The Woman in Black

CHAPTER IX

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 gray 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-humor.

"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 honor: 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 destroy this manuscript"—he laid a long envelop 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 despatch for publication in the RecordNow 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 to-day and leave it with my editor to be dealt with at his discretion.My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled to suppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents itself to my imagination.But if I gather from you—and I can gather it from no other person—that there is substance in that imaginary possibility I speak of, then I have only one thing to do as a gentleman and as one who"—he hesitated for a phrase—"wishes you well.I shall suppress that despatch of mine.In some directions I decline to assist the police.Have you followed me so far?"he asked with a touch of anxiety in his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave no sign as she regarded him, her hands clasped before her and her shoulders drawn back in a pose of rigid calm.She looked precisely as she had looked at the inquest.

"I understand quite well," said Mrs. Manderson in a low voice.She drew a deep breath, and went on: "I don't know what dreadful thing you have found out, or what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, but it was good—it was honorable of you to come to me about it.Now will you please tell me?"

"I cannot do that," Trent replied."The secret is my newspaper's, if it is not yours.If I find it is yours, you shall have my manuscript to read and destroy.Believe me," he broke out with something of his old warmth, "I detest such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul, but it is not I who have made this mystery.This is the most painful hour of my life, and you make it worse by not treating me like a hound.The first thing I ask you to tell me"—he reverted with an effort to his colorless tone—"is this: is it true, as you stated at the inquest, that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late husband had changed his attitude toward you, and become mistrustful and reserved, during the last few months of his life?"

Mrs. Manderson's dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly rose from her chair.Trent got up at the same moment, and took his envelop from the table; his manner said that he perceived the interview to be at an end.But she held up a hand, and there was color in her cheeks and quick breathing in her voice as she said: "Do you know what you ask, Mr. Trent?You ask me if I perjured myself."

"I do," he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause: "You knew already that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs. Manderson.The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could withhold a part of the truth under any circumstances is a polite fiction."He still stood as awaiting dismissal; but she was silent.She walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slight movement of her shoulders until it subsided.Then with face averted, looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last clearly.

"Mr. Trent," she said, "you inspire confidence in people, and I feel that things which I don't want known or talked about are safe with you.And I know you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are doing, though I don't know what it is.I suppose it would be assisting justice in some way if I told you the truth about what you asked me just now.To understand that truth you ought to know about what went before; I mean about my marriage.After all, a good many people could tell you as well as I can that it was not ...a very successful union.I was only twenty.I admired his force and courage and certainty; he was the only strong man I had ever known.But it did not take me long to find out that he cared for his business more than for me, and I think I found out even sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself, promising myself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own feelings, because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than an English girl ever dreams of.I have been despising myself for that for five years.My husband's feeling for me ...well, I cannot speak of that ...what I want to say is that along with it there had always been a belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place in society, and that I should throw myself into it with enjoyment and become a sort of personage and do him great credit—that was his idea; and the idea remained with him after other delusions had gone.I was a part of his ambition.That was his really bitter disappointment—that I failed him as a social success.I think he was too shrewd not to have known in his heart that such a man as he was, twenty years older than I, with great business responsibilities that filled every hour of his life, and caring for nothing else—he must have felt that there was a risk of great unhappiness in marrying the sort of girl I was, brought up to music and books and unpractical ideas, always enjoying myself in my own way.But he had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honors of his position in the world; and I found I couldn't."

Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she had yet shown to Trent.Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun to ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto have been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past few days.Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as she went on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, her hands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she surrendered herself to the impulse of giving speech to things long pent up.

"The people!" she said. "Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor,—can you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you have to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all—where money is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's thoughts—where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display and silly amusements and silly immoralities—do you know how awful that life is?... Of course I know there are clever people and people of taste in that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing in the end—empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make friends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after it all. The seasons in New York and London! How I hated them! And our house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest—the same people, the same emptiness!

"And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of all this? His life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and when he was in society he had always his business plans and difficulties to occupy his mind. He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never let him know—I couldn't; it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must do something to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position and fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live up to his idea about my social qualities.... I did try. I acted my best. And it became harder year by year.... I never was what they call a popular hostess—how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying.... I used to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I was not doing my part of a bargain—it sounds horrid to put it like that, I know, but it was so—when I took one of my old school-friends, who couldn't afford to travel, away to Italy for a month or two, and we went about cheaply all by ourselves and were quite happy; or when I went and made a long stay in London with some quiet people who had known me all my life, and we all lived just as in the old days, when we had to think twice about seats at the theater, and told each other about cheap dress-makers. Those and a few other expeditions of the same sort were my best times after I was married, and they helped me to go through with it the rest of the time. But I felt my husband would have hated to know how much I enjoyed every hour of those returns to the old life.

"And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to know.... He could see through anything, I think, once his attention was turned to it. He had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling his idea of me as a figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought it was my misfortune rather than my fault. But the moment he began to see, in spite of my pretending, that I wasn't playing my part with any spirit, he knew the whole story; he divined how I loathed and was weary of the luxury and the brilliancy and the masses of money just because of the people who lived among them—who were made so by them, I suppose.... It happened last year. I don't know just how or when. It may have been suggested to him by some woman—for they all understood, of course. He said nothing to me, and I think he tried not to change in his manner to me at first; but such things hurt—and it was working in both of us. I knew that he knew. After a time we were just being polite and considerate to each other. Before he found me out we had been on a footing of—how can I express it to you? —of intelligent companionship, I might say. We talked without restraint of many things of the kind we could agree or disagree about without its going very deep ... if you understand. And then that came to an end. I felt that the only possible basis of our living in each other's company was going under my feet. And at last it was gone.

"It had been like that," she ended simply, "for months before he died."She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing her body after an effort.For a few moments both were silent.Trent was hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions.He was amazed at the frankness of Mrs. Manderson's story.He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it.In this vivid being, carried away by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seen the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the real woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion.In both she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty that she had been to the world.With that amazement of his went something like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into an appearance scarcely mortal in his eyes.Incongruously there rushed into his mind, occupied as it was with the affair of the moment, a little knot of ideas ...she was unique not because of her beauty but because of its being united with intensity of nature; in England all the very beautiful women were placid, all the fiery women seemed to have burnt up the best of their beauty; that was why no beautiful woman had ever cast this sort of spell on him before; when it was a question of wit in women he had preferred the brighter flame to the duller, without much regarding the lamp."All this is very disputable," said his reason; and instinct answered, "Yes—except that I am under a spell"; and a deeper instinct cried out, "Away with it!"He forced his mind back to her story, and found growing swiftly in him an irrepressible conviction.It was all very fine; but it would not do.

"I feel as if I had led you into saying more than you meant to say, or than I wanted to learn," he said slowly."But there is one brutal question which is the whole point of my inquiry."He braced his frame like one preparing for a plunge into cold waters."Mrs. Manderson, will you assure me that your husband's change toward you had nothing to do with John Marlowe?"

And what he had dreaded came."Oh!"she cried with a sound of anguish, her face thrown up and open hands stretched out as if for pity; and then the hands covered the burning face, and she flung herself aside among the cushions at her elbow, so that he saw nothing but her heavy crown of black hair and her body moving with sobs that stabbed his heart, and a foot turned inward gracefully in an abandonment of misery.Like a tall tower suddenly breaking apart she had fallen in ruins, helplessly weeping.

Trent stood up, his face white and calm.With a senseless particularity he placed his envelop exactly in the center of the little polished table.He walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, and in a few minutes was tramping through the rain out of sight of White Gables, going nowhere, seeing nothing, his soul shaken in the fierce effort to kill and trample the raving impulse that had seized him in the presence of her shame, that clamored to him to drag himself before her feet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words—he knew not what words, but he knew that they had been straining at his lips—to wreck his self-respect forever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband not yet buried, to a woman who loved another man.

Such was the magic of her tears, quickening in a moment the thing which, as his heart had known, he must not let come to life.For Philip Trent was a young man, younger in nature even than his years, and a way of life that kept his edge keen and his spirit volcanic had prepared him very ill for the meeting that comes once in the early manhood of most of us, usually—as in his case, he told himself harshly—to no purpose but the testing of virtue and the power of the will.

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CHAPTER X

"HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED"

(Being the report which was not sent to the Record.)

I begin this, my third and probably my final despatch to the Record upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting feelings. I have a strong sense of relief, because in my two previous despatches I was obliged, in the interests of justice, to withhold facts ascertained by me which would, if published then, have put a certain person upon his guard and possibly have led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness and resource. Those facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess, no liking for the story of treachery and perverted cleverness which I have to tell. It leaves an evil taste in the mouth, a savor of something revolting in the deeper puzzle of motive underlying the puzzle of the crime itself, which I believe I have solved.

It will be remembered that in my first despatch I described the situation as I found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday morning. I told how the body was found, and in what state; dwelt upon the complete mystery surrounding the crime and mentioned one or two local theories about it; gave some account of the dead man's domestic surroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed description of his movements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a little fact which may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of whisky much larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappeared from his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. On the following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than an abstract of the proceedings in the coroner's court, of which a verbatim report was made at my request by other representatives of the Record; and it will be remembered that the police evidence showed that two revolvers, with either of which the crime might have been committed, had been found—one in Manderson's bureau and the other in the room of the secretary, Marlowe; but that no importance could be attached to this, as the weapons were of an extremely popular make.I write these lines in the last hours of the same day; and I have now completed an investigation which has led me directly to the man who must be called upon to clear himself of the guilt of the death of Manderson.

Apart from the central mystery of Manderson's having arisen long before his usual hour to go out and meet his death, there were two minor points of oddity about this affair which, I suppose, must have occurred to thousands of those who have read the accounts in the newspapers; points apparent from the very beginning.The first of these was that, whereas the body was found at a spot not thirty yards from the house, all the people of the house declared that they had heard no cry or other noise in the night.Manderson had not been gagged; the marks on his wrists pointed to a struggle with his assailant; and there had been at least one pistol-shot.(I say at least one, because it is the fact that in murders with firearms, especially if there has been a struggle, the criminal commonly misses his victim at least once.)This odd fact seemed all the more odd to me when I learned that Martin, the butler, was a bad sleeper, very keen of hearing, and that his bedroom, with the window open, faced almost directly toward the shed by which the body was found.

The second odd little fact that was apparent from the outset was Manderson's leaving his dental plate by the bedside.It appeared that he had risen and dressed himself fully, down to his necktie and watch and chain, and had gone out-of-doors without remembering to put in this plate, which he had carried in his mouth every day for years, and which contained all the visible teeth of the upper jaw.It had evidently not been a case of frantic hurry; and even if it had been, he would have been more likely to forget almost anything than this denture.Any one who wears such a removable plate will agree that the putting it in on rising is a matter of second nature.Speaking as well as eating, to say nothing of appearances, depend upon it.

Neither of these queer details, however, seemed to lead to anything at the moment.They only awakened in me a suspicion of something lurking in the shadows, something that lent more mystery to the already mysterious question how and why and through whom Manderson met his end.

With this much of preamble I come at once to the discovery which, in the first few hours of my investigation, set me upon the path which so much ingenuity had been directed to concealing.

I have already described Manderson's bedroom, the rigorous simplicity of its furnishings, contrasted so strangely with the multitude of clothes and shoes, and the manner of its communication with Mrs. Manderson's room.On the upper of the two long shelves on which the shoes were ranged I found, where I had been told I should find them, the pair of patent leather shoes which Manderson had worn on the evening before his death.I had glanced over the row, not with any idea of their giving me a clue, but merely because it happens that I am a judge of shoes, and all these shoes were of the very best workmanship.

But my attention was at once caught by a little peculiarity in this particular pair.They were the lightest kind of lace-up dress shoes, very thin in the sole, without toe-caps, and beautifully made, like all the rest.These shoes were old and well-worn; but being carefully polished and fitted, as all the shoes were, upon their trees, they looked neat enough.What caught my eye was a slight splitting of the leather in that part of the upper known as the vamp, a splitting at the point where the two laced parts of the shoe rise from the upper.It is at this point that the strain comes when a tight shoe of this sort is forced upon the foot, and it is usually guarded with a strong stitching across the bottom of the opening.In both the shoes I was examining this stitching had parted, and the leather below had given way.The splitting was a tiny affair in each case, not an eighth of an inch long, and the torn edges having come together again on the removal of the strain, there was nothing that a person who was not something of a connoisseur of shoe-leather would have noticed.Even less noticeable, and indeed not to be seen at all unless one were looking for it, was a slight straining of the stitches uniting the upper to the sole.At the toe and on the outer side of each shoe this stitching had been dragged until it was visible on a close inspection of the joining.

These indications, of course, could mean only one thing.The shoes had been worn by someone for whom they were too small.

Now it was clear at a glance that Manderson was always thoroughly well shod and careful, perhaps a little vain, of his small and narrow feet.Not one of the other shoes in the collection, as I soon ascertained, bore similar marks; they had not belonged to a man who squeezed himself into tight shoe-leather.Someone who was not Manderson had worn these shoes, and worn them recently; the edges of the tears were quite fresh.

The possibility of someone having worn them since Manderson's death was not worth considering; the body had only been found about twenty-six hours when I was examining the shoes; besides, why should any one wear them?The possibility of someone having borrowed Manderson's shoes and spoiled them for him, while he was alive, seemed about as negligible.With others to choose from he would not have worn these.Besides, the only men in the place were the butler and the two secretaries.But I do not say that I gave those possibilities even as much consideration as they deserved; for my thoughts were running away with me; and I have always found it good policy, in cases of this sort, to let them have their heads.Ever since I had got out of the train at Marlstone early that morning I had been steeped in details of the Manderson affair; the thing had not once been out of my head.Suddenly the moment had come when the dæmon wakes and begins to range.

Let me put it less fancifully.After all, it is a detail of psychology familiar enough to all whose business or inclination brings them in contact with difficult affairs of any sort.Swiftly and spontaneously, when chance or effort puts one in possession of the key-fact in any system of baffling circumstances, one's ideas seem to rush to group themselves anew in relation to that fact, so that they are suddenly rearranged almost before one has consciously grasped the significance of the key-fact itself.In the present instance, my brain had scarcely formulated within itself the thought, 'Somebody who was not Manderson has been wearing those shoes,' when there flew into my mind a flock of ideas, all of the same character and all bearing upon this new notion.It was unheard-of for Manderson to drink much whisky at night.It was very unlike him to be untidily dressed, as the body was when found—the cuffs dragged up inside the sleeves, the shoes unevenly laced; very unlike him not to wash, when he rose, and to put on last night's evening shirt and collar and underclothing; very unlike him to have his watch in the waistcoat pocket that was not lined with leather for its reception.(In my first despatch I mentioned all these points, but neither I nor any one else saw anything significant in them, when examining the body.)It was very strange, in the existing domestic situation, that Manderson should be communicative to his wife about his doings, especially at the time of his going to bed, when he seldom spoke to her at all.It was extraordinary that Manderson should leave his bedroom without his false teeth.

All these thoughts, as I say, came flocking into my mind together, drawn from various parts of my memory of the morning's inquiries and observations.They had all presented themselves, in far less time than it takes to read them as set down here, as I was turning over the shoes, confirming my own certainty on the main point.And yet when I confronted the definite idea that had sprung up suddenly and unsupported before me,—It was not Manderson who was in the house that night—it seemed a stark absurdity at the first formulating.It was certainly Manderson who had dined at the house and gone out with Marlowe in the car.People had seen him at close quarters.But was it he who returned at ten?That question too seemed absurd enough.But I could not set it aside.It seemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the whole expanse of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be rising.I set myself to think over, one by one, the points that had just occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as Manderson should have done these things that Manderson would not have done.

I had not to cast about very long for the motive a man might have in forcing his feet into Manderson's narrow shoes.The examination of footmarks is very well understood by the police.But not only was the man concerned to leave no footmarks of his own.He was concerned to leave Manderson's, if any; his whole plan, if my guess was right, must have been directed to producing the belief that Manderson was in the place that night.Moreover, his plan did not turn upon leaving footmarks.He meant to leave the shoes themselves, and he did so.The maidservant had found them outside the bedroom door, as Manderson always left his shoes, and had polished them, replacing them on the shoe-shelves later in the morning, after the body had been found.

When I came to consider in this new light the leaving of the false teeth, an explanation of what had seemed the maddest part of the affair broke upon me at once. A dental plate is not inseparable from its owner. If my guess was right, the unknown had brought the denture to the house with him, and left it in the bedroom, with the same object as he had in leaving the shoes; to make it impossible that any one should doubt that Manderson had been in the house and had gone to bed there. This, of course, led me to the inference that Manderson was dead before the false Manderson came to the house; and other things confirmed this.

For instance, the clothing, to which I now turned in my review of the position: if my guess was right, the unknown in Manderson's shoes had certainly had possession of Manderson's trousers, waistcoat and shooting jacket.They were there before my eyes in the bedroom; and Martin had seen the jacket—which nobody could have mistaken—upon the man who sat at the telephone in the library.It was now quite plain (if my guess was right) that this unmistakable garment was a cardinal feature of the unknown's plan.He knew that Martin would take him for Manderson at the first glance.

And there my thinking was interrupted by the realization of a thing that had escaped me before. So strong had been the influence of the unquestioned assumption that it was Manderson who was present that night, that neither I nor, so far as I know, any one else had noted the point. Martin had not seen the man's face; nor had Mrs. Manderson.

Mrs. Manderson (judging by her evidence at the inquest, of which, as I have said, I had a full report made by the Record stenographers in court) had not seen the man at all. She hardly could have done, as I shall show presently. She had merely spoken with him as she lay half asleep, resuming a conversation which she had had with her living husband about an hour before. Martin, I perceived, could only have seen the man's back, as he sat crouching over the telephone; no doubt a characteristic pose was imitated there. And the man had worn his hat, Manderson's broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in the back of a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been of about Manderson's build, had had no need for any disguise, apart from the jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry.

I paused there to contemplate the coolness and ingenuity of the man.The thing, I now began to see, was so safe and easy, provided that his mimicry was good enough, and that his nerve held.Those two points assured, only some wholly unlikely accident could unmask him.

To come back to my puzzling out of the matter as I sat in the dead man's bedroom with the tell-tale shoes before me:—the reason for the entrance by the window instead of by the front-door will already have occurred to any one reading this.Entering by the door, the man would almost certainly have been heard by the sharp-eared Martin in his pantry just across the hall; he might have met him face to face.

Then there was the problem of the whisky.I had not attached much importance to it; whisky will sometimes vanish in very queer ways in a household of eight or nine persons; but it had seemed strange that it should go in that way on that evening.Martin had been plainly quite dumfounded by the fact.It seemed to me now that many a man—fresh, as this man in all likelihood was, from a bloody business, from the unclothing of a corpse, and with a desperate part still to play—would turn to that decanter as to a friend.No doubt he had a drink before sending for Martin; after making that trick with ease and success, he probably drank more.

But he had known when to stop.The worst part of the enterprise was before him, the business—clearly of such vital importance to him, for whatever reason—of shutting himself in Manderson's room and preparing a mass of convincing evidence of its having been occupied by Manderson; and this with the risk—very slight, as no doubt he understood, but how unnerving!—of the woman on the other side of the half-open door awaking and somehow discovering him.True, if he kept out of her limited field of vision from the bed, she could only see him by getting up and going to the door.I found that to a person lying in her bed, which stood with its head to the wall a little beyond the door, nothing was visible through the doorway but one of the cupboards by Manderson's bed-head.Moreover, since this man knew the ways of the household, he would think it most likely that Mrs. Manderson was asleep.Another point with him, I guessed, might have been the estrangement between the husband and wife, which they had tried to cloak by keeping up, among other things, their usual practice of sleeping in connected rooms, but which was well known to all who had anything to do with them.He would hope from this that if Mrs. Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the supposed presence of her husband.

So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom, and saw him setting about his work.And it was with a catch in my own breath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heard the sound of all others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice from the adjoining room.

What Mrs. Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at the inquest. She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had a good run in the car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think, we come to a supremely significant point. Not only does he—standing rigid there, as I picture him, before the dressing-table, listening to the sound of his own leaping heart—not only does he answer the lady in the voice of Manderson; he volunteers an explanatory statement. He tells her that he has, on a sudden inspiration, sent Marlowe in the car to Southampton; that he has sent him to bring back some important information from a man leaving for Paris by the steamboat that morning. Why these details from a man who had long been uncommunicative to his wife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest her? Why these details about Marlowe?

Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definite propositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the car started, and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot—probably at a considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; that the body was brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outer clothing, while the car was left in hiding somewhere at hand; that at some time round about eleven o'clock a man who was not Manderson, wearing Manderson's shoes, hat and jacket, entered the library by the garden-window; that he had with him Manderson's black trousers, waistcoat and motor-coat, the denture taken from Manderson's mouth, and the weapon with which he had been murdered; that he concealed these, rang the bell for the butler, and sat down at the telephone with his hat on and his back to the door; that he was occupied with the telephone all the time Martin was in the room; that on going up to the bedroom-floor he quietly entered Marlowe's room and placed the revolver with which the crime had been committed—Marlowe's revolver—in the case on the mantel-piece from which it had been taken; and that he then went to Manderson's room, placed Manderson's shoes outside the door, threw Manderson's garments on a chair, placed the denture in the bowl by the bedside, and selected a suit of clothes, a pair of shoes and a tie from those in the bedroom.

Here I will pause in my statement of this man's proceedings to go into a question for which the way is now sufficiently prepared.

Who was the false Manderson?

Reviewing what was known to me, or might almost with certainty be surmised, about that person, I set down the following five conclusions:

(1) He had been in close relations with the dead man.In his acting before Martin and his speaking to Mrs. Manderson he had made no mistake.

(2) He was of a build not unlike Manderson's, especially as to height and breadth of shoulder, which mainly determine the character of the back of a seated figure when the head is concealed and the body loosely clothed.But his feet were larger, though not greatly larger, than Manderson's.

(3) He had considerable aptitude for mimicry and acting—probably some experience too.

(4) He had a minute acquaintance with the ways of the Manderson household.

(5) He was under a vital necessity of creating the belief that Manderson was alive and in that house until some time after midnight on the Sunday night.

So much I took as either certain or next door to it.It was as far as I could see.And it was far enough.

I proceed to give, in an order corresponding with the numbered paragraphs above, such relevant facts as I was able to obtain about Mr. John Marlowe, from himself and other sources.

(1) He had been Manderson's private secretary, upon a footing of great intimacy, for nearly three years.

(2) The two men were nearly of the same height, about five feet, eleven inches; both were powerfully built and heavy in the shoulder; Marlowe, who was the younger by some twenty years, was slighter about the body, though Manderson was a man in good physical condition.Marlowe's shoes (of which I examined several pairs) were roughly about one shoemaker's size longer and broader than Manderson's.

(3) In the afternoon of the first day of my investigation, after arriving at the results already detailed, I sent a telegram to a personal friend, a fellow of a college at Oxford, whom I knew to be interested in theatrical matters, in these terms:

My friend replied in the following telegram, which reached me next morning (the morning of the inquest):

I had been led to send the telegram which brought this very helpful answer by seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe's bedroom a photograph of himself and two others in the costume of Falstaff's three followers, with an inscription from The Merry Wives, and by noting that it bore the imprint of an Oxford firm of photographers.

(4) During his connection with Manderson, Marlowe had lived as one of the family.No other person, apart from the servants, had his opportunities for knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in detail.

(5) I ascertained beyond doubt that Marlowe arrived at a hotel in Southampton on the Monday morning at six-thirty, and there proceeded to carry out the commission which, according to his story, and to the statement made to Mrs. Manderson in the bedroom by the false Manderson, had been entrusted to him by his employer.He had then returned in the car to Marlstone, where he had shown great amazement and horror at the news of the murder.

---

These, I say, are the relevant facts about Marlowe. We must now examine fact number five (as set out above) in connection with conclusion number five about the false Manderson.

I would first draw attention to one important fact. The only person who professed to have heard Manderson mention Southampton at all before he started in the car was Marlowe. His story—confirmed to some extent by what the butler overheard—was that the journey was all arranged in a private talk before they set out, and he could not say, when I put the question to him, why Manderson should have concealed his intentions by giving out that he was going with Marlowe for a moonlight drive. This point, however, attracted no attention. Marlowe had an absolutely air-tight alibi in his presence at Southampton by six-thirty; nobody thought of him in connection with a murder which must have been committed after twelve-thirty—the hour at which Martin, the butler, had gone to bed. But it was the Manderson who came back from the drive who went out of his way to mention Southampton openly to two persons. He even went so far as to ring up a hotel at Southampton and ask questions which bore out Marlowe's story of his errand. This was the call he was busy with when Martin was in the library.

Now let us consider the alibi.If Manderson was in the house that night, and if he did not leave it until some time after twelve-thirty, Marlowe could not by any possibility have had a direct hand in the murder.It is a question of the distance between Marlstone and Southampton.If he had left Marlstone in the car at the hour when he is supposed to have done so—between ten and ten-thirty—with a message from Manderson, the run would be quite an easy one to do in the time.But it would be physically impossible for the car—a fifteen horse-power four-cylinder Northumberland, an average medium-power car—to get to Southampton by half-past six unless it left Marlstone by midnight at latest.Motorists who will examine the road-map and make the calculations required, as I did in Manderson's library that day, will agree that on the facts as they appeared there was absolutely no case against Marlowe.

But even if they were not as they appeared; if Manderson was dead by eleven o'clock, and if at about that time Marlowe impersonated him at White Gables; if Marlowe retired to Manderson's bedroom—how can all this be reconciled with his appearance next morning at Southampton? He had to get out of the house, unseen and unheard, and away in the car by midnight. And Martin, the sharp-eared Martin, was sitting up until twelve-thirty in his pantry, with the door open, listening for the telephone bell. Practically he was standing sentry over the foot of the staircase, the only staircase leading down from the bedroom floor.

With this difficulty we arrive at the last and crucial phase of my investigation.Having the foregoing points clearly in mind, I spent the rest of the day before the inquest in talking to various persons and in going over my story, testing it link by link.I could only find the one weakness which seemed to be involved in Martin's sitting up until twelve-thirty; and since his having been instructed to do so was certainly a part of the plan, meant to clinch the alibi for Marlowe, I knew there must be an explanation somewhere.If I could not find that explanation my theory was valueless.I must be able to show that at the time Martin went up to bed, the man who had shut himself in Manderson's bedroom might have been many miles away on the road to Southampton.

I had, however, a pretty good idea already—as perhaps the reader of these lines has by this time, if I have made myself clear—of how the escape of the false Manderson before midnight had been contrived.But I did not want what I was now about to do to be known.If I had chanced to be discovered at work, there would have been no concealing the direction of my suspicions.I resolved not to test them on this point until the next day, during the opening proceedings at the inquest.This was to be held, I knew, at the hotel, and I reckoned upon having White Gables to myself so far as the principal inmates were concerned.

So in fact it happened.By the time the proceedings at the hotel had begun, I was hard at work at White Gables.I had a camera with me.I made search, on principles well known to and commonly practised by the police, and often enough by myself, for certain indications.Without describing my search, I may say at once that I found and was able to photograph two fresh finger-prints, very large and distinct, on the polished front of the right-hand top drawer of the chest of drawers in Manderson's bedroom; five more (among a number of smaller and less recent impressions made by other hands) on the glasses of the French window in Mrs. Manderson's room, a window which always stood open at night with a curtain before it; and three more upon the glass bowl in which Manderson's dental plate had been found lying.

I took the bowl with me from White Gables.I took also a few articles which I selected from Marlowe's bedroom, as bearing the most distinct of the innumerable finger-prints which are always to be found upon toilet-articles in daily use.I already had in my possession, made upon leaves cut from my pocket diary, some excellent finger-prints of Marlowe's, which he had made in my presence without knowing it.I had shown him the leaves, asking if he recognized them; and the few seconds during which he had held them in his fingers had sufficed to leave impressions which I was afterward able to bring out.

By six o'clock in the evening, two hours after the jury had brought in their verdict against a person or persons unknown, I had completed my work, and was in a position to state that two of the five large prints made on the window-glasses, and the three on the bowl, were made by the left hand of Marlowe; that the remaining three on the window and the two on the drawer were made by his right hand.

By eight o'clock I had made at the establishment of Mr. H.T.Copper, photographer, of Bishopsbridge, and with his assistance, a dozen enlarged prints of the finger-marks of Marlowe, clearly showing the identity of those which he unknowingly made in my presence and those left upon articles in his bedroom, with those found by me as I have described, and thus establishing the facts that Marlowe was recently in Manderson's bedroom, where he had in the ordinary way no business, and in Mrs. Manderson's room, where he had still less.I hope it may be possible to reproduce these prints for publication with this despatch.

At nine o'clock I was back in my room at the hotel and sitting down to begin this manuscript.I had my story complete.

I bring it to a close by advancing these further propositions: that on the night of the murder the impersonator of Manderson, being in Manderson's bedroom, told Mrs. Manderson, as he had already told Martin, that Marlowe was at that moment on his way to Southampton; that having made his dispositions in the room, he switched off the light, and lay in the bed in his clothes; that he waited until he was assured that Mrs. Manderson was asleep; that he then arose and stealthily crossed Mrs. Manderson's bedroom in his stocking feet, having under his arm the bundle of clothing and shoes for the body; that he stepped behind the curtain, pushing the doors of the window a little further open with his hands, strode over the iron railing of the balcony, and let himself down until only a drop of a few feet separated him from the soft turf of the lawn.

All this might very well have been accomplished within half an hour of his entering Manderson's bedroom, which according to Martin he did at about half-past eleven.

What followed your readers and the authorities may conjecture for themselves.The corpse was found next morning clothed—rather untidily.Marlowe in the car appeared at Southampton by half-past six.

---

I bring this manuscript to an end in my sitting-room at the hotel at Marlstone.It is four o'clock in the morning.I leave for London by the noon train from Bishopsbridge.By this evening these pages will be in your hands, and I ask you to communicate the substance of them to the Criminal Investigation Department.

Philip Trent.

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CHAPTER XI

EVIL DAYS

"I am returning the check you sent for what I did on the Manderson case," Trent wrote to Sir James Molloy from Munich, whither he had gone immediately after handing in at the Record office a brief despatch bringing his work on the case to an unexciting close. "What I sent you wasn't worth one-tenth of the amount; but I should have no scruple about pocketing it, if I hadn't taken a fancy—never mind why—not to touch any money at all for this business. I should like you, if there is no objection, to pay for the stuff at your ordinary space-rate, and hand the money to some charity which does not devote itself to bullying people, if you know of any such. I have come to this place to see some old friends and arrange my ideas, and the idea that comes out upper-most is that for a little while I want some employment with activity in it. I find I can't paint at all; I couldn't paint a fence. Will you try me as your Own Correspondent somewhere? If you can find me a good adventure I will send you good accounts. After that I could settle down and work."

Sir James sent him instructions by telegram to proceed at once to Kurland and Livonia, where Citizen Browning was abroad again, and town and country-side blazed in revolt.It was a roving commission, and for two months Trent followed his luck.It served him not less well than usual.He was the only correspondent who saw General Dragilew killed in the street at Volmar by a girl of eighteen.He saw burnings, lynchings, fusillades, hangings; each day his soul sickened afresh at the imbecilities born of misrule.Many nights he lay down in danger.Many days he went fasting.But there was never an evening or a morning when he did not see the face of the woman whom he hopelessly loved.

He discovered in himself an unhappy pride at the lasting force of this infatuation.It interested him as a phenomenon; it amazed and enlightened him.Such a thing had not visited him before; it confirmed so much that he had found dubious in the recorded experience of men.

It was not that, at thirty-two, he could pretend to ignorance of this world of emotion.About his knowledge, let it be enough to say that what he had learned had come unpursued and unpurchased, and was without intolerable memories; broken to the realities of sex, he was still troubled by its inscrutable history; he went through life full of a strange respect for certain feminine weakness and a very simple terror of certain feminine strength.He had held to a rather lukewarm faith that something remained in him to be called forth, and that the voice that should call would be heard in its own time, if ever, and not through any seeking.

But he had not thought of the possibility that, if this proved true some day, the truth might come in a sinister shape.The two things that had taken him utterly by surprise in the matter of his feeling towards Mabel Manderson were the insane suddenness of its uprising in full strength and its extravagant hopelessness.Before it came, he had been much disposed to laugh at the permanence of unrequited passion as a generous boyish delusion.He knew now that he had been wrong, and he was living bitterly in the knowledge.

Before the eye of his fancy the woman always came just as she was when he had first had sight of her, with the gesture which he had surprised as he walked past unseen on the edge of the cliff; that great gesture of passionate joy in her new liberty which had told him more plainly than speech that her widowhood was a release from torment, and had confirmed with terrible force the suspicion, active in his mind before, that it was her passport to happiness with a man whom she loved.He could not with certainty name to himself the moment when he had first suspected that it might be so.The seed of the thought must have been sown, he believed, at his first meeting with Marlowe; his mind would have noted automatically that such evident strength and grace, with the sort of looks and manners that the tall young man possessed, might go far with any woman of unfixed affections.And the connection of this with what Mr. Cupples had told him of the Mandersons' married life must have formed itself in the unconscious depths of his mind.Certainly it had presented itself as an already established thing when he began, after satisfying himself of the identity of the murderer, to cast about for the motive of the crime.Motive, motive!How desperately he had sought for another, turning his back upon that grim thought, that Marlowe—obsessed by passion like himself, and privy perhaps to maddening truths about the wife's unhappiness—had taken a leaf, the guiltiest, from the book of Bothwell.But in all his investigations at the time, in all his broodings on the matter afterwards, he had been able to discover nothing else that could prompt Marlowe to such a deed—nothing but that temptation, the whole strength of which he could not know, but which if it had existed must have pressed urgently upon a bold spirit in which scruple had been somehow paralyzed.If he could trust his senses at all, the young man was neither insane nor by nature evil.But that could not clear him.Murder for a woman's sake, he thought, was not a rare crime, Heaven knew!If the modern feebleness of impulse in the comfortable classes, and their respect for the modern apparatus of detection, had made it rare among them, it was yet far from impossible; it only needed a man of equal daring and intelligence, his soul drugged with the vapors of an intoxicating intrigue, to plan and perform such a deed.

A thousand times, with a heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason away the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been intended against her husband's life.That she knew all the truth after the thing was done, he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in his presence when the question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly put had swept away his last hope that there was no love between the pair, and had seemed to him, moreover, to speak of dread of discovery.In any case, she knew the truth after reading what he had left with her; and it was certain that no public suspicion had been cast upon Marlowe since.She had destroyed his manuscript, then, and taken him at his word to keep the secret that threatened her lover's life.

But it was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was brewing, and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent's mind. She might have suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that she was aware of the whole plot, that she connived? He could never forget that his first suspicion of Marlowe's motive in the crime had been roused by the fact that his escape was made through the lady's room. At that time, when he had not yet seen her, he had been ready enough to entertain the idea of her equal guilt and her coöperation. He had figured to himself some passionate hystérique, merciless as a tiger in her hate and her love, a zealous abettor, perhaps even the ruling spirit in the crime.

Then he had seen her, had spoken with her, had helped her in her weakness; and such suspicions, since their first meeting, had seemed the vilest of infamy.He had seen her eyes and her mouth; he had breathed the woman's atmosphere.Trent was one of those who fancy they can scent true wickedness in the air.In her presence he had felt an inward certainty of her ultimate goodness of heart; and it was nothing against this, that she had abandoned herself a moment, that day on the cliff, to the sentiment of relief at the ending of her bondage, of her years of starved sympathy and unquickened motherhood.That she had turned to Marlowe in her destitution he believed; that she had any knowledge of his deadly purpose he did not believe.

And yet, morning and evening, the sickening doubts returned, and he recalled again that it was almost in her very presence that Marlowe had made his preparations in the bedroom of the murdered man, that it was from the window of her own chamber that he had escaped from the house.Had he forgotten his cunning and taken the risk of telling her then?Or had he, as Trent thought more likely, still played his part with her then, and stolen off while she slept?He did not think she had known of the masquerade when she gave evidence at the inquest; it read like honest evidence.Or—the question would never be silenced, though he scorned it—had she lain expecting the footstep in the room and the whisper that should tell her it was done?Among the foul possibilities of human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit as well were hidden behind that good and straight and gentle seeming?

These thoughts would scarcely leave him when he was alone.

---

Trent served Sir James, well earning his pay, for six months, and then returned to Paris, where he went to work again with a better heart. His powers had returned to him, and he began to live more happily than he had expected among a tribe of strangely-assorted friends, French, English and American, artists, poets, journalists, policemen, hotel-keepers, soldiers, lawyers, business men and others. His old faculty of sympathetic interest in his fellows won for him, just as in his student days, privileges seldom extended to the Briton. He enjoyed again the rare experience of being taken into the bosom of a Frenchman's family. He was admitted to the momentous confidence of les jeunes, and found them as sure that they had surprised the secrets of art and life as the departed jeunes of ten years before had been.

One morning in June, as he descended the slope of the Rue des Martyrs, he saw approaching a figure that he remembered.He glanced quickly round, for the thought of meeting Mr. Bunner again was unacceptable.For some time he had recognized that his wound was healing under the spell of creative work; he thought less often of the woman he loved, and with less pain.He would not have the memory of those three days re-opened.

But the straight and narrow thoroughfare offered no refuge, and the American saw him almost at once.

His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man.They sat long over a meal, and Mr. Bunner talked.Trent listened to him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then contributing a question or remark.Besides liking his companion, he enjoyed his conversation for its own sake.

Mr. Bunner was, it appeared, resident in Paris as the chief Continental agent of the Manderson firm, and fully satisfied with his position and prospects.He discoursed on these for some twenty minutes.This subject at length exhausted, he went on to tell Trent, who confessed that he had been away from England for a year, that Marlowe had shortly after the death of Manderson entered his father's business, which was now again in a flourishing state, and had already come to be virtually in control of it.They had kept up their intimacy, and were even now planning a holiday for the summer.Mr. Bunner spoke with generous admiration of his friend's talent for affairs."Jack Marlowe has a natural big head," he declared, "and if he had more experience, I wouldn't want to have him up against me.He would put a crimp in me every time."

As the American's talk flowed on, Trent listened with growing surprise and anxiety.It became more and more plain that something was very wrong in his theory of the situation; there was no mention of its central figure.Presently Mr. Bunner mentioned that Marlowe was engaged to be married to an Irish girl, whose charms he celebrated with native enthusiasm.

Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table.What could have happened?His ideas were sliding and shifting.At last he forced himself to put a direct question.

Mr. Bunner was not very fully informed.He knew that Mrs. Manderson had left England immediately after the settlement of her husband's affairs, and had lived for some time in Italy.She had returned not long ago to London, where she had decided not to live in the house in Mayfair, and had bought a smaller one in the Hampstead neighborhood; also, he understood, one somewhere in the country.She was said to go but little into society."And all the good hard dollars just waiting for someone to spraddle them around!"said Mr. Bunner with a note of pathos in his voice."Why, she has money to burn—money to feed to the birds—and nothing doing!The old man left her more than half his wad.And think of the figure she might make in the world!She is beautiful, and she is the best woman I ever met, too.But she couldn't ever seem to get the habit of spending money the way it ought to be spent."

His words now became a soliloquy: Trent's thoughts were occupying all his attention.He pleaded business soon, and the two men parted with cordiality.

Half an hour later Trent was in his studio, swiftly and mechanically "cleaning up."He wanted to know what had happened; somehow he must find out.He could never approach herself, he knew; he would never bring back to her the shame of that last encounter with him; it was scarcely likely that he would even set eyes on her.But he must know!...Cupples was in London, Marlowe was there....And anyhow he was sick of Paris.

Such thoughts came, and went; and below them all strained the fibers of an unseen cord that dragged mercilessly at his heart, and that he cursed bitterly in the moments when he could not deny to himself that it was there....The folly, the useless, pitiable folly of it!

In twenty-four hours his feeble roots in Paris had been torn out.He was looking over a leaden sea at the shining fortress-wall of the Dover cliffs.

---

But though he had instinctively picked out the lines of a set purpose from among the welter of promptings in his mind, he found it delayed at the very outset.

He had decided that he must first see Mr. Cupples, who would be in a position to tell him much more than the American knew.But Mr. Cupples was away on his travels, not expected to come back for a month; and Trent had no reasonable excuse for hastening his return.Marlowe he would not confront until he had tried at least to reconnoiter the position.He constrained himself not to commit the crowning folly of seeking out Mrs. Manderson's house in Hampstead; he could not enter it, and the thought of the possibility of being seen by her lurking in its neighborhood brought the blood to his face.

He stayed at a hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr. Cupples' return attempted vainly to lose himself in work.

At the end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager precipitancy.She had let fall some word, at their last meeting, of a taste for music.Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly, to the opera.He might see her; and if, in spite of his caution, she caught sight of him, they could be blind to each other's presence—anybody might happen to go to the opera.

So he went alone each evening, passing as quickly as he might through the people in the vestibule; and each evening he came away knowing that she had not been in the house.It was a habit that yielded him a sort of satisfaction along with the guilty excitement of his search; for he too loved music, and nothing gave him so much peace while its magic endured.

---

One night as he entered, hurrying through the brilliant crowd, he felt a touch on his arm.Flooded with an incredible certainty at the touch, he turned.

It was she: so much more radiant in the absence of grief and anxiety, in the fact that she was smiling, and in the allurement of evening dress, that he could not speak.She, too, breathed a little quickly, and there was a light of daring in her eyes and cheeks as she greeted him.

Her words were few. "I wouldn't miss a note of Tristan," she said, "nor must you.Come and see me in the interval."She gave him the number of the box.

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CHAPTER XII

ERUPTION

The following two months were a period in Trent's life that he has never since remembered without shuddering.He met Mrs. Manderson half a dozen times, and each time her cool friendliness, a nicely calculated mean between mere acquaintance and the first stage of intimacy, baffled and maddened him.At the opera he had found her, to his further amazement, with a certain Mrs. Wallace, a frisky matron whom he had known from childhood.Mrs. Manderson, it appeared, on her return from Italy, had somehow wandered into circles to which he belonged by nurture and disposition.It came, she said, of her having pitched her tent in their hunting-grounds; several of his friends were near neighbors.

He had a dim but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs. Wallace.The other lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearance of agitation with which she had stopped him in the vestibule.She had spoken pleasantly to him of her travels, of her settlement in London and of people whom they both knew.

During the last half of the opera, which he had stayed in the box to hear, he had been conscious of nothing, as he sat behind them, but the angle of her cheek and the mass of her hair, the lines of her shoulder and arm, her hand upon the cushion.The black hair had seemed at last a forest, immeasurable, pathless and enchanted, luring him to a fatal adventure.At the end he had been pale and subdued, parting with them rather formally.

The next time he saw her—it was at a country house where both were guests—and the subsequent times, he had had himself in hand.He had matched her manner and had acquitted himself, he thought, decently, considering ...considering that he lived in an agony of bewilderment and remorse and longing.He could make nothing, absolutely nothing, of her attitude.That she had read his manuscript, and understood the suspicion indicated in his last question to her at White Gables, was beyond the possibility of doubt.Then how could she treat him thus amiably and frankly, as she treated all the world of men who had done her no injury?

For it had become clear to his intuitive sense, for all the absence of any shade of differentiation in her outward manner, that an injury had been done, and that she had felt it.Several times, on the rare and brief occasions when they had talked apart, he had warning from the same sense that she was approaching this subject; and each time he had turned the conversation with the ingenuity born of fear.Two resolutions he made.The first was that when he had completed a commissioned work which tied him to London he would go away, and stay away.The strain was too great.He no longer burned to know the truth; he wanted nothing to confirm his fixed internal conviction by faith, that he had blundered, that he had misread the situation, misinterpreted her tears, written himself down a slanderous fool.He speculated no more on Marlowe's motive in the killing of Manderson.Mr. Cupples returned to London, and Trent asked him nothing.He knew now that he had been right in those words—Trent remembered them for the emphasis with which they were spoken—"So long as she considered herself bound to him ...no power on earth could have persuaded her."He met Mrs. Manderson at dinner at her uncle's large and tomb-like house in Bloomsbury, and there he conversed most of the evening with a professor of archaeology from Berlin.

His other resolution was that he would not be with her alone.

But when, a few days after, she wrote asking him to come and see her on the following afternoon, he made no attempt to excuse himself.This was a formal challenge.

---

While she celebrated the rites of tea, and for some little time thereafter, she joined with such natural ease in his slightly fevered conversation on matters of the day that he began to hope she had changed what he could not doubt had been her resolve, to corner him and speak to him gravely.She was to all appearances careless now, smiling so that he recalled, not for the first time since that night at the opera, what was written long ago of a Princess of Brunswick: "Her mouth has ten thousand charms that touch the soul."She made a tour of the beautiful room where she had received him, singling out this treasure or that from the spoils of a hundred bric-à-brac shops, laughing over her quests, discoveries and bargainings.And when he asked if she would delight him again with a favorite piece of his which he had heard her play at another house, she consented at once.

She played with a perfection of execution and feeling that moved him now as it had moved him before."You are a musician born," he said quietly when she had finished, and the last tremor of the music had passed away."I knew that before I first heard you play."

"I have played a great deal ever since I can remember.It has been a great comfort to me," she said simply, and half-turned to him smiling."When did you first detect music in me?Oh, of course!I was at the opera.But that wouldn't prove much, would it?"

"No," he said, abstractedly, his sense still busy with the music that had just ended."I think I knew it the first time I saw you."Then understanding of his own words came to him, and turned him rigid.For the first time the past had been invoked.

There was a short silence.Mrs. Manderson looked at Trent, then hastily looked away.Color began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her lips as if for whistling.Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders which he remembered she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself in a chair opposite to him.

"That speech of yours will do as well as anything," she began slowly, looking at the point of her shoe, "to bring us to what I wanted to say.I asked you here to-day on purpose, Mr. Trent, because I couldn't bear it any longer.Ever since the day you left me at White Gables I have been saying to myself that it didn't matter what you thought of me in that affair; that you were certainly not the kind of man to speak to others of what you believed about me, after what you had told me of your reasons for suppressing your manuscript.I asked myself how it could matter.But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter.It mattered horribly.Because what you thought was not true."She raised her eyes and met his gaze calmly.Trent, with a completely expressionless face, returned her look.

"Since I began to know you," he said, "I have ceased to think it."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply. Then, playing with a glove, she added: "But I want you to know what was true."

"I did not know if I should ever see you again," she went on in a lower voice, "but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this.I thought it would not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me an understanding person, and besides, a woman who has been married isn't expected to have the same sort of difficulty as a young girl in speaking about such things when it is necessary.And then we did meet again, and I discovered that it was very difficult indeed.You made it difficult."

"How?"he asked quietly.

"I don't know," said the lady."But yes—I do know.It was just because you treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anything of that sort about me.I had always supposed that if I saw you again you would turn on me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you asked me that last question—do you remember?—at White Gables.Instead of that you were just like any other acquaintance.You were just"—she hesitated and spread her hands—"nice.You know.After that first time at the opera when I spoke to you I went home positively wondering if you had really recognized me.I mean, I thought you might have recognized my face without remembering who it was."

A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.

She smiled deprecatingly."Well, I couldn't remember if you had spoken my name; and I thought it might be so.But the next time, at the Wallaces', you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite.I began to feel that you wouldn't let me, that you would slip away from the subject if I approached it.Wasn't I right?Tell me, please."He nodded."But why?"He remained silent.

"Well," she said, "I will finish what I had to say, and then you will tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard.When I began to understand that you wouldn't let me talk of the matter to you, it made me more determined than ever.I suppose you didn't realize that I would insist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging.I dare say I couldn't have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought.You walked into my parlor to-day, never thinking I should dare.Well, now you see."

Mrs. Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy.She had, as she was wont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardor of her purpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so long she felt herself mistress of the situation.

"I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made," she continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked at her enigmatically."You will have to believe it, Mr. Trent; it is so utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twice about taking for facts.Please understand that I don't blame you in the least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did.You knew that I had no love for my husband, and you knew what that so often means.You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an injured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain it away.I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself at first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was disappointed in me because I couldn't take a brilliant lead in society.Well, that was true.He was so.But I could see you weren't convinced.You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew how irrational it was.Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; you had divined that.

"Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it was such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliation and strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. You practically asked me if my husband's secretary was not my lover, Mr. Trent—I have to say it, because I want you to understand why I broke down and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you thought I was guilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a party to the crime, that I had consented.... That did hurt me; but perhaps you couldn't have thought anything else—I don't know."

Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head at the words.He did not raise it again as she continued."But really it was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me.And when I pulled myself together again you had gone."

She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer, and drew out a long, sealed envelop.

"This is the manuscript you left with me," she said."I have read it through again and again.I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness in things of this kind."A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face and was gone."I thought it was splendid, Mr. Trent—I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested.And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of yours rather than put a woman's reputation in peril.If all had been as you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the case you put in their hands.Believe me, I understood just what you had done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed by your suspicion."

As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were bright.Trent perceived nothing of this.His head was still bent.He did not seem to hear.She put the envelop into his hand as it lay open, palm upwards, on his knee.There was a touch of gentleness about the act which made him look up.

"Can you—" he began slowly.

She raised her hand as she stood before him."No, Mr. Trent, let me finish before you say anything.It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it."She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen."I am telling you a thing that nobody else knows.Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come between us, though I did everything in my power to hide it.But I don't think any one in the world ever guessed what my husband's notion was.People who know me don't think that sort of thing about me, I believe.And his fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts.I will tell you what the situation was.Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he came to us.For all his cleverness—my husband said he had a keener brain than any man he knew—I looked upon him as practically a boy.You know I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of ambition that made me feel it the more.One day my husband asked me what I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about it I said, 'His manners.'He surprised me very much by looking black at that, and after a silence he said, 'Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman, that's so'—not looking at me.

"Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when I found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected and hoped he would do—fallen desperately in love with an American girl.But to my disgust he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those whom we used to meet.She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well-educated, very good at games—what they call a woman-athlete—and caring for nothing on earth but her own amusement.She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest.Everyone knew it, and Mr. Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all....I don't know how she managed it, but I can imagine....She liked him, of course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him.The whole affair was so idiotic, I became perfectly furious.One day I asked him to row me in a boat on the lake—all this happened at our house by Lake George.We had never been alone together for any length of time before.In the boat I talked to him.I was very kind about it, I think, and he took it admirably, but he didn't believe me a bit.He had the impudence to tell me that I misunderstood Alice's nature.When I hinted at his prospects—I knew he had scarcely anything of his own—he said that if she loved him he could make himself a position in the world.I dare say that was true, with his abilities and his friends; he is rather well-connected, you know, as well as popular.But his enlightenment came very soon after that.

"My husband helped me out of the boat when we came back.He joked with Mr. Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed he never once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why I took so long to realize what he thought about him and myself.But to me he was reserved and silent that evening—not angry.He was always perfectly cold and expressionless to me after he took this idea into his head.After dinner he only spoke to me once.Mr. Marlowe was telling him about some horse he had bought for the farm in Kentucky, and my husband looked at me and said, 'Marlowe may be a gentleman, but he seldom quits loser in a horse trade.'I was surprised at that, but at that time—and even on the next occasion when he found us together—I didn't understand what was in his mind.That next time was the morning when Mr. Marlowe received a sweet little note from the girl asking for his congratulations on her engagement.It was in our New York house.He looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, and afterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was the matter.He didn't say anything, but just handed me the note, and turned away to the window.I was very glad that was all over, but terribly sorry for him too, of course.I don't remember what I said, but I remember putting my hand on his arm as he stood there staring out on the garden; and just then my husband appeared at the open door with some papers.He just glanced at us, and then turned and walked quietly back to his study.I thought he might have heard what I was saying to comfort Mr. Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of him to slip away.Mr. Marlowe neither saw nor heard him.My husband left the house that morning for the West while I was out.Even then I did not understand.He used often to go off suddenly like that, if some business project called him.

"It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the situation.He was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me he asked me where Mr. Marlowe was.Somehow the tone of his question told me everything in a flash.

"I almost gasped.I was wild with indignation.You know, Mr. Trent, I don't think I should have minded at all if any one had thought me capable of openly breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebody else.I dare say I might have done that.But that coarse suspicion ...a man whom he trusted ...and the notion of concealment.It made me see scarlet.Every shred of pride in me was strung up till I quivered, and I swore to myself on the spot that I would never show by any word or sign that I was conscious of his having such a thought about me.I would behave exactly as I always had behaved, I determined—and that I did, up to the very last.Though I knew that a wall had been made between us now that could never be broken down—even if he asked my pardon and obtained it—I never once closed the door between our rooms at night.

"And so it went on.I never could go through such a time again.My husband showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we were alone—and that was only when it was unavoidable.He never once alluded to what was in his mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it.Both of us were stubborn in our different attitudes.To Mr. Marlowe he was more friendly, if anything, than before—heaven only knows why.I fancied he was planning some sort of revenge; but that was only a fancy.Certainly Mr. Marlowe never knew what was suspected of him.He and I remained good friends, though we never spoke of anything intimate after that disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no less of him than I had always done.Then we came over to England and to White Gables, and after that followed—my husband's dreadful end."

She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality."You know about the rest—so much more than any other man," she added; and glanced up at him with a quaint expression.

Trent wondered at that look.But the wonder was only a passing shadow on his thought.Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness.All the vivacity had returned to his face.Long before Mrs. Manderson ended her story he had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from the first days of their renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story that his imagination had built up at White Gables, upon foundations that seemed so good to him.

He said: "I don't know how to begin the apologies I have to make.There are no words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I realize what a crude, cock-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion was.Yes, I suspected—you!I had almost forgotten that I was ever such a fool.Almost; not quite.Sometimes when I have been alone I have remembered that folly, and poured contempt on it.I have tried to imagine what the facts were.I have tried to excuse myself."

She interrupted him quickly."What nonsense.Do be sensible, Mr. Trent.You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to me with your solution of the mystery."Again the quaint expression came and was gone."If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like you to pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all over me in large letters—so large that you couldn't believe very strong evidence against me after seeing me twice."Mrs. Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it.He knew well by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the perfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her merely for his delight in the sound of it."And now it's all over, and you know—and we'll never speak of it any more."

"I hope not," Trent said in sincere relief."If you're resolved to be so kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your blasting me with your lightnings.And now, Mrs. Manderson, I had better go.Changing the subject after this would be like playing puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake."He rose to his feet.

"You are right," she said."But no!Wait.There is another thing—part of the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while we are about it.Please sit down."She took the envelop containing Trent's manuscript despatch from the table where he had laid it."I want to speak about this."

His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly."So do I, if you do," he said slowly."I want very much to know one thing."

"Tell me."

"Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy, why did you never make any use of it?When I began to realize that I had been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round a man's neck, whatever he might have done.I can quite understand that feeling.Was that what it was?Another possibility I thought of was that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusing Marlowe's act.Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial.Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence.They feel there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold."

Mrs. Manderson tapped her lips with the envelop without quite concealing a smile."You didn't think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr. Trent," she said.

"No."He looked puzzled.

"I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr. Marlowe as well as about me.No, no; you needn't tell me that the chain of evidence is complete.I know it is.But evidence of what?Of Mr. Marlowe having impersonated my husband that night, and having escaped by way of my window, and built up an alibi.I have read your despatch again and again, Mr. Trent, and I don't see that those things can be doubted."

Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes.He said nothing to fill the brief pause that followed.Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupied air, as one collecting her ideas.

"I did not make any use of the facts found out by you," she slowly said at last, "because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal to Mr. Marlowe."

"I agree with you," Trent remarked in a colorless tone.

"And," pursued Mrs. Manderson, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in her eyes, "as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him to that risk."

There was another little pause.Trent rubbed his chin, with an affectation of turning over the idea.Inwardly he was telling himself, somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine.It was permitted to her—more than permitted—to set her loyal belief in the character of a friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect.Nevertheless, it chafed him.He would have had her declaration of faith a little less positive in form.It was too irrational to say she "knew."In fact (he put it to himself bluntly) it was quite unlike her.If to be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up better than any woman he had known.

"You suggest," he said at length, "that Marlowe constructed an alibi for himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted, to clear himself of a crime he did not commit.Did he tell you he was innocent?"

She uttered a little laugh of impatience."So you think he has been talking me round!No, that is not so.I am merely sure he did not do it.Ah!I see you think that absurd.But see how unreasonable you are, Mr. Trent!Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was foolishness in you to have had a certain suspicion of me."Trent started in his chair.She glanced at him, and went on: "Now I know a great deal more about Mr. Marlowe than you know about me even now.I saw him constantly for several years.I don't pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed.The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr. Trent.I can imagine you killing a man, you know ...if the man deserved it and had an equal chance of killing you.I could kill a person myself in some circumstances.But Mr. Marlowe was incapable of doing it.I don't care what the provocation might be.He had a temper that nothing could shake, and he looked upon human nature with a sort of cold magnanimity that would find excuses for absolutely anything.It wasn't a pose; you could see it was a part of him.He never put it forward, but it was there always.It was quite irritating at times....He really loathed and hated physical violence.He was a very strange man in some ways, Mr. Trent.He gave one a feeling that he might do unexpected things—do you know that feeling one has about some people?...What part he really played in the events of that night I have never been able to guess.But nobody who knew anything about him could possibly believe in his deliberately taking a man's life."Again the movement of her head expressed finality, and she leaned back in the sofa, calmly regarding him.

"Then," said Trent, who had followed this with earnest attention, "we are forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thought worth much consideration until this moment.Accepting what you say, he might still conceivably have killed in self-defense; or he might have done so by accident."

The lady nodded."Of course I thought of those two explanations when I read your manuscript."

"And I suppose you felt, as I did myself, that in either of those cases the natural thing, and obviously the safest thing, for him to do was to make a public statement of the truth, instead of setting up a series of deceptions which would certainly stamp him as guilty in the eyes of the law, if anything went wrong with them."

"Yes," she said wearily, "I thought over all that until my head ached.And I thought somebody else might have done it, and that he was somehow screening the guilty person.But that seemed wild.I could see no light in the mystery, and after a while I simply let it alone.All I was clear about was that Mr. Marlowe was not a murderer, and that if I told what you had found out, the judge and jury would probably think he was.I promised myself that I would speak to you about it if we should meet again; and now I've kept my promise."

Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet.The excitement of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him.He had not in his own mind accepted Mrs. Manderson's account of Marlowe's character as unquestionable.But she had spoken forcibly; he could by no means set it aside, and his theory was much shaken.

"There is only one thing for it," he said, looking up."I must see Marlowe.It worries me too much to have the thing left like this.I will get at the truth.Can you tell me," he broke off, "how he behaved after the day I left White Gables?"

"I never saw him after that," said Mrs. Manderson simply."For some days after you went away I was ill, and didn't go out of my room.When I was about again he had left and was in London, settling things with the lawyers.He did not come down to the funeral.Immediately after that I went abroad.After some weeks a letter from him reached me, saying he had concluded his business and given the solicitors all the assistance in his power.He thanked me very nicely for what he called all my kindness, and said good-by.There was nothing in it about his plans for the future, and I thought it particularly strange that he said not a word about my husband's death.I didn't answer.Knowing what I knew, I couldn't.In those days I shuddered whenever I thought of that masquerade in the night.Rather than face him, I was ready to go on in ignorance of what had really happened.I never wanted to see or hear of him again."

"Then you don't know what has become of him?"

"No: but I dare say Uncle Burton—Mr. Cupples, you know—could tell you.Some time ago he told me that he had met Mr. Marlowe in London, and had some talk with him.I changed the conversation."She paused and smiled with a trace of mischief."I rather wonder what you supposed had happened to Mr. Marlowe, after you withdrew from the scene of the drama that you had put together so much to your satisfaction."

Trent flushed."Do you really want to know?"he said.

"I ask you," she retorted quietly.

"You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs. Manderson.Very well.I will tell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned to London this year: that you had married Marlowe and gone to live abroad."

She heard him with unmoved composure."We certainly couldn't have lived very comfortably in England on his money and mine," she observed thoughtfully."He had practically nothing then."

He stared at her—"gaped," she told him some time afterwards.At the moment she laughed with a little embarrassment."Dear me, Mr. Trent!Have I said anything dreadful?You surely must know ...I thought everybody understood by now ...I'm sure I've had to explain it often enough ...if I marry again I lose everything that my husband left me."

The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious.For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise.As this passed away he gradually drew himself together as he sat into a tense attitude.He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon.But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was: "I had no idea of it."

"It is so," she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger."Really, Mr. Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing....I think I am glad of it.For one thing, it has secured me—at least since it became generally known—from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in my position has to put up with as a rule."

"No doubt," he said gravely."And ...the other kind?"

She looked at him questioningly."Ah!"she laughed."The other kind trouble me even less.I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me."

She shook her head slowly, and something in the gesture shattered the last remnants of Trent's self-possession."Haven't you, by God!"he exclaimed, rising with a violent movement and advancing a step towards her."Then I am going to show you that human passion is not always stifled by the smell of money.I am going to end the business—my business.I am going to tell you what I dare say scores of better men have wanted to tell you, but couldn't summon up what I have summoned up—the infernal cheek to do it.They were afraid of making fools of themselves.I am not.You have accustomed me to the feeling this afternoon."He laughed aloud in his rush of words, and spread out his hands."Look at me!It is the sight of the century!It is the one who says he loves you, and would ask you to give up very great wealth to stand at his side."

She was hiding her face in her hands.He heard her say brokenly: "Please ...don't speak in that way."

He answered: "It will make a great difference to me if you will allow me to say all I have to say before I leave you.Perhaps it is in bad taste, but I will risk that—I want to relieve my soul, it needs open confession.This is the truth.You have troubled me ever since the first time I saw you—and you did not know it—as you sat under the edge of the cliff at Marlstone and held out your arms to the sea.It was only your beauty that filled my mind then.As I passed by you it seemed as if all the life in the place were crying out a song about you in the wind and the sunshine.And the song stayed in my ears; but even your beauty would be no more than an empty memory to me by now if that had been all.It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house, with your hand on my arm, that—what was it that happened?I only knew that your stronger magic had struck home, and that I never should forget that day, whatever the love of my life should be.Till that day I had admired as I should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but that day I felt the spell of the divinity of the lake.And next morning the waters were troubled, and she rose—the morning when I came to you with my questions, tired out with doubts that were as bitter as pain, and when I saw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure—when I saw you moved and glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and when you made me understand that for such a creature as you there had been emptiness and the mere waste of yourself for so long.Madness rose in me then, and my spirit was clamoring to say what I say at last now—that life would never seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I was taken forever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation of your voice—"

"Oh, stop!"she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face flaming and her hands clutching the cushions beside her.She spoke fast and disjointedly, her breath coming quick."You shall not talk me into forgetting common sense.What does all this mean?Oh!I do not recognize you at all—you seem another man.We are not children—have you forgotten that?You speak like a boy in love for the first time.It is foolish, unreal—I know that if you do not.I will not hear it.What has happened to you?"She was half sobbing."How can these sentimentalities come from a man like you?Where is your self-restraint?"

"Gone!"exclaimed Trent with an abrupt laugh."It has got right away!I am going after it in a minute."He looked gravely down into her eyes."I don't care so much now.I never could declare myself to you under the cloud of your great fortune.It was too great.There's nothing creditable in that feeling, as I look at it; as a matter of simple fact, it was a form of cowardice—fear of what you would think, and very likely say—fear of the world's comment too, I suppose.But the cloud being rolled away I have spoken, and I don't care so much.I can face things with a quiet mind now that I have told you the truth in its own terms. You may call it sentimentality or any other nickname you like.It is quite true that it was not intended for a scientific statement.Since it annoys you, let it be extinguished.But please believe that it was serious to me if it was comedy to you.I have said that I love you and honor you and would hold you dearest of all the world.Now give me leave to go."

But she held out her hands to him.

---

CHAPTER XIII

WRITING A LETTER

"If you insist," Trent said, "I suppose you will have your way.But I had much rather write it when I am not with you.However, if I must, bring me a tablet whiter than a star, or hand of hymning angel.Don't underestimate the sacrifice I am making.I never felt less like correspondence in my life."

She rewarded him.

"What shall I say?" he inquired, his pen hovering over the paper. "Shall I compare him to a summer's day? What shall I say?"

"Say what you want to say," she suggested helpfully.

He shook his head."What I want to say—what I have been wanting for the past twenty-four hours to say to every man, woman, and child I met—is 'Mabel and I are betrothed, and joy is borne on burning wheels.'But that wouldn't be a very good opening for a letter of strictly formal, not to say sinister character.I have got as far as 'Dear Mr. Marlowe.'What comes next?"

"I am sending you a manuscript which I thought you might like to see," she prompted as she came to his chair before the escritoire."Something of that kind.Please try.I want to see what you write, and I want it to go to him at once.You see, I would be contented enough to leave things as they are; but you say you must get at the truth, and if you must, I want it to be as soon as possible.Do it now—you know you can if you will—and I'll send it off the moment it is ready.Don't you ever feel that?—the longing to get the worrying letter into the post and off your hands, so that you can't recall it if you would, and it's no use fussing any more about it."

"I will do as you wish," he said, and turned to the paper, which he dated as from his hotel.Mrs. Manderson looked down at his bent head with a gentle light in her eyes, and made as if to place a smoothing hand upon his rather untidy crop of hair.But she did not touch it.Going in silence to the piano, she began to play very softly.It was ten minutes before Trent spoke.

"At last I am his faithfully.Do you want to see it?"

She ran across the twilight room, and turned on a reading lamp beside the escritoire.Then, leaning on his shoulder, she read what follows:

At this point Mrs. Manderson raised her eyes quickly from the letter.Her dark brows were drawn together."Two persons?"she said with a note of inquiry.

"Your uncle is the other.I sought him out last night and told him the whole story.Have you anything against it?I always felt uneasy at keeping it from him as I did, because I had led him to expect I should tell him all I discovered, and my silence looked like mystery-making.Now that it is to be cleared up finally, and there is no question of shielding you, I wanted him to know everything.He is a very shrewd adviser, too, in a way of his own; and I should like to have him with me when I see Marlowe.I have a feeling that two heads will be better than one on my side of the interview."

She sighed."Yes, of course, uncle ought to know the truth.I hope there is nobody else at all."She pressed his hand."I so much want all that horror buried—buried deep.I am very happy now, dear, but I shall be happier still when you have satisfied that curious mind of yours and found out everything, and stamped down the earth upon it all."She continued her reading.

"What a very stiff letter!"she said."Now I am sure you couldn't have made it any stiffer in your own rooms."

Trent slipped the letter and enclosure into a long envelop."This thing mustn't run any risk of going wrong.It would be best to send a special messenger with orders to deliver it into his own hands.If he's away it oughtn't to be left."

She nodded."I can arrange that.Wait here for a little."

When Mrs. Manderson returned, he was hunting through the music-cabinet.She sank on the carpet beside him in a wave of dark brown skirts."Tell me something, Philip," she said.

"If it is among the few things that I know."

"When you saw uncle last night, did you tell him about—about us?"

"I did not," he answered."I remembered you had said nothing about telling any one.It is for you—isn't it?—to decide whether we take the world into our confidence at once or later on."

"Then will you tell him?" She looked down at her clasped hands. "I wish you to tell him. Perhaps if you think you will guess why. There! that is settled." She lifted her eyes again to his, and for a time there was silence between them.

He leaned back at length in the deep chair."What a world!"he said."Mabel, will you play something on the piano that expresses mere joy, the genuine article, nothing feverish or like thorns under a pot, but joy that has decided in favor of the universe.It's a mood that can't last altogether, so we had better get all we can out of it."

She went to the instrument and struck a few chords while she thought.Then she began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony which is like the sound of the opening of the gates of Paradise.

---

CHAPTER XIV

DOUBLE CUNNING

An old oaken desk with a deep body stood by the window in a room that overlooked St.James's Park from a height.The room was large, furnished and decorated in the mode by someone who had brought taste to the work; but the hand of the bachelor lay heavy upon it.John Marlowe unlocked the desk and drew a long, stout envelop from the back of the well.

"I understand," he said to Mr. Cupples, "that you have read this."

"I read it for the first time two days ago," replied Mr. Cupples, who, seated on a sofa, was peering about the room with a benignant face."We have discussed it fully."

Marlowe turned to Trent."There is your manuscript," he said, laying the envelop on the table."I have gone over it three times.I do not believe there is another man who could have got at as much of the truth as you have set down there."

Trent ignored the compliment.He sat by the table gazing stonily at the fire, his long legs twisted beneath his chair."You mean, of course," he said, drawing the envelop towards him, "that there is more of the truth to be disclosed now.We are ready to hear you as soon as you like.I expect it will be a long story, and the longer the better, so far as I am concerned; I want to understand thoroughly.What we should both like, I think, is some preliminary account of Manderson and your relations with him.It seemed to me from the first that the character of the dead man must be somehow an element in the business."

"You were right," Marlowe answered grimly.He crossed the room and seated himself on a corner of the tall cushion-topped fender."I will begin as you suggest."

"I ought to tell you beforehand," said Trent, looking him in the eyes, "that although I am here to listen to you, I have not as yet any reason to doubt the conclusions I have stated here."He tapped the envelop."It is a defense that you will be putting forward—you understand that?"

"Perfectly."Marlowe was cool and in complete possession of himself, a man different indeed from the worn-out, nervous being Trent remembered at Marlstone a year and a half ago.His tall, lithe figure was held with the perfection of muscular tone.His brow was candid, his blue eyes were clear, though they still had, as he paused collecting his ideas, the look that had troubled Trent at their first meeting.Only the lines of his mouth showed that he knew himself in a position of difficulty, and meant to face it.

"Sigsbee Manderson was not a man of normal mind," Marlowe began in his quiet voice."Most of the very rich men I met with in America had become so by virtue of abnormal greed, or abnormal industry, or abnormal personal force, or abnormal luck.None of them had remarkable intellects.Manderson delighted too in heaping up wealth; he worked incessantly at it; he was a man of dominant will; he had quite his share of luck; but what made him singular was his brain-power.In his own country they would perhaps tell you that it was his ruthlessness in pursuit of his aims that was his most striking characteristic; but there are hundreds of them who would have carried out his plans with just as little consideration for others if they could have formed the plans.

"I used to think that his strain of Indian blood, remote as it was, might have something to do with the cunning and pitilessness of the man.Strangely enough, the existence of that strain was unknown to anyone but himself and me.It was when he asked me to apply my taste for genealogical work to his own obscure family history that I made the discovery that he had in him a share of the blood of the Iroquois chief Montour and his French wife, a terrible woman who ruled the savage politics of the tribes of the Wilderness two hundred years ago.The Mandersons were active in the fur trade on the Pennsylvania border in those days, and more than one of them married Indian women.Other Indian blood than Montour's may have descended to Manderson, for all I can say, through previous and subsequent unions; some of the wives' antecedents were quite untraceable, and there were so many generations of pioneering before the whole country was brought under civilization.Manderson was thunderstruck at what I told him, and was anxious to conceal it from every soul.Of course I never gave it away while he lived, and I don't think he supposed I would; but I have thought since that his mind took a turn against me from that time onward.It happened about a year before his death."

"Had Manderson," asked Mr. Cupples, so unexpectedly that the other started, "any definable religious attitude?"

Marlowe considered a moment."None that I ever heard of," he said."Worship and prayer were quite unknown to him, so far as I could see, and I never heard him mention religion.I should doubt if he had any real sense of God at all, or if he was capable of knowing God through the emotions.But I understood that as a child he had had a religious up-bringing with a strong moral side to it.His private life was, in the usual limited sense, blameless.He was almost ascetic in his habits, except as to smoking.I lived with him five years without ever knowing him to tell a direct verbal falsehood, constantly as he used to practise deceit in other forms. Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant matter?Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one.I suppose you might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy.The rules of the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard it.Only with them it is always war-time."

"It is a sad world," observed Mr. Cupples.

"As you say," Marlowe agreed."Now I was saying that one could always take Manderson's word if he gave it in a definite form.The first time I ever heard him utter a downright lie was on the night he died; and hearing it, I believe, saved me from being hanged as his murderer."

Marlowe stared at the light above his head, and Trent moved impatiently in his chair."Before we come to that," he said, "will you tell us exactly on what footing you were with Manderson during the years you were with him."

"We were on very good terms from beginning to end," answered Marlowe."Nothing like friendship—he was not a man for making friends—but the best of terms as between a trusted employee and his chief.I went to him as private secretary just after getting my degree at Oxford.For a long time I liked the position greatly.When one is attached to an active American plutocrat in the prime of life one need not have many dull moments.Besides, it made me independent.My father had some serious business reverses about that time, and I was glad to be able to do without an allowance from him.At the end of the first year Manderson doubled my salary.'It's big money,' he said, 'but I guess I don't lose.'

"You see, by that time I was doing a great deal more than accompany him on horseback in the morning and play chess in the evening, which was mainly what he had required.I was attending to his houses, his farm in Ohio, his shooting in Maine, his horses, his cars and his yacht.I had become a walking railway-guide and an expert cigar-buyer.I was always learning something.

"Well, now you understand what my position was in regard to Manderson during the last few years of my connection with him.It was a happy life for me on the whole.I was busy, my work was varied and interesting.I had time to amuse myself, too, and money to spend.At one time I made a fool of myself about a girl, and that was not a happy time; but it taught me to understand the great goodness of Mrs. Manderson."Marlowe inclined his head to Mr. Cupples as he said this."She may choose to tell you about it.As for her husband, he had never varied in his attitude towards me, in spite of the change that came over him in the last months of his life, as you know.He treated me well and generously in his unsympathetic way, and I never had a feeling that he was less than satisfied with his bargain—that was the sort of footing we lived upon.And it was that continuance of his attitude right up to the end that made the revelation so shocking when I was suddenly shown, on the night on which he met his end, the depth of crazy hatred of myself that was in Manderson's soul."

The eyes of Trent and Mr. Cupples met for an instant.

"You never suspected that he hated you before that time?"asked Trent, and Mr. Cupples asked at the same moment: "To what did you attribute it?"

"I never guessed until that night," answered Marlowe, "that he had the smallest ill-feeling toward me.How long it had existed I do not know.I cannot imagine why it was there.I was forced to think, when I considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a case of a madman's delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against him, as they so often do.Some such insane conviction must have been at the root of it.But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy?Can you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death with the object of delivering someone he hates to the hangman?"

Mr. Cupples moved sharply in his chair."You say Manderson was responsible for his own death?"he asked.Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent watch upon the face of Marlowe.In the relief of speech it was now less pale and drawn.

"I do say so," Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in the face.Mr. Cupples nodded.

"Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement," observed the old gentleman, in the tone of one discussing a point of abstract science, "it may be remarked that the state of mind which you attribute to Manderson—"

"Suppose we have the story first," Trent interrupted, gently laying a hand on Mr. Cupples' arm."You were telling us," he went on, turning to Marlowe, "how things stood between you and Manderson.Now will you tell us the facts of what happened that night?"

Marlowe flushed at the barely perceptible emphasis which Trent laid upon the word "facts."He drew himself up.

"Bunner and myself dined with Mr. and Mrs. Manderson that Sunday evening," he began, speaking carefully."It was just like other dinners at which the four of us had been together.Manderson was taciturn and gloomy, as we had latterly been accustomed to see him.We others kept a conversation going.We rose from the table, I suppose, about nine.Mrs. Manderson went to the drawing-room, and Bunner went up to the hotel to see an acquaintance.Manderson asked me to come into the orchard behind the house, saying he wished to have a talk.We paced up and down the pathway there, out of earshot from the house, and Manderson, as he smoked his cigar, spoke to me in his cool, deliberate way.He had never seemed more sane, or more well-disposed to me.

"He said he wanted me to do him an important service.There was a big thing on.It was a secret affair.Bunner knew nothing of it, and the less I knew the better.He wanted me to do exactly as he directed, and not bother my head about reasons.

"This, I may say, was quite characteristic of Manderson's method of going to work.If at times he required a man to be a mere tool in his hand, he would tell him so.He had used me in the same kind of way a dozen times.I assured him he could rely on me, and said I was ready.'Right now?'he asked.I said, of course I was.

"He nodded, and said—I tell you his words as well as I can recollect them—'Well, attend to this.There is a man in England now who is in this thing with me.He was to have left to-morrow for Paris by the noon boat from Southampton to Havre.His name is George Harris—at least that's the name he is going by.Do you remember that name?''Yes,' I said, 'when I went up to London a week ago you asked me to book a cabin in that name on the boat that goes to-morrow.I gave you the ticket.''Here it is,' he said, producing it from his pocket.

"'Now,' Manderson said to me, poking his cigar-butt at me with each sentence in a way he used to have, 'George Harris cannot leave England to-morrow. I find I shall want him where he is. And I want Bunner where he is. But somebody has got to go by that boat and take certain papers to Paris. Or else my plan is going to fall to pieces. Will you go?' I said, 'Certainly. I am here to obey orders.'

"He bit his cigar, and said: 'That's all right: but these are not just ordinary orders;—not the kind of thing one can ask of a man in the ordinary way of his duty to an employer.The point is this.The deal I am busy with is one in which neither myself nor any one known to be connected with me must appear as yet.That is vital.But these people I am up against know your face as well as they know mine.If my secretary is known in certain quarters to have crossed to Paris at this time and to have interviewed certain people—and that would be known as soon as it happened—then the game is up.'He threw away his cigar-end and looked at me questioningly.

"I didn't like it much, but I liked failing Manderson at a pinch still less.I spoke lightly.I said I supposed I should have to conceal my identity, and I would do my best.I told him I used to be pretty good at make-up.

"He nodded in approval.He said: 'That's good.I judged you would not let me down.'Then he gave me my instructions—'You take the car right now and start for Southampton—there's no train that will fit in.You'll be driving all night.Barring accidents, you ought to get there by six in the morning.But whenever you arrive, drive straight to the Grand Hotel and ask for George Harris.If he's there, tell him you are to go over instead of him, and ask him to telephone me here.It is very important he should know that at the earliest moment possible.But if he isn't there, that means he has got the instructions I wired to-day, and hasn't gone to Southampton.In that case you don't want to trouble about him any more, but just wait for the boat.You can leave the car at a garage under a fancy name—mine must not be given.See about changing your appearance—I don't care how, so you do it well.Travel by the boat as George Harris.Let on to be anything you like, but be careful, and don't talk much to anybody.When you arrive, take a room at the Hotel St.Petersburg.You will receive a note or message there, addressed to George Harris, telling you where to take the wallet I shall give you.The wallet is locked, and you want to take good care of it.Have you got all that clear?'

"I repeated the instructions.I asked if I should return from Paris after handing over the wallet.'As soon as you like,' he said.'And mind this—whatever happens, don't communicate with me at any stage of the journey.If you don't get the message in Paris at once, just wait until you do—days, if necessary.But not a line of any sort to me.Understand?Now get ready as quick as you can.I'll go with you in the car a little way.Hurry!'

"That is, so far as I can remember, the exact substance of what Manderson said to me that night.I went to my room, changed into day clothes, and hastily threw a few necessaries into a kit-bag.My mind was in a whirl, not so much at the nature of the business as at the suddenness of it.I think I remember telling you the last time we met"—he turned to Trent—"that Manderson had rather a fondness for doing things in a story-book style.Other things being equal, he delighted in a bit of mystification and melodrama, and I told myself that this was Manderson all over.I hurried downstairs with my bag and rejoined him in the library.He handed me a stout leather letter-case, about eight inches by six, fastened with a strap with a lock on it.I could just squeeze it into my side-pocket.Then I went to get out the car from the garage behind the house.

"As I was bringing it round to the front a disconcerting thought struck me.I remembered that I had only a few shillings in my pocket.

"For some time past I had been keeping myself very short of cash, and for this reason—which I tell you because it is a vital point, as you will see in a minute.I was living temporarily on borrowed money.I had always been careless about money while I was with Manderson, and being a gregarious animal I had made many friends, most of them belonging to a New York set that had little to do but get rid of the large incomes given them by their parents.Still, I was very well paid, and I was too busy even to attempt to go very far with them in that amusing occupation.I was still well on the right side of the ledger until I began, merely out of curiosity, to play at speculation.It's a very old story—particularly in Wall Street.I thought it was easy; I was lucky at first; I would always be prudent—and so on.Then came the day when I went out of my depth.In one week I was separated from my roll, as Bunner expressed it when I told him; and I owed money, too.I had had my lesson.Now in this pass I went to Manderson and told him what I had done and how I stood.He heard me with a very grim smile, and then, with the nearest approach to sympathy I had ever found in him, he advanced me a sum on account of my salary that would clear me.'Don't play the markets any more,' was all he said.

"Now on that Sunday night Manderson knew that I was practically without any money in the world.He knew that Bunner knew it, too.He may have known that I had even borrowed a little more from Bunner for pocket-money until my next check was due, which, owing to my anticipation of my salary, would not have been a large one.Bear this knowledge of Manderson's in mind.

"As soon as I had brought the car round I went into the library and stated the difficulty to Manderson.

"What followed gave me, slight as it was, my first impression of something odd being afoot.As soon as I mentioned the word 'expenses' his hand went mechanically to his left hip-pocket, where he always kept a little case containing notes to the value of about a hundred pounds in our money.This was such a rooted habit in him that I was astonished to see him check the movement suddenly.Then, to my greater amazement, he swore viciously under his breath.I had never heard him do this before; but Bunner had told me that of late he had often shown irritation in this way when they were alone.'Has he mislaid his note-case?'was the question that flashed through my mind.But it seemed to me that it could not affect his plan at all, and I will tell you why.The week before, when I had gone up to London to carry out various commissions, including the booking of a berth for Mr. George Harris, I had drawn a thousand pounds for Manderson from his bankers; and all, at his request, in notes of small amounts.I did not know what this unusually large sum in cash was for; but I did know that the packets of notes were in his locked desk in the library, or had been earlier in the day, when I had seen him fingering them as he sat at the desk.

"But instead of turning to the desk, Manderson stood looking at me.There was fury in his face, and it was a strange sight to see him gradually master it until his eyes grew cold again.'Wait in the car,' he said slowly.'I will get some money.'We both went out, and as I was getting into my overcoat in the hall I saw him enter the drawing-room, which, you remember, was on the other side of the entrance hall.

"I stepped out onto the lawn before the house and smoked a cigarette, pacing up and down.I was asking myself again and again where that thousand pounds was; whether it was in the drawing-room; and if so, why.Presently, as I passed one of the drawing-room windows, I noticed Mrs. Manderson's shadow on the thin silk curtain.She was standing at her escritoire.The window was open, and as I passed I heard her say: 'I have not quite thirty pounds here.Will that be enough?'I did not hear the answer, but next moment Manderson's shadow was mingled with hers, and I heard the chink of money.Then, as he stood by the window, and as I was moving away, these words of his came to my ears—and these at least I can repeat exactly, for astonishment stamped them on my memory—'I'm going out now.Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a moonlight run in the car.He is very urgent about it.He says it will help me to sleep, and I guess he is right.'

"I have told you that in the course of four years I had never once heard Manderson utter a direct lie about anything great or small.I believed that I understood the man's queer skin-deep morality, and I could have sworn that if he was firmly pressed with a question that could not be evaded he would either refuse to answer or tell the truth.But what had I just heard?No answer to any question.A voluntary statement, precise in terms, that was utterly false.The unimaginable had happened.It was almost as if one's dearest friend, in a moment of closest sympathy, had suddenly struck one in the face.The blood rushed to my head, and I stood still on the grass.I stood there until I heard his step at the front-door, and then I pulled myself together and stepped quickly to the car.He handed me a banker's paper bag with gold and notes in it.'There's more than you'll want there,' he said, and I pocketed it mechanically.

"For a minute or so I stood discussing with Manderson—it was by one of those tours de force of which one's mind is capable under great excitement—certain points about the route of the long drive before me. I had made the run several times by day, and I believe I spoke quite calmly and naturally about it. But while I spoke my mind was seething in a flood of suddenly-born suspicion and fear. I did not know what I feared. I simply felt fear, somehow—I did not know how—connected with Manderson. My soul once opened to it, fear rushed in like an assaulting army. I felt—I knew—that something was altogether wrong and sinister, and I felt myself to be the object of it. Yet Manderson was surely no enemy of mine. Then my thoughts reached out wildly for an answer to the question why he had told that lie. And all the time the blood hammered in my ears: 'Where is that money?' Reason struggled hard to set up the suggestion that the two things were not necessarily connected. The instinct of a man in danger would not listen to it. As we started, and the car took the curve into the road, it was merely the unconscious part of me that steered and controlled it, and that made occasional empty remarks as we slid along in the moonlight. Within me was a confusion and vague alarm that was far worse than any definite terror I ever felt.

"About a mile from the house, you remember, one passed on one's left a gate on the other side of which was the golf-course.There Manderson said he would get down, and I stopped the car.'You've got it all clear?'he asked.With a sort of wrench I forced myself to remember and repeat the directions given me.'That's O.K.,' he said.'Good-by, then.Stay with that wallet.'Those were the last words I heard him speak as the car moved gently away from him."

Marlowe rose from his chair and pressed his hands to his eyes.He was flushed with the excitement of his own narrative, and there was in his look a horror of recollection that held both the listeners silent.He shook himself with a movement like a dog's, and then, his hands behind him, stood erect before the fire as he continued his tale.

"I expect you both know what the back-reflector of a motor-car is."

Trent nodded quickly, his face alive with anticipation; but Mr. Cupples, who cherished a mild but obstinate prejudice against motor-cars, readily confessed to ignorance.

"It is a small round or more often rectangular mirror," Marlowe explained, "rigged out from the right side of the screen in front of the driver, and adjusted in such a way that he can see, without turning round, if anything is coming up behind to pass him.It is quite an ordinary appliance, and there was one on this car.As the car moved on, and Manderson ceased speaking behind me, I saw in that mirror a thing that I wish I could forget."

Marlowe was silent for a moment, staring at the wall before him.

"Manderson's face," he said in a low tone."He was standing in the road, looking after me, only a few yards behind, and the moonlight was full on his face.The mirror happened to catch it for an instant.

"Physical habit is a wonderful thing.I did not shift hand or foot on the controlling mechanism of the car.Indeed, I dare say it steadied me against the shock to have myself braced to the business of driving.You have read in books, I dare say, of hell looking out of a man's eyes, but perhaps you don't know what a good metaphor that is.If I had not known Manderson was there, I should not have recognized the face.It was that of a madman, distorted, hideous in the imbecility of hate, the teeth bared in a simian grin of ferocity and triumph, the eyes—!In the little mirror I had this glimpse of the face alone; I saw nothing of whatever gesture there may have been as that writhing white mask glared after me.And I saw it only for a flash.The car went on, gathering speed, and as it went, my brain, suddenly purged of the vapors of doubt and perplexity, was as busy as the throbbing engine before my feet.I knew.

"You say something in that manuscript of yours, Mr. Trent, about the swift, automatic way in which one's ideas arrange themselves about some new, illuminating thought.It is quite true.The awful intensity of ill-will that had flamed after me from those straining eyeballs had poured over my mind like a search-light.I was thinking quite clearly now, and almost coldly, for I knew what—at least I knew whom—I had to fear, and instinct warned me that it was not a time to give room to the emotions that were fighting to possess me.The man hated me insanely.That incredible fact I suddenly knew.But the face had told me—it would have told anybody—more than that.It was a face of hatred gratified, it proclaimed some damnable triumph.It had gloated over me driving away to my fate.This too was plain to me.And to what fate?

"I stopped the car.It had gone about two hundred and fifty yards, and a sharp bend of the road hid the spot where I had set Manderson down.I lay back in the seat and thought it out.Something was to happen to me.In Paris?Probably—why else should I be sent there, with money and a ticket?But why Paris?That puzzled me, for I had no melodramatic ideas about Paris.I put the point aside for a moment.I turned to the other things that had roused my attention that evening.The lie about my 'persuading him to go for a moonlight run.'What was the intention of that?Manderson, I said to myself, will be returning without me while I am on my way to Southampton.What will he tell them about me?How account for his returning alone and without the car?As I asked myself that sinister question there rushed into my mind the last of my difficulties: 'Where are the thousand pounds?'And in the same instant came the answer: 'The thousand pounds are in my pocket.'

"I got up and stepped from the car.My knees trembled and I felt very sick.I saw the plot now—as I thought.The whole of the story about the papers and the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind.With Manderson's money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed him, I was to all appearance attempting to escape from England, with every precaution that guilt could suggest.He would communicate with the police at once, and would know how to put them on my track.I should be arrested in Paris—if I got so far—living under a false name, after having left the car under a false name, disguised myself, and traveled in a cabin which I had booked in advance, also under a false name.It would be plainly the crime of a man without money, and for some reason desperately in want of it.As for my account of the affair, it would be too preposterous.

"As this ghastly array of incriminating circumstances rose up before me, I dragged the stout letter-case from my pocket.In the intensity of the moment I never entertained the faintest doubt that I was right, and that the money was there.It would easily hold the packets of notes.But as I felt it and weighed it in my hands it seemed to me there must be more than this.It was too bulky.What more was to be laid to my charge?After all, a thousand pounds was not much to tempt a man like myself to run the risk of penal servitude.In this new agitation, scarcely knowing what I did, I caught the surrounding strap in my fingers just above the fastening and tore the staple out of the lock.These locks, you know, are pretty flimsy as a rule."

Here Marlowe paused and walked to the oaken desk before the window.Opening a drawer full of miscellaneous objects, he took out a box of odd keys, and selected a small one distinguished by a piece of pink tape.

He handed it to Trent."I keep that by me as a sort of morbid memento.It is the key to the lock I smashed.I might have saved myself the trouble if I had known that this key was at that moment in the left-hand side-pocket of my overcoat.Manderson must have slipped it in, either while the coat was hanging in the hall or while he sat at my side in the car.I might not have found the tiny thing there for weeks—as a matter of fact I did find it two days after Manderson was dead—but a police search would have found it in five minutes.And then I—I with the case and its contents in my pocket, my false name and my sham spectacles and the rest of it—I should have had no explanation to offer but the highly convincing one that I didn't know the key was there."

Trent dangled the key by its tape idly.Then—"How do you know this is the key of that case?"he asked quickly.

"I tried it.As soon as I found it I went up and fitted it to the lock.I knew where I had left the thing.So do you, I think, Mr. Trent.Don't you?"There was a faint shade of mockery in Marlowe's voice.

"Touché!"Trent said, with a dry smile."I found a large empty letter-case with a burst lock lying with other odds and ends on the dressing-table in Manderson's room.Your statement is that you put it there.I could make nothing of it."He closed his lips.

"There was no reason for hiding it," said Marlowe."But to get back to my story.I burst the lock of the strap.I opened the case before one of the lamps of the car.The first thing I found in it I ought to have expected, of course; but I hadn't."He paused and glanced at Trent.

"It was—" began Trent mechanically; and then stopped himself."Try not to bring me in any more, if you don't mind," he said, meeting the other's eye."I have complimented you already in that document on your cleverness.You need not prove it by making the judge help you out with your evidence."

"All right," agreed Marlowe. "I couldn't resist just that much. If you had been in my place you would have known before I did that Manderson's little pocket case was there. As soon as I saw it, of course, I remembered his not having had it about him when I asked for money, and his surprising anger. He had made a false step. He had already fastened his note-case up with the rest of what was to figure as my plunder, and placed it in my hands. I opened it. It contained a few notes as usual—I didn't count them.

"Tucked into the flaps of the big case in packets were the other notes, just as I had brought them from London.And with them were two small wash-leather bags, the look of which I knew well.My heart jumped sickeningly again, for this too was utterly unexpected.In those bags Manderson kept the diamonds in which he had been investing for some time past.I didn't open them; I could feel the tiny stones shifting under the pressure of my fingers.How many thousands of pounds' worth there were there I have no idea.We had regarded Manderson's diamond-buying as merely a speculative fad.I believe now that it was the earliest movement in the scheme for my ruin.For any one like myself to be represented as having robbed him there ought to be a strong inducement shown.That had been provided with a vengeance.

"Now, I thought, I have the whole thing plain, and I must act.I saw instantly what I must do.I had left Manderson about a mile from the house.It would take him twenty minutes, fifteen if he walked fast, to get back to the house, where he would of course immediately tell his story of robbery, and probably telephone at once to the police in Bishopsbridge.I had left him only five or six minutes ago—for all that I have just told you was as quick thinking as I ever did.It would be easy to overtake him in the car before he neared the house.There would be an awkward interview—I set my teeth as I thought of it, and all my fears vanished as I began to savor the gratification of telling him my opinion of him.There are probably few people who ever positively looked forward to an awkward interview with Manderson; but I was mad with rage.My honor and my liberty had been plotted against with detestable treachery.I did not consider what would follow the interview.That would arrange itself.

"I had started and turned the car—I was already going fast—when I heard the sound of a shot in front of me, to the right.

"Instantly I stopped the car.My first wild thought was that Manderson was shooting at me.Then I realized that the noise had not been close at hand.I could see nobody on the road, though the moonlight flooded it.I had left Manderson at a spot just round a corner that was now some fifty yards ahead of me.I started again, and turned the corner at a slow pace.Then I stopped again with a jar, and for a moment I sat perfectly still.

"Manderson lay dead a few steps from me on the turf within the gate, clearly visible to me in the moonlight."

Marlowe made another pause, and Trent, with a puckered brow, inquired: "On the golf-course?"

"Obviously," remarked Mr. Cupples."The eighth green is just there."He had grown more and more interested as Marlowe went on, and was now playing feverishly with his thin beard.

"On the green, quite close to the flag," said Marlowe."He lay on his back, his arms were stretched abroad, his jacket and heavy overcoat were open; the light shone hideously on his white face and his shirt-front; it glistened on his bared teeth and one of the eyes.The other ...you saw it.The man was certainly dead.As I sat there stunned, unable for the moment to think at all, I could even see a thin dark line of blood running down from the shattered socket to the ear.Close by lay his soft black hat, and at his feet a pistol.

"I suppose it was only a few seconds that I sat helplessly staring at the body.Then I rose and moved to it with dragging feet; for now the truth had come to me at last, and I realized the fullness of my appalling danger.It was not only my liberty or my honor that the maniac had undermined.It was death that he had planned for me; death with the degradation of the scaffold.To strike me down with certainty he had not hesitated to end his life—a life which was, no doubt, already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and the last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps, to a devilish joy by the thought that he dragged down my life with his.For, so far as I could see at the moment, my situation was utterly hopeless.If it had been desperate on the assumption that Manderson meant to denounce me as a thief, what was it now that his corpse denounced me as a murderer?

"I picked up the revolver and saw, almost without emotion, that it was my own—Manderson had taken it from my room, I suppose, while I was getting out the car.At the same moment I remembered that it was by Manderson's suggestion that I had had it engraved with my initials, to distinguish it from a precisely similar weapon which he had of his own.

"I bent over the body and satisfied myself that there was no life left in it.I must tell you here that I did not notice, then or afterwards, the scratches and marks on the wrists which were taken as evidence of a struggle with an assailant.But I have no doubt that Manderson deliberately injured himself in this way before firing the shot; it was a part of his plan.

"Though I never perceived that detail, however, it was evident enough as I looked at the body that Manderson had not forgotten, in his last act on earth, to tie me tighter by putting out of court the question of suicide.He had clearly been at pains to hold the pistol at arm's length, and there was not a trace of smoke or of burning on the face.The wound was absolutely clean, and was already ceasing to bleed outwardly.I rose and paced the green, reckoning up the points in the crushing case against me.

"I was the last to be seen with Manderson.I had persuaded him—so he had lied to his wife and, as I afterwards knew, to the butler—to go with me for the drive from which he never returned.My pistol had killed him.It was true that by discovering his plot I had saved myself from heaping up further incriminating facts—flight, concealment, the possession of the treasure.But what need of them, after all?As I stood, what hope was there?What could I do?"

Marlowe came to the table and leaned forward with his hands upon it."I want," he said very earnestly, "to try to make you understand what was in my mind when I decided to do what I did.I hope you won't be bored, because I must do it.You may both have thought I acted like a fool.But after all the police never suspected me.I walked that green for a quarter of an hour, I suppose, thinking the thing out like a game of chess.I had to think ahead and think coolly; for my safety depended on upsetting the plans of one of the longest-headed men who ever lived.And remember that, for all I knew, there were details of the scheme still hidden from me, waiting to crush me.

"Two plain courses presented themselves at once.Either of them, I thought, would certainly prove fatal.I could, in the first place, do the completely straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my story, hand over the notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power of truth and innocence.I could have laughed as I thought of it.I saw myself bringing home the corpse and giving an account of myself, boggling with sheer shame over the absurdity of my wholly unsupported tale as I brought a charge of mad hatred and fiendish treachery against a man who had never, so far as I knew, had a word to say against me.At every turn the cunning of Manderson had forestalled me.His careful concealment of such a hatred was a characteristic feature of the stratagem; only a man of his iron self-restraint could have done it.You can see for yourselves how every fact in my statement would appear, in the shadow of Manderson's death, a clumsy lie.I tried to imagine myself telling such a story to the counsel for my defense.I could see the face with which he would listen to it; I could read in the lines of it his thought, that to put forward such an impudent farrago would mean merely the disappearance of any chance there might be of a commutation of the capital sentence.

"True, I had not fled; I had brought back the body; I had handed over the property.But how did that help me?It would only suggest that I had yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that, when I found that I had done murder, the heart went out of me.Turn it which way I would, I could see no hope of escape by this plan of action.

"The second of the obvious things that I might do was to take the hint offered by the situation, and to fly at once.That too must prove fatal.There was the body.I had no time to hide it in such a way that it would not be found at the first systematic search.But whatever I should do with the body, Manderson's not returning to the house would cause uneasiness in two or three hours at most.Martin would suspect an accident to the car, and would telephone to the police.At daybreak the roads would be scoured and inquiries telegraphed in every direction.The police would act on the possibility of there being foul play.They would spread their nets with energy in such a big business as the disappearance of Manderson.Ports and railway termini would be watched.Within twenty-four hours the body would be found, and the whole country would be on the alert for me—all Europe scarcely less; I did not believe there was a spot in Christendom where the man accused of Manderson's murder could pass unchallenged, with every newspaper crying the fact of his death into the ears of all the world.Every stranger would be suspected; every man, woman and child would be a detective.The car, wherever I should abandon it, would put people on my track.If I had to choose between two utterly hopeless courses, I decided, I would take that of telling the preposterous truth.

"But now I cast about desperately for some tale that would seem more plausible than the truth.Could I save my neck by a lie?One after another came into my mind; I need not trouble to remember them now.Each had its own futilities and perils; but every one split upon the fact—or what would be taken for fact—that I had induced Manderson to go out with me, and the fact that he had never returned alive.Notion after notion I swiftly rejected as I paced there by the dead man, and doom seemed to settle down upon me more heavily as the moments passed.Then a strange thought came to me.

"Several times I had repeated to myself half-consciously, as a sort of refrain, the words in which I had heard Manderson tell his wife that I had induced him to go out.'Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a moonlight run in the car.He is very urgent about it.'All at once it struck me that, without meaning to do so, I was saying this in Manderson's voice.

"As you found out for yourself, Mr. Trent, I have a natural gift of mimicry. I had imitated Manderson's voice many times so successfully as to deceive even Bunner, who had been much more in his company than his own wife. It was, you remember,"—Marlowe turned to Mr. Cupples—"a strong, metallic voice, of great carrying power, so unusual as to make it a very fascinating voice to imitate, and at the same time very easy. I said the words carefully to myself again, like this—" he uttered them, and Mr. Cupples opened his eyes in amazement—"and then I struck my hand upon the low wall beside me. 'Manderson never returned alive?' I said aloud. 'But Manderson shall return alive!'

"In thirty seconds the bare outline of the plan was complete in my mind.I did not wait to think over details.Every instant was precious now; I lifted the body and laid it on the floor of the car, covered with a rug.I took the hat and the revolver.Not one trace remained on the green, I believe, of that night's work.As I drove back to White Gables my design took shape before me with a rapidity and ease that filled me with a wild excitement.I should escape yet!It was all so easy if I kept my pluck.Putting aside the unusual and unlikely, I should not fail.I wanted to shout, to scream!Nearing the house I slackened speed, and carefully reconnoitered the road.Nothing was moving.I turned the car into the open field on the other side of the road, about twenty paces short of the little door at the extreme corner of the grounds.I brought it to rest behind a stack.When, with Manderson's hat on my head and the pistol in my pocket, I had staggered with the body across the moonlit road and through that door, I left much of my apprehension behind me.With swift action and an unbroken nerve, I thought I ought to succeed."

With a long sigh Marlowe threw himself into one of the deep chairs at the fireside, and passed his handkerchief over his damp forehead.Each of his hearers, too, drew a deep breath, but not audibly.

"Everything else you know," he said.He took a cigarette from a box beside him and lighted it.Trent watched the very slight quiver of the hand that held the match, and privately noted that his own at the moment was not so steady.

"The shoes that betrayed me to you," pursued Marlowe after a short silence, "were painful all the time I wore them, but I never dreamed that they had given anywhere.I knew that no footstep of mine must appear by any accident in the soft ground about the hut where I laid the body, or between the hut and the house, so I took the shoes off and crammed my feet into them as soon as I was inside the little door.I left my own shoes, with my own jacket and overcoat, near the body, ready to be resumed later.I made a clear footmark on the soft gravel outside the French window, and several on the drugget round the carpet.The stripping off of the outer clothing of the body and the dressing of it afterwards in the brown suit and shoes, and putting the things into the pockets, was a horrible business; and getting the teeth out of the mouth was worse.The head ...but you don't want to hear about it.I didn't feel it much at the time.I was wriggling my own head out of a noose, you see.I wish I had thought of pulling down the cuffs, and had tied the shoes more neatly.And putting the watch in the wrong pocket was a bad mistake.It had all to be done so hurriedly.

"You were wrong, by the way, about the whisky.After one stiffish drink I had no more; but I filled up a flask that was in the cupboard, and pocketed it.I had a night of peculiar anxiety and effort in front of me, and I didn't know how I should stand it.I had to take some once or twice during the drive.Speaking of that, you give rather a generous allowance of time in your document for doing that run by night.You say that to get to Southampton by half-past six in that car under the conditions, a man must, even if he drove like a demon, have left Marlstone by twelve at latest.I had not got the body dressed in the other suit, with tie and watch-chain and so forth, until nearly ten minutes past; and then I had to get to the car and start it going....But then I don't suppose any demon would have taken the risks I did in that car at night, without a head-light.It turns me cold to think of it now.

"There's nothing much to say about what I did in the house.I spent the time after Martin had left me in carefully thinking over the remaining steps in my plan, while I unloaded and thoroughly cleaned the revolver, using my handkerchief and a penholder from the desk.I also placed the packets of notes, the note-case and the diamonds in the roll-top desk, which I opened and re-locked with Manderson's key.When I went upstairs it was a trying moment, for though I was safe from the eyes of Martin as he sat in his pantry, there was a faint possibility of somebody being about on the bedroom floor.I had sometimes found the French maid wandering about there when the other servants were in bed.Bunner, I knew, was a deep sleeper.Mrs. Manderson, I had gathered from things I had heard her say, was usually asleep by eleven; I had thought it possible that her gift of sleep had helped her to retain all her beauty and vitality in spite of a marriage which we all knew was an unhappy one.Still, it was uneasy work mounting the stairs and holding myself ready to retreat to the library again at the least sound from above.But nothing happened.

"The first thing I did on reaching the corridor was to enter my room and put the revolver and cartridges back in the case.Then I turned off the light and went quietly into Manderson's room.

"What I had to do there you know.I had to take off the shoes and put them outside the door, leave Manderson's jacket, waistcoat, trousers and black tie, after taking everything out of the pockets, select a suit and tie and shoes for the body, and place the dental plate in the bowl, which I moved from the washing-stand to the bedside, leaving those ruinous finger-marks as I did so.The marks on the drawer must have been made when I shut it after taking out the tie.Then I had to lie down in the bed and tumble it.You know all about it—all except my state of mind, which you couldn't imagine, and I couldn't describe.

"The worst came when I had hardly begun my operations; the moment when Mrs. Manderson spoke from the room where I supposed her asleep.I was prepared for it happening; it was a possibility; but I nearly lost my nerve all the same.However....

"By the way, I may tell you this: in the extremely unlikely contingency of Mrs. Manderson remaining awake and so putting out of the question my escape by way of her window, I had planned simply to remain where I was a few hours, and then, not speaking to her, to leave the house quickly and quietly by the ordinary way.Martin would have been in bed by that time.I might have been heard to leave, but not seen.I should have done just as I had planned with the body, and then made the best time I could in the car to Southampton.The difference would have been that I couldn't have furnished an unquestionable alibi by turning up at the hotel at six-thirty.I should have made the best of it by driving straight to the docks and making my ostentatious inquiries there.I could in any case have got there long before the boat left at noon.I couldn't see that anybody could suspect me of the supposed murder in any case; but if any one had, and if I hadn't arrived until ten o'clock, say, I shouldn't have been able to answer: 'It is impossible for me to have got to Southampton so soon after shooting him.'I should simply have had to say I was delayed by a break-down after leaving Manderson at half-past ten, and challenged any one to produce any fact connecting me with the crime.They couldn't have done it.The pistol, left openly in my room, might have been used by anybody, even if it could be proved that that particular pistol was used.Nobody could reasonably connect me with the shooting so long as it was believed that it was Manderson who had returned to the house.The suspicion could not, I was confident, enter any one's mind.All the same, I wanted to introduce the element of absolute physical impossibility; I knew I should feel ten times as safe with that.

"So when I knew from the sound of her breathing that Mrs. Manderson was asleep again I walked quickly across her room in my stocking feet and was on the grass with my bundle in ten seconds.I don't think I made the least noise.The curtain before the window was of soft, thick stuff and didn't rustle, and when I pushed the glass doors further open there was not a sound."

"Tell me," said Trent as the other stopped to light a new cigarette, "why you took the risk of going through Mrs. Manderson's room to escape from the house?I could see when I looked into the thing on the spot why it had to be on that side of the house; there was a danger of being seen by Martin or by some servant at a bedroom window if you got out by a window on one of the other sides.But there were three unoccupied rooms on that side: two spare bedrooms and Mrs. Manderson's sitting-room.I should have thought it would have been safer, after you had done what was necessary to your plan in Manderson's room, to leave it quietly and escape through one of those three rooms....The fact that you went through her window, you know," he added coldly, "might have suggested, if it became known, a certain suspicion in regard to the lady herself.I think you understand me."

Marlowe turned upon him with a glowing face."And I think you will understand me, Mr. Trent," he said in a voice that shook a little, "when I say that if such a possibility had occurred to me then, I would have taken any risk rather than make my escape by that way....Oh, well!"he went on more coolly, "I suppose that to any one who didn't know her the idea of her being privy to her husband's murder might not seem so indescribably fatuous.Forgive the expression."He looked attentively at the burning end of his cigarette, studiously unconscious of the red flag that flew in Trent's eyes for an instant at his words and the tone of them.

That emotion, however, was conquered at once."Your remark is perfectly just," Trent said with answering coolness."I can quite believe, too, that at the time you didn't think of the possibility I mentioned.But surely, apart from that, it would have been safer to do as I said: go by the window of an unoccupied room."

"Do you think so?" said Marlowe. "All I can say is I hadn't the nerve to do it. I tell you, when I entered Manderson's room I shut the door of it on more than half my terrors. I had the problem confined before me in a closed space, with only one danger in it, and that a known danger: the danger of Mrs. Manderson. The thing was almost done: I had only to wait until she was certainly asleep after her few moments of waking up, for which, as I told you, I was prepared as a possibility. Barring accidents, the way was clear. But now suppose that I, carrying Manderson's clothes and shoes, had opened that door again and gone in my shirt-sleeves and socks to enter one of the empty rooms. The moonlight was flooding the corridor through the end-window. Even if my face were concealed, nobody could mistake my standing figure for Manderson's. Martin might be going about the house in his silent way. Bunner might come out of his bedroom. One of the servants who were supposed to be in bed might come round the corner from the other passage—I had found Célestine prowling about quite as late as it was then. None of these things was very likely; but they were all too likely for me. They were uncertainties. Shut off from the household in Manderson's room I knew exactly what I had to face. As I lay in my clothes in Manderson's bed and listened for the almost inaudible breathing through the open door I felt far more ease of mind, terrible as my anxiety was, than I had felt since I saw the dead body on the turf. I even congratulated myself that I had had the chance, through Mrs. Manderson's speaking to me, of tightening one of the screws in my scheme by repeating the statement about my having been sent to Southampton."

Marlowe looked at Trent, who nodded as who should say that his point was met.

"As for Southampton," pursued Marlowe, "you know what I did when I got there, I have no doubt.I had decided to take Manderson's story about the mysterious Harris and act it out on my own lines.It was a carefully prepared lie, better than anything I could improvise.I even went so far as to get through a trunk call to the hotel at Southampton from the library before starting, and ask if Harris was there.As I expected, he wasn't."

"Was that why you telephoned?"Trent inquired quickly.

"The reason for telephoning was to get myself into an attitude in which Martin couldn't see my face or anything but the jacket and hat, yet which was a natural and familiar attitude.But while I was about it, it was obviously better to make a genuine call.If I had simply pretended to be telephoning, the people at the exchange could have told you at once that there hadn't been a call from White Gables that night."

"One of the first things I did was to make that inquiry," said Trent."That telephone call, and the wire you sent from Southampton to the dead man, to say Harris hadn't turned up and you were returning—both those appealed to me."

A constrained smile lighted Marlowe's face for a moment."I don't know that there's anything more to tell.I returned to Marlstone, and faced your friend the detective with such nerve as I had left.The worst was when I heard you had been put on the case—no, that wasn't the worst.The worst was when I saw you walk out of the shrubbery the next day, coming away from the shed where I had laid the body.For one ghastly moment I thought you were going to give me in charge on the spot.Now I've told you everything, you don't look so terrible."

He closed his eyes, and there was a short silence.Then Trent got suddenly to his feet.

"Cross-examination?"inquired Marlowe, looking at him gravely.

"Not at all," said Trent, stretching his long limbs."Only stiffness of the legs.I don't want to ask any questions.I believe what you have told us.I don't believe it simply because I always liked your face, or because it saves awkwardness, which are the most usual reasons for believing a person, but because my vanity will have it that no man could lie to me steadily for an hour without my perceiving it.Your story is an extraordinary one; but Manderson was an extraordinary man, and so are you.You acted like a lunatic in doing what you did; but I quite agree with you that if you had acted like a sane man you wouldn't have had the hundredth part of a dog's chance with a judge and jury.One thing is beyond dispute on any reading of the affair: you are a man of courage."

The color rushed into Marlowe's face, and he hesitated for words.Before he could speak Mr. Cupples arose with a dry cough.

"For my part," he said, "I never supposed you guilty for a moment."Marlowe turned to him in grateful amazement, Trent with an incredulous stare."But," pursued Mr. Cupples, holding up his hand, "there is one question which I should like to put."

Marlowe bowed, saying nothing.

"Suppose," said Mr. Cupples, "that someone else had been suspected of the crime and put upon trial.What would you have done?"

"I think my duty was clear.I should have gone with my story to the lawyers for the defense, and put myself in their hands."

Trent laughed aloud. Now that the thing was over his spirits were rapidly becoming ungovernable. "I can see their faces!" he said. "As a matter of fact, though, nobody else was ever in danger. There wasn't a shred of evidence against any one. I looked up Murch at the Yard this morning, and he told me he had come round to Bunner's view, that it was a case of revenge on the part of some American black-hand gang. So there's the end of the Manderson case. Holy, suffering Moses! What an ass a man can make of himself when he thinks he's being preternaturally clever!" He seized the bulky envelop from the table, and stuffed it into the heart of the fire. "There's for you, old friend! For want of you the world's course will not fail. But look here! It's getting late—nearly seven, and Cupples and I have an appointment at half-past. We must go. Mr. Marlowe, good-by." He looked into the other's eyes. "I am a man who has worked hard to put a rope round your neck. Considering the circumstances I don't know whether you will blame me. Will you shake hands?"

---

CHAPTER XV

THE LAST STRAW

"What was that you said about our having an appointment at half-past seven?"asked Mr. Cupples as the two came out of the great gateway of the pile of flats."Have we such an appointment?"

"Certainly we have," replied Trent."You are dining with me.Only one thing can properly celebrate this occasion, and that is a dinner for which I pay.No, no!I asked you first.I have got right down to the bottom of a case that must be unique, a case that has troubled even my mind for over a year, and if that isn't a good reason for standing a dinner, I don't know what is.Cupples, we will not go to my club.This is to be a festival, and to be seen in a London club in a state of pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter any man's career.Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or at least they always make it taste the same, I know not how.The eternal dinner at my club hath bored millions of members like me, and shall bore; but to-night let the feast be spread in vain, so far as we are concerned.We will not go where the satraps throng the hall.We will go to Sheppard's."

"Who is Sheppard?"asked Mr. Cupples mildly, as they proceeded up Victoria Street.His companion went with an unnatural lightness, and a policeman observing his face, smiled indulgently at a look of happiness which he could only attribute to alcohol.

"Who is Sheppard?"echoed Trent with bitter emphasis."That question, if you will pardon me for saying so, Cupples, is thoroughly characteristic of the spirit of aimless inquiry prevailing in this restless day.I suggest our dining at Sheppard's and instantly you fold your arms and demand, in a frenzy of intellectual pride, to know who Sheppard is before you will cross the threshold of Sheppard's.I am not going to pander to the vices of the modern mind.Sheppard's is a place where one can dine.I do not know Sheppard.It never occurred to me that Sheppard existed.Probably he is a myth of totemistic origin.All I know is that you can get a bit of saddle of mutton at Sheppard's that has made many an American visitor curse the day that Christopher Columbus was born....Taxi!"

A cab rolled smoothly to the curb, and the driver received his instruction with a majestic nod.

"Another reason I have for suggesting Sheppard's," continued Trent, feverishly lighting a cigarette, "is that I am going to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world.I trust the connection of ideas is clear."

"You are going to marry Mabel!" cried Mr. Cupples. "My dear friend, what good news this is! Shake hands, Trent; this is glorious! I congratulate you both from the bottom of my heart. And may I say—I don't want to interrupt your flow of high spirits, which is very natural indeed, and I remember being just the same in similar circumstances long ago—but may I say how earnestly I have hoped for this? Mabel has seen so much unhappiness, yet she is surely a woman formed in the great purpose of humanity to be the best influence in the life of a good man. But I did not know her mind as regarded yourself. Your mind I have known for some time," Mr. Cupples went on, with a twinkle in his eye that would have done credit to the worldliest of creatures. "I saw it at once when you were both dining at my house, and you sat listening to Professor Peppmüller and looking at her. Some of us older fellows have our wits about us still, my dear boy."

"Mabel says she knew it before that," replied Trent with a slightly crestfallen air."And I thought I was acting the part of a person who was not mad about her to the life.Well, I never was any good at dissembling.I shouldn't wonder if even old Peppmüller noticed something through his double convex lenses.But however crazy I may have been as an undeclared suitor, I am going to be much worse now.Here's the place," he broke off, as the cab rushed down a side-street and swung round a corner into a broad and populous thoroughfare."We're there already."The cab drew up.

"Here we are," said Trent as he paid the man and led Mr. Cupples into a long paneled room set with many tables and filled with a hum of talk."This is the house of fulfilment of craving, this is the bower with the roses around it.I see there are three bookmakers eating pork at my favorite table.We will have that one in the opposite corner."

He conferred earnestly with a waiter, while Mr. Cupples, in a pleasant meditation, warmed himself before the great fire."The wine here," Trent resumed, as they seated themselves, "is almost certainly made out of grapes.What shall we drink?"

Mr. Cupples came out of his reverie."I think," he said, "I will have milk and soda-water."

"Speak lower!"urged Trent."The head-waiter has a weak heart, and he might hear you.Milk and soda-water!Cupples, you may think you have a strong constitution, and I don't say you have not, but I warn you that this habit of mixing drinks has been the death of many a robuster man than you.Be wise in time.Fill high the bowl with Samian wine; leave soda to the Turkish hordes.Here comes our food."He gave another order to the waiter, who ranged the dishes before them and darted away.Trent was, it seemed, a respected customer."I have sent," he said, "for wine that I know, and I hope you will try it.If you have taken a vow, then in the name of all the teetotal saints drink water, which stands at your elbow, but don't seek a cheap notoriety by demanding milk and soda."

"I have never taken any pledge," said Mr. Cupples, examining his mutton with a favorable eye."I simply don't care about wine.I bought a bottle once and drank it to see what it was like, and it made me ill.But very likely it was bad wine.I will taste some of yours, as it is your dinner, and I do assure you, my dear Trent, I should like to do something unusual to show how strongly I feel on the present occasion.I have not been so delighted for many years.To think," he reflected aloud as the waiter filled his glass, "of the Manderson mystery disposed of, the innocent exculpated, and your own and Mabel's happiness crowned—all coming upon me together!I drink to you, my dear friend."And Mr. Cupples took a very small sip of the wine.

"You have a great nature," said Trent, much moved."Your outward semblance doth belie your soul's immensity.I should have expected as soon to see an elephant conducting at the opera as you drinking my health.Dear Cupples!May his beak retain ever that delicate rose-stain!—No, curse it all!"he broke out, surprising a shade of discomfort that fitted over his companion's face as he tasted the wine again."I have no business to meddle with your tastes.I apologize.You shall have what you want, even if it causes the head-waiter to perish in his pride."

When Mr. Cupples had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance."In this babble of many conversations," he said, "we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare hill-side.The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk.We are alone.What do you think of that interview of this afternoon?"He began to dine with an appetite.

Without pausing in the task of cutting his mutton into very small pieces Mr. Cupples replied: "The most curious feature of it, in my judgment, was the irony of the situation.We both held the clue to that mad hatred of Manderson's which Marlowe found so mysterious.We knew of his jealous obsession; which knowledge we withheld, as was very proper, if only in consideration of Mabel's feelings.Marlowe will never know of what he was suspected by that person.Strange!Nearly all of us, I venture to think, move unconsciously among a network of opinions, often quite erroneous, which other people entertain about us.With regard to Marlowe's story, it appeared to me entirely straightforward, and not, in its essential features, especially remarkable, once we have admitted, as we surely must, that in the case of Manderson we have to deal with a more or less disordered mind.It was Mr. Bunner, I think you said, who told you of his rooted and apparently hereditary temper of suspicious jealousy.When the pressure of his business labors brought on mental derangement, that abnormality increased until it dominated him entirely."

Trent laughed loudly."Not especially remarkable!"he said."I confess that the affair struck me as a little unusual."

"Only in the development of the details," argued Mr. Cupples."What is there abnormal in the essential facts?A madman conceives a crazy suspicion; he hatches a cunning plot against his fancied injurer; it involves his own destruction.Put thus, what is there that any man with the least knowledge of the ways of lunatics would call remarkable?Turn now to Marlowe's proceedings.He finds himself in a perilous position from which, though he is innocent, telling the truth will not save him.Is that an unheard-of situation?He escapes by means of a bold and ingenious piece of deception.That seems to me a thing that might happen every day and probably does so."He attacked his now unrecognizable mutton.

"I should like to know," said Trent after an alimentary pause in the conversation, "whether there is anything that ever happened on the face of the earth that you could not represent as quite ordinary and commonplace, by such a line of argument as that.You may say what you like, but the idea of impersonating Manderson in those circumstances was an extraordinarily ingenious idea."

"Ingenious—certainly!"replied Mr. Cupples."Extraordinarily so—no!In those circumstances (your own words) it was really not strange that it should occur to a clever man.It lay almost on the surface of the situation.Marlowe was famous for his imitation of Manderson's voice; he had a talent for acting; he knew the ways of the establishment intimately.I grant you that the idea was brilliantly carried out; but everything favored it.As for the essential idea, I do not place it, as regards ingenuity, in the same class with, for example, the idea of utilizing the force of recoil in a discharged firearm to actuate the mechanism of ejecting and reloading.I do, however, admit, as I did at the outset, that in respect of details the case had unusual features.It developed a high degree of complexity."

"Did it really strike you in that way?"inquired Trent with desperate sarcasm.

"The affair became complicated," proceeded Mr. Cupples quite unmoved, "because after Marlowe's suspicions were awakened a second subtle mind came in to interfere with the plans of the first.That sort of duel often happens in business and politics, but less frequently, I imagine, in the world of crime.One disturbing reflection was left on my mind by what we learned to-day.If Marlowe had suspected nothing and walked into the trap, he would almost certainly have been hanged.Now how often may not a plan to throw the guilt of murder on an innocent person have been practised successfully?There are, I imagine, numbers of cases in which the accused, being found guilty on circumstantial evidence, have died protesting their innocence.I shall never approve again of a death-sentence imposed in a case decided upon such evidence."

"I never have done so, for my part," said Trent."To hang in such cases seems to me flying in the face of the perfectly obvious and sound principle expressed in the saying that 'you never can tell.'I agree with the American jurist who lays it down that we should not hang a yellow dog for stealing jam on circumstantial evidence, not even if he has jam all over his nose.As for attempts being made by malevolent persons to fix crimes upon innocent men, of course it is constantly happening."

Mr. Cupples mused a few moments."We know," he said, "from the things Mabel and Mr. Bunner told you what may be termed the spiritual truth underlying this matter: the insane depth of jealous hatred which Manderson concealed.We can understand that he was capable of such a scheme.But as a rule it is in the task of penetrating to the spiritual truth that the administration of justice breaks down.Sometimes that truth is deliberately concealed, as in Manderson's case.Sometimes, I think, it is concealed because simple people are actually unable to express it, and nobody else divines it."

"The law certainly does not shine when it comes to a case requiring much delicacy of perception," said Trent."It goes wrong easily enough over the commonplace criminal.As for the people with temperaments who get mixed up in legal proceedings, they must feel as if they were in a forest of apes, whether they win or lose.Well, I dare say it's good for them and their sort to have their noses rubbed in reality now and again.But what would twelve red-faced realities in a jury-box have done to Marlowe?His story would, as he says, have been a great deal worse than no defense at all.It's not as if there were a single piece of evidence in support of his tale.Can't you imagine how the prosecution would tear it to rags?Can't you see the judge simply taking it in his stride when it came to the summing up?And the jury—you've served on juries, I expect—in their room, snorting with indignation over the feebleness of the lie, telling each other it was the clearest case they ever heard of, and that they'd have thought better of him if he hadn't lost his nerve at the crisis, and had cleared off with the swag as he intended.Imagine yourself on that jury, not knowing Marlowe, and trembling with indignation at the record unrolled before you—cupidity, murder, robbery, sudden cowardice, shameless, impenitent, desperate lying!Why, you and I believed him to be guilty until—"

"I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!" interjected Mr. Cupples, laying down his knife and fork. "I was most careful, when we talked it all over the other night, to say nothing indicating such a belief. I was always certain that he was innocent."

"You said something of the sort at Marlowe's just now.I wondered what on earth you could mean.Certain that he was innocent!How can you be certain?You are generally more careful about terms than that, Cupples."

"I said 'certain,'" Mr. Cupples repeated firmly.

Trent shrugged his shoulders."If you really were, after reading my manuscript and discussing the whole thing as we did," he rejoined, "then I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that system.Why, man—"

"Let me say a word," Mr. Cupples interposed again, folding his hands above his plate."I assure you I am far from abandoning reason.I am certain he is innocent, and I always was certain of it, because of something that I know, and knew from the very beginning.You asked me just now to imagine myself on the jury at Marlowe's trial.That would be an unprofitable exercise of the mental powers, because I know that I should be present in another capacity.I should be in the witness box, giving evidence for the defense.You said just now, 'If there were a single piece of evidence in support of his tale.'There is, and it is my evidence.And," he added quietly, "it is conclusive."He took up his knife and fork and went contentedly on with his dinner.

The pallor of excitement had turned Trent to marble while Mr. Cupples led laboriously up to this statement.At the last word the blood rushed to his face again and he struck the table with an unnatural laugh."It can't be!"he exploded."It's something you fancied, something you dreamed after one of those debauches of soda-and-milk.You can't really mean that all the time I was working on the case down there you knew Marlowe was innocent."

Mr. Cupples, busy with his last mouthful, nodded brightly.He made an end of eating, wiped his sparse mustache, and then leaned forward over the table."It's very simple," he said."I shot Manderson myself."

---

"I am afraid I startled you," Trent heard the voice of Mr. Cupples say.He forced himself out of his stupefaction like a diver striking upward for the surface, and with a rigid movement raised his glass.But half of the wine splashed upon the cloth, and he put it carefully down again untasted.He drew a deep breath, which was exhaled in a laugh wholly without merriment."Go on," he said.

"It was not murder," began Mr. Cupples, slowly measuring off inches with a fork on the edge of the table."I will tell you the whole story.On that Sunday night I was taking my before-bedtime constitutional, having set out from the hotel about a quarter past ten.I went along the field-path that runs behind White Gables, cutting off the great curve of the road, and came out on the road nearly opposite that gate that is just by the eighth hole on the golf-course.Then I turned in there, meaning to walk along the turf to the edge of the cliff, and go back that way.I had only gone a few steps when I heard the car coming, and then I heard it stop near the gate.I saw Manderson at once.Do you remember my telling you I had seen him once alive after our quarrel in front of the hotel?Well, this was the time.You asked me if I had, and I did not care to tell a falsehood."

A slight groan came from Trent.He drank a little wine, and said stonily: "Go on, please."

"It was, as you know," pursued Mr. Cupples, "a moonlight night; but I was in shadow under the trees by the stone wall, and anyhow they could not suppose there was any one near them.I heard all that passed just as Marlowe has narrated it to us, and I saw the car go off towards Bishopsbridge.I did not see Manderson's face as it went, because his back was to me, but he shook his left hand at the car with extraordinary violence, greatly to my amazement.Then I waited for him to go back to White Gables, as I did not want to meet him again.But he did not go.He opened the gate through which I had just passed, and he stood there on the turf of the green, quite still.His head was bent, his arms hung at his sides, and he looked somehow ...rigid.For a few moments he remained in this tense attitude; then all of a sudden his right arm moved swiftly, and his hand was at the pocket of his overcoat.I saw his face raised in the moonlight, the teeth bared and the eyes glittering, and all at once I knew that the man was mad.Almost as quickly as that flashed across my mind, something else flashed in the moonlight.He held the pistol before him, pointing at his breast.

"Now I may say here I shall always be doubtful whether Manderson intended to kill himself then.Marlowe naturally thinks so, knowing nothing of my intervention.But I think it quite likely he only meant to wound himself, and to charge Marlowe with attempted murder and robbery.

"At that moment, however, I assumed it was suicide.Before I knew what I was doing I had leapt out of the shadows and seized his arm.He shook me off with a furious snarling noise, giving me a terrific blow in the chest, and presented the revolver at my head.But I seized his wrists before he could fire, and clung with all my strength—you remember how bruised and scratched they were.I knew I was fighting for my own life now, for murder was in his eyes.We struggled like two beasts, without an articulate word, I holding his pistol-hand down and keeping a grip on the other.I never dreamed that I had the strength for such an encounter.Then, with a perfectly instinctive movement—I never knew I meant to do it—I flung away his free hand and clutched like lightning at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers.By a miracle it did not go off.I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat like a wild cat, and I fired blindly in his face.He would have been about a yard away, I suppose.His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on the turf.

"I flung the pistol down, and bent over him.The heart's motion ceased under my hand.I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don't know how long it was before I heard the noise of the car returning.

"Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight on his white and working face, I was within a few yards of him, crouching in the shadow of the furze by the ninth tee.I dared not show myself.I was thinking.My public quarrel with Manderson the same morning was, I suspected, the talk of the hotel.I assure you that every horrible possibility of the situation for me had rushed across my mind the moment I saw Manderson fall.I became cunning.I knew what I must do.I must get back to the hotel as fast as I could, get in somehow unperceived, and play a part to save myself.I must never tell a word to any one.Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell everyone how he had found the body.I knew he would suppose it was suicide; I thought everyone would suppose so.

"When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the wall and got out into the road by the club-house, where he could not see me.I felt perfectly cool and collected.I crossed the road, climbed the fence, and ran across the meadow to pick up the field-path I had come by, that runs to the hotel behind White Gables.I got back to the hotel very much out of breath."

"Out of breath," repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his companion as if hypnotized.

"I had had a sharp run," said Mr. Cupples."Well, approaching the hotel from the back I could see into the writing-room through the open window.There was nobody in there, so I climbed over the sill, walked to the bell and rang it, and then sat down to write a letter I had meant to write the next day.I saw by the clock that it was a little past eleven.When the waiter answered the bell I asked for a glass of milk and a postage-stamp.Soon afterwards I went up to bed.But I could not sleep."

Mr. Cupples, having nothing more to say, ceased speaking.He looked in mild surprise at Trent, who now sat silent, supporting his bent head in his hands.

"He could not sleep!" murmured Trent at last in a hollow tone. "A frequent result of over-exertion during the day. Nothing to be alarmed about." He was silent again, then looked up with a pale face. "Cupples, I am cured. I will never touch a crime-mystery again. The Manderson affair shall be Philip Trent's last case. His high-blown pride at length breaks under him." Trent's smile suddenly returned. "I could have borne everything but that last revelation of the impotence of human reason. Cupples, I have absolutely nothing left to say, except this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of self-abasement. And you shall pay for the dinner."

THE END