Quite recently, however [the letter went on], facts have come to my knowledge which have led me to change my decision. I do not mean that I shall publish what I discovered, but that I have determined to approach you and ask you for a private statement. If you have anything to say which would place the matter in another light, I can imagine no reason why you should withhold it.
I expect, then, to hear from you when and where I may call upon you; unless you prefer the interview to take place at my hotel. In either case I desire that Mr. Cupples whom you will remember, and who has read the enclosed document, should be present also.—Faithfully yours,
“What a very stiff letter!” she said. “Now I am sure you couldn’t have made it any stiffer in your own rooms.”
Trent slipped the letter and enclosure into a long envelope. “Yes,” he said, “I think it will make him sit up suddenly. Now this thing mustn’t run any risk of going wrong. It would be best to send a special messenger with orders to deliver it into his own hands. If he’s away it oughtn’t to be left.”
She nodded. “I can arrange that. Wait here for a little.”
When Mrs. Manderson returned, he was hunting through the music cabinet. She sank on the carpet beside him in a wave of dark brown skirts. “Tell me something, Philip,” she said.
“If it is among the few things that I know.”
“When you saw uncle last night, did you tell him about—about us?”
“I did not,” he answered. “I remembered you had said nothing about telling anyone. It is for you—isn’t it?—to decide whether we take the world into our confidence at once or later on.”
“Then will you tell him?” She looked down at her clasped hands. “I wish you to tell him. Perhaps if you think you will guess why. … There! that is settled.” She lifted her eyes again to his, and for a time there was silence between them.
He leaned back at length in the deep chair. “What a world!” he said. “Mabel, will you play something on the piano that expresses mere joy, the genuine article, nothing feverish or like thorns under a pot, but joy that has decided in favour of the universe? It’s a mood that can’t last altogether, so we had better get all we can out of it.”
She went to the instrument and struck a few chords while she thought. Then she began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony which is like the sound of the opening of the gates of Paradise.
XV
Double Cunning
An old oaken desk with a deep body stood by the window in a room that overlooked St. James’s Park from a height. The room was large, furnished and decorated by someone who had brought taste to the work; but the hand of the bachelor lay heavy upon it. John Marlowe unlocked the desk and drew a long, stout envelope from the back of the well.
“I understand,” he said to Mr. Cupples, “that you have read this.”
“I read it for the first time two days ago,” replied Mr. Cupples, who, seated on a sofa, was peering about the room with a benignant face. “We have discussed it fully.”
Marlowe turned to Trent. “There is your manuscript,” he said, laying the envelope on the table. “I have gone over it three times. I do not believe there is another man who could have got at as much of the truth as you have set down there.”
Trent ignored the compliment. He sat by the table gazing stonily at the fire, his long legs twisted beneath his chair. “You mean, of course,” he said, drawing the envelope towards him, “that there is more of the truth to be disclosed now. We are ready to hear you as soon as you like. I expect it will be a long story, and the longer the better, so far as I am concerned; I want to understand thoroughly. What we should both like, I think, is some preliminary account of Manderson and your relations with him. It seemed to me from the first that the character of the dead man must be somehow an element in the business.”
“You were right,” Marlowe answered grimly. He crossed the room and seated himself on a corner of the tall cushion-topped fender. “I will begin as you suggest.”
“I ought to tell you beforehand,” said Trent, looking him in the eyes, “that although I am here to listen to you, I have not as yet any reason to doubt the conclusions I have stated here.” He tapped the envelope. “It is a defence that you will be putting forward—you understand that?”
“Perfectly.” Marlowe was cool and in complete possession of himself, a man different indeed from the worn-out, nervous being Trent remembered at Marlstone a year and a half ago. His tall, lithe figure was held with the perfection of muscular tone. His brow was candid, his blue eyes were clear, though they still had, as he paused collecting his ideas, the look that had troubled Trent at their first meeting. Only the lines of his mouth showed that he knew himself in a position of difficulty, and meant to face it.
“Sigsbee Manderson was not a man of normal mind,” Marlowe began in his quiet voice. “Most of the very rich men I met with in America had become so by virtue of abnormal greed, or abnormal industry, or abnormal personal force, or abnormal luck. None
