Mr. Bunner on the Case
“Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,” amended the newcomer, with a touch
of punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was
used to finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with strangers, and
Trent’s quick remark plainly disconcerted him a little. “You are Mr.
Trent, I expect,” he went on. “Mrs. Manderson was telling me a while
ago. Captain, good-morning.” Mr. Murch acknowledged the outlandish
greeting with a nod. “I was coming up to my room, and I heard a strange
voice in here, so I thought I would take a look in.” Mr. Bunner laughed
easily. “You thought I might have been eavesdropping, perhaps,” he
said. “No, sir; I heard a word or two about a pistol—this one, I
guess—and that’s all.”
Mr. Bunner was a thin, rather short young man with a shaven, pale,
bony, almost girlish face, and large, dark, intelligent eyes. His
waving dark hair was parted in the middle. His lips, usually occupied
with a cigar, in its absence were always half open with a curious
expression as of permanent eagerness. By smoking or chewing a cigar
this expression was banished, and Mr. Bunner then looked the
consummately cool and sagacious Yankee that he was.
Born in Connecticut, he had gone into a broker’s office on leaving
college, and had attracted the notice of Manderson, whose business with
his firm he had often handled. The Colossus had watched him for some
time, and at length offered him the post of private secretary. Mr.
Bunner was a pattern business man, trustworthy, long-headed,
methodical, and accurate. Manderson could have found many men with
those virtues; but he engaged Mr Bunner because he was also swift and
secret, and had besides a singular natural instinct in regard to the
movements of the stock market.
Trent and the American measured one another coolly with their eyes.
Both appeared satisfied with what they saw. “I was having it explained
to me,” said Trent pleasantly, “that my discovery of a pistol that
might have shot Manderson does not amount to very much. I am told it is
a favourite weapon among your people, and has become quite popular over
here.”
Mr. Bunner stretched out a bony hand and took the pistol from its case.
“Yes, sir,” he said, handling it with an air of familiarity; “the
captain is right. This is what we call out home a Little Arthur, and I
dare say there are duplicates of it in a hundred thousand hip-pockets
this minute. I consider it too light in the hand myself,” Mr. Bunner
went on, mechanically feeling under the tail of his jacket, and
producing an ugly looking weapon. “Feel of that, now, Mr. Trent—it’s
loaded, by the way. Now this Little Arthur—Marlowe bought it just
before we came over this year to please the old man. Manderson said it
was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth
century. So he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess—never
consulted me. Not but what it’s a good gun,” Mr. Bunner conceded,
squinting along the sights. “Marlowe was poor with it at first, but
I’ve coached him some in the last month or so, and he’s practised until
he is pretty good. But he never could get the habit of carrying it
around. Why, it’s as natural to me as wearing my pants. I have carried
one for some years now, because there was always likely to be somebody
laying for Manderson. And now,” Mr. Bunner concluded sadly, “they got
him when I wasn’t around. Well, gentlemen, you must excuse me. I am
going into Bishopsbridge. There is a lot to do these days, and I have
to send off a bunch of cables big enough to choke a cow.”
“I must be off too,” said Trent. “I have an appointment at the ‘Three
Tuns’ inn.”
“Let me give you a lift in the automobile,” said Mr. Bunner cordially.
“I go right by that joint. Say, cap., are you coming my way too? No?
Then come along, Mr. Trent, and help me get out the car. The chauffeur
is out of action, and we have to do ’most everything ourselves except
clean the dirt off her.”
Still tirelessly talking in his measured drawl, Mr. Bunner led Trent
downstairs and through the house to the garage at the back. It stood at
a little distance from the house, and made a cool retreat from the
blaze of the midday sun.
Mr. Bunner seemed to be in no hurry to get out the car. He offered
Trent a cigar, which was accepted, and for the first time lit his own.
Then he seated himself on the footboard of the car, his thin hands
clasped between his knees, and looked keenly at the other.
“See here, Mr. Trent,” he said, after a few moments. “There are some
things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record.
You are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don’t know if
I have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I
would answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me—I have done
so, in fact—but I don’t feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine
without his asking. See?”
Trent nodded. “That is a feeling many people have in the presence of
our police,” he said. “It’s the official manner, I suppose. But let me
tell you, Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the
shrewdest officers in Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but
he is very sure. And his experience is immense. My forte is
imagination, but I assure you in police work experience outweighs it by
a great deal.”
“Outweigh nothing!” replied Mr. Bunner crisply. “This is no ordinary
case, Mr. Trent. I will tell you one reason why. I believe the old man
knew there was something coming to him. Another thing: I believe it was
something he thought he couldn’t dodge.”
Trent pulled a crate opposite to Mr. Bunner’s place on the footboard
and seated himself. “This sounds like business,” he said. “Tell me your
ideas.”
“I say what I do because of the change in the old man’s manner this
last few weeks. I dare say you have heard, Mr. Trent, that he was a man
who always kept himself well in hand. That was so. I have always
considered him the coolest and hardest head in business. That man’s
calm was just deadly—I never saw anything to beat it. And I knew
Manderson as nobody else did. I was with him in the work he really
lived for. I guess I knew him a heap better than his wife did, poor
woman. I knew him better than Marlowe could—he never saw Manderson in
his office when there was a big thing on. I knew him better than any of
his friends.”
“Had he any friends?” interjected Trent.
Mr. Bunner glanced at him sharply. “Somebody has been putting you next,
I see that,” he remarked. “No: properly speaking, I should say not. He
had many acquaintances among the big men, people he saw, most every
day; they would even go yachting or hunting together. But I don’t
believe there ever was a man that Manderson opened a corner of his
heart to. But what I was going to say was this. Some months ago the old
man began to get like I never knew him before—gloomy and sullen, just
as if he was everlastingly brooding over something bad, something that
he couldn’t fix. This went on without any break; it was the same down
town as it was up home, he acted just as if there was something lying
heavy on his mind. But it wasn’t until a few weeks back that his
self-restraint began to go; and let me tell you this, Mr. Trent”—the
American laid his bony claw on the other’s knee—“I’m the only man that
knows it. With every one else he would be just morose and dull; but
when he was alone with me in his office, or anywhere where we would be
working together, if the least little thing went wrong, by George! he
would fly off the handle to beat the Dutch. In this library here I have
seen him open a letter with something that didn’t just suit him in it,
and he would rip around and carry on like an Indian, saying he wished
he had the man that wrote it here, he wouldn’t do a thing to him, and
so on, till it was just pitiful. I never saw such a change. And here’s
another thing. For a week before he died Manderson neglected his work,
for the first time in my experience. He wouldn’t answer a letter or a
cable, though things looked like going all to pieces over there. I
supposed that this anxiety of his, whatever it was, had got on to his
nerves till they were worn out. Once I advised him to see a doctor, and
he told me to go to hell. But nobody saw this side of him but me. If he
was having one of these rages in the library here, for example, and
Mrs. Manderson would come into the room, he would be all calm and cold
again in an instant.”
“And you put this down to some secret anxiety, a fear that somebody had
designs on his life?” asked Trent.
The American nodded.
“I suppose,” Trent resumed, “you had considered the idea of there being
something wrong with his mind—a break-down from overstrain, say. That
is the first thought that your account suggests to me. Besides, it is
what is always happening to your big business men in America, isn’t it?
That is the impression one gets from the newspapers.”
“Don’t let them slip you any of that bunk,” said Mr. Bunner earnestly.
“It’s only the ones who have got rich too quick, and can’t make good,
who go crazy. Think of all our really big men—the men anywhere near
Manderson’s size: did you ever hear of any one of them losing his
senses? They don’t do it—believe _me_. I know they say every man has
his loco point,” Mr. Bunner added reflectively, “but that doesn’t mean
genuine, sure-enough craziness; it just means some personal
eccentricity in a man ... like hating cats ... or my own weakness of
not being able to touch any kind of fish-food.”
“Well, what was Manderson’s?”
“He was full of them—the old man. There was his objection to all the
unnecessary fuss and luxury that wealthy people don’t kick at much, as
a general rule. He didn’t have any use for expensive trifles and
ornaments. He wouldn’t have anybody do little things for him; he hated
to have servants tag around after him unless he wanted them. And
although Manderson was as careful about his clothes as any man I ever
knew, and his shoes—well, sir, the amount of money he spent on shoes
was sinful—in spite of that, I tell you, he never had a valet. He never
liked to have anybody touch him. All his life nobody ever shaved him.”
“I’ve heard something of that,” Trent remarked. “Why was it, do you
think?”
“Well,” Mr. Bunner answered slowly, “it was the Manderson habit of
mind, I guess; a sort of temper of general suspicion and jealousy.
“They say his father and grandfather were just the same.... Like a dog
with a bone, you know, acting as if all the rest of creation was laying
for a chance to steal it. He didn’t really _think_ the barber would
start in to saw his head off; he just felt there was a possibility that
he _might_, and he was taking no risks. Then again in business he was
always convinced that somebody else was after his bone—which was true
enough a good deal of the time; but not all the time. The consequence
of that was that the old man was the most cautious and secret worker in
the world of finance; and that had a lot to do with his success,
too.... But that doesn’t amount to being a lunatic, Mr. Trent; not by a
long way. You ask me if Manderson was losing his mind before he died. I
say I believe he was just worn out with worrying over something, and
was losing his nerve.”
Trent smoked thoughtfully. He wondered how much Mr. Bunner knew of the
domestic difficulty in his chief’s household, and decided to put out a
feeler. “I understood that he had trouble with his wife.”
“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 inquired.
“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. “Célestine!” 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. Célestine 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
deeply obliged to you. We must talk it over again.” He looked at his
watch. “I have been expected for some time by my friend. Shall we make
a move?”
“Two o’clock,” said Mr. Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from
the foot-board. “Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don’t know Wall
Street, Mr. Trent. Let’s you and I hope we never see anything nearer
hell than what’s loose in the Street this minute.”