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
End of Project Gutenberg's The Woman in Black, by Edmund Clerihew Bentley