The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [196]
'Sure,' replied Mr Bunner. 'But do you suppose a thing like that was going to upset Sig Manderson that way? No, sir! He was a sight too big a man to be all broken up by any worry of that kind.'
Trent looked half-incredulously into the eyes of the young man. But behind all their shrewdness and intensity he saw a massive innocence. Mr Bunner really believed a serious breach between husband and wife to be a minor source of trouble for a big man.
'What was the trouble between them, anyhow?' Trent enquired.
'You can search me,' Mr Bunner replied briefly. He puffed at his cigar. 'Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never make out a solution. I had a notion at first,' said Mr Bunner in a lower voice, leaning forward, 'that the old man was disappointed and vexed because he had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the disappointment on that score was the other way around, likely as not. His idea was all right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by Mrs Manderson's French maid.'
Trent looked up at him quickly. 'Celestine!' he said; and his thought was, 'So that was what she was getting at!'
Mr Bunner misunderstood his glance. 'Don't you think I'm giving a man away, Mr Trent,' he said. 'Marlowe isn't that kind. Celestine just took a fancy to him because he talks French like a native, and she would always be holding him up for a gossip. French servants are quite unlike English that way. And servant or no servant,' added Mr Bunner with emphasis, 'I don't see how a woman could mention such a subject to a man. But the French beat me.' He shook his head slowly.
'But to come back to what you were telling me just now,' Trent said. 'You believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some time. Who should threaten it? I am quite in the dark.'
'Terror--I don't know,' replied Mr Bunner meditatively. 'Anxiety, if you like. Or suspense--that's rather my idea of it. The old man was hard to terrify, anyway; and more than that, he wasn't taking any precautions--he was actually avoiding them. It looked more like he was asking for a quick finish--supposing there's any truth in my idea. Why, he would sit in that library window, nights, looking out into the dark, with his white shirt just a target for anybody's gun. As for who should threaten his life well, sir,' said Mr Bunner with a faint smile, 'it's certain you have not lived in the States. To take the Pennsylvania coal hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with women and children to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole through the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms. Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr Trent. There's a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been known to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten what he did. They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had done them dirt in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the Atlantic is going to stop them?... It takes some sand, I tell you, to be a big business man in our country. No, sir: the old man knew--had always known--that there was a whole crowd of dangerous men scattered up and down the States who had it in for him. My belief is that he had somehow got to know that some of them were definitely after him at last. What licks me altogether is why he should have just laid himself open to them the way he did--why he never tried to dodge, but walked right down into the garden yesterday morning to be shot at.'
Mr Bunner ceased to speak, and for a little while both men sat with wrinkled brows, faint blue vapours rising from their cigars. Then Trent rose. 'Your theory is quite fresh to me,' he said. 'It's perfectly rational, and it's only a question of whether it fits all the facts, I mustn't give away what I'm doing for my newspaper, Mr Bunner, but I will say this: I have already satisfied myself that this was a premeditated crime, and an extraordinarily cunning one at that. I'm