POKING ABOUT
There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is within
us, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness some
hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feel
at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well
with him?--not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow from
fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an unsought
conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that success is
at hand in some great or little thing. The general suddenly knows at
dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green suddenly
knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted the stairway
outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty of
achievement.
A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparently unsorted through his
mind; a few secret observations that he had made, and which he felt must
have significance, still stood unrelated to any plausible theory of the
crime; yet as he went up he seemed to know indubitably that light was
going to appear.
The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted by
a tall end-window. It went the length of the house until it ran at right
angles into a narrower passage, out of which the servants' rooms opened.
Martin's room was the exception: it opened out of a small landing
halfway to the upper floor. As Trent passed it, he glanced within. A
little square room, clean and commonplace. In going up the rest of the
stairway he stepped with elaborate precaution against noise, hugging the
wall closely and placing each foot with care; but a series of very
audible creaks marked his passage.
He knew that Manderson's room was the first on the right hand when the
bedroom floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the latch
and the lock, which worked normally, and examined the wards of the key.
Then he turned to the room.
It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat's toilet
appointments were of the simplest. All remained just as it had been on
the morning of the ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets and
blankets of the unmade bed lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead,
and the sun shone brightly through the window upon them. It gleamed,
too, upon the gold parts of the delicate work of dentistry that lay in
water in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a small, plain table by the
bedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron candlestick. Some clothing
lay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed chairs. Various objects
on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used as a dressing
table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make--toilet
articles, a book of flies, an empty pocket-book with a burst strap, a
pocket compass and other trifles. Trent looked them over with a
questioning eye. He noted also that the occupant of the room had neither
washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned over the dental plate in
the bowl, and frowned again at its incomprehensible presence.
The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams,
were producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a
picture of a haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the
first light of dawn, glancing constantly at the inner door behind which
his wife slept, his eyes full of some terror.
Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities opened two tall
cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained
clothing, a large choice of which had evidently been one of the very few
conditions of comfort for the man who had slept there.
In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the
advantage of wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and
carefully kept, was ranged on two long low shelves against the wall.
Trent, himself an amateur of good shoe-leather, now turned to them, and
glanced over the collection with an appreciative eye. It was to be seen
that Manderson had been inclined to pride himself on a rather small and
well-formed foot. The shoes were of a distinctive shape, narrow and
round-toed, beautifully made; all were evidently from the same last.
Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather
shoes on the upper shelf.
These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the
position to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his death.
They were a well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that they had
been very recently polished. Something about the uppers of these shoes
had seized his attention. He bent lower and frowned over them, comparing
what he saw with the appearance of the neighboring shoes. Then he took
them up and examined the line of juncture of the uppers with the soles.
As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with
great precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present,
would have recognized.
Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary
trick which tells those who know them that they are suppressing
excitement. The inspector had noted that, when Trent had picked up a
strong scent, he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; though
the inspector could not have told you that it was, in fact, the opening
movement of Mendelssohn's _Lied ohne Wörter_ in A major.
He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape, and
looked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the heel
and the instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.
Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behind
him to the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with
eyes that saw nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the
Englishman's expletive of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to
the shelves again, and swiftly but carefully examined every one of the
shoes there.
This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them over
closely and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again,
and hunted through them carefully. The litter on the dressing table now
engaged his attention for the second time. Then he sat down on the empty
chair, took his head in his hands, and remained in that attitude,
staring at the carpet, for some minutes. He rose at last and opened the
inner door leading to Mrs. Manderson's room.
It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put down
from its place as the lady's bower. All the array of objects that belong
to a woman's dressing table had been removed; on bed and chairs and
smaller tables there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no trace
remained of the obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefs
and ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The room was like an
unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of furniture and
decoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting taste. Trent, as
his expert eye noted the various perfection of color and form amid which
the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought her loneliest
thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an artistic
nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew stronger; and his
brows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens laid upon it, and
of the deed of which the history was now shaping itself with more and
more of substance before his busy mind.
He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall that
faced the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony with an
iron railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that began
immediately beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrow
flower-bed, and stretched away with an abrupt dip at the farther end,
toward the orchard. The other window opened with a sash above the
garden-entrance to the library. In the further inside corner of the room
was a second door giving upon the passage; the door by which the maid
was wont to come in, and her mistress to go out, in the morning.
Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan of the
room and its neighbor. The bed stood in the angle between the
communicating-door and the sash-window, its head against the wall
dividing the room from Manderson's. Trent stared at the pillows; then he
lay down with deliberation on the bed and looked through the open door
into the adjoining room.
This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his plan
that on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon that
farthest from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of copper
connected by a free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it thoughtfully,
then at the switches connected with the other lights in the room. They
were, as usual, on the wall just within the door, and some way out of
his reach as he sat on the bed. He rose, and satisfied himself that the
lights were all in order. Then he turned on his heel, walked quickly
into Manderson's room, and rang the bell.
"I want your help again, Martin," he said, as the butler presented
himself, upright and impassive, in the doorway. "I want you to prevail
upon Mrs. Manderson's maid to grant me an interview."
"Certainly, sir," said Martin.
"What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?"
"She's French, sir," replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause:
"She has not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impression
that the young woman knows as much of the world as is good for
her--since you ask me."
"You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?" said Trent.
"Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her."
"I will send her up immediately, sir." The butler withdrew, and Trent
wandered round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than
he had expected, a small, neat figure in black appeared quietly before
him.
The lady's maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favorable notice
of Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been hoping
desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was as
great below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing, she
felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her
scenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr.
Murch, he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner.
Trent, her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman,
and at a distance he had appeared _sympathetique_.
As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any
approach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good
impression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candor, then,
that she said, "Monsieur desire to speak with me?" She added helpfully,
"I am called Célestine."
"Naturally," said Trent with businesslike calm. "Now what I want you to
tell me, Célestine, is this: when you took tea to your mistress
yesterday morning at seven o'clock, was the door between the two
bedrooms--this door here--open?"
Célestine became intensely animated in an instant. "Oh, yes," she said,
using her favorite English idiom. "The door was open as always,
monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain.
Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in
there--ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other
room, all explains itself." She tripped across to the door, and urged
Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. "See! I
enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I come
quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand--open, always--so!
But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of Monsieur
Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from down
there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it was as
ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like an
angel--she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau--I open the
curtains--I prepare the toilette--I retire--voilà!" Célestine paused for
breath, and spread her hands abroad.
Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
gravity, nodded his head. "I see exactly how it was now," he said.
"Thank you, Célestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still in his
room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having
breakfast in her boudoir."
"Oui, monsieur."
"Nobody missed him, in fact," remarked Trent. "Well, Célestine, I am
very much obliged to you." He re-opened the door to the outer bedroom.
"It is nothing, monsieur," said Célestine, as she crossed the small
room. "I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur
Manderson.... But I not regret him too much," she added with sudden and
amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer
door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the color rose in her
small, dark face. English departed from her. "Je ne le regrette pas du
tout, du tout!" she cried with a flood of words. "Madame--ah! je me
jetterais au feu pour madame--une femme si charmante, si adorable. Mais
un homme comme, monsieur--maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!--de ma
vie! J'en avais pardessus la tête, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce
insupportable, tout de même, qu'il existe des types comme ça? Je vous
jure que--"
"Finissez ce chahut, Célestine!" Trent broke in sharply. Célestine's
tirade had brought back the memory of his student days in Paris with a
rush. "En voilà une scène! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentrer ça,
mademoiselle. Du reste, c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! have
some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that
kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don't wave your fists
about so much; you might hit something. You seem," he went on more
pleasantly, as Célestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, "to be
even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the way. I
could almost suspect, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take as much
notice of you, as you thought necessary and right."
"A peine s'il m'avait regardé!" Célestine answered simply.
"Ca, c'est un comble!" observed Trent. "You are a nice young woman for a
small tea-party, I don't think. A star upon your birthday burned, whose
fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven,
Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a
beauty!"
Célestine took this as a scarcely-expected compliment. The surprise
restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at Trent
over her shoulder, the lady's maid opened the door and swiftly
disappeared.
Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two
forcible descriptive terms in Célestine's language, and turned to his
problem.
He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and placed them
on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other
opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed
upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost
inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subdued
twittering came from the trees through the open window. From time to
time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill.
But the man in the room, his face grown hard and somber now with his
thoughts, never moved.
So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his
feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out
upon the landing.
Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened
that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means
austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one
corner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid's hand had failed to
give a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the
dressing-table and the mantel-shelf--pipes, pen-knives, pencils, keys,
golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins and bottles. Two
fine etchings and some water-color sketches hung on the walls; leaning
against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framed engravings. A
row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window. Trent crossed the
room and studied them intently; then he measured some of them with his
tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on the side of the bed,
and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.
The photographs on the mantel-shelf attracted him presently. He rose and
examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two others
were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of three
youths--one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blue
eyes--clothed in tatterdemalion soldier's gear of the sixteenth century.
Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resembling
Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on the
mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned his
attention to a flat leathern case that lay by the cigarette-box.
It opened easily. A small and light revolver of beautiful workmanship
was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock were
engraved the initials "J. M."
A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and
peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the
open door of the room. "I was wondering"--he began; then stopped as he
saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly.
"Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?" he asked in a conversational tone.
"Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe," replied
Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. "I found this
lying about on the mantel-piece. It seems a handy little pistol to me,
and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last
time it was used. But I know little about firearms."
"Well, I know a good deal," rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the
revolver from Trent's outstretched hand. "It's a bit of a specialty with
me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don't require an
expert to tell one thing." He replaced the revolver in its case on the
mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it on the
spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his
waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little
leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some
bright new scratches.
"Is that _the_ one?" Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector's
hand.
"That's him," replied Mr. Murch. "Lodged in the bone at the back of the
skull. Dr. Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the
local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you
see, were made by the doctor's instruments. These other marks were made
by the rifling of the barrel--a barrel like this one." He tapped the
revolver. "Same make, same caliber."
With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector looked
into each other's eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to speak.
"This mystery is all wrong," he observed. "It is insanity. The symptoms
of mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not in any
doubt, I believe, about Manderson having despatched Marlowe in the car
to Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late last night,
many hours after the murder was committed."
"There _is_ no doubt whatever about all that," said Mr. Murch, with a
slight emphasis on the verb.
"And now," pursued Trent, "we are invited by this polished and
insinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that
Marlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the
night; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else,
got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds;
that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminating
pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the house
and, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in a
favorable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he then
withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding--_with_ a large
motor-car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole
affair, at--what time was it?"
"A little after nine P. M." The inspector still stared moodily
at Trent. "As you say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by
this find, and it seems wild enough--at least it would do, if it didn't
fall to pieces at the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must
have been fifty to a hundred miles away. He _did_ go to Southampton."
"How do you know?"
"I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in
Southampton about six-thirty on the Monday morning."
"Come off!" exclaimed Trent bitterly. "What do I care about his story?
What do you care about his story? I want to know how you _know_ he went
to Southampton."
Mr. Murch chuckled. "I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr.
Trent," he said. "Well, there's no harm in telling you. After I arrived
yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from
Mrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the
telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had
told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and sent
Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from someone
who was crossing by the next day's boat. It seemed right enough; but you
see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn't under my hand,
so to speak; he didn't return in the car until later in the evening; so
before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to Southampton
making certain inquiries. Early this morning I got this reply." He
handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:
Person answering description in motor answering description arrived
Bedford Hotel here 6:30 this morning gave name Marlowe left car
hotel garage told attendant car belonged Manderson had bath and
breakfast went out heard of later at docks inquiring for passenger
name Harris on Havre boat inquired repeatedly until boat left at
noon next heard of at hotel where he lunched about 1:15, left soon
afterwards in car company's agents inform berth was booked name
Harris last week but Harris did not travel by boat. Burke
Inspector.
"Simple and satisfactory," observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twice
reading the message, returned it to him. "His own story corroborated in
every particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or
so on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back, lunched
and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to Manderson: 'Harris not
turned up missed boat returning Marlowe,' which was duly delivered here
in the afternoon, and placed among the dead man's letters. He motored
back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired. When he heard of Manderson's
death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What with that and the being
without sleep for so long, he was rather a wreck when I came to
interview him last night; but he was perfectly coherent."
Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few
moments. "It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and
cartridges about so carelessly," he remarked at length, as he put it
back in the case. "It was throwing temptation in somebody's way, don't
you think?"
Mr. Murch shook his head. "There isn't really much to lay hold of about
the revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver
is common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half the
people who buy a revolver to-day for self-defense or mischief provide
themselves with that make, of that caliber. It is very reliable, and
easily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands of them in the
possession of crooks and honest men. For instance," continued the
inspector with an air of unconcern, "Manderson himself had one, the
double of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of the desk
downstairs, and it's in my overcoat pocket now."
"Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself."
"I was," said the inspector, "but as you've found one revolver, you may
as well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any
good. The people in the house--"
Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the
half-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood
in the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the
faces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to
herald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet. He
wore rubber-soled tennis shoes.
"You must be Mr. Bunner," said Trent.