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THE WOMAN IN BLACK
BY EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY
Copyright, 1913, by
The Century Co.
NEW YORK
_Published, March, 1913_
"... So shall you hear
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads ..."
--_Hamlet_.
TO GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
_My dear Gilbert_:
I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble
motive I had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it. Second:
because I owe you a book in return for "The Man Who Was Thursday."
Third: because I said I would when I unfolded the plan of it to you,
surrounded by Frenchmen, two years ago. Fourth: because I remember the
past.
I have been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when
neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy in
the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea and our elders'
patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves
produced such light reading as was necessary; when (in the words of
Canada's poet) we studied the works of nature, also those little frogs;
when, in short, we were extremely young.
For the sake of that age I offer you this book.
Yours always,
E. C. BENTLEY.
CONTENTS
Prologue
I Knocking the Town Endways
II Breakfast
III Handcuffs in the Air
IV Poking About
V Mr. Brunner on the Case
VI The Lady in Black
VII The Inquest
VIII A Hot Scent
IX The Wife of Dives
X Hitherto Unpublished
XI Evil Days
XII Eruption
XIII Writing a Letter
XIV Double Cunning
XV The Last Straw
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
PROLOGUE
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we
know judge wisely?
When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered
by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single
tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of
such wealth as this dead man had piled up--without making one loyal
friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to
the least honor. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those
living in the great vortices of business as if the earth, too, shuddered
under a blow.
In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no
figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He
had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and
augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions
for so doing, had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had
been this singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing
especially dear to the hearts of his countrymen, had remained
incongruously about his head through the years when he stood in every
eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability, the stamper-out of
manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding chieftains that infest the
borders of Wall Street.
The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those
chieftains, on the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with
accretion through his father, who during a long life had quietly
continued to lend money and never had margined a stock. Manderson, who
had at no time known what it was to be without large sums to his hand,
should have been altogether of that newer American plutocracy which is
steadied by the tradition and habit of great wealth. But it was not so.
While his nurture and education had taught him European ideas of a rich
man's proper external circumstance; while they had rooted in him an
instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which does not
shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
him, nevertheless, much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his
forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been
called his early bad manner he had been little more than a gambler of
genius, his hand against every man's, an infant prodigy who brought to
the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than any
opposed to it. At St. Helena it was laid down that war is _une belle
occupation_, and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and
complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New York.
Then came his change. At his father's death, when Manderson was thirty
years old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he
served seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic
adaptability of his nation he turned to steady labor in his father's
banking business, closing his ears to the sound of the battles of the
Street. In a few years he came to control all the activity of the great
firm whose unimpeached conservatism, safety and financial weight lifted
it like a cliff above the angry sea of the markets. All mistrust founded
on the performances of his youth had vanished. He was quite plainly a
different man. How the change came about none could with authority say,
but there was a story of certain last words spoken by his father, whom
alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was
current in the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of Manderson
called up a vision of all that was broad-based and firm in the vast
wealth of the United States. He planned great combinations of capital,
drew together and centralized industries of continental scope, financed
with unerring judgment the large designs of state or of private
enterprise. Many a time when he "took hold" to smash a strike, or to
federate the ownership of some great field of labor, he sent ruin upon a
multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or steel-workers or cattlemen
defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more lawless and ruthless
than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate business ends.
Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the financier
and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to protect
or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country.
Forcible, cold and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national
lust for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the Colossus.
But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants
and certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little
circle knew that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability
in the markets, had his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when the
Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if
Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the
spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out,
the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his
hat-band. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous
raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the
offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried
out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go
soberly down to his counting-house--humming a stave or two of "Spanish
Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the
harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of
pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to
the depredator might have been made. "Seems to me," he would say almost
wistfully, "the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place since I
quit." By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus became
known to the business world, which exulted greatly in the knowledge.
* * * * *
At the news of his death, panic went through the markets like a
hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed
like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous
inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever
speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide.
In Europe also not a few took with their own hands lives that had become
pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them had
never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the
Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leaped from the
Cathedral top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men
stabbed and shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it as
the air, because in a lonely corner of England the life had departed
from one cold heart vowed to the service of greed.
The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when
Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed "scare." Suppressed:
because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be
actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the
effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his
plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at
a time when the market had been "boosted" beyond its real strength. In
the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands
had not been good, and there had been two or three railway statements
which had been expected to be much better than they were. But at
whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of the
threatened break had been felt, "the Manderson crowd" had stepped in and
held the market up. All through the week the speculator's mind, as
shallow as it is quick-witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in
this the hand of the giant stretched out in protection from afar.
Manderson, said the newspapers in chorus, was in hourly communication
with his lieutenants in the Street. One journal was able to give, in
round figures, the sum spent on cabling between New York and Marlstone
in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of expert
operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to Marlstone
to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that Manderson, on
the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon his holiday
and return home by the _Lusitania_; but that he soon had the situation
so well in hand that he had determined to remain where he was.
All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the
"finance editors," consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd
business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better
help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship--knew also that no
word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that
Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron fame, was the true organizer of
victory. So they fought down apprehension through four feverish days,
and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the ground beneath the feet
of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with Ætna-mutterings of
disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was firm and slowly
advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn out but
thankfully at peace.
In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumor flew round the sixty
acres of the financial district. It came into being as the lightning
comes, a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected
that it was first whispered over the telephone--together with an urgent
selling order--by some employee in the cable service. In five minutes
the dull noise of the curbstone market in Broad Street had leaped to a
high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange
itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear and men rushed hatless in
and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous "short"
interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news
came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of "Yankees" in London at the
close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four
hours' trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as
the savior and warden of the market had recoiled upon its authors with
annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone,
listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had
lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and
falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding
of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumor that it was suicide, was
printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached Wall
Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
* * * * *
All this sprang out of nothing.
Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power
to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
unnumbered. Men labored everywhere in the various servitudes to which
they were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona
tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all
mankind save a million or two of half-crazed gamblers, blind to all
reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the
world went on. Weeks before he died strong hands had been in control of
every wire in the huge network of commerce and industry that he had
supervised. Before his corpse was buried his countrymen had made a
strange discovery: that the existence of the potent engine of monopoly
that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a condition of
even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days, the
pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
"recovered a normal tone."
While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic
scandal in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents.
Next morning the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable
politician was shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the
streets of New Orleans. Within a week of its arising "the Manderson
story," to the trained sense of editors throughout the Union, was
"cold." The tide of American visitors pouring through Europe made eddies
round the memorial or statue of many a man who had died in poverty; and
never thought of their most famous plutocrat. Like the poet who died in
Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was buried far away
from his own land; but for all the men and women of Manderson's people
who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the Monte
Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever will be, to stand in reverence by
the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
CHAPTER I
KNOCKING THE TOWN ENDWAYS
In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the _Record_,
the telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a
motion with his pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and
came over to the instrument.
"Who is that?" he said. "Who?... I can't hear you ... Oh, it's Mr.
Bunner, is it? Yes, but ... I know, but he's fearfully busy this
afternoon. Can't you ... Oh, really? Well, in that case--just hold on,
will you?"
He placed the receiver before Sir James. "It's Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
Manderson's right hand man," he said concisely. "He insists on speaking
to you personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking
from the house down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak
clearly."
Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
receiver. "Well?" he said in his strong voice; and listened. "Yes," he
said. The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of
amazement and horror. "Good God," murmured Sir James. Clutching the
instrument, he slowly rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At
intervals he repeated, "Yes." Presently, as he listened, he glanced at
the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr. Silver over the top of the
transmitter. "Go and hunt up Figgis and young Williams. Hurry!" Mr.
Silver darted from the room.
The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart
and black-mustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in
the world, which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the
half-cynical competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the
charlatan: he made no mysteries, and no pretenses of knowledge, and he
saw instantly through these in others. In his handsome, well-bred,
well-dressed appearance there was something a little sinister when anger
or intense occupation put its imprint about his eyes and brow; but when
his generous nature was under no restraint he was the most cordial of
men. He was managing director of the company which owned that most
powerful morning paper, the _Record_, and also that most indispensable
evening paper, the _Sun_, which had its offices on the other side of the
street. He was moreover editor-in-chief of the _Record_, to which he had
in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in
the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts,
you must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great
deal of both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a
profession not favorable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
"You're sure that's all?" asked Sir James, after a few minutes of
earnest listening and questioning. "And how long has this been
known?... Yes, of course, the police are; but the servants? Surely
it's all over the place down there by now.... Well, we'll have a
try.... Look here, Bunner, I'm infinitely obliged to you about this.
I owe you a good turn. You know I mean what I say. Come and see me the
first day you get to town.... All right, that's understood. Now I must
act on your news. Good-by."
Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway time-table from the
rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it
down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed
by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
"I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis," said Sir James, banishing
all signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. "When you
have them, put them into shape just as quick you can for a special
edition of the _Sun_." The hard-featured man nodded and glanced at the
clock, which pointed to a few minutes past three; he pulled out a
notebook and drew a chair up to the big writing-table. "Silver," Sir
James went on, "go and tell Jones to wire our local correspondent very
urgently, to drop everything and get down to Marlstone at once. He is
not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an unnecessary word
about this news until the _Sun_ is on the streets with it--you all
understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways.
Just tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a
scoop. Say that Figgis will be over in five minutes with the facts, and
that he had better let him write up the story in his private room. As
you go, ask Miss Morgan to see me here at once and tell the telephone
people to see if they can get Mr. Trent on the wire for me. After seeing
Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by." The alert-eyed young man
vanished like a spirit.
Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over
the paper. "Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered," he began quickly and
clearly, pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis
scratched down a line of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had
been told that the day was fine--the pose of his craft. "He and his wife
and two secretaries have been for the past fortnight at the house called
White Gables, at Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years
ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since spent a part of each summer there.
Last night he went to bed about half-past eleven, just as usual. No one
knows when he got up and left the house. He was not missed until this
morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a gardener. It was
lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head, through the
left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not robbed,
but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a struggle having
taken place. Dr. Stock, of Marlstone, was at once sent for, and will
conduct the post-mortem examination. The police from Bishopsbridge, who
were soon on the spot, are reticent, but it is believed that they are
quite without a clue to the identity of the murderer. There you are,
Figgis. Mr. Anthony is expecting you. Now I must telephone him and
arrange things."
Mr. Figgis looked up. "One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,"
he suggested, "has been put in charge of the case. It's a safe
statement."
"If you like," said Sir James.
"And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?"
"Yes. What about her?"
"Prostrated by the shock," hinted the reporter, "and sees nobody. Human
interest."
"I wouldn't put that in, Mr. Figgis," said a quiet voice. It belonged to
Miss Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her
appearance while the dictation was going on. "I have seen Mrs.
Manderson," she proceeded, turning to Sir James. "She looks quite
healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been murdered? I don't think
the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to be doing all she
can to help the police."
"Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan," he said with a
momentary smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb.
"Cut it out, Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I
want."
"Our Manderson biography happens to be well up-to-date," replied Miss
Morgan, drooping her dark eye-lashes as she considered the position. "I
was looking over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for
to-morrow's paper. I should think the _Sun_ had better use the sketch of
his life they had about two years ago, when he went to Berlin and
settled the potash difficulty. I remember it was a very good sketch, and
they won't be able to carry much more than that. As for our paper, of
course we have a great quantity of cuttings, mostly rubbish. The
sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then we have two
very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a drawing Mr.
Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is better
than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a bad
photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once, and
you can choose. As far as I can see, the _Record_ is well ahead of the
situation, except that you will not be able to get a special man down
there in time to be of any use for to-morrow's paper."
Sir James sighed deeply. "What are we good for, anyhow?" he inquired
dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. "She even knows
Bradshaw by heart."
Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. "Is there
anything else?" she asked, as the telephone bell rang.
"Yes, one thing," replied Sir James as he took up the receiver. "I want
you to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan; an everlasting
bloomer--just to put us in countenance." She permitted herself the
fraction of what would have been a charming smile as she went out.
"Anthony?" asked Sir James; and was at once deep in consultation with
the editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the _Sun_
building in person: the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say,
was all very well if you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the
Murat of Fleet Street, who delighted in riding the whirlwind and
fighting a tumultuous battle against time, would say the same of a
morning paper.
It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that
Mr. Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr.
Anthony. "They can put him through at once," he said to the boy.
"Hullo!" he cried into the telephone after a few moments. A voice in the
instrument replied: "Hullo be blowed! What do you want?"
"This is Molloy," said Sir James.
"I know it is," the voice said. "This is Trent. He is in the middle of
painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment.
Well, I hope it's something important, that's all!"
"Trent," said Sir James impressively, "it is important. I want you to do
some work for us."
"Some play, you mean," replied the voice. "Believe me, I don't want a
holiday. The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent
things. Why can't you leave a man alone?"
"Something very serious has happened."
"What?"
"Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered--shot through the brain--and they
don't know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It
happened at his place near Bishopsbridge." Sir James proceeded to tell
his hearer, briefly and clearly, the facts that he had communicated to
Mr. Figgis. "What do you think of it?" he ended.
A considering grunt was the only answer.
"Come now!" urged Sir James.
"Tempter!"
"You will go down?"
There was a brief pause. "Are you there?" said Sir James.
"Look here, Molloy," the voice broke out querulously, "the thing may be
a case for me, or it may not. We can't possibly tell. It may be a
mystery: it may be as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being
robbed looks interesting, but he may have been outed by some wretched
tramp whom he found sleeping in the grounds and tried to kick out. It's
the sort of thing he would do. Such a murderer might easily have sense
enough to know that to leave the money and valuables was the safest
thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have a hand in hanging a poor
devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a measure of
social protest."
Sir James smiled at the telephone: a smile of success. "Come, my boy,
you're getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the case.
You know you do. If it's anything you don't want to handle, you're free
to drop it. By the bye, where are you?"
"I am blown along a wandering wind," replied the voice irresolutely,
"and hollow, hollow, hollow all delight."
"Can you get here within an hour?" persisted Sir James.
"I suppose I can," the voice grumbled. "How much time have I?"
"Good man! Well, there's time enough--that's just the worst of it. I've
got to depend on our local correspondent for to-night. The only good
train of the day went half an hour ago. The next is a slow one, leaving
Paddington at midnight. You could have the Buster, if you like"--Sir
James referred to a very fast motor-car of his--"but you wouldn't get
down in time to do anything to-night."
"And I'd miss my sleep. No, thanks. The train for me. I am quite fond of
railway-traveling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker and
the stoked, I am the song the porter sings."
"What's that you say?"
"It doesn't matter," said the voice sadly. "I say," it continued, "will
your people look out a hotel near the scene of action, and telegraph for
a room?"
"At once," said Sir James. "Come here as soon as you can!" He replaced
the receiver. As he turned to his papers again a shrill outcry burst
forth in the street below. He walked to the open window. A band of
excited boys was rushing down the steps of the Sun building and up the
narrow thoroughfare toward Fleet Street. Each carried a bundle of
newspapers and a large broadsheet with the simple legend:
MURDER OF SIGSBEE MANDERSON
Sir James smiled and rattled the money in his pockets cheerfully.
"It makes a good bill," he observed to Mr. Silver, who stood at his
elbow.
Such was Manderson's epitaph.