried to lay a place for me while I go and wash? I shan’t be three
minutes.” He disappeared into the hotel, and Mr. Cupples, after a
moment’s thought, went to the telephone in the porter’s office.

He returned to find his friend already seated, pouring out tea, and
showing an unaffected interest in the choice of food. “I expect this to
be a hard day for me,” he said, with the curious jerky utterance which
seemed to be his habit. “I shan’t eat again till the evening, very
likely. You guess why I’m here, don’t you?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Cupples. “You have come down to write about the
murder.”

“That is rather a colourless way of stating it,” the man called Trent
replied, as he dissected a sole. “I should prefer to put it that I have
come down in the character of avenger of blood, to hunt down the
guilty, and vindicate the honour of society. That is my line of
business. Families waited on at their private residences. I say,
Cupples, I have made a good beginning already. Wait a bit, and I’ll
tell you.” There was a silence, during which the newcomer ate swiftly
and abstractedly, while Mr. Cupples looked on happily.

“Your manager here,” said the tall man at last, “is a fellow of
remarkable judgement. He is an admirer of mine. He knows more about my
best cases than I do myself. The _Record_ wired last night to say I was
coming, and when I got out of the train at seven o’clock this morning,
there he was waiting for me with a motor car the size of a haystack. He
is beside himself with joy at having me here. It is fame.” He drank a
cup of tea and continued: “Almost his first words were to ask me if I
would like to see the body of the murdered man—if so, he thought he
could manage it for me. He is as keen as a razor. The body lies in Dr
Stock’s surgery, you know, down in the village, exactly as it was when
found. It’s to be post-mortem’d this morning, by the way, so I was only
just in time. Well, he ran me down here to the doctor’s, giving me full
particulars about the case all the way. I was pretty well _au fait_ by
the time we arrived. I suppose the manager of a place like this has
some sort of a pull with the doctor. Anyhow, he made no difficulties,
nor did the constable on duty, though he was careful to insist on my
not giving him away in the paper.”

“I saw the body before it was removed,” remarked Mr. Cupples. “I should
not have said there was anything remarkable about it, except that the
shot in the eye had scarcely disfigured the face at all, and caused
scarcely any effusion of blood, apparently. The wrists were scratched
and bruised. I expect that, with your trained faculties, you were able
to remark other details of a suggestive nature.”

“Other details, certainly; but I don’t know that they suggest anything.
They are merely odd. Take the wrists, for instance. How was it you
could see bruises and scratches on them? I dare say you saw something
of Manderson down here before the murder.”

“Certainly,” Mr. Cupples said.

“Well, did you ever see his wrists?”

Mr. Cupples reflected. “No. Now you raise the point, I am reminded that
when I interviewed Manderson here he was wearing stiff cuffs, coming
well down over his hands.”

“He always did,” said Trent. “My friend the manager says so. I pointed
out to him the fact you didn’t observe, that there were no cuffs
visible, and that they had, indeed, been dragged up inside the
coat-sleeves, as yours would be if you hurried into a coat without
pulling your cuffs down. That was why you saw his wrists.”

“Well, I call that suggestive,” observed Mr. Cupples mildly. “You might
infer, perhaps, that when he got up he hurried over his dressing.”

“Yes, but did he? The manager said just what you say. ‘He was always a
bit of a swell in his dress,’ he told me, and he drew the inference
that when Manderson got up in that mysterious way, before the house was
stirring, and went out into the grounds, he was in a great hurry. ‘Look
at his shoes,’ he said to me: ‘Mr. Manderson was always specially neat
about his footwear. But those shoe-laces were tied in a hurry.’ I
agreed. ‘And he left his false teeth in his room,’ said the manager.
‘Doesn’t _that_ prove he was flustered and hurried?’ I allowed that it
looked like it. But I said, ‘Look here: if he was so very much pressed,
why did he part his hair so carefully? That parting is a work of art.
Why did he put on so much? for he had on a complete outfit of
underclothing, studs in his shirt, sock-suspenders, a watch and chain,
money and keys and things in his pockets. That’s what I said to the
manager. He couldn’t find an explanation. Can you?’

Mr. Cupples considered. “Those facts might suggest that he was hurried
only at the end of his dressing. Coat and shoes would come last.”

“But not false teeth. You ask anybody who wears them. And besides, I’m
told he hadn’t washed at all on getting up, which in a neat man looks
like his being in a violent hurry from the beginning. And here’s
another thing. One of his waistcoat pockets was lined with wash-leather
for the reception of his gold watch. But he had put his watch into the
pocket on the other side. Anybody who has settled habits can see how
odd that is. The fact is, there are signs of great agitation and haste,
and there are signs of exactly the opposite. For the present I am not
guessing. I must reconnoitre the ground first, if I can manage to get
the right side of the people of the house.” Trent applied himself again
to his breakfast.

Mr. Cupples smiled at him benevolently. “That is precisely the point,”
he said, “on which I can be of some assistance to you.” Trent glanced
up in surprise. “I told you I half expected you. I will explain the
situation. Mrs. Manderson, who is my niece—”

“What!” Trent laid down his knife and fork with a clash. “Cupples, you
are jesting with me.”

“I am perfectly serious, Trent, really,” returned Mr. Cupples
earnestly. “Her father, John Peter Domecq, was my wife’s brother. I
never mentioned my niece or her marriage to you before, I suppose. To
tell the truth, it has always been a painful subject to me, and I have
avoided discussing it with anybody. To return to what I was about to
say: last night, when I was over at the house—by the way, you can see
it from here. You passed it in the car.” He indicated a red roof among
poplars some three hundred yards away, the only building in sight that
stood separate from the tiny village in the gap below them.

“Certainly I did,” said Trent. “The manager told me all about it, among
other things, as he drove me in from Bishopsbridge.”

“Other people here have heard of you and your performances,” Mr.
Cupples went on. “As I was saying, when I was over there last night,
Mr. Bunner, who is one of Manderson’s two secretaries, expressed a hope
that the _Record_ would send you down to deal with the case, as the
police seemed quite at a loss. He mentioned one or two of your past
successes, and Mabel—my niece—was interested when I told her
afterwards. She is bearing up wonderfully well, Trent; she has
remarkable fortitude of character. She said she remembered reading your
articles about the Abinger case. She has a great horror of the
newspaper side of this sad business, and she had entreated me to do
anything I could to keep journalists away from the place—I’m sure you
can understand her feeling, Trent; it isn’t really any reflection on
that profession. But she said you appeared to have great powers as a
detective, and she would not stand in the way of anything that might
clear up the crime. Then I told her you were a personal friend of mine,
and gave you a good character for tact and consideration of others’
feelings; and it ended in her saying that, if you should come, she
would like you to be helped in every way.”

Trent leaned across the table and shook Mr. Cupples by the hand in
silence. Mr. Cupples, much delighted with the way things were turning
out, resumed:

“I spoke to my niece on the telephone only just now, and she is glad
you are here. She asks me to say that you may make any enquiries you
like, and she puts the house and grounds at your disposal. She had
rather not see you herself; she is keeping to her own sitting-room. She
has already been interviewed by a detective officer who is there, and
she feels unequal to any more. She adds that she does not believe she
could say anything that would be of the smallest use. The two
secretaries and Martin, the butler (who is a most intelligent man),
could tell you all you want to know, she thinks.”

Trent finished his breakfast with a thoughtful brow. He filled a pipe
slowly, and seated himself on the rail of the veranda. “Cupples,” he
said quietly, “is there anything about this business that you know and
would rather not tell me?”

Mr. Cupples gave a slight start, and turned an astonished gaze on the
questioner. “What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean about the Mandersons. Look here! Shall I tell you a thing that
strikes me about this affair at the very beginning? Here’s a man
suddenly and violently killed, and nobody’s heart seems to be broken
about it, to say the least. The manager of this hotel spoke to me about
him as coolly as if he’d never set eyes on him, though I understand
they’ve been neighbours every summer for some years. Then you talk
about the thing in the coldest of blood. And Mrs. Manderson—well, you
won’t mind my saying that I have heard of women being more cut up about
their husbands being murdered than she seems to be. Is there something
in this, Cupples, or is it my fancy? Was there something queer about
Manderson? I travelled on the same boat with him once, but never spoke
to him. I only know his public character, which was repulsive enough.
You see, this may have a bearing on the case; that’s the only reason
why I ask.”

Mr. Cupples took time for thought. He fingered his sparse beard and
looked out over the sea. At last he turned to Trent. “I see no reason,”
he said, “why I shouldn’t tell you as between ourselves, my dear
fellow. I need not say that this must not be referred to, however
distantly. The truth is that nobody really liked Manderson; and I think
those who were nearest to him liked him least.”

“Why?” the other interjected.

“Most people found a difficulty in explaining why. In trying to account
to myself for my own sensations, I could only put it that one felt in
the man a complete absence of the sympathetic faculty. There was
nothing outwardly repellent about him. He was not ill-mannered, or
vicious, or dull—indeed, he could be remarkably interesting. But I
received the impression that there could be no human creature whom he
would not sacrifice in the pursuit of his schemes, in his task of
imposing himself and his will upon the world. Perhaps that was
fanciful, but I think not altogether so. However, the point is that
Mabel, I am sorry to say, was very unhappy. I am nearly twice your age,
my dear boy, though you always so kindly try to make me feel as if we
were contemporaries—I am getting to be an old man, and a great many
people have been good enough to confide their matrimonial troubles to
me; but I never knew another case like my niece’s and her husband’s. I
have known her since she was a baby, Trent, and I know—you understand,
I think, that I do not employ that word lightly—I _know_ that she is as
amiable and honourable a woman, to say nothing of her other good gifts,
as any man could wish. But Manderson, for some time past, had made her
miserable.”

“What did he do?” asked Trent, as Mr. Cupples paused.

“When I put that question to Mabel, her words were that he seemed to
nurse a perpetual grievance. He maintained a distance between them, and
he would say nothing. I don’t know how it began or what was behind it;
and all she would tell me on that point was that he had no cause in the
world for his attitude. I think she knew what was in his mind, whatever
it was; but she is full of pride. This seems to have gone on for
months. At last, a week ago, she wrote to me. I am the only near
relative she has. Her mother died when she was a child; and after John
Peter died I was something like a father to her until she married—that
was five years ago. She asked me to come and help her, and I came at
once. That is why I am here now.”

Mr. Cupples paused and drank some tea. Trent smoked and stared out at
the hot June landscape.

“I would not go to White Gables,” Mr. Cupples resumed. “You know my
views, I think, upon the economic constitution of society, and the
proper relationship of the capitalist to the employee, and you know, no
doubt, what use that person made of his vast industrial power upon
several very notorious occasions. I refer especially to the trouble in
the Pennsylvania coal-fields, three years ago. I regarded him, apart
from an all personal dislike, in the light of a criminal and a disgrace
to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw my niece here. She told me
what I have more briefly told you. She said that the worry and the
humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up appearances
before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my advice. I
said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his way
of treating her. But she would not do that. She had always taken the
line of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanour, and
nothing, I knew, would persuade her to admit to him that she was
injured, once pride had led her into that course. Life is quite full,
my dear Trent,” said Mr. Cupples with a sigh, “of these obstinate
silences and cultivated misunderstandings.”

“Did she love him?” Trent enquired abruptly. Mr. Cupples did not reply
at once. “Had she any love left for him?” Trent amended.

Mr. Cupples played with his teaspoon. “I am bound to say,” he answered
slowly, “that I think not. But you must not misunderstand the woman,
Trent. No power on earth would have persuaded her to admit that to any
one—even to herself, perhaps—so long as she considered herself bound to
him. And I gather that, apart from this mysterious sulking of late, he
had always been considerate and generous.”

“You were saying that she refused to have it out with him.”

“She did,” replied Mr. Cupples. “And I knew by experience that it was
quite useless to attempt to move a Domecq where the sense of dignity
was involved. So I thought it over carefully, and next day I watched my
opportunity and met Manderson as he passed by this hotel. I asked him
to favour me with a few minutes’ conversation, and he stepped inside
the gate down there. We had held no communication of any kind since my
niece’s marriage, but he remembered me, of course. I put the matter to
him at once and quite definitely. I told him what Mabel had confided to
me. I said that I would neither approve nor condemn her action in
bringing me into the business, but that she was suffering, and I
considered it my right to ask how he could justify himself in placing
her in such a position.”

“And how did he take that?” said Trent, smiling secretly at the
landscape. The picture of this mildest of men calling the formidable
Manderson to account pleased him.

“Not very well,” Mr. Cupples replied sadly. “In fact, far from well. I
can tell you almost exactly what he said—it wasn’t much. He said, ‘See
here, Cupples, you don’t want to butt in. My wife can look after
herself. I’ve found that out, along with other things.’ He was
perfectly quiet—you know he was said never to lose control of
himself—though there was a light in his eyes that would have frightened
a man who was in the wrong, I dare say. But I had been thoroughly
roused by his last remark, and the tone of it, which I cannot
reproduce. You see,” said Mr. Cupples simply, “I love my niece. She is
the only child that there has been in our—in my house. Moreover, my
wife brought her up as a girl, and any reflection on Mabel I could not
help feeling, in the heat of the moment, as an indirect reflection upon
one who is gone.”

“You turned upon him,” suggested Trent in a low tone. “You asked him to
explain his words.”

“That is precisely what I did,” said Mr. Cupples. “For a moment he only
stared at me, and I could see a vein on his forehead swelling—an
unpleasant sight. Then he said quite quietly, ‘This thing has gone far
enough, I guess,’ and turned to go.”

“Did he mean your interview?” Trent asked thoughtfully.

“From the words alone you would think so,” Mr. Cupples answered. “But
the way in which he uttered them gave me a strange and very
apprehensive feeling. I received the impression that the man had formed
some sinister resolve. But I regret to say I had lost the power of
dispassionate thought. I fell into a great rage”—Mr. Cupples’s tone was
mildly apologetic—“and said a number of foolish things. I reminded him
that the law allowed a measure of freedom to wives who received
intolerable treatment. I made some utterly irrelevant references to his
public record, and expressed the view that such men as he were unfit to
live. I said these things, and others as ill-considered, under the
eyes, and very possibly within earshot, of half a dozen persons sitting
on this veranda. I noticed them, in spite of my agitation, looking at
me as I walked up to the hotel again after relieving my mind for it
undoubtedly did relieve it,” sighed Mr. Cupples, lying back in his
chair.

“And Manderson? Did he say no more?”

“Not a word. He listened to me with his eyes on my face, as quiet as
before. When I stopped he smiled very slightly, and at once turned away
and strolled through the gate, making for White Gables.”

“And this happened—?”

“On the Sunday morning.”

“Then I suppose you never saw him alive again?”

“No,” said Mr. Cupples. “Or rather yes—once. It was later in the day,
on the golf-course. But I did not speak to him. And next morning he was
found dead.”

The two regarded each other in silence for a few moments. A party of
guests who had been bathing came up the steps and seated themselves,
with much chattering, at a table near them. The waiter approached. Mr.
Cupples rose, and, taking Trent’s arm, led him to a long tennis-lawn at
the side of the hotel.

“I have a reason for telling you all this,” began Mr. Cupples as they
paced slowly up and down.

“Trust you for that,” rejoined Trent, carefully filling his pipe again.
He lit it, smoked a little, and then said, “I’ll try and guess what
your reason is, if you like.”

Mr. Cupples’s face of solemnity relaxed into a slight smile. He said
nothing.

“You thought it possible,” said Trent meditatively—“may I say you
thought it practically certain?—that I should find out for myself that
there had been something deeper than a mere conjugal tiff between the
Mandersons. You thought that my unwholesome imagination would begin at
once to play with the idea of Mrs. Manderson having something to do
with the crime. Rather than that I should lose myself in barren
speculations about this, you decided to tell me exactly how matters
stood, and incidentally to impress upon me, who know how excellent your
judgement is, your opinion of your niece. Is that about right?”

“It is perfectly right. Listen to me, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Cupples
earnestly, laying his hand on the other’s arm. “I am going to be very
frank. I am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to
have done nothing but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know
that he was making a desert of the life of one who was like my own
child to me. But I am under an intolerable dread of Mabel being
involved in suspicion with regard to the murder. It is horrible to me
to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, if only for a
time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not fitted for it. It
would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in these days
could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of
imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women
today which would carry them through anything, perhaps.

“I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of
feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that.
She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used
to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of
character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed
up”—Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture—“with ideals of
refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a
child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my wife’s
child.”

The younger man bowed his head. They paced the length of the lawn
before he asked gently, “Why did she marry him?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Cupples briefly.

“Admired him, I suppose,” suggested Trent.

Mr. Cupples shrugged his shoulders. “I have been told that a woman will
usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her
circle. Of course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating
personality like his would influence a girl whose affections were not
bestowed elsewhere; especially if he laid himself out to win her. It is
probably an overwhelming thing to be courted by a man whose name is
known all over the world. She had heard of him, of course, as a
financial great power, and she had no idea—she had lived mostly among
people of artistic or literary propensities—how much soulless
inhumanity that might involve. For all I know, she has no adequate idea
of it to this day. When I first heard of the affair the mischief was
done, and I knew better than to interpose my unsought opinions. She was
of age, and there was absolutely nothing against him from the
conventional point of view. Then I dare say his immense wealth would
cast a spell over almost any woman. Mabel had some hundreds a year of
her own; just enough, perhaps, to let her realize what millions really
meant. But all this is conjecture. She certainly had not wanted to
marry some scores of young fellows who to my knowledge had asked her;
and though I don’t believe, and never did believe, that she really
loved this man of forty-five, she certainly did want to marry him. But
if you ask me why, I can only say I don’t know.”

Trent nodded, and after a few more paces looked at his watch. “You’ve
interested me so much,” he said, “that I had quite forgotten my main
business. I mustn’t waste my morning. I am going down the road to White
Gables at once, and I dare say I shall be poking about there until
midday. If you can meet me then, Cupples, I should like to talk over
anything I find out with you, unless something detains me.”

“I am going for a walk this morning,” Mr. Cupples replied. “I meant to
have luncheon at a little inn near the golf-course, The Three Tuns. You
had better join me there. It’s further along the road, about a quarter
of a mile beyond White Gables. You can just see the roof between those
two trees. The food they give one there is very plain, but good.”

“So long as they have a cask of beer,” said Trent, “they are all right.
We will have bread and cheese, and oh, may Heaven our simple lives
prevent from luxury’s contagion, weak and vile! Till then, goodbye.” He
strode off to recover his hat from the veranda, waved it to Mr.
Cupples, and was gone.

The old gentleman, seating himself in a deck-chair on the lawn, clasped
his hands behind his head and gazed up into the speckless blue sky. “He
is a dear fellow,” he murmured. “The best of fellows. And a terribly
acute fellow. Dear me! How curious it all is!”




Chapter IV.
Handcuffs in the Air


A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his
twenties achieved some reputation within the world of English art.
Moreover, his pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a habit
of leisurely but continuous working, broken by fits of strong creative
enthusiasm, were at the bottom of it. His father’s name had helped; a
patrimony large enough to relieve him of the perilous imputation of
being a struggling man had certainly not hindered. But his best aid to
success had been an unconscious power of getting himself liked. Good
spirits and a lively, humorous fancy will always be popular. Trent
joined to these a genuine interest in others that gained him something
deeper than popularity. His judgement of persons was penetrating, but
its process was internal; no one felt on good behaviour with a man who
seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for
floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face
seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound
knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose,
dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed the
age of laughter and adventure.

His rise to a celebrity a hundred times greater than his proper work
had won for him came of a momentary impulse. One day he had taken up a
newspaper to find it chiefly concerned with a crime of a sort curiously
rare in our country—a murder done in a railway train. The circumstances
were puzzling; two persons were under arrest upon suspicion. Trent, to
whom an interest in such affairs was a new sensation, heard the thing
discussed among his friends, and set himself in a purposeless mood to
read up the accounts given in several journals. He became intrigued;
his imagination began to work, in a manner strange to him, upon facts;
an excitement took hold of him such as he had only known before in his
bursts of art-inspiration or of personal adventure. At the end of the
day he wrote and dispatched a long letter to the editor of the
_Record_, which he chose only because it had contained the fullest and
most intelligent version of the facts.

In this letter he did very much what Poe had done in the case of the
murder of Mary Rogers. With nothing but the newspapers to guide him, he
drew attention to the significance of certain apparently negligible
facts, and ranged the evidence in such a manner as to throw grave
suspicion upon a man who had presented himself as a witness. Sir James
Molloy had printed this letter in leaded type. The same evening he was
able to announce in the Sun the arrest and full confession of the
incriminated man.

Sir James, who knew all the worlds of London, had lost no time in
making Trent’s acquaintance. The two men got on well, for Trent
possessed some secret of native tact which had the effect of almost
abolishing differences of age between himself and others. The great
rotary presses in the basement of the _Record_ building had filled him
with a new enthusiasm. He had painted there, and Sir James had bought
at sight, what he called a machinery-scape in the manner of Heinrich
Kley.

Then a few months later came the affair known as the Ilkley mystery.
Sir James had invited Trent to an emollient dinner, and thereafter
offered him what seemed to the young man a fantastically large sum for
his temporary services as special representative of the _Record_ at
Ilkley.

“You could do it,” the editor had urged. “You can write good stuff, and
you know how to talk to people, and I can teach you all the
technicalities of a reporter’s job in half an hour. And you have a head
for a mystery; you have imagination and cool judgement along with it.
Think how it would feel if you pulled it off!”

Trent had admitted that it would be rather a lark. He had smoked,
frowned, and at last convinced himself that the only thing that held
him back was fear of an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had
become a fixed moral habit with him, and he had accepted Sir James’s
offer.

He had pulled it off. For the second time he had given the authorities
a start and a beating, and his name was on all tongues. He withdrew and
painted pictures. He felt no leaning towards journalism, and Sir James,
who knew a good deal about art, honourably refrained—as other editors
did not—from tempting him with a good salary. But in the course of a
few years he had applied to him perhaps thirty times for his services
in the unravelling of similar problems at home and abroad. Sometimes
Trent, busy with work that held him, had refused; sometimes he had been
forestalled in the discovery of the truth. But the result of his
irregular connection with the _Record_ had been to make his name one of
the best known in England. It was characteristic of him that his name
was almost the only detail of his personality known to the public. He
had imposed absolute silence about himself upon the Molloy papers; and
the others were not going to advertise one of Sir James’s men.

The Manderson case, he told himself as he walked rapidly up the sloping
road to White Gables, might turn out to be terribly simple. Cupples was
a wise old boy, but it was probably impossible for him to have an
impartial opinion about his niece. But it was true that the manager of
the hotel, who had spoken of her beauty in terms that aroused his
attention, had spoken even more emphatically of her goodness. Not an
artist in words, the manager had yet conveyed a very definite idea to
Trent’s mind. “There isn’t a child about here that don’t brighten up at
the sound of her voice,” he had said, “nor yet a grown-up, for the
matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming over in
the summer. I don’t mean that she’s one of those women that are all
kind heart and nothing else. There’s backbone with it, if you know what
I mean—pluck— any amount of go. There’s nobody in Marlstone that isn’t
sorry for the lady in her trouble—not but what some of us may think
she’s lucky at the last of it.” Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs.
Manderson.

He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of
the two-storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables
from which it had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car
that morning. A modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place
was beautifully kept, with that air of opulent peace that clothes even
the smallest houses of the well-to-do in an English countryside. Before
it, beyond the road, the rich meadow-land ran down to the edge of the
cliffs; behind it a woody landscape stretched away across a broad vale
to the moors. That such a place could be the scene of a crime of
violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well ordered, so
eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there beyond the
house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot,
white road, stood the gardener’s toolshed, by which the body had been
found, lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the
gate of the drive and along the road until he was opposite this shed.
Some forty yards further along the road turned sharply away from the
house, to run between thick plantations; and just before the turn the
grounds of the house ended, with a small white gate at the angle of the
boundary hedge. He approached the gate, which was plainly for the use
of gardeners and the service of the establishment. It swung easily on
its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path that led towards the back of
the house, between the outer hedge and a tall wall of rhododendrons.
Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the little neatly built
erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a corner of the
front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a servant, he
thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of the
day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered
what it could be like to be as rich as the master.

He examined the place carefully and ransacked the hut within, but he
could note no more than the trodden appearance of the uncut grass where
the body had lain. Crouching low, with keen eyes and feeling fingers,
he searched the ground minutely over a wide area; but the search was
fruitless.

It was interrupted by the sound—the first he had heard from the
house—of the closing of the front door. Trent unbent his long legs and
stepped to the edge of the drive. A man was walking quickly away from
the house in the direction of the great gate.

At the noise of a footstep on the gravel, the man wheeled with nervous
swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face
was almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man’s
face. There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all
their tale of strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each
other, Trent noted with admiration the man’s breadth of shoulder and
lithe, strong figure. In his carriage, inelastic as weariness had made
it; in his handsome, regular features; in his short, smooth, yellow
hair; and in his voice as he addressed Trent, the influence of a
special sort of training was confessed. “Oxford was your playground, I
think, my young friend,” said Trent to himself.

“If you are Mr. Trent,” said the young man pleasantly, “you are
expected. Mr. Cupples telephoned from the hotel. My name is Marlowe.”

“You were secretary to Mr. Manderson, I believe,” said Trent. He was
much inclined to like young Mr. Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a
physical breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living
and inward health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his
years. But there was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge
to Trent’s penetration; an habitual expression, as he took it to be, of
meditating and weighing things not present to their sight. It was a
look too intelligent, too steady and purposeful, to be called dreamy.
Trent thought he had seen such a look before somewhere. He went on to
say: “It is a terrible business for all of you. I fear it has upset you
completely, Mr. Marlowe.”

“A little limp, that’s all,” replied the young man wearily. “I was
driving the car all Sunday night and most of yesterday, and I didn’t
sleep last night after hearing the news—who would? But I have an
appointment now, Mr. Trent, down at the doctor’s—arranging about the
inquest. I expect it’ll be tomorrow. If you will go up to the house and
ask for Mr. Bunner, you’ll find him expecting you; he will tell you all
about things and show you round. He’s the other secretary; an American,
and the best of fellows; he’ll look after you. There’s a detective
here, by the way—Inspector Murch, from Scotland Yard. He came
yesterday.”

“Murch!” Trent exclaimed. “But he and I are old friends. How under the
sun did he get here so soon?”

“I have no idea,” Mr. Marlowe answered. “But he was here last evening,
before I got back from Southampton, interviewing everybody, and he’s
been about here since eight this morning. He’s in the library
now—that’s where the open French window is that you see at the end of
the house there. Perhaps you would like to step down there and talk
about things.”

“I think I will,” said Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The
thick turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep
made Trent’s footsteps as noiseless as a cat’s. In a few moments he was
looking in through the open leaves of the window at the southward end
of the house, considering with a smile a very broad back and a bent
head covered with short grizzled hair. The man within was stooping over
a number of papers laid out on the table.

“’Twas ever thus,” said Trent in a melancholy tone, at the first sound
of which the man within turned round with startling swiftness. “From
childhood’s hour I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay. I did think I was
ahead of Scotland Yard this time, and now here is the hugest officer in
the entire Metropolitan force already occupying the position.”

The detective smiled grimly and came to the window. “I was expecting
you, Mr. Trent,” he said. “This is the sort of case that you like.”

“Since my tastes were being considered,” Trent replied, stepping into
the room, “I wish they had followed up the idea by keeping my hated
rival out of the business. You have got a long start, too—I know all
about it.” His eyes began to wander round the room. “How did you manage
it? You are a quick mover, I know; the dun deer’s hide on fleeter foot
was never tied; but I don’t see how you got here in time to be at work
yesterday evening. Has Scotland Yard secretly started an aviation
corps? Or is it in league with the infernal powers? In either case the
Home Secretary should be called upon to make a statement.”

“It’s simpler than that,” said Mr. Murch with professional stolidity.
“I happened to be on leave with the missus at Havley, which is only
twelve miles or so along the coast. As soon as our people there heard
of the murder they told me. I wired to the Chief, and was put in charge
of the case at once. I bicycled over yesterday evening, and have been
at it since then.”

“Arising out of that reply,” said Trent inattentively, “how is Mrs.
Inspector Murch?”

“Never better, thank you,” answered the inspector, “and frequently
speaks of you and the games you used to have with our kids. But you’ll
excuse me saying, Mr. Trent, that you needn’t trouble to talk your
nonsense to me while you’re using your eyes. I know your ways by now. I
understand you’ve fallen on your feet as usual, and have the lady’s
permission to go over the place and make enquiries.”

“Such is the fact,” said Trent. “I am going to cut you out again,
inspector. I owe you one for beating me over the Abinger case, you old
fox. But if you really mean that you’re not inclined for the social
amenities just now, let us leave compliments and talk business.” He
stepped to the table, glanced through the papers arranged there in
order, and then turned to the open roll-top desk. He looked into the
drawers swiftly. “I see this has been cleared out. Well now, inspector,
I suppose we play the game as before.”

Trent had found himself on a number of occasions in the past thrown
into the company of Inspector Murch, who stood high in the councils of
the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a quiet, tactful, and
very shrewd officer, a man of great courage, with a vivid history in
connection with the more dangerous class of criminals. His humanity was
as broad as his frame, which was large even for a policeman. Trent and
he, through some obscure working of sympathy, had appreciated one
another from the beginning, and had formed one of those curious
friendships with which it was the younger man’s delight to adorn his
experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any
one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities
of every case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily
rules and limits. It was understood between them that Trent made no
journalistic use of any point that could only have come to him from an
official source. Each of them, moreover, for the honour and prestige of
the institution he represented, openly reserved the right to withhold
from the other any discovery or inspiration that might come to him
which he considered vital to the solution of the difficulty. Trent had
insisted on carefully formulating these principles of what he called
detective sportsmanship. Mr. Murch, who loved a contest, and who only
stood to gain by his association with the keen intelligence of the
other, entered very heartily into “the game”. In these strivings for
the credit of the press and of the police, victory sometimes attended
the experience and method of the officer, sometimes the quicker brain
and livelier imagination of Trent, his gift of instinctively
recognizing the significant through all disguises.

The inspector then replied to Trent’s last words with cordial
agreement. Leaning on either side of the French window, with the deep
peace and hazy splendor of the summer landscape before them, they
reviewed the case.

Trent had taken out a thin notebook, and as they talked he began to
make, with light, secure touches, a rough sketch plan of the room. It
was a thing he did habitually on such occasions, and often quite idly,
but now and then the habit had served him to good purpose.

This was a large, light apartment at the corner of the house, with
generous window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle.
As one entered by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left
of it against the wall. The inner door was in the wall to the left, at
the farther end of the room; and was faced by a broad window divided
into openings of the casement type. A beautifully carved old
corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the door, and another
cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured prints of
Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance, hung
on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very
uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never
taken from their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English
novelists, essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army
struck dead in its ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the
cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel
office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare.
Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a
wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the
mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the desk.

“Seen the body?” enquired the inspector.

Trent nodded. “And the place where it lay,” he said.

“First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,” said the inspector.
“From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and
murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in
these parts. But as soon as I began my enquiries I came on some curious
points, which by this time I dare say you’ve noted for yourself. The
man is shot in his own grounds, quite near the house, to begin with.
Yet there’s not the slightest trace of any attempt at burglary. And the
body wasn’t robbed. In fact, it would be as plain a case of suicide as
you could wish to see, if it wasn’t for certain facts. Here’s another
thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been in a
queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had
some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his
manner to her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely
spoken to her. They say he was a changed man, moody and silent—whether
on account of that or something else. The lady’s maid says he looked as
if something was going to arrive. It’s always easy to remember that
people looked like that, after something has happened to them. Still,
that’s what they say. There you are again, then: suicide! Now, why
wasn’t it suicide, Mr. Trent?”

“The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,” Trent
replied, sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees.
“First, of course, no weapon is to be found. I’ve searched, and you’ve
searched, and there’s no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone’s
throw of where the body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh
scratches and bruises, which we can only assume to have been done in a
struggle with somebody. Third, who ever heard of anybody shooting
himself in the eye? Then I heard from the manager of the hotel here
another fact, which strikes me as the most curious detail in this
affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out there, but
he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed himself
to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?”

“That last argument hadn’t struck me,” admitted Mr. Murch. “There’s
something in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had
occurred to me, I am not considering suicide. I have been looking about
for ideas in this house, this morning. I expect you were thinking of
doing the same.”

“That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let
us make an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general
suspicion. Let us suspect everybody in the house, to begin with.
Listen: I will tell you whom I suspect. I suspect Mrs. Manderson, of
course. I also suspect both the secretaries—I hear there are two, and I
hardly know which of them I regard as more thoroughly open to
suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady’s maid. I suspect the
other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the way,
what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go
round, whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of
curiosity I should like to know.”

“All very well to laugh,” replied the inspector, “but at the first
stage of affairs it’s the only safe principle, and you know that as
well as I do, Mr. Trent. However, I’ve seen enough of the people here,
last night and today, to put a few of them out of my mind for the
present at least. You will form your own conclusions. As for the
establishment, there’s the butler and lady’s maid, cook, and three
other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who’s away with a broken
wrist. No boy.”

“What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and
sinister figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background,
Murch. Play the game. Out with him—or I report you to the Rules
Committee.”

“The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a
week. I’ve talked to him. He was here last on Friday.”

“Then I suspect him all the more,” said Trent. “And now as to the house
itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little
in this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time,
and in his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we’re in this
room, let’s start here. You seem to be at the same stage of the
inquiry. Perhaps you’ve done the bedrooms already?”

The inspector nodded. “I’ve been over Manderson’s and his wife’s.
Nothing to be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no
signs of any sort—that _I_ could see. Seems to have insisted on the
simple life, does Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room’s almost
like a cell, except for the clothes and shoes. You’ll find it all
exactly as I found it; and they tell me that’s exactly as Manderson
left it, at we don’t know what o’clock yesterday morning. Opens into
Mrs. Manderson’s bedroom—not much of the cell about that, I can tell
you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things as most. But
she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery—told the maid she
could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband’s room.
Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr. Trent. She’s camping out, so to
say, in one of the spare bedrooms now.”

“Come, my friend,” Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes
in his little book. “Have you got your eye on Mrs. Manderson? Or
haven’t you? I know that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I
wish I had seen her. Either you’ve got something against her and you
don’t want me to get hold of it; or else you’ve made up your mind she’s
innocent, but have no objection to my wasting my time over her. Well,
it’s all in the game; which begins to look extremely interesting as we
go on.” To Mr. Murch he said aloud: “Well, I’ll draw the bedroom later
on. What about this?”

“They call it the library,” said the inspector. “Manderson used to do
his writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors
here. Since he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken
to spending his evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent
’em in here. He was last seen alive, as far as the servants are
concerned, in this room.”

Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table.
“Business letters and documents, mostly,” said Mr. Murch. “Reports,
prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, nothing in
them that I can see. The American secretary—Bunner his name is, and a
queerer card I never saw turned—he’s been through this desk with me
this morning. He had got it into his head that Manderson had been
receiving threatening letters, and that the murder was the outcome of
that. But there’s no trace of any such thing; and we looked at every
blessed paper. The only unusual things we found were some packets of
banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of little bags of
unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer place. It
appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a
speculation—it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed
to amuse him.”

“What about these secretaries?” Trent enquired. “I met one called
Marlowe just now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes,
unquestionably English. The other, it seems, is an American. What did
Manderson want with an English secretary?”

“Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his
right-hand business man, one of his office staff, who never left him.
Mr. Marlowe had nothing to do with Manderson’s business as a financier,
knew nothing of it. His job was to look after Manderson’s horses and
motors and yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself
generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of
money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office
affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being
English, it was just a fad of Manderson’s to have an English secretary.
He’d had several before Mr. Marlowe.”

“He showed his taste,” observed Trent. “It might be more than
interesting, don’t you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a
modern plutocrat with a large P. Only they say that Manderson’s were
exclusively of an innocent kind. Certainly Marlowe gives me the
impression that he would be weak in the part of Petronius. But to
return to the matter in hand.” He looked at his notes. “You said just
now that he was last seen alive here, ‘so far as the servants were
concerned’. That meant—?”

“He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the
manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story
last night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is
meat and drink to the servants of the house.”

Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over
the sun-flooded slopes. “Would it bore you to hear what he has to say
again?” he asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A
spare, clean-shaven, middle-aged man, having the servant’s manner in
its most distinguished form, answered it.

“This is Mr. Trent, who is authorized by Mrs. Manderson to go over the
house and make enquiries,” explained the detective. “He would like to
hear your story.” Martin bowed distantly. He recognized Trent for a
gentleman. Time would show whether he was what Martin called a
gentleman in every sense of the word.

“I observed you approaching the house, sir,” said Martin with impassive
courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. “My instructions
are to assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall
the circumstances of Sunday night?”

“Please,” said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin’s style was making
clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all
vivacity of expression from his face.

“I last saw Mr. Manderson—”

“No, not that yet,” Trent checked him quietly. “Tell me all you saw of
him that evening—after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little
detail.”

“After dinner, sir?—yes. I remember that after dinner Mr. Manderson and
Mr. Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking.
If you ask me for details, it struck me they were talking about
something important, because I heard Mr. Manderson say something when
they came in through the back entrance. He said, as near as I can
remember, ‘If Harris is there, every minute is of importance. You want
to start right away. And not a word to a soul.’ Mr. Marlowe answered,
‘Very well. I will just change out of these clothes and then I am
ready’—or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as they passed the
window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom, and Mr.
Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some
letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as
Mr. Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in the car by
moonlight.”

“That was curious,” remarked Trent.

“I thought so, sir. But I recollected what I had heard about ‘not a
word to a soul’, and I concluded that this about a moonlight drive was
intended to mislead.”

“What time was this?”

“It would be about ten, sir, I should say. After speaking to me, Mr.
Manderson waited until Mr. Marlowe had come down and brought round the
car. He then went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Manderson was.”

“Did that strike you as curious?”

Martin looked down his nose. “If you ask me the question, sir,” he said
with reserve, “I had not known him enter that room since we came here
this year. He preferred to sit in the library in the evenings. That
evening he only remained with Mrs. Manderson for a few minutes. Then he
and Mr. Marlowe started immediately.”

“You saw them start?”

“Yes, sir. They took the direction of Bishopsbridge.”

“And you saw Mr. Manderson again later?”

“After an hour or thereabouts, sir, in the library. That would have
been about a quarter past eleven, I should say; I had noticed eleven
striking from the church. I may say I am peculiarly quick of hearing,
sir.”

“Mr. Manderson had rung the bell for you, I suppose. Yes? And what
passed when you answered it?”

“Mr. Manderson had put out the decanter of whisky and a syphon and
glass, sir, from the cupboard where he kept them—”

Trent held up his hand. “While we are on that point, Martin, I want to
ask you plainly, did Mr. Manderson drink very much? You understand this
is not impertinent curiosity on my part. I want you to tell me, because
it may possibly help in the clearing up of this case.”

“Perfectly, sir,” replied Martin gravely. “I have no hesitation in
telling you what I have already told the inspector. Mr. Manderson was,
considering his position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my
four years of service with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic
nature pass his lips, except a glass or two of wine at dinner, very
rarely a little at luncheon, and from time to time a whisky and soda
before going to bed. He never seemed to form a habit of it. Often I
used to find his glass in the morning with only a little soda water in
it; sometimes he would have been having whisky with it, but never much.
He never was particular about his drinks; ordinary soda was what he
preferred, though I had ventured to suggest some of the natural
minerals, having personally acquired a taste for them in my previous
service. He used to keep them in the cupboard here, because he had a
great dislike of being waited on more than was necessary. It was an
understood thing that I never came near him after dinner unless sent
for. And when he sent for anything, he liked it brought quick, and to
be left alone again at once. He hated to be asked if he required
anything more. Amazingly simple in his tastes, sir, Mr. Manderson was.”

“Very well; and he rang for you that night about a quarter past eleven.
Now can you remember exactly what he said?”

“I think I can tell you with some approach to accuracy, sir. It was not
much. First he asked me if Mr. Bunner had gone to bed, and I replied
that he had been gone up some time. He then said that he wanted some
one to sit up until 12.30, in case an important message should come by
telephone, and that Mr. Marlowe having gone to Southampton for him in
the motor, he wished me to do this, and that I was to take down the
message if it came, and not disturb him. He also ordered a fresh syphon
of soda water. I believe that was all, sir.”

“You noticed nothing unusual about him, I suppose?”

“No, sir, nothing unusual. When I answered the ring, he was seated at
the desk listening at the telephone, waiting for a number, as I
supposed. He gave his orders and went on listening at the same time.
“When I returned with the syphon he was engaged in conversation over
the wire.”

“Do you remember anything of what he was saying?”

“Very little, sir; it was something about somebody being at some
hotel—of no interest to me. I was only in the room just time enough to
place the syphon on the table and withdraw. As I closed the door he was
saying, ‘You’re sure he isn’t in the hotel?’ or words to that effect.”

“And that was the last you saw and heard of him alive?”

“No, sir. A little later, at half-past eleven, when I had settled down
in my pantry with the door ajar, and a book to pass the time, I heard
Mr. Manderson go upstairs to bed. I immediately went to close the
library window, and slipped the lock of the front door. I did not hear
anything more.”

Trent considered. “I suppose you didn’t doze at all,” he said
tentatively, “while you were sitting up waiting for the telephone
message?”

“Oh no, sir. I am always very wakeful about that time. I’m a bad
sleeper, especially in the neighbourhood of the sea, and I generally
read in bed until somewhere about midnight.”

“And did any message come?”

“No, sir.”

“No. And I suppose you sleep with your window open, these warm nights?”

“It is never closed at night, sir.”

Trent added a last note; then he looked thoughtfully through those he
had taken. He rose and paced up and down the room for some moments with
a downcast eye. At length he paused opposite Martin.

“It all seems perfectly ordinary and simple,” he said. “I just want to
get a few details clear. You went to shut the windows in the library
before going to bed. Which windows?”

“The French window, sir. It had been open all day. The windows opposite
the door were seldom opened.”

“And what about the curtains? I am wondering whether any one outside
the house could have seen into the room.”

“Easily, sir, I should say, if he had got into the grounds on that
side. The curtains were never drawn in the hot weather. Mr. Manderson
would often sit right in the doorway at nights, smoking and looking out
into the darkness. But nobody could have seen him who had any business
to be there.”

“I see. And now tell me this. Your hearing is very acute, you say, and
you heard Mr. Manderson enter the house when he came in after dinner
from the garden. Did you hear him re-enter it after returning from the
motor drive?”

Martin paused. “Now you mention it, sir, I remember that I did not. His
ringing the bell in this room was the first I knew of his being back. I
should have heard him come in, if he had come in by the front. I should
have heard the door go. But he must have come in by the window.” The
man reflected for a moment, then added, “As a general rule, Mr.
Manderson would come in by the front, hang up his hat and coat in the
hall, and pass down the hall into the study. It seems likely to me that
he was in a great hurry to use the telephone, and so went straight
across the lawn to the window. He was like that, sir, when there was
anything important to be done. He had his hat on, now I remember, and
had thrown his greatcoat over the end of the table. He gave his order
very sharp, too, as he always did when busy. A very precipitate man
indeed was Mr. Manderson; a hustler, as they say.”

“Ah! he appeared to be busy. But didn’t you say just now that you
noticed nothing unusual about him?”

A melancholy smile flitted momentarily over Martin’s face. “That
observation shows that you did not know Mr. Manderson, sir, if you will
pardon my saying so. His being like that was nothing unusual; quite the
contrary. It took me long enough to get used to it. Either he would be
sitting quite still and smoking a cigar, thinking or reading, or else
he would be writing, dictating, and sending off wires all at the same
time, till it almost made one dizzy to see it, sometimes for an hour or
more at a stretch. As for being in a hurry over a telephone message, I
may say it wasn’t in him to be anything else.”

Trent turned to the inspector, who met his eye with a look of answering
intelligence. Not sorry to show his understanding of the line of
inquiry opened by Trent, Mr. Murch for the first time put a question.

“Then you left him telephoning by the open window, with the lights on,
and the drinks on the table; is that it?” “That is so, Mr. Murch.” The
delicacy of the change in Martin’s manner when called upon to answer
the detective momentarily distracted Trent’s appreciative mind. But the
big man’s next question brought it back to the problem at once.

“About those drinks. You say Mr. Manderson often took no whisky before
going to bed. Did he have any that night?”

“I could not say. The room was put to rights in the morning by one of
the maids, and the glass washed, I presume, as usual. I know that the
decanter was nearly full that evening. I had refilled it a few days
before, and I glanced at it when I brought the fresh syphon, just out
of habit, to make sure there was a decent-looking amount.”

The inspector went to the tall corner-cupboard and opened it. He took
out a decanter of cut glass and set it on the table before Martin. “Was
it fuller than that?” he asked quietly. “That’s how I found it this
morning.” The decanter was more than half empty.

For the first time Martin’s self-possession wavered. He took up the
decanter quickly, tilted it before his eyes, and then stared amazedly
at the others. He said slowly: “There’s not much short of half a bottle
gone out of this since I last set eyes on it—and that was that Sunday
night.”

“Nobody in the house, I suppose?” suggested Trent discreetly.

“Out of the question!” replied Martin briefly; then he added, “I beg
pardon, sir, but this is a most extraordinary thing to me. Such a thing
never happened in all my experience of Mr. Manderson. As for the
women-servants, they never touch anything, I can answer for it; and as
for me, when I want a drink I can help myself without going to the
decanters.” He took up the decanter again and aimlessly renewed his
observation of the contents, while the inspector eyed him with a look
of serene satisfaction, as a master contemplates his handiwork.

Trent turned to a fresh page of his notebook, and tapped it
thoughtfully with his pencil. Then he looked up and said, “I suppose
Mr. Manderson had dressed for dinner that night?”

“Certainly, sir. He had on a suit with a dress-jacket, what he used to
refer to as a Tuxedo, which he usually wore when dining at home.”

“And he was dressed like that when you saw him last?”

“All but the jacket, sir. When he spent the evening in the library, as
usually happened, he would change it for an old shooting-jacket after
dinner, a light-coloured tweed, a little too loud in pattern for
English tastes, perhaps. He had it on when I saw him last. It used to
hang in this cupboard here”—Martin opened the door of it as he
spoke—“along with Mr. Manderson’s fishing-rods and such things, so that
he could slip it on after dinner without going upstairs.”

“Leaving the dinner-jacket in the cupboard?”

“Yes, sir. The housemaid used to take it upstairs in the morning.”

“In the morning,” Trent repeated slowly. “And now that we are speaking
of the morning, will you tell me exactly what you know about that? I
understand that Mr. Manderson was not missed until the body was found
about ten o’clock.”

“That is so, sir. Mr. Manderson would never be called, or have anything
brought to him in the morning. He occupied a separate bedroom. Usually
he would get up about eight and go round to the bathroom, and he would
come down some time before nine. But often he would sleep till nine or
ten o’clock. Mrs. Manderson was always called at seven. The maid would
take in tea to her. Yesterday morning Mrs. Manderson took breakfast
about eight in her sitting-room as usual, and every one supposed that
Mr. Manderson was still in bed and asleep, when Evans came rushing up
to the house with the shocking intelligence.”

“I see,” said Trent. “And now another thing. You say you slipped the
lock of the front door before going to bed. Was that all the locking-up
you did?”

“To the front door, sir, yes; I slipped the lock. No more is considered
necessary in these parts. But I had locked both the doors at the back,
and seen to the fastenings of all the windows on the ground floor. In
the morning everything was as I had left it.”

“As you had left it. Now here is another point—the last, I think. Were
the clothes in which the body was found the clothes that Mr. Manderson
would naturally have worn that day?”

Martin rubbed his chin. “You remind me how surprised I was when I first
set eyes on the body, sir. At first I couldn’t make out what was
unusual about the clothes, and then I saw what it was. The collar was a
shape of collar Mr. Manderson never wore except with evening dress.
Then I found that he had put on all the same things that he had worn
the night before—large fronted shirt and all—except just the coat and
waistcoat and trousers, and the brown shoes, and blue tie. As for the
suit, it was one of half a dozen he might have worn. But for him to
have simply put on all the rest just because they were there, instead
of getting out the kind of shirt and things he always wore by day;
well, sir, it was unprecedented. It shows, like some other things, what
a hurry he must have been in when getting up.”

“Of course,” said Trent. “Well, I think that’s all I wanted to know.
You have put everything with admirable clearness, Martin. If we want to
ask any more questions later on, I suppose you will be somewhere
about.”

“I shall be at your disposal, sir.” Martin bowed, and went out quietly.

Trent flung himself into the armchair and exhaled a long breath.
“Martin is a great creature,” he said. “He is far, far better than a
play. There is none like him, none, nor will be when our summers have
deceased. Straight, too; not an atom of harm in dear old Martin. Do you
know, Murch, you are wrong in suspecting that man.”

“I never said a word about suspecting him.” The inspector was taken
aback. “You know, Mr. Trent, he would never have told his story like
that if he thought I suspected him.”

“I dare say he doesn’t think so. He is a wonderful creature, a great
artist; but, in spite of that, he is not at all a sensitive type. It
has never occurred to his mind that you, Murch, could suspect him,
Martin, the complete, the accomplished. But I know it. You must
understand, inspector, that I have made a special study of the
psychology of officers of the law. It is a grossly neglected branch of
knowledge. They are far more interesting than criminals, and not nearly
so easy. All the time I was questioning him I saw handcuffs in your
eye. Your lips were mutely framing the syllables of those tremendous
words: ‘It is my duty to tell you that anything you now say will be
taken down and used in evidence against you.’ Your manner would have
deceived most men, but it could not deceive me.”

Mr. Murch laughed heartily. Trent’s nonsense never made any sort of
impression on his mind, but he took it as a mark of esteem, which
indeed it was; so it never failed to please him. “Well, Mr. Trent,” he
said, “you’re perfectly right. There’s no point in denying it, I have
got my eye on him. Not that there’s anything definite; but you know as
well as I do how often servants are mixed up in affairs of this kind,
and this man is such a very quiet customer. You remember the case of
Lord William Russell’s valet, who went in as usual, in the morning, to
draw up the blinds in his master’s bedroom, as quiet and starchy as you
please, a few hours after he had murdered him in his bed. I’ve talked
to all the women of the house, and I don’t believe there’s a morsel of
harm in one of them. But Martin’s not so easy set aside. I don’t like
his manner; I believe he’s hiding something. If so, I shall find it
out.”

“Cease!” said Trent. “Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter
prophecy. Let us get back to facts. Have you, as a matter of evidence,
anything at all to bring against Martin’s story as he has told it to
us?”

“Nothing whatever at present. As for his suggestion that Manderson came
in by way of the window after leaving Marlowe and the car, that’s right
enough, I should say. I questioned the servant who swept the room next
morning, and she tells me there were gravelly marks near the window, on
this plain drugget that goes round the carpet. And there’s a footprint
in this soft new gravel just outside.” The inspector took a folding
rule from his pocket and with it pointed out the traces. “One of the
patent shoes Manderson was wearing that night exactly fits that print;
you’ll find them,” he added, “on the top shelf in the bedroom, near the
window end, the only patents in the row. The girl who polished them in
the morning picked them out for me.”

Trent bent down and studied the faint marks keenly. “Good!” he said.
“You have covered a lot of ground, Murch, I must say. That was
excellent about the whisky; you made your point finely. I felt inclined
to shout ‘Encore!’ It’s a thing that I shall have to think over.”

“I thought you might have fitted it in already,” said Mr. Murch. “Come,
Mr. Trent, we’re only at the beginning of our enquiries, but what do
you say to this for a preliminary theory? There’s a plan of burglary,
say a couple of men in it and Martin squared. They know where the plate
is, and all about the handy little bits of stuff in the drawing-room
and elsewhere. They watch the house; see Manderson off to bed; Martin
comes to shut the window, and leaves it ajar, accidentally on purpose.
They wait till Martin goes to bed at twelve-thirty; then they just walk
into the library, and begin to sample the whisky first thing. Now
suppose Manderson isn’t asleep, and suppose they make a noise opening
the window, or however it might be. He hears it; thinks of burglars;
gets up very quietly to see if anything’s wrong; creeps down on them,
perhaps, just as they’re getting ready for work. They cut and run; he
chases them down to the shed, and collars one; there’s a fight; one of
them loses his temper and his head, and makes a swinging job of it.
Now, Mr. Trent, pick that to pieces.”

“Very well,” said Trent; “just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I
know you don’t believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left
by your burglar or burglars, and the window found fastened in the
morning, according to Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next:
nobody in the house hears anything of this stampede through the
library, nor hears any shout from Manderson either inside the house or
outside. Next: Manderson goes down without a word to anybody, though
Bunner and Martin are both at hand. Next: did you ever hear, in your
long experience, of a householder getting up in the night to pounce on
burglars, who dressed himself fully, with underclothing, shirt; collar
and tie, trousers, waistcoat and coat, socks and hard leather shoes;
and who gave the finishing touches to a somewhat dandified toilet by
doing his hair, and putting on his watch and chain? Personally, I call
that over-dressing the part. The only decorative detail he seems to
have forgotten is his teeth.”

The inspector leaned forward thinking, his large hands clasped before
him. “No,” he said at last. “Of course there’s no help in that theory.
I rather expect we have some way to go before we find out why a man
gets up before the servants are awake, dresses himself awry, and is
murdered within sight of his house early enough to be “cold and stiff
by ten in the morning.”

Trent shook his head. “We can’t build anything on that last
consideration. I’ve gone into the subject with people who know. I
shouldn’t wonder,” he added, “if the traditional notions about loss of
temperature and rigour after death had occasionally brought an innocent
man to the gallows, or near it. Dr. Stock has them all, I feel sure;
most general practitioners of the older generation have. That Dr. Stock
will make an ass of himself at the inquest, is almost as certain as
that tomorrow’s sun will rise. I’ve seen him. He will say the body must
have been dead about so long, because of the degree of coldness and
_rigor mortis_. I can see him nosing it all out in some textbook that
was out of date when he was a student. Listen, Murch, and I will tell
you some facts which will be a great hindrance to you in your
professional career. There are many things that may hasten or retard
the cooling of the body. This one was lying in the long dewy grass on
the shady side of the shed. As for rigidity, if Manderson died in a
struggle, or labouring under sudden emotion, his corpse might stiffen
practically instantaneously; there are dozens of cases noted,
particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On the
other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten
hours after death. You can’t hang anybody on _rigor mortis_ nowadays,
inspector, much as you may resent the limitation. No, what we _can_ say
is this. If he had been shot after the hour at which the world begins
to get up and go about its business, it would have been heard, and very
likely seen too. In fact, we must reason, to begin with, at any rate,
on the assumption that he wasn’t shot at a time when people might be
awake; it isn’t done in these parts. Put that time at 6.30 a.m.
Manderson went up to bed at 11 p.m., and Martin sat up till 12.30.
Assuming that he went to sleep at once on turning in, that leaves us
something like six hours for the crime to be committed in; and that is
a long time. But whenever it took place, I wish you would suggest a
reason why Manderson, who was a fairly late riser, was up and dressed
at or before 6.30; and why neither Martin, who sleeps lightly, nor
Bunner, nor his wife heard him moving about, or letting himself out of
the house. He must have been careful. He must have crept about like a
cat. Do you feel as I do, Murch, about all this; that it is very, very
strange and baffling?”

“That’s how it looks,” agreed the inspector.

“And now,” said Trent, rising to his feet, “I’ll leave you to your
meditations, and take a look at the bedrooms. Perhaps the explanation
of all this will suddenly burst upon you while I am poking about up
there. But,” concluded Trent in a voice of sudden exasperation, turning
round in the doorway, “if you can tell me at any time, how under the
sun a man who put on all those clothes could forget to put in his
teeth, you may kick me from here to the nearest lunatic asylum, and
hand me over as an incipient dement.”




Chapter V.
Poking About


There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is
within us, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness
some hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is
to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to
go well with him?—not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a
blow from fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an
unsought conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that
success is at hand in some great or fine thing. The general suddenly
knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green
suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted
the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty
of achievement. A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparently
unsorted through his mind; a few secret observations that he had made,
and which he felt must have significance, still stood unrelated to any
plausible theory of the crime; yet as he went up he seemed to know
indubitably that light was going to appear.

The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted by
a tall end window. It went the length of the house until it ran at
right angles into a narrower passage, out of which the servants’ rooms
opened. Martin’s room was the exception: it opened out of a small
landing half-way to the upper floor. As Trent passed it he glanced
within. A little square room, clean and commonplace. In going up the
rest of the stairway he stepped with elaborate precaution against
noise, hugging the wall closely and placing each foot with care; but a
series of very audible creaks marked his passage.

He knew that Manderson’s room was the first on the right hand when the
bedroom floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the
latch and the lock, which worked normally, and examined the wards of
the key. Then he turned to the room.

It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat’s toilet
appointments were of the simplest. All remained just as it had been on
the morning of the ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets and
blankets of the unmade bed lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead,
and the sun shone brightly through the window upon them. It gleamed,
too, upon the gold parts of the delicate work of dentistry that lay in
water in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a small, plain table by the
bedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron candlestick. Some clothing
lay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed chairs. Various objects
on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used as a
dressing-table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make. Trent
looked them over with a questing eye. He noted also that the occupant
of the room had neither washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned
over the dental plate in the bowl, and frowned again at its
incomprehensible presence.

The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams,
were producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a
picture of a haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the
first light of dawn, glancing constantly at the inner door behind which
his wife slept, his eyes full of some terror.

Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities, opened two
tall cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained
clothing, a large choice of which had evidently been one of the very
few conditions of comfort for the man who had slept there.

In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the
advantage of wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and
carefully kept, was ranged on two long low shelves against the wall. No
boots were among them. Trent, himself an amateur of good shoe-leather,
now turned to these, and glanced over the collection with an
appreciative eye. It was to be seen that Manderson had been inclined to
pride himself on a rather small and well-formed foot. The shoes were of
a distinctive shape, narrow and round-toed, beautifully made; all were
evidently from the same last.

Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather
shoes on the upper shelf.

These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the
position to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his
death. They were a well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that
they had been very recently polished. Something about the uppers of
these shoes had seized his attention. He bent lower and frowned over
them, comparing what he saw with the appearance of the neighbouring
shoes. Then he took them up and examined the line of junction of the
uppers with the soles.

As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with
great precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present,
would have recognized.

Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary
trick which tells those who know them that they are suppressing
excitement. The inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up a
strong scent he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; though
the inspector could not have told you that it was in fact the opening
movement of Mendelssohn’s _Lied ohne Worter_ in A Major.

He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape,
and looked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the
heel and the instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.

Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behind
him to the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with
eyes that saw nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the
Englishman’s expletive of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to
the shelves again, and swiftly but carefully examined every one of the
shoes there.

This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them over
closely and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again,
and hunted through them carefully. The litter on the dressing-table now
engaged his attention for the second time. Then he sat down on the
empty chair, took his head in his hands, and remained in that attitude,
staring at the carpet, for some minutes. He rose at last and opened the
inner door leading to Mrs. Manderson’s room.

It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put
down from its place as the lady’s bower. All the array of objects that
belong to a woman’s dressing-table had been removed; on bed and chairs
and smaller tables there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no
trace remained of the obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils,
handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The
room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of
furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting
taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of colour
and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought
her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an
artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew
stronger; and his brows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens
laid upon it, and of the deed of which the history was now shaping
itself with more and more of substance before his busy mind.

He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall that
faced the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony with
an iron railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that began
immediately beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrow
flower-bed, and stretched away, with an abrupt dip at the farther end,
toward the orchard. The other window opened with a sash above the
garden-entrance of the library. In the farther inside corner of the
room was a second door giving upon the passage; the door by which the
maid was wont to come in, and her mistress to go out, in the morning.

Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan of
the room and its neighbour. The bed stood in the angle between the
communicating-door and the sash-window, its head against the wall
dividing the room from Manderson’s. Trent stared at the pillows; then
he lay down with deliberation on the bed and looked through the open
door into the adjoining room.

This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his plan
that on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon
that furthest from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of
copper connected by a free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it
thoughtfully, then at the switches connected with the other lights in
the room. They were, as usual, on the wall just within the door, and
some way out of his reach as he sat on the bed. He rose, and satisfied
himself that the lights were all in order. Then he turned on his heel,
walked quickly into Manderson’s room, and rang the bell.

“I want your help again, Martin,” he said, as the butler presented
himself, upright and impassive, in the doorway. “I want you to prevail
upon Mrs. Manderson’s maid to grant me an interview.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Martin.

“What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?”

“She’s French, sir,” replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause:
“She has not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impression
that the young woman knows as much of the world as is good for
her—since you ask me.”

“You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?” said
Trent. “Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.”

“I will send her up immediately, sir.” The butler withdrew, and Trent
wandered round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than
he had expected, a small neat figure in black appeared quietly before
him.

The lady’s maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable notice
of Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been
hoping desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was
as great below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing,
she felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her
scenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr.
Murch, he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner.
Trent, her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman,
and at a distance he had appeared _sympathique_.

As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any
approach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good
impression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour,
then, that she said, “Monsieur desire to speak with me.” She added
helpfully, “I am called Célestine.”

“Naturally,” said Trent with businesslike calm. “Now what I want you to
tell me, Célestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress
yesterday morning at seven o’clock, was the door between the two
bedrooms—this door here—open?”

Célestine became intensely animated in an instant. “Oh yes!” she said,
using her favourite English idiom. “The door was open as always,
monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain.
Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in
there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other
room, all explains itself.” She tripped across to the door, and urged
Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. “See!
I enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I
come quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand—open
always—so! But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of
Monsieur Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach
from down there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order.
Yesterday it was as ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame
sleep like an angel—she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the
_plateau_—I open the curtains—I prepare the toilette—I retire—voilà!”
Célestine paused for breath and spread her hands abroad.

Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
gravity, nodded his head. “I see exactly how it was now,” he said.
“Thank you, Célestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still in his
room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having
breakfast in her boudoir?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Nobody missed him, in fact,” remarked Trent. “Well, Célestine, I am
very much obliged to you.” He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.

“It is nothing, monsieur,” said Célestine, as she crossed the small
room. “I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur
Manderson. But I not regret him too much,” she added with sudden and
amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer
door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose in
her small dark face. English departed from her. “Je ne le regrette pas
du tout, du tout!” she cried with a flood of words. “Madame—ah! je me
jetterais au feu pour madame—une femme si charmante, si adorable! Mais
un homme comme monsieur—maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!—de ma
vie! J’en avais par-dessus la tête, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce
insupportable, tout de même, qu’il existe des types comme ça? Je vous
jure que—”

“Finissez ce chahut, Célestine!” Trent broke in sharply. Célestine’s
tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. “En
voilà une scène! C’est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ça,
mademoiselle. Du reste, c’est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have
some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that
kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don’t wave your fists
about so much; you might hit something. You seem,” he went on more
pleasantly, as Célestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, “to
be even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the
way. I could almost suspect, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take
as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.”

“A peine s’il m’avait regardé!” Célestine answered simply.

“Ça, c’est un comble!” observed Trent. “You are a nice young woman for
a small tea-party, I don’t think. A star upon your birthday burned,
whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven,
Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a
beauty!”

Célestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise
restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at
Trent over her shoulder, the lady’s maid opened the door and swiftly
disappeared.

Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two
forcible descriptive terms in Célestine’s language, and turned to his
problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and
placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself
on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat
with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he
whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room.
A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open window. From
time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about
the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now
with his thoughts, never moved.

So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his
feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out
upon the landing.

Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened
that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means
austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one
corner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid’s hand had failed to
give a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the
dressing-table and on the mantelshelf—pipes, penknives, pencils, keys,
golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles.
Two fine etchings and some water-colour sketches hung on the walls;
leaning against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framed
engravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window.
Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he measured some
of them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on the
side of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.

The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose and
examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two
others were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print
of three youths—one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the
haggard blue eyes—clothed in tatterdemalion soldier’s gear of the
sixteenth century. Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady,
slightly resembling Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette
from an open box on the mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the
photographs. Next he turned his attention to a flat leathern case that
lay by the cigarette-box.

It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship,
was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock
were engraved the initials “J. M.”

A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and
peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the
open door of the room. “I was wondering—” he began; then stopped as he
saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly.
“Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?” he asked in a conversational tone.

“Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe,”
replied Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. “I
found this lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little
pistol to me, and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say,
since the last time it was used. But I know little about firearms.”

“Well, I know a good deal,” rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the
revolver from Trent’s outstretched hand. “It’s a bit of a speciality
with me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don’t
require an expert to tell one thing.” He replaced the revolver in its
case on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it
on the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his
waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little
leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it
some bright new scratches.

“Is that _the_ one?” Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector’s
hand.

“That’s him,” replied Mr. Murch. “Lodged in the bone at the back of the
skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the
local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches
you see were made by the doctor’s instruments. These other marks were
made by the rifling of the barrel—a barrel like this one.” He tapped
the revolver. “Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks
the bullet just like this.”

With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector
looked into each other’s eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to
speak. “This mystery is all wrong,” he observed. “It is insanity. The
symptoms of mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not
in any doubt, I believe, about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in
the car to Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late
last night, many hours after the murder was committed.”

“There _is_ no doubt whatever about all that,” said Mr. Murch, with a
slight emphasis on the verb.

“And now,” pursued Trent, “we are invited by this polished and
insinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that
Marlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the
night; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else,
got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds;
that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminating
pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the
house and, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in
a favourable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he
then withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding—_with_ a large
motor car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole
affair, at—what time was it?”

“A little after 9 p.m.” The inspector still stared moodily at Trent.
“As you say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this
find, and it seems wild enough—at least it would do if it didn’t fall
to pieces at the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have
been fifty to a hundred miles away. He _did_ go to Southampton.”

“How do you know?”

“I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in
Southampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.”

“Come off” exclaimed Trent bitterly. “What do I care about his story?
What do you care about his story? I want to know how you _know_ he went
to Southampton.”

Mr. Murch chuckled. “I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr.
Trent,” he said. “Well, there’s no harm in telling you. After I arrived
yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from
Mrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the
telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had
told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and
sent Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some
one who was crossing by the next day’s boat. It seemed right enough,
but, you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn’t
under my hand, so to speak. He didn’t return in the car until later in
the evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to
Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this
reply.” He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:

Person answering description in motor answering description arrived
Bedford Hotel here 6.30 this morning gave name Marlowe left car hotel
garage told attendant car belonged Manderson had bath and breakfast
went out heard of later at docks inquiring for passenger name Harris on
Havre boat inquired repeatedly until boat left at noon next heard of at
hotel where he lunched about 1.15 left soon afterwards in car company’s
agents inform berth was booked name Harris last week but Harris did not
travel by boat Burke Inspector.


“Simple and satisfactory,” observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twice
reading the message, returned it to him. “His own story corroborated in
every particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or
so on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back,
lunched, and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to
Manderson—‘Harris not turned up missed boat returning Marlowe,’ which
was duly delivered here in the afternoon, and placed among the dead
man’s letters. He motored back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired.
When he heard of Manderson’s death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What
with that and the being without sleep for so long, he was rather a
wreck when I came to interview him last night; but he was perfectly
coherent.”

Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few
moments. “It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and
cartridges about so carelessly,” he remarked at length, as he put it
back in the case. “It was throwing temptation in somebody’s way, don’t
you think?”

Mr. Murch shook his head. “There isn’t really much to lay hold of about
the revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver
is common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half
the people who buy a revolver today for self-defence or mischief
provide themselves with that make, of that calibre. It is very
reliable, and easily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands
of them in the possession of crooks and honest men. For instance,”
continued the inspector with an air of unconcern, “Manderson himself
had one, the double of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of
the desk downstairs, and it’s in my overcoat pocket now.”

“Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.”

“I was,” said the inspector; “but as you’ve found one revolver, you may
as well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any
good. The people in the house—”

Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the
half-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood
in the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the
faces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to
herald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet.
He wore rubber-soled tennis shoes.

“You must be Mr. Bunner,” said Trent.




Chapter VI.
Mr. Bunner on the Case


“Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,” amended the newcomer, with a touch
of punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was
used to finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with strangers, and
Trent’s quick remark plainly disconcerted him a little. “You are Mr.
Trent, I expect,” he went on. “Mrs. Manderson was telling me a while
ago. Captain, good-morning.” Mr. Murch acknowledged the outlandish
greeting with a nod. “I was coming up to my room, and I heard a strange
voice in here, so I thought I would take a look in.” Mr. Bunner laughed
easily. “You thought I might have been eavesdropping, perhaps,” he
said. “No, sir; I heard a word or two about a pistol—this one, I
guess—and that’s all.”

Mr. Bunner was a thin, rather short young man with a shaven, pale,
bony, almost girlish face, and large, dark, intelligent eyes. His
waving dark hair was parted in the middle. His lips, usually occupied
with a cigar, in its absence were always half open with a curious
expression as of permanent eagerness. By smoking or chewing a cigar
this expression was banished, and Mr. Bunner then looked the
consummately cool and sagacious Yankee that he was.

Born in Connecticut, he had gone into a broker’s office on leaving
college, and had attracted the notice of Manderson, whose business with
his firm he had often handled. The Colossus had watched him for some
time, and at length offered him the post of private secretary. Mr.
Bunner was a pattern business man, trustworthy, long-headed,
methodical, and accurate. Manderson could have found many men with
those virtues; but he engaged Mr Bunner because he was also swift and
secret, and had besides a singular natural instinct in regard to the
movements of the stock market.

Trent and the American measured one another coolly with their eyes.
Both appeared satisfied with what they saw. “I was having it explained
to me,” said Trent pleasantly, “that my discovery of a pistol that
might have shot Manderson does not amount to very much. I am told it is
a favourite weapon among your people, and has become quite popular over
here.”

Mr. Bunner stretched out a bony hand and took the pistol from its case.
“Yes, sir,” he said, handling it with an air of familiarity; “the
captain is right. This is what we call out home a Little Arthur, and I
dare say there are duplicates of it in a hundred thousand hip-pockets
this minute. I consider it too light in the hand myself,” Mr. Bunner
went on, mechanically feeling under the tail of his jacket, and
producing an ugly looking weapon. “Feel of that, now, Mr. Trent—it’s
loaded, by the way. Now this Little Arthur—Marlowe bought it just
before we came over this year to please the old man. Manderson said it
was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth
century. So he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess—never
consulted me. Not but what it’s a good gun,” Mr. Bunner conceded,
squinting along the sights. “Marlowe was poor with it at first, but
I’ve coached him some in the last month or so, and he’s practised until
he is pretty good. But he never could get the habit of carrying it
around. Why, it’s as natural to me as wearing my pants. I have carried
one for some years now, because there was always likely to be somebody
laying for Manderson. And now,” Mr. Bunner concluded sadly, “they got
him when I wasn’t around. Well, gentlemen, you must excuse me. I am
going into Bishopsbridge. There is a lot to do these days, and I have
to send off a bunch of cables big enough to choke a cow.”

“I must be off too,” said Trent. “I have an appointment at the ‘Three
Tuns’ inn.”

“Let me give you a lift in the automobile,” said Mr. Bunner cordially.
“I go right by that joint. Say, cap., are you coming my way too? No?
Then come along, Mr. Trent, and help me get out the car. The chauffeur
is out of action, and we have to do ’most everything ourselves except
clean the dirt off her.”

Still tirelessly talking in his measured drawl, Mr. Bunner led Trent
downstairs and through the house to the garage at the back. It stood at
a little distance from the house, and made a cool retreat from the
blaze of the midday sun.

Mr. Bunner seemed to be in no hurry to get out the car. He offered
Trent a cigar, which was accepted, and for the first time lit his own.
Then he seated himself on the footboard of the car, his thin hands
clasped between his knees, and looked keenly at the other.

“See here, Mr. Trent,” he said, after a few moments. “There are some
things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record.
You are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don’t know if
I have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I
would answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me—I have done
so, in fact—but I don’t feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine
without his asking. See?”

Trent nodded. “That is a feeling many people have in the presence of
our police,” he said. “It’s the official manner, I suppose. But let me
tell you, Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the
shrewdest officers in Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but
he is very sure. And his experience is immense. My forte is
imagination, but I assure you in police work experience outweighs it by
a great deal.”

“Outweigh nothing!” replied Mr. Bunner crisply. “This is no ordinary
case, Mr. Trent. I will tell you one reason why. I believe the old man
knew there was something coming to him. Another thing: I believe it was
something he thought he couldn’t dodge.”

Trent pulled a crate opposite to Mr. Bunner’s place on the footboard
and seated himself. “This sounds like business,” he said. “Tell me your
ideas.”

“I say what I do because of the change in the old man’s manner this
last few weeks. I dare say you have heard, Mr. Trent, that he was a man
who always kept himself well in hand. That was so. I have always
considered him the coolest and hardest head in business. That man’s
calm was just deadly—I never saw anything to beat it. And I knew
Manderson as nobody else did. I was with him in the work he really
lived for. I guess I knew him a heap better than his wife did, poor
woman. I knew him better than Marlowe could—he never saw Manderson in
his office when there was a big thing on. I knew him better than any of
his friends.”

“Had he any friends?” interjected Trent.

Mr. Bunner glanced at him sharply. “Somebody has been putting you next,
I see that,” he remarked. “No: properly speaking, I should say not. He
had many acquaintances among the big men, people he saw, most every
day; they would even go yachting or hunting together. But I don’t
believe there ever was a man that Manderson opened a corner of his
heart to. But what I was going to say was this. Some months ago the old
man began to get like I never knew him before—gloomy and sullen, just
as if he was everlastingly brooding over something bad, something that
he couldn’t fix. This went on without any break; it was the same down
town as it was up home, he acted just as if there was something lying
heavy on his mind. But it wasn’t until a few weeks back that his
self-restraint began to go; and let me tell you this, Mr. Trent”—the
American laid his bony claw on the other’s knee—“I’m the only man that
knows it. With every one else he would be just morose and dull; but
when he was alone with me in his office, or anywhere where we would be
working together, if the least little thing went wrong, by George! he
would fly off the handle to beat the Dutch. In this library here I have
seen him open a letter with something that didn’t just suit him in it,
and he would rip around and carry on like an Indian, saying he wished
he had the man that wrote it here, he wouldn’t do a thing to him, and
so on, till it was just pitiful. I never saw such a change. And here’s
another thing. For a week before he died Manderson neglected his work,
for the first time in my experience. He wouldn’t answer a letter or a
cable, though things looked like going all to pieces over there. I
supposed that this anxiety of his, whatever it was, had got on to his
nerves till they were worn out. Once I advised him to see a doctor, and
he told me to go to hell. But nobody saw this side of him but me. If he
was having one of these rages in the library here, for example, and
Mrs. Manderson would come into the room, he would be all calm and cold
again in an instant.”

“And you put this down to some secret anxiety, a fear that somebody had
designs on his life?” asked Trent.

The American nodded.

“I suppose,” Trent resumed, “you had considered the idea of there being
something wrong with his mind—a break-down from overstrain, say. That
is the first thought that your account suggests to me. Besides, it is
what is always happening to your big business men in America, isn’t it?
That is the impression one gets from the newspapers.”

“Don’t let them slip you any of that bunk,” said Mr. Bunner earnestly.
“It’s only the ones who have got rich too quick, and can’t make good,
who go crazy. Think of all our really big men—the men anywhere near
Manderson’s size: did you ever hear of any one of them losing his
senses? They don’t do it—believe _me_. I know they say every man has
his loco point,” Mr. Bunner added reflectively, “but that doesn’t mean
genuine, sure-enough craziness; it just means some personal
eccentricity in a man ... like hating cats ... or my own weakness of
not being able to touch any kind of fish-food.”

“Well, what was Manderson’s?”

“He was full of them—the old man. There was his objection to all the
unnecessary fuss and luxury that wealthy people don’t kick at much, as
a general rule. He didn’t have any use for expensive trifles and
ornaments. He wouldn’t have anybody do little things for him; he hated
to have servants tag around after him unless he wanted them. And
although Manderson was as careful about his clothes as any man I ever
knew, and his shoes—well, sir, the amount of money he spent on shoes
was sinful—in spite of that, I tell you, he never had a valet. He never
liked to have anybody touch him. All his life nobody ever shaved him.”

“I’ve heard something of that,” Trent remarked. “Why was it, do you
think?”

“Well,” Mr. Bunner answered slowly, “it was the Manderson habit of
mind, I guess; a sort of temper of general suspicion and jealousy.

“They say his father and grandfather were just the same.... Like a dog
with a bone, you know, acting as if all the rest of creation was laying
for a chance to steal it. He didn’t really _think_ the barber would
start in to saw his head off; he just felt there was a possibility that
he _might_, and he was taking no risks. Then again in business he was
always convinced that somebody else was after his bone—which was true
enough a good deal of the time; but not all the time. The consequence
of that was that the old man was the most cautious and secret worker in
the world of finance; and that had a lot to do with his success,
too.... But that doesn’t amount to being a lunatic, Mr. Trent; not by a
long way. You ask me if Manderson was losing his mind before he died. I
say I believe he was just worn out with worrying over something, and
was losing his nerve.”

Trent smoked thoughtfully. He wondered how much Mr. Bunner knew of the
domestic difficulty in his chief’s household, and decided to put out a
feeler. “I understood that he had trouble with his wife.”

“Sure,” replied Mr. Bunner. “But do you suppose a thing like that was
going to upset Sig Manderson that way? No, sir! He was a sight too big
a man to be all broken up by any worry of that kind.”

Trent looked half-incredulously into the eyes of the young man. But
behind all their shrewdness and intensity he saw a massive innocence.
Mr. Bunner really believed a serious breach between husband and wife to
be a minor source of trouble for a big man.

“What _was_ the trouble between them, anyhow?” Trent inquired.

“You can search me,” Mr. Bunner replied briefly. He puffed at his
cigar. “Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never
make out a solution. I had a notion at first,” said Mr. Bunner in a
lower voice, leaning forward, “that the old man was disappointed and
vexed because he had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the
disappointment on that score was the other way around, likely as not.
His idea was all right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by
Mrs. Manderson’s French maid.”

Trent looked up at him quickly. “Célestine!” he said; and his thought
was, “So that was what she was getting at!”

Mr. Bunner misunderstood his glance. “Don’t you think I’m giving a man
away, Mr. Trent,” he said. “Marlowe isn’t that kind. Célestine just
took a fancy to him because he talks French like a native, and she
would always be holding him up for a gossip. French servants are quite
unlike English that way. And servant or no servant,” added Mr. Bunner
with emphasis, “I don’t see how a woman could mention such a subject to
a man. But the French beat me.” He shook his head slowly.

“But to come back to what you were telling me just now,” Trent said.
“You believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some
time. Who should threaten it? I am quite in the dark.”

“Terror—I don’t know,” replied Mr. Bunner meditatively. “Anxiety, if
you like. Or suspense—that’s rather my idea of it. The old man was hard
to terrify, anyway; and more than that, he wasn’t taking any
precautions—he was actually avoiding them. It looked more like he was
asking for a quick finish—supposing there’s any truth in my idea. Why,
he would sit in that library window, nights, looking out into the dark,
with his white shirt just a target for anybody’s gun. As for who should
threaten his life well, sir,” said Mr. Bunner with a faint smile, “it’s
certain you have not lived in the States. To take the Pennsylvania coal
hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with women and children
to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole through
the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms.
Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr. Trent.
There’s a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been
known to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten
what he did. They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had
done them dirt in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the
Atlantic is going to stop them?... It takes some sand, I tell you, to
be a big business man in our country. No, sir: the old man knew—had
always known—that there was a whole crowd of dangerous men scattered up
and down the States who had it in for him. My belief is that he had
somehow got to know that some of them were definitely after him at
last. What licks me altogether is why he should have just laid himself
open to them the way he did—why he never tried to dodge, but walked
right down into the garden yesterday morning to be shot at.”

Mr. Bunner ceased to speak, and for a little while both men sat with
wrinkled brows, faint blue vapours rising from their cigars. Then Trent
rose. “Your theory is quite fresh to me,” he said. “It’s perfectly
rational, and it’s only a question of whether it fits all the facts. I
mustn’t give away what I’m doing for my newspaper, Mr. Bunner, but I
will say this: I have already satisfied myself that this was a
premeditated crime, and an extraordinarily cunning one at that. I’m
deeply obliged to you. We must talk it over again.” He looked at his
watch. “I have been expected for some time by my friend. Shall we make
a move?”

“Two o’clock,” said Mr. Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from
the foot-board. “Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don’t know Wall
Street, Mr. Trent. Let’s you and I hope we never see anything nearer
hell than what’s loose in the Street this minute.”




Chapter VII.
The Lady in Black


The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze;
the sun flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this
perfection of English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went down
before eight o’clock to a pool among the rocks, the direction of which
had been given him, and dived deep into clear water. Between vast grey
boulders he swam out to the tossing open, forced himself some little
way against a coast-wise current, and then returned to his refuge
battered and refreshed. Ten minutes later he was scaling the cliff
again, and his mind, cleared for the moment of a heavy disgust for the
affair he had in hand, was turning over his plans for the morning.

It was the day of the inquest, the day after his arrival in the place.
He had carried matters not much further after parting with the American
on the road to Bishopsbridge. In the afternoon he had walked from the
inn into the town, accompanied by Mr. Cupples, and had there made
certain purchases at a chemist’s shop, conferred privately for some
time with a photographer, sent off a reply-paid telegram, and made an
enquiry at the telephone exchange. He had said but little about the
case to Mr. Cupples, who seemed incurious on his side, and nothing at
all about the results of his investigation or the steps he was about to
take. After their return from Bishopsbridge, Trent had written a long
dispatch for the _Record_ and sent it to be telegraphed by the proud
hands of the paper’s local representative. He had afterwards dined with
Mr. Cupples, and had spent the rest of the evening in meditative
solitude on the veranda.

This morning as he scaled the cliff he told himself that he had never
taken up a case he liked so little, or which absorbed him so much. The
more he contemplated it in the golden sunshine of this new day, the
more evil and the more challenging it appeared. All that he suspected
and all that he almost knew had occupied his questing brain for hours
to the exclusion of sleep; and in this glorious light and air, though
washed in body and spirit by the fierce purity of the sea, he only saw
the more clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and
was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now
at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened.
He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the
course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to
do in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much
serious hope, he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot
into the sky, as it were, the day before.

The path back to the hotel wound for some way along the top of the
cliff, and on nearing a spot he had marked from the sea level, where
the face had fallen away long ago, he approached the edge and looked
down, hoping to follow with his eyes the most delicately beautiful of
all the movements of water—the wash of a light sea over broken rock.
But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a
rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass
and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where
the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about
her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant
liner, her face full of some dream.

This woman seemed to Trent, whose training had taught him to live in
his eyes, to make the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. Her face
of southern pallor, touched by the kiss of the wind with colour on the
cheek, presented to him a profile of delicate regularity in which there
was nothing hard; nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the
point where they almost met gave her in repose a look of something like
severity, strangely redeemed by the open curves of the mouth. Trent
said to himself that the absurdity or otherwise of a lover writing
sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow depended after all on the quality of
the eyebrow. Her nose was of the straight and fine sort, exquisitely
escaping the perdition of too much length, which makes a conscientious
mind ashamed that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the tip-tilted.
Her hat lay pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze
played with her thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad
bandeaux that should have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a
hundred tiny curls from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about
this lady was black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had
discarded; lustreless black covered her to her bare throat. All she
wore was fine and well put on. Dreamy and delicate of spirit as her
looks declared her, it was very plain that she was long-practised as
only a woman grown can be in dressing well, the oldest of the arts, and
had her touch of primal joy in the excellence of the body that was so
admirably curved now in the attitude of embraced knees. With the
suggestion of French taste in her clothes, she made a very modern
figure seated there, until one looked at her face and saw the glow and
triumph of all vigorous beings that ever faced sun and wind and sea
together in the prime of the year. One saw, too, a womanhood so unmixed
and vigorous, so unconsciously sure of itself, as scarcely to be
English, still less American.

Trent, who had halted only for a moment in the surprise of seeing the
woman in black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and
feeling as he went the things set down. At all times his keen vision
and active brain took in and tasted details with an easy swiftness that
was marvellous to men of slower chemistry; the need to stare, he held,
was evidence of blindness. Now the feeling of beauty was awakened and
exultant, and doubled the power of his sense. In these instants a
picture was printed on his memory that would never pass away.

As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her
thoughts, suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from about her
knees, stretched her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly
raised her head and extended her arms with open, curving fingers, as if
to gather to her all the glory and overwhelming sanity of the morning.
This was a gesture not to be mistaken: it was a gesture of freedom, the
movement of a soul’s resolution to be, to possess, to go forward,
perhaps to enjoy.

So he saw her for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. He knew
suddenly who the woman must be, and it was as if a curtain of gloom
were drawn between him and the splendour of the day.

During breakfast at the hotel Mr. Cupples found Trent little inclined
to talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr.
Cupples, on the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The
prospect of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent
with a disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy
tribunal, the coroner’s court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom
of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he
passed to the case that was to come before it that morning.

“Young Bunner mentioned to me last night,” he said, “when I went up
there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to
the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is
occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded
knowledge of the world quite unusual in one of his apparent age.
Indeed, his promotion by Manderson to the position of his principal
lieutenant speaks for itself. He seems to have assumed with perfect
confidence the control at this end of the wire, as he expresses it, of
the complicated business situation caused by the death of his
principal, and he has advised very wisely as to the steps I should take
on Mabel’s behalf, and the best course for her to pursue until effect
has been given to the provisions of the will. I was accordingly less
disposed than I might otherwise have been to regard his suggestion of
an industrial vendetta as far-fetched. When I questioned him he was
able to describe a number of cases in which attacks of one sort or
another—too often successful—had been made upon the lives of persons
who had incurred the hostility of powerful labour organizations. This
is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy. There is none
recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between the
material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so
menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement,
is the prospect so dark as it is in the United States.”

“I thought,” said Trent listlessly, “that Puritanism was about as
strong there as the money-getting craze.”

“Your remark,” answered Mr. Cupples, with as near an approach to humour
as was possible to him, “is not in the nature of a testimonial to what
you call Puritanism—a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I
need not remind you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party
which aimed at the purging of the services and ritual of their Church
from certain elements repugnant to them. The sense of your observation,
however, is none the less sound, and its truth is extremely well
illustrated by the case of Manderson himself, who had, I believe, the
virtues of purity, abstinence, and self-restraint in their strongest
form. No, Trent, there are other and more worthy things among the moral
constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite nature, the more we
preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of external
apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I
need not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,” pursued
Mr. Cupples, placidly buttering a piece of toast, “is regarded as
fundamentally erroneous by many of those who think generally as I do
about the deeper concerns of life, but I am nevertheless firmly
persuaded of its truth.”

“It needs epigrammatic expression,” said Trent, rising from the table.
“If only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like ‘No
Popery’, or ‘Tax the Foreigner’, you would find multitudes to go to the
stake for it. But you were planning to go to White Gables before the
inquest, I think. You ought to be off if you are to get back to the
court in time. I have something to attend to there myself, so we might
walk up together. I will just go and get my camera.”

“By all means,” Mr. Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the
ever-growing warmth of the morning. The roof of White Gables, a surly
patch of dull red against the dark trees, seemed to harmonize with
Trent’s mood; he felt heavy, sinister, and troubled. If a blow must
fall that might strike down that creature radiant of beauty and life
whom he had seen that morning, he did not wish it to come from his
hand. An exaggerated chivalry had lived in Trent since the first
teachings of his mother; but at this moment the horror of bruising
anything so lovely was almost as much the artist’s revulsion as the
gentleman’s. On the other hand, was the hunt to end in nothing? The
quality of the affair was such that the thought of forbearance was an
agony. There never was such a case; and he alone, he was confident,
held the truth of it under his hand. At least, he determined, that day
should show whether what he believed was a delusion. He would trample
his compunction underfoot until he was quite sure that there was any
call for it. That same morning he would know.

As they entered at the gate of the drive they saw Marlowe and the
American standing in talk before the front door. In the shadow of the
porch was the lady in black.

She saw them, and came gravely forward over the lawn, moving as Trent
had known that she would move, erect and balanced, stepping lightly.
When she welcomed him on Mr. Cupples’s presentation her eyes of
golden-flecked brown observed him kindly. In her pale composure, worn
as the mask of distress, there was no trace of the emotion that had
seemed a halo about her head on the ledge of the cliff. She spoke the
appropriate commonplace in a low and even voice. After a few words to
Mr. Cupples she turned her eyes on Trent again.

“I hope you will succeed,” she said earnestly. “Do you think you will
succeed?”

He made his mind up as the words left her lips. He said, “I believe I
shall do so, Mrs. Manderson. When I have the case sufficiently complete
I shall ask you to let me see you and tell you about it. It may be
necessary to consult you before the facts are published.”

She looked puzzled, and distress showed for an instant in her eyes. “If
it is necessary, of course you shall do so,” she said.

On the brink of his next speech Trent hesitated. He remembered that the
lady had not wished to repeat to him the story already given to the
inspector—or to be questioned at all. He was not unconscious that he
desired to hear her voice and watch her face a little longer, if it
might be; but the matter he had to mention really troubled his mind, it
was a queer thing that fitted nowhere into the pattern within whose
corners he had by this time brought the other queer things in the case.
It was very possible that she could explain it away in a breath; it was
unlikely that any one else could. He summoned his resolution.

“You have been so kind,” he said, “in allowing me access to the house
and every opportunity of studying the case, that I am going to ask
leave to put a question or two to yourself—nothing that you would
rather not answer, I think. May I?”

She glanced at him wearily. “It would be stupid of me to refuse. Ask
your questions, Mr. Trent.”

“It’s only this,” said Trent hurriedly. “We know that your husband
lately drew an unusually large sum of ready money from his London
bankers, and was keeping it here. It is here now, in fact. Have you any
idea why he should have done that?”

She opened her eyes in astonishment. “I cannot imagine,” she said. “I
did not know he had done so. I am very much surprised to hear it.”

“Why is it surprising?”

“I thought my husband had very little money in the house. On Sunday
night, just before he went out in the motor, he came into the
drawing-room where I was sitting. He seemed to be irritated about
something, and asked me at once if I had any notes or gold I could let
him have until next day. I was surprised at that, because he was never
without money; he made it a rule to carry a hundred pounds or so about
him always in a note-case. I unlocked my escritoire, and gave him all I
had by me. It was nearly thirty pounds.”

“And he did not tell you why he wanted it?”

“No. He put it in his pocket, and then said that Mr. Marlowe had
persuaded him to go for a run in the motor by moonlight, and he thought
it might help him to sleep. He had been sleeping badly, as perhaps you
know. Then he went off with Mr. Marlowe. I thought it odd he should
need money on Sunday night, but I soon forgot about it. I never
remembered it again until now.”

“It was curious, certainly,” said Trent, staring into the distance. Mr
Cupples began to speak to his niece of the arrangements for the
inquest, and Trent moved away to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon
the lawn. The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming
business of the day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he
showed himself not without a quiet humour in describing the pomposities
of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr Stock. Trent turned
the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all
Marlowe’s gravity returned.

“Bunner has told me what he thinks,” he said when Trent referred to the
American’s theory. “I don’t find myself convinced by it, because it
doesn’t really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long
enough in the United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done
in a secret, melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a
characteristic feature of certain sections of the labour movement
there. Americans have a taste and a talent for that sort of business.
Do you know _Huckleberry Finn?_”

“Do I know my own name?” exclaimed Trent.

“Well, I think the most American thing in that great American epic is
Tom Sawyer’s elaboration of an extremely difficult and romantic scheme,
taking days to carry out, for securing the escape of the nigger Jim,
which could have been managed quite easily in twenty minutes. You know
how fond they are of lodges and brotherhoods. Every college club has
its secret signs and handgrips. You’ve heard of the Know-Nothing
movement in politics, I dare say, and the Ku Klux Klan. Then look at
Brigham Young’s penny-dreadful tyranny in Utah, with real blood. The
founders of the Mormon State were of the purest Yankee stock in
America; and you know what they did. It’s all part of the same mental
tendency. Americans make fun of it among themselves. For my part, I
take it very seriously.”

“It can have a very hideous side to it, certainly,” said Trent, “when
you get it in connection with crime—or with vice—or even mere luxury.
But I have a sort of sneaking respect for the determination to make
life interesting and lively in spite of civilization. To return to the
matter in hand, however; has it struck you as a possibility that
Manderson’s mind was affected to some extent by this menace that Bunner
believes in? For instance, it was rather an extraordinary thing to send
you posting off like that in the middle of the night.”

“About ten o’clock, to be exact,” replied Marlowe. “Though, mind you,
if he’d actually roused me out of my bed at midnight I shouldn’t have
been very much surprised. It all chimes in with what we’ve just been
saying. Manderson had a strong streak of the national taste for
dramatic proceedings. He was rather fond of his well-earned reputation
for unexpected strokes and for going for his object with ruthless
directness through every opposing consideration. He had decided
suddenly that he wanted to have word from this man Harris—”

“Who is Harris?” interjected Trent.

“Nobody knows. Even Bunner never heard of him, and can’t imagine what
the business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London
last week to attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at
Manderson’s request, for a Mr. George Harris on the boat that sailed on
Monday. It seems that Manderson suddenly found he wanted news from
Harris which presumably was of a character too secret for the
telegraph; and there was no train that served; so I was sent off as you
know.”

Trent looked round to make sure that they were not overheard, then
faced the other gravely, “There is one thing I may tell you,” he said
quietly, “that I don’t think you know. Martin the butler caught a few
words at the end of your conversation with Manderson in the orchard
before you started with him in the car. He heard him say, ‘If Harris is
there, every moment is of importance.’ Now, Mr. Marlowe, you know my
business here. I am sent to make enquiries, and you mustn’t take
offence. I want to ask you if, in the face of that sentence, you will
repeat that you know nothing of what the business was.”

Marlowe shook his head. “I know nothing, indeed. I’m not easily
offended, and your question is quite fair. What passed during that
conversation I have already told the detective. Manderson plainly said
to me that he could not tell me what it was all about. He simply wanted
me to find Harris, tell him that he desired to know how matters stood,
and bring back a letter or message from him. Harris, I was further
told, might not turn up. If he did, ‘every moment was of importance’.
And now you know as much as I do.”

“That talk took place _before_ he told his wife that you were taking
him for a moonlight run. Why did he conceal your errand in that way, I
wonder.”

The young man made a gesture of helplessness. “Why? I can guess no
better than you.”

“Why,” muttered Trent as if to himself, gazing on the ground, “did he
conceal it—from Mrs. Manderson?” He looked up at Marlowe.

“And from Martin,” the other amended coolly. “He was told the same
thing.”

With a sudden movement of his head Trent seemed to dismiss the subject.
He drew from his breast-pocket a letter-case, and thence extracted two
small leaves of clean, fresh paper.

“Just look at these two slips, Mr. Marlowe,” he said. “Did you ever see
them before? Have you any idea where they come from?” he added as
Marlowe took one in each hand and examined them curiously.

“They seem to have been cut with a knife or scissors from a small diary
for this year from the October pages,” Marlowe observed, looking them
over on both sides. “I see no writing of any kind on them. Nobody here
has any such diary so far as I know. What about them?”

“There may be nothing in it,” Trent said dubiously. “Any one in the
house, of course, might have such a diary without your having seen it.
But I didn’t much expect you would be able to identify the leaves—in
fact, I should have been surprised if you had.”

He stopped speaking as Mrs. Manderson came towards them. “My uncle
thinks we should be going now,” she said.

“I think I will walk on with Mr. Bunner,” Mr. Cupples said as he joined
them. “There are certain business matters that must be disposed of as
soon as possible. Will you come on with these two gentlemen, Mabel? We
will wait for you before we reach the place.”

Trent turned to her. “Mrs. Manderson will excuse me, I hope,” he said.
“I really came up this morning in order to look about me here for some
indications I thought I might possibly find. I had not thought of
attending the—the court just yet.”

She looked at him with eyes of perfect candour. “Of course, Mr. Trent.
Please do exactly as you wish. We are all relying upon you. If you will
wait a few moments, Mr. Marlowe, I shall be ready.”

She entered the house. Her uncle and the American had already strolled
towards the gate.

Trent looked into the eyes of his companion. “That is a wonderful
woman,” he said in a lowered voice.

“You say so without knowing her,” replied Marlowe in a similar tone.
“She is more than that.”

Trent said nothing to this. He stared out over the fields towards the
sea. In the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A
little distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them from
the direction of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope,
unmistakable afar off, of a telegram. Trent watched him with an
indifferent eye as he met and passed the two others. Then he turned to
Marlowe. “A propos of nothing in particular,” he said, “were you at
Oxford?”

“Yes,” said the young man. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It’s one of the things you
can very often tell about a man, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Marlowe said. “Well, each of us is marked in one way or
another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn’t
known it.”

“Why? Does my hair want cutting?”

“Oh, no! It’s only that you look at things and people as I’ve seen
artists do, with an eye that moves steadily from detail to
detail—rather looking them over than looking at them.”

The boy came up panting. “Telegram for you, sir,” he said to Trent.
“Just come, sir.”

Trent tore open the envelope with an apology, and his eyes lighted up
so visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe’s tired face softened in a
smile.

“It must be good news,” he murmured half to himself.

Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. “Not
exactly news,” he said. “It only tells me that another little guess of
mine was a good one.”




Chapter VIII.
The Inquest


The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a
provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had
resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of
jovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his
work, and the news of Manderson’s mysterious death within his
jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A
respectable capacity for marshalling facts was fortified in him by a
copiousness of impressive language that made juries as clay in his
hands, and sometimes disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules
of evidence.

The court was held in a long, unfurnished room lately built on to the
hotel, and intended to serve as a ballroom or concert-hall. A regiment
of reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to
be called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table
behind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, with
plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the other
side. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, and
listened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspaper
men, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them who
knew Trent by sight assured the rest that he was not in the court.

The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness
called, from whom the coroner, after some enquiry into the health and
circumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last
occasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson was
taken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which every
man felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil
before beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken
composure of the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an
impression of hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to
be felt in her presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear
that the force of a powerful character was at work to master the
emotions of her situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her
eyes with her handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.

Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour
for retiring on Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room
attached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was
usually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were
entered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always
had a preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom
arrangements, and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been
awake when he came up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened,
when the light was switched on in her husband’s room. She had spoken to
him. She had no clear recollection of what she had said, as she had
been very drowsy at the time; but she had remembered that he had been
out for a moonlight run in the car, and she believed she had asked
whether he had had a good run, and what time it was. She had asked what
the time was because she felt as if she had only been a very short time
asleep, and she had expected her husband to be out very late. In answer
to her question he had told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone
on to say that he had changed his mind about going for a run.

“Did he say why?” the coroner asked.

“Yes,” replied the lady, “he did explain why. I remember very well what
he said, because—” she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.

“Because—” the coroner insisted gently.

“Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his business
affairs,” answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch of
defiance. “He did not—did not think they would interest me, and as a
rule referred to them as little as possible. That was why I was rather
surprised when he told me that he had sent Mr. Marlowe to Southampton
to bring back some important information from a man who was leaving for
Paris by the next day’s boat. He said that Mr. Marlowe could do it
quite easily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the
car, and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better
for it.”

“Did he say any more?”

“Nothing, as well as I remember,” the witness said. “I was very sleepy,
and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband
turning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive.”

“And you heard nothing in the night?”

“No: I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
o’clock. She closed the door leading to my husband’s room, as she
always did, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a
great deal of sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the
morning. I had breakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I
heard that my husband’s body had been found.” The witness dropped her
head and silently waited for her dismissal.

But it was not to be yet.

“Mrs. Manderson.” The coroner’s voice was sympathetic, but it had a
hint of firmness in it now. “The question I am going to put to you
must, in these sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty
to ask it. Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband
had not been, for some time past, relations of mutual affection and
confidence? Is it the fact that there was an estrangement between you?”

The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colour
rising in her cheeks. “If that question is necessary,” she said with
cold distinctness, “I will answer it so that there shall be no
misunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband’s life his
attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He had
changed towards me; he had become very reserved, and seemed
mistrustful. I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to
be alone. I can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to
work against it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I
thought. Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never
told me. My own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in
so many words; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had
always been, so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know
now what it was.” The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of her
self-control over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when she
had said this, and stood erect and quiet.

One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. “Then
was there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between
you and your husband, ma’am?”

“Never.” The word was colourlessly spoken; but every one felt that a
crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a
person like Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.

Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have
been preying upon her husband’s mind recently?

Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her
ordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The
general attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now
eagerly directed upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.

It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway and edged his
way into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was
observing the well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along
an opening path in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he
stood aside from the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson
address him by name in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into
the hall.

“I wanted to ask you,” she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken,
“if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could
not see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint.... I
shall be better in the air.... No, no; I cannot stay here—please, Mr.
Trent!” she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. “I must go
to the house.” Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all
her weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leaned
heavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walked
slowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White
Gables.

Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a
chorus of “Fool! fool!” All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and
suspected of this affair, rushed through his brain in a rout; but the
touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his
consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and
bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask
of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had
attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch in the
morning-room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly,
with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now,
she said, and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she
had not taken him away from anything important. She was ashamed of
herself; she thought she could go through with it, but she had not
expected those last questions. “I am glad you did not hear me,” she
said when he explained. “But of course you will read it all in the
reports. It shook me so to have to speak of that,” she added simply;
“and to keep from making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And
all those staring men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when
I asked you.... I thought I might,” she ended queerly, with a little
tired smile; and Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from
the cool touch of her fingers.

The testimony of the servants and of the finder of the body brought
nothing new to the reporters’ net. That of the police was as colourless
and cryptic as is usual at the inquest stage of affairs of the kind.
Greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Bunner, his evidence afforded the
sensation of the day, and threw far into the background the interesting
revelation of domestic difficulty made by the dead man’s wife. He told
the court in substance what he had already told Trent. The flying
pencils did not miss a word of the young American’s story, and it
appeared with scarcely the omission of a sentence in every journal of
importance in Great Britain and the United States.

Public opinion next day took no note of the faint suggestion of the
possibility of suicide which the coroner, in his final address to the
jury, had thought it right to make in connection with the lady’s
evidence. The weight of evidence, as the official had indeed pointed
out, was against such a theory. He had referred with emphasis to the
fact that no weapon had been found near the body.

“This question, of course, is all-important, gentlemen,” he had said to
the jury. “It is, in fact, the main issue before you. You have seen the
body for yourselves. You have just heard the medical evidence; but I
think it would be well for me to read you my notes of it in so far as
they bear on this point, in order to refresh your memories. Dr Stock
told you—I am going to omit all technical medical language and repeat
to you merely the plain English of his testimony—that in his opinion
death had taken place six or eight hours previous to the finding of the
body. He said that the cause of death was a bullet wound, the bullet
having entered the left eye, which was destroyed, and made its way to
the base of the brain, which was quite shattered. The external
appearance of the wound, he said, did not support the hypothesis of its
being self-inflicted, inasmuch as there were no signs of the firearm
having been pressed against the eye, or even put very close to it; at
the same time it was not physically impossible that the weapon should
have been discharged by the deceased with his own hand, at some small
distance from the eye. Dr Stock also told us that it was impossible to
say with certainty, from the state of the body, whether any struggle
had taken place at the time of death; that when seen by him, at which
time he understood that it had not been moved since it was found, the
body was lying in a collapsed position such as might very well result
from the shot alone; but that the scratches and bruises upon the wrists
and the lower part of the arms had been very recently inflicted, and
were, in his opinion, marks of violence.

“In connection with this same point, the remarkable evidence given by
Mr Bunner cannot be regarded, I think, as without significance. It may
have come as a surprise to some of you to hear that risks of the
character described by this witness are, in his own country, commonly
run by persons in the position of the deceased. On the other hand, it
may have been within the knowledge of some of you that in the
industrial world of America the discontent of labour often proceeds to
lengths of which we in England happily know nothing. I have
interrogated the witness somewhat fully upon this. At the same time,
gentlemen, I am by no means suggesting that Mr. Bunner’s personal
conjecture as to the cause of death can fitly be adopted by you. That
is emphatically not the case. What his evidence does is to raise two
questions for your consideration. First, can it be said that the
deceased was to any extent in the position of a threatened man—of a man
more exposed to the danger of murderous attack than an ordinary person?
Second, does the recent alteration in his demeanour, as described by
this witness, justify the belief that his last days were overshadowed
by a great anxiety? These points may legitimately be considered by you
in arriving at a conclusion upon the rest of the evidence.”

Thereupon the coroner, having indicated thus clearly his opinion that
Mr Bunner had hit the right nail on the head, desired the jury to
consider their verdict.




Chapter IX.
A Hot Scent


“Come in!” called Trent.

Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
evening of the day on which the coroner’s jury, without leaving the
box, had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons
unknown. Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study
of what lay in a photographic dish of enamelled metal, which he moved
slowly about in the light of the window. He looked very pale, and his
movements were nervous.

“Sit on the sofa,” he advised. “The chairs are a job lot bought at the
sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
pretty good negative,” he went on, holding it up to the light with his
head at the angle of discriminating judgement. “Washed enough now, I
think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess.”

Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
basins, dishes, racks, boxes, and bottles, picked up first one and then
another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.

“That is called hypo-eliminator,” said Trent, as Mr. Cupples uncorked
and smelt at one of the bottles. “Very useful when you’re in a hurry
with a negative. I shouldn’t drink it, though, all the same. It
eliminates sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn’t wonder if it would
eliminate human beings too.” He found a place for the last of the
litter on the crowded mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr. Cupples
on the table. “The great thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its
beauty does not distract the mind from work. It is no place for the
mayfly pleasures of a mind at ease. Have you ever been in this room
before, Cupples? I have, hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over
England for years. I should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic,
far-off hotel, they were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at
this table-cover; there is the ink I spilt on it when I had this room
in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the carpet when I had it in Ipswich.
But I see they have mended the glass over the picture of ‘Silent
Sympathy’, which I threw a boot at in Banbury. I do all my best work
here. This afternoon, for instance, since the inquest, I have finished
several excellent negatives. There is a very good dark room
downstairs.”

“The inquest—that reminds me,” said Mr. Cupples, who knew that this
sort of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering
what he could be about. “I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for
looking after Mabel this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel
ill after leaving the box; she seemed quite unmoved, and, really, she
is a woman of such extraordinary self-command, I thought I could leave
her to her own devices and hear out the evidence, which I thought it
important I should do. It was a very fortunate thing she found a friend
to assist her, and she is most grateful. She is quite herself again
now.”

Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow,
made no reply to this. “I tell you what,” he said after a short pause,
“I was just getting to the really interesting part of the job when you
came in. Come; would you like to see a little bit of high-class police
work? It’s the very same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing
at this moment. Perhaps he is; but I hope to glory he isn’t.” He sprang
off the table and disappeared into his bedroom. Presently he came out
with a large drawing-board on which a number of heterogeneous objects
was ranged.

“First I must introduce you to these little things,” he said, setting
them out on the table. “Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two
leaves cut out of a diary—my own diary; here is a bottle containing
dentifrice; here is a little case of polished walnut. Some of these
things have to be put back where they belong in somebody’s bedroom at
White Gables before night. That’s the sort of man I am—nothing stops
me. I borrowed them this very morning when every one was down at the
inquest, and I dare say some people would think it rather an odd
proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the board. Can
you tell me, without touching it, what it is?”

“Certainly I can,” said Mr. Cupples, peering at it with great interest.
“It is an ordinary glass bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see
nothing odd about it,” he added after some moments of close scrutiny.

“I can’t see much myself,” replied Trent, “and that is exactly where
the fun comes in. Now take this little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull
out the cork. Do you recognize that powder inside it? You have
swallowed pounds of it in your time, I expect. They give it to babies.
Grey powder is its ordinary name—mercury and chalk. It is great stuff.
Now, while I hold the basin sideways over this sheet of paper, I want
you to pour a little powder out of the bottle over this part of the
bowl—just here.... Perfect! Sir Edward Henry himself could not have
handled the powder better. You have done this before, Cupples, I can
see. You are an old hand.”

“I really am not,” said Mr. Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the
fallen powder to the bottle. “I assure you it is all a complete mystery
to me. What did I do then?”

“I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair
brush. Now look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do
you see anything now?”

Mr. Cupples peered again. “How curious!” he said. “Yes, there are two
large grey finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before.”

“I am Hawkshaw the detective,” observed Trent. “Would it interest you
to hear a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you
take one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually
practically invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave
the marks of your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is
never quite dry, and sometimes—in moments of great anxiety, for
instance, Cupples—it is very moist. It leaves a mark on any cold smooth
surface it may touch. That bowl was moved by somebody with a rather
moist hand quite lately.” He sprinkled the powder again. “Here on the
other side, you see, is the thumb-mark—very good impressions all of
them.” He spoke without raising his voice, but Mr. Cupples could
perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint
grey marks. “This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man
of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a
single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the
print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and
fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same
two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look!”—he
held one of the negatives up to the light of the declining sun and
demonstrated with a pencil point. “You can see they’re the same. You
see the bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the other. You see
that little scar near the centre. There it is in the other. There are a
score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert would swear in the
witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks I have
photographed on this negative were made by the same hand.”

“And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?” asked Mr
Cupples, wide-eyed.

“I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front window
in Mrs. Manderson’s bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I
photographed them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of
the glass for the purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson’s room. It is
the bowl in which his false teeth were placed at night. I could bring
that away, so I did.”

“But those cannot be Mabel’s finger-marks.”

“I should think not!” said Trent with decision. “They are twice the
size of any print Mrs. Manderson could make.”

“Then they must be her husband’s.”

“Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I
believe we can.” Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent
opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder.
“Lamp-black,” he explained. “Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a
second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your
fingers.” He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the
leaves cut from his diary, and held it out for the other to examine. No
marks appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the powder out upon one
surface of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the other; then shook
the leaf gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it out to Mr.
Cupples in silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably,
clearly printed in black, the same two finger-prints that he had
already seen on the bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the
bowl and compared them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other
side was a bold black replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in
grey on the glass in his hand.

“Same man, you see,” Trent said with a short laugh. “I felt that it
must be so, and now I know.” He walked to the window and looked out.
“Now I know,” he repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone
was bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his
motionless back for a few moments.

“I am still completely in the dark,” he ventured presently. “I have
often heard of this fingerprint business, and wondered how the police
went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon
my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson’s fingerprints are
going—”

“I am very sorry, Cupples,” Trent broke in upon his meditative speech
with a swift return to the table. “When I began this investigation I
meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn’t think I
have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my
tongue about the whole thing, at least for a time. I will tell you
this: I have come upon a fact that looks too much like having very
painful consequences if it is discovered by any one else.” He looked at
the other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his
hand. “It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was
hoping against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be
wrong in the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way
of finding out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it.”
He smiled suddenly at Mr. Cupples’s face of consternation. “All
right—I’m not going to be tragic any more, and I’ll tell you all about
it when I can. Look here, I’m not half through my game with the
powder-bottles yet.”

He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test the
broad ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr. Cupples, swallowing his
amazement, bent forward in an attitude of deep interest and handed
Trent the bottle of lamp-black.




Chapter X.
The Wife of Dives


Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables
gazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather
had broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathings
drifted up the fields from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken grey
deadness shedding pin-point moisture that was now and then blown
against the panes with a crepitation of despair. The lady looked out on
the dim and chilling prospect with a woeful face. It was a bad day for
a woman bereaved, alone, and without a purpose in life.

There was a knock, and she called “Come in,” drawing herself up with an
unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that the
weariness of the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr. Trent had
called, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an early hour,
but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent
importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror,
looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at
herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent
was shown in.

His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of the
sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick
sensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his half
smile of fixed good-humour.

“May I come to the point at once?” he said, when she had given him her
hand. “There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelve
o’clock, but I cannot go until I have settled this thing, which
concerns you only, Mrs. Manderson. I have been working half the night
and thinking the rest; and I know now what I ought to do.”

“You look wretchedly tired,” she said kindly. “Won’t you sit down? This
is a very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible business
and your work as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I can
properly tell you, Mr. Trent. I know that you won’t make it worse for
me than you can help in doing your duty here. If you say you must see
me about something, I know it must be because, as you say, you ought to
do it.”

“Mrs. Manderson,” said Trent, slowly measuring his words, “I won’t make
it worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad for
you—only between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tell
me what I shall ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on
my word of honour: I shall ask you only as much as will decide me
whether to publish or to withhold certain grave things that I have
found out about your husband’s death, things not suspected by any one
else, nor, I think, likely to be so. What I have discovered—what I
believe that I have practically proved—will be a great shock to you in
any case. But it may be worse for you than that; and if you give me
reason to think it would be so, then I shall suppress this manuscript,”
he laid a long envelope on the small table beside him, “and nothing of
what it has to tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell you,
of a short private note to my editor, followed by a long dispatch for
publication in the _Record_. Now you may refuse to say anything to me.
If you do refuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this
up to London with me today and leave it with my editor to be dealt with
at his discretion. My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled
to suppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents
itself to my im

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