• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 22135 0

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

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

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

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

Mr Cupples moved sharply in his chair. 'You say Manderson was responsible for his own death?' he asked.

Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent watch upon the face of Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less pale and drawn.

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

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

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