The Woman in Black
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E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley >> The Woman in Black
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16 *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
TRENT'S LAST CASE
by E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
CHAPTER I: Bad News
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know
judge wisely?
When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a
shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it
gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as
this dead man had piled up--without making one loyal friend to mourn him,
without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honour. But when
the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of
business as if the earth too shuddered under a blow.
In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no figure
that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He had a niche
apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and augment the
forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions for their labour,
had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had been this
singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing especially dear to
the hearts of his countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head
through the years when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of
stability, the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding
chieftains that infest the borders of Wall Street.
The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those chieftains on
the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with accretion through his
father, who during a long life had quietly continued to lend money and never
had margined a stock. Manderson, who had at no time known what it was to be
without large sums to his hand, should have been altogether of that newer
American plutocracy which is steadied by the tradition and habit of great
wealth. But it was not so. While his nurture and education had taught him
European ideas of a rich man's proper external circumstance; while they had
rooted in him an instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which
does not shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his forbear.
During that first period of his business career which had been called his
early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of genius, his hand
against every man's--an infant prodigy- who brought to the enthralling pursuit
of speculation a brain better endowed than any opposed to it. At St Helena it
was laid down that war is une belle occupation; and so the young Manderson had
found the multitudinous and complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New
York.
Then came his change. At his father's death, when Manderson was thirty years
old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he served
seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic adaptability of his
nation he turned to steady labour in his father's banking business, closing
his ears to the sound of the battles of the Street. In a few years he came to
control all the activity of the great firm whose unimpeached conservatism,
safety, and financial weight lifted it like a cliff above the angry sea of the
markets. All mistrust founded on the performances of his youth had vanished.
He was quite plainly a different man. How the change came about none could
with authority say, but there was a story of certain last words spoken by his
father, whom alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was current in
the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of Manderson called up a
vision of all that was broad-based and firm in the vast wealth of the United
States. He planned great combinations of capital, drew together and
centralized industries of continental scope, financed with unerring judgement
the large designs of state or of private enterprise. Many a time when he 'took
hold' to smash a strike, or to federate the ownership of some great field of
labour, he sent ruin upon a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or
steelworkers or cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more
lawless and ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate
business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the
financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to
protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country.
Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national lust
for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the Colossus.
But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants and
certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little circle knew
that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability in the markets, had
his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when the Street had trembled at
his name. It was, said one of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a
decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate
would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches
sputtering in his hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of
tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room
of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried
out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go
soberly down to his counting-house--humming a stave or two of 'Spanish
Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless
satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to
some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a million to the depredator might
have been made. 'Seems to me,' he would say almost wistfully, 'the Street is
getting to be a mighty dull place since I quit.' By slow degrees this amiable
weakness of the Colossus became known to the business world, which exulted
greatly in the knowledge.
At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a hurricane; for
it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed like towers in an
earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous inferno of pale despair.
All over the United States, wherever speculation had its devotees, went a waft
of ruin, a plague of suicide. In Europe also not a few took with their own
hands lives that had become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom
most of them had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out
of the Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the Cathedral
top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men stabbed and
shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it as the air, because
in a lonely corner of England the life had departed from one cold heart vowed
to the service of greed.
The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when Wall
Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week
past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the
Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of
Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This
bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been
'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was
due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or
three railway statements which had been expected to be much better than they
were. But at whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of the
threatened break had been felt, 'the Manderson crowd' had stepped in and held
the market up. All through the week the speculator's mind, as shallow as it is
quick- witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in this the hand of the
giant stretched out in protection from afar. Manderson, said the newspapers in
chorus, was in hourly communication with his lieutenants in the Street. One
journal was able to give in round figures the sum spent on cabling between New
York and Marlstone in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of
expert operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to
Marlstone to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that Manderson,
on the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon his holiday and
return home by the Lusitania; but that he soon had the situation so well in
hand that he had determined to remain where he was.
All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the 'finance
editors', consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd business men of
the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better help their plans than
this illusion of hero-worship--knew also that no word had come from Manderson
in answer to their messages, and that Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron
fame, was the true organizer of victory. So they fought down apprehension
through four feverish days, and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the
ground beneath the feet of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with
Etna-mutterings of disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was
firm, and slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn
out but thankfully at peace.
In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the sixty
acres of the financial district. It came into being as the lightning comes--a
blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was
first whispered over the telephone--together with an urgent selling order by
some employee in the cable service. A sharp spasm convulsed the convalescent
share- list. In five minutes the dull noise of the kerbstone market in Broad
Street had leapt to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive
of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed
hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous 'short'
interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a
sudden and ruinous collapse of 'Yankees' in London at the close of the Stock
Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours' trading in front
of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the saviour and warden of the
markets had recoiled upon its authors with annihilating force, and Jeffrey,
his ear at his private telephone, listened to the tale of disaster with a set
jaw. The new Napoleon had lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial
landscape sliding and falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news
of the finding of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumour that it was
suicide, was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached
Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
All this sprang out of nothing.
Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power to a
myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various servitudes to which they
were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona tossed and
murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a
million or two of half- crazed gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of
Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before
he died strong hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of
commerce and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
countrymen had made a strange discovery--that the existence of the potent
engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a
condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days,
the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
'recovered a normal tone'.
While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic scandal
in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents. Next morning
the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable politician was
shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the streets of New Orleans.
Within a week of its rising, 'the Manderson story', to the trained sense of
editors throughout the Union, was 'cold'. The tide of American visitors
pouring through Europe made eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man
who had died in poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat.
Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
Manderson's people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the
Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever Will be, to stand in reverence by
the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
CHAPTER II: Knocking the Town Endways
In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the
telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his
pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over to the
instrument.
'Who is that?' he said. 'Who?... I can't hear you .... Oh, it's Mr. Bunner, is
it?... Yes, but... I know, but he's fearfully busy this afternoon. Can't
you... Oh, really? Well, in that case--just hold on, will you?'
He placed the receiver before Sir James. 'It's Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
Manderson's right-hand man,' he said concisely. 'He insists on speaking to you
personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking from the house
down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak clearly.'
Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
receiver. 'Well?' he said in his strong voice, and listened. 'Yes,' he said.
The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of amazement and
horror. 'Good God!' murmured Sir James. Clutching the instrument, he slowly
rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At intervals he repeated 'Yes.'
Presently, as he listened, he glanced at the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr.
Silver over the top of the transmitter. 'Go and hunt up Figgis and young
Williams. Hurry.' Mr. Silver darted from the room.
The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart and
black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in the world,
which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the half-cynical
competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the charlatan: he made
no mysteries, and no pretences of knowledge, and he saw instantly through
these in others. In his handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was
something a little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint
about his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint
he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company which
owned that most powerful morning paper, the Record, and also that most
indispensable evening paper, the Sun, which had its offices on the other side
of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of the Record, to which he
had in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in
the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts, you
must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great deal of
both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a profession not
favourable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
'You're sure that's all?' asked Sir James, after a few minutes of earnest
listening and questioning. 'And how long has this been known?... Yes, of
course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it's all over the place down
there by now .... Well, we'll have a try .... Look here, Bunner, I'm
infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you a good turn. You know I mean
what I say. Come and see me the first day you get to town .... All right,
that's understood. Now I must act on your news. Goodbye.'
Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the rack
before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a
forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured
man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
'I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,' said Sir James, banishing all
signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. 'When you have them,
put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special edition of the
Sun.' The hard- featured man nodded and glanced at the clock, which pointed to
a few minutes past three; he pulled out a notebook and drew a chair up to the
big writing- table. 'Silver,' Sir James went on, 'go and tell Jones to wire
our local correspondent very urgently, to drop everything and get down to
Marlstone at once. He is not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an
unnecessary word about this news until the Sun is on the streets with it--you
all understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways. Just
tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a scoop. Say that
Figgis will be over in five minutes with the facts, and that he had better let
him write up the story in his private room. As you go, ask Miss Morgan to see
me here at once, and tell the telephone people to see if they can get Mr.
Trent on the wire for me. After seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.'
The alert-eyed young man vanished like a spirit.
Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over the
paper. 'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,' he began quickly and clearly,
pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis scratched down a line
of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had been told that the day was
fine--the pose of his craft. 'He and his wife and two secretaries have been
for the past fortnight at the house called White Gables, at Marlstone, near
Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since
spent a part of each summer there. Last night he went to bed about half-past
eleven, just as usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was
not missed until this morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a
gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head,
through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not
robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a straggle having
taken place. Dr Stock, of Marlstone, was at once sent for, and will conduct
the post-mortem examination. The police from Bishopsbridge, who were soon on
the spot, are reticent, but it is believed that they are quite without a clue
to the identity of the murderer. There you are, Figgis. Mr. Anthony is
expecting you. Now I must telephone him and arrange things.'
Mr. Figgis looked up. 'One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,' he
suggested, 'has been put in charge of the case. It's a safe statement.'
'If you like,' said Sir James.
'And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?'
'Yes. What about her?'
'Prostrated by the shock,' hinted the reporter, 'and sees nobody. Human
interest.'
'I wouldn't put that in, Mr. Figgis,' said a quiet voice. It belonged to Miss
Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her appearance while the
dictation was going on. 'I have seen Mrs. Manderson,' she proceeded, turning
to Sir James. 'She looks quite healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been
murdered? I don't think the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to
be doing all she can to help the police.'
'Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan,' he said with a momentary
smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb. 'Cut it out,
Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I want.'
'Our Manderson biography happens to be well up to date,' replied Miss Morgan,
drooping her dark eyelashes as she considered the position. 'I was looking
over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for tomorrow's paper. I
should think the Sun had better use the sketch of his life they had about two
years ago, when he went to Berlin and settled the potash difficulty. I
remember it was a very good sketch, and they won't be able to carry much more
than that. As for our paper, of course we have a great quantity of cuttings,
mostly rubbish. The sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then
we have two very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a
drawing Mr. Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is
better than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a bad
photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once, and you
can choose. As far as I can see, the Record is well ahead of the situation,
except that you will not be able to get a special man down there in time to be
of any use for tomorrow's paper.'
Sir James sighed deeply. 'What are we good for, anyhow?' he enquired
dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. 'She even knows
Bradshaw by heart.'
Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. 'Is there anything
else?' she asked, as the telephone bell rang.
'Yes, one thing,' replied Sir James, as he took up the receiver. 'I want you
to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan--an everlasting bloomer--just to
put us in countenance.' She permitted herself the fraction of what would have
been a charming smile as she went out.
'Anthony?' asked Sir James, and was at once deep in consultation with the
editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the Sun building in
person; the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say, was all very well if
you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the Murat of Fleet Street, who
delighted in riding the whirlwind and fighting a tumultuous battle against
time, would say the same of a morning paper.
It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that Mr.
Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr. Anthony.
'They can put him through at once,' he said to the boy.
'Hullo!' he cried into the telephone after a few moments.
A voice in the instrument replied, 'Hullo be blowed! What do you want?'
'This is Molloy,' said Sir James.
'I know it is,' the voice said. 'This is Trent. He is in the middle of
painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment. Well, I
hope it's something important, that's all!'
'Trent,' said Sir James impressively, 'it is important. I want you to do some
work for us.'
'Some play, you mean,' replied the voice. 'Believe me, I don't want a holiday.
The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent things. Why
can't you leave a man alone?' 'Something very serious has happened.' 'What?'
'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered--shot through the brain--and they don't
know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It happened at his
place near Bishopsbridge.' Sir James proceeded to tell his hearer, briefly and
clearly, the facts that he had communicated to Mr. Figgis. 'What do you think
of it?' he ended. A considering grunt was the only answer. 'Come now,' urged
Sir James. 'Tempter!'
'You will go down?'
There was a brief pause.
'Are you there?' said Sir James.
'Look here, Molloy,' the voice broke out querulously, 'the thing may be a case
for me, or it may not. We can't possibly tell. It may be a mystery; it may be
as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being robbed looks interesting,
but he may have been outed by some wretched tramp whom he found sleeping in
the grounds and tried to kick out. It's the sort of thing he would do. Such a
murderer might easily have sense enough to know that to leave the money and
valuables was the safest thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have a hand in
hanging a poor devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a
measure of social protest.'
Sir James smiled at the telephone--a smile of success. 'Come, my boy, you're
getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the case. You know you
do. If it's anything you don't want to handle, you're free to drop it. By the
by, where are you?'
'I am blown along a wandering wind,' replied the voice irresolutely, 'and
hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
'Can you get here within an hour?' persisted Sir James.
'I suppose I can,' the voice grumbled. 'How much time have I?'
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