Trent's Last Case Part 3

'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 b.u.t.ter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?' said Trent. 'Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Oui, monsieur.'

'n.o.body missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I am very much obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.

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

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

'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.

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

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

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

So he sat for the s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage. 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-b.a.l.l.s, 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 s.p.a.cious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some bright new scratches.

'Is that the one?' Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector's hand.

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

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

'There is no doubt whatever about all that,' said Mr Murch, with a slight emphasis on the verb.

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

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

'How do you know?'

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

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

Mr Murch chuckled. 'I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr Trent,' he said. 'Well, there's no harm in telling you. After I arrived yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from Mrs Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and sent Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some one who was crossing by the next day's boat. It seemed right enough, but, you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn't under my hand, so to speak. He didn't return in the car until later in the evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this reply.' He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read: PERSON ANSWERING DESCRIPTION IN MOTOR ANSWERING DESCRIPTION ARRIVED BEDFORD HOTEL HERE 6.30 THIS MORNING GAVE NAME MARLOWE LEFT CAR HOTEL GARAGE TOLD ATTENDANT CAR BELONGED MANDERSON HAD BATH AND BREAKFAST WENT OUT HEARD OF LATER AT DOCKS ENQUIRING FOR Pa.s.sENGER NAME HARRIS ON HAVRE BOAT ENQUIRED REPEATEDLY UNTIL BOAT LEFT AT NOON NEXT HEARD OF AT HOTEL WHERE HE LUNCHED ABOUT 1.15 LEFT SOON AFTERWARDS IN CAR COMPANY'S AGENTS INFORM BERTH WAS BOOKED NAME HARRIS LAST WEEK BUT HARRIS DID NOT TRAVEL BY BOAT BURKE INSPECTOR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'You must be Mr Bunner,' said Trent.

CHAPTER VI: Mr Bunner on the Case

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

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

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

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

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

'I must be off too,' said Trent. 'I have an appointment at the "Three Tuns" inn.'

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

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

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

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

Trent nodded. 'That is a feeling many people have in the presence of our police,' he said. 'It's the official manner, I suppose. But let me tell you, Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the shrewdest officers in Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but he is very sure. And his experience is immense. My forte is imagination, but I a.s.sure 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 n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l. But n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 ma.s.sive innocence. Mr Bunner really believed a serious breach between husband and wife to be a minor source of trouble for a big man.

'What was the trouble between them, anyhow?' Trent enquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Two o'clock,' said Mr Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from the foot-board. 'Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don't know Wall Street, Mr Trent. Let's you and I hope we never see anything nearer h.e.l.l 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.s gathered at her nape. Everything about this lady was black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had discarded; l.u.s.treless 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al lieutenant speaks for itself. He seems to have a.s.sumed 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 princ.i.p.al, 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 const.i.tuents 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.'