Mr. Cupples moved sharply in his chair. “You say Manderson was responsible for his own death?” he asked.
Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent watch upon the face of Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less pale and drawn.
“I do say so,” Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in the face. Mr. Cupples nodded.
“Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement,” observed the old gentleman, in a tone of one discussing a point of abstract science, “it may be remarked that the state of mind which you attribute to Manderson—”
“Suppose we have the story first,” Trent interrupted, gently laying a hand on Mr. Cupples’s arm. “You were telling us,” he went on, turning to Marlowe, “how things stood between you and Manderson. Now will you tell us the facts of what happened that night?”
Marlowe flushed at the barely perceptible emphasis which Trent laid upon the word “facts.” He drew himself up.
“Bunner and myself dined with Mr. and Mrs. Manderson that Sunday evening,” he began, speaking carefully. “It was just like other dinners at which the four of us had been together. Manderson was taciturn and gloomy, as we had latterly been accustomed to see him. We others kept a conversation going. We rose from the table, I suppose, about nine. Mrs. Manderson went to the drawing-room, and Bunner went up to the hotel to see an acquaintance. Manderson asked me to come into the orchard behind the house, saying he wished to have a talk. We paced up and down the pathway there, out of earshot from the house, and Manderson, as he smoked his cigar, spoke to me in his cool, deliberate way. He had never seemed more sane, or more well-disposed to me. He said he wanted me to do him an important service. There was a big thing on. It was a secret affair. Bunner knew nothing of it, and the less I knew the better. He wanted me to do exactly as he directed, and not bother my head about reasons.
“This, I may say, was quite characteristic of Manderson’s method of going to work. If at times he required a man to be a mere tool in his hand, he would tell him so. He had used me in the same kind of way a dozen times. I assured him he could rely on me, and said I was ready. ‘Right now?’ he asked. I said of course I was.
“He nodded, and said—I tell you his words as well as I can recollect them—‘Well, attend to this. There is a man in England now who is in this thing with me. He was to have left tomorrow for Paris by the noon boat from Southampton to Havre. His name is George Harris—at least that’s the name he is going by. Do you remember that name?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘when I went up to London a week ago you asked me to book a cabin in that name on the boat that goes tomorrow. I gave you the ticket.’ ‘Here it is,’ he said, producing it from his pocket.
“ ‘Now,’ Manderson said to me, poking his cigar-butt at me with each sentence in a way he used to have, ‘George Harris cannot leave England tomorrow. I find I shall want him where he is. And I want Bunner where he is. But somebody has got to go by that boat and take certain papers to Paris. Or else my plan is going to fall to pieces. Will you go?’ I said, ‘Certainly. I am here to obey orders.’
“He bit his cigar, and said, ‘That’s all right; but these are not just ordinary orders. Not the kind of thing one can ask of a man in the ordinary way of his duty to an employer. The point is this. The deal I am busy with is one in which neither myself nor anyone known to be connected with me must appear as yet. That is vital. But these people I am up against know your face as well as they know mine. If my secretary is known in certain quarters to have crossed to Paris at this time and to have interviewed certain people—and that would be known as soon as it happened—then the game is up.’ He threw away his cigar-end and looked at me questioningly.
“I didn’t like it much, but I liked failing Manderson at a pinch still less. I spoke lightly. I said I supposed I should have to conceal my identity, and I would do my best. I told him I used to be pretty good at makeup.
“He nodded in approval. He said, ‘That’s good. I judged you would not let me down.’ Then he gave me my instructions. ‘You take the car right now,’ he said, ‘and start for Southampton—there’s no train that will fit in. You’ll be driving all night. Barring accidents, you ought to get there by six in the morning. But whenever you arrive, drive straight to the Bedford Hotel and ask for George Harris. If he’s there, tell him you are to go over instead of him, and ask him to telephone me here. It is very important he should know that at the earliest moment possible. But if he isn’t there, that means he has got the instructions I wired today, and hasn’t gone to
