“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 breakdown 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
