The Woman in Black Part 11

CHAPTER VIII

A HOT SCENT

"Come in," called Trent.

Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early evening of the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box, had p.r.o.nounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown.

Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study of what lay in a photographic dish of enameled metal, which he moved slowly about in the light of the window. He looked very pale and his movements were nervous.

"Sit on the sofa," he advised. "The chairs are a job lot bought at the sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a pretty good negative," he went on, holding it up to the light with his head at the angle of discriminating judgment. "Washed enough now, I think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess."

Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of basins, dishes, racks, boxes and bottles, picked up first one and then another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.

"That is called hypo-eliminator," said Trent as Mr. Cupples uncorked and smelled at one of the bottles. "Very useful when you're in a hurry with a negative. I shouldn't drink it, though, all the same. It eliminates sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn't wonder if it would eliminate human beings too." He found a place for the last of the litter on the crowded mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr. Cupples on the table. "The great thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its beauty does not distract the mind from work. It is no place for the May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease. Have you ever been in this room before, Cupples? I have, hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over England for years. I should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel, they were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there is the ink I spilled on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended the gla.s.s over the picture of 'Silent Sympathy,' which I threw a boot at in Banbury. I do all my best work here. This afternoon, for instance, since the inquest, I have finished several excellent negatives. There is a very good dark-room downstairs."

"The inquest--that reminds me," said Mr. Cupples, who knew that this sort of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering what he could be about. "I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for looking after Mabel this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel ill after leaving the box; she seemed quite unmoved, and really she is a woman of such extraordinary self-command, I thought I could leave her to her own devices and hear out the evidence, which I thought it important I should do. It was a very fortunate thing she found a friend to a.s.sist her, and she is most grateful. She is quite herself again now."

Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow, made no reply to this. "I tell you what," he said after a short pause, "I was just getting to the really interesting part of the job when you came in. Come: would you like to see a little bit of high-cla.s.s police work? It's the very same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing at this moment. Perhaps he is; but I hope to glory he isn't." He sprang off the table and disappeared into his bedroom. Presently he came out with a large drawing-board on which a number of heterogeneous objects was ranged.

"First I must introduce you to these little things," he said, setting them out on the table. "Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two leaves cut out of a diary--my own diary; here is a bottle containing dentifrice; here is a little case of polished walnut. Some of these things have to be put back where they belong in somebody's bedroom at White Gables before night. That's the sort of man I am--nothing stops me. I borrowed them this very morning when everyone was down at the inquest, and I dare say some people would think it rather an odd proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the board. Can you tell me, without touching it, what it is?"

"Certainly I can," said Mr. Cupples, peering at it with great interest.

"It is an ordinary gla.s.s bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see nothing odd about it," he added after some moments of close scrutiny.

"That," replied Trent, "is exactly where the fun comes in. Now take this little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull out the cork. Do you recognize that powder inside it? You have swallowed pounds of it in your time, I expect. They give it to babies. Gray powder is its ordinary name--mercury and chalk. It is great stuff. Now while I hold the basin side-ways over this sheet of paper, I want you to pour a little powder out of the bottle over this part of the bowl--just here.... Perfect! Sir Edward Henry himself could not have handled the powder better. You have done this before, Cupples, I can see. You are an old hand."

"I really am not," said Mr. Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the fallen powder to the bottle. "I a.s.sure you it is all a complete mystery to me. What did I do then?"

"I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair brush. Now look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do you see anything now?"

Mr. Cupples peered again. "How curious," he said. "Yes, there are two large gray finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before."

"I am Hawkshaw the detective," observed Trent. "Would it interest you to hear a short lecture on the subject of gla.s.s finger-bowls? When you take one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually practically invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave the marks of your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is never quite dry, and sometimes--in moments of great anxiety, for instance, Cupples--it is very moist. It leaves a mark on any cold smooth surface it may touch.

That bowl was moved by somebody with a rather moist hand quite lately."

He sprinkled the powder again. "Here on the other side, you see, is the thumb-mark--very good impressions all of them." He spoke without raising his voice, but Mr. Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint gray marks. "This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look--!" he held one of the negatives up to the light of the declining sun and demonstrated with a pencil point. "You can see they're the same. You see the bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the other. You see that little scar near the center. There it is in the other. There are a score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert would swear in the witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks I have photographed on this negative were made by the same hand."

"And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?" asked Mr.

Cupples, wide-eyed.

"I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front-window in Mrs. Manderson's bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I photographed them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of the gla.s.s for the purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson's room. It is the bowl in which his false teeth were placed at night. I could bring that away, so I did."

"But those cannot be Mabel's finger-marks."

"I should think not!" said Trent with decision. "They are twice the size of any print Mrs. Manderson could make."

"Then they must be her husband's."

"Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I believe we can." Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder.

"Lamp-black," he explained. "Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your fingers." He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the leaves cut from his diary, and held it out for the other to examine. No marks appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the powder out upon one surface of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the other; then shook the leaf gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it out to Mr. Cupples in silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably, clearly printed in black, the same two finger-prints that he had already seen on the bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the bowl and compared them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other side was a bold black replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in gray on the gla.s.s in his hand.

"Same man, you see," Trent said with a short laugh. "I felt that it must be so, and now I know." He walked to the window and looked out. "Now I know," he repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone was bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his motionless back for a few moments.

"I am still completely in the dark," he ventured presently. "I have often heard of this finger-print business, and wondered how the police went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson's finger-prints are going--"

"I am very sorry, Cupples," Trent broke in upon his meditative speech with a swift return to the table. "When I began this investigation I meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn't think I have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my tongue about the whole thing, at least for a time. I will tell you this: I have come upon a fact that looks too much like having terrible consequences if it is discovered by any one else." He looked at the other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his hand.

"It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was hoping against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be wrong in the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way of finding out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it." He smiled suddenly at Mr. Cupples' face of consternation. "All right--I'm not going to be tragic any more, and I'll tell you all about it when I can.

Look here, I'm not half through my game with the powder-bottles yet."

He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test the broad ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr. Cupples, swallowing his amazement, bent forward in an att.i.tude of deep interest and handed Trent the bottle of lamp-black.

CHAPTER IX

THE WIFE OF DIVES

Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables gazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather had broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathings drifted up the fields from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken gray deadness shedding pin-point moisture that was now and then blown against the panes with a crepitation of despair. The lady looked out on the dim and chilling prospect with a woeful face. It was a bad day for a woman bereaved, alone and without a purpose in life.

There was a knock, and she called, "Come in!" drawing herself up with an unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that the weariness of the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr. Trent had called, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an early hour, but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs. Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent was shown in.

His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of the sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick sensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his half-smile of fixed good-humor.

"May I come to the point at once?" he said when she had given him her hand. "There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelve o'clock, but I cannot go until I have settled this thing, which concerns you only, Mrs. Manderson. I have been working half the night, and thinking the rest; and I know now what I ought to do."

"You look wretchedly tired," she said kindly. "Won't you sit down?--this is a very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible business and your work as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I can properly tell you, Mr. Trent. I know that you won't make it worse for me than you can help in doing your duty here. If you say you must see me about something, I know it must be because, as you say, you ought to do it."

"Mrs. Manderson," said Trent, slowly measuring his words, "I won't make it worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad for you--only between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tell me what I shall ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on my word of honor: I shall ask you only as much as will decide me whether to publish or to withhold certain grave things that I have found out about your husband's death, things not suspected by any one else, nor, I think, likely to be so. What I have discovered--what I believe that I have practically proved--will be a great shock to you in any case. But it may be worse for you than that; and if you give me reason to think it would be so, then I shall destroy this ma.n.u.script"--he laid a long envelop on the small table beside him--"and nothing of what it has to tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell you, of a short private note to my editor, followed by a long despatch for publication in the _Record_. Now you may refuse to say anything to me. If you do refuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this up to London with me to-day and leave it with my editor to be dealt with at his discretion. My view is, you understand, that I am not ent.i.tled to suppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents itself to my imagination. But if I gather from you--and I can gather it from no other person--that there is substance in that imaginary possibility I speak of, then I have only one thing to do as a gentleman and as one who"--he hesitated for a phrase--"wishes you well. I shall suppress that despatch of mine. In some directions I decline to a.s.sist the police.

Have you followed me so far?" he asked with a touch of anxiety in his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave no sign as she regarded him, her hands clasped before her and her shoulders drawn back in a pose of rigid calm. She looked precisely as she had looked at the inquest.

"I understand quite well," said Mrs. Manderson in a low voice. She drew a deep breath, and went on: "I don't know what dreadful thing you have found out, or what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, but it was good--it was honorable of you to come to me about it. Now will you please tell me?"

"I cannot do that," Trent replied. "The secret is my newspaper's, if it is not yours. If I find it is yours, you shall have my ma.n.u.script to read and destroy. Believe me," he broke out with something of his old warmth, "I detest such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul, but it is not I who have made this mystery. This is the most painful hour of my life, and you make it worse by not treating me like a hound. The first thing I ask you to tell me"--he reverted with an effort to his colorless tone--"is this: is it true, as you stated at the inquest, that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late husband had changed his att.i.tude toward you, and become mistrustful and reserved, during the last few months of his life?"

Mrs. Manderson's dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly rose from her chair. Trent got up at the same moment, and took his envelop from the table; his manner said that he perceived the interview to be at an end. But she held up a hand, and there was color in her cheeks and quick breathing in her voice as she said: "Do you know what you ask, Mr.

Trent? You ask me if I perjured myself."

"I do," he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause: "You knew already that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs.

Manderson. The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could withhold a part of the truth under any circ.u.mstances is a polite fiction." He still stood as awaiting dismissal; but she was silent. She walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slight movement of her shoulders until it subsided. Then with face averted, looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last clearly.

"Mr. Trent," she said, "you inspire confidence in people, and I feel that things which I don't want known or talked about are safe with you.

And I know you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are doing, though I don't know what it is. I suppose it would be a.s.sisting justice in some way if I told you the truth about what you asked me just now. To understand that truth you ought to know about what went before; I mean about my marriage. After all, a good many people could tell you as well as I can that it was not ... a very successful union. I was only twenty. I admired his force and courage and certainty; he was the only strong man I had ever known. But it did not take me long to find out that he cared for his business more than for me, and I think I found out even sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself, promising myself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own feelings, because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than an English girl ever dreams of. I have been despising myself for that for five years. My husband's feeling for me ... well, I cannot speak of that ... what I want to say is that along with it there had always been a belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place in society, and that I should throw myself into it with enjoyment and become a sort of personage and do him great credit--that was his idea; and the idea remained with him after other delusions had gone. I was a part of his ambition. That was his really bitter disappointment--that I failed him as a social success. I think he was too shrewd not to have known in his heart that such a man as he was, twenty years older than I, with great business responsibilities that filled every hour of his life, and caring for nothing else--he must have felt that there was a risk of great unhappiness in marrying the sort of girl I was, brought up to music and books and unpractical ideas, always enjoying myself in my own way. But he had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honors of his position in the world; and I found I couldn't."

Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she had yet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun to ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto have been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past few days. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as she went on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, her hands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she surrendered herself to the impulse of giving speech to things long pent up.

"The people!" she said. "Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor,--can you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you _have_ to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all--where money is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's thoughts--where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display and silly amus.e.m.e.nts and silly immoralities--do you know how awful that life is?... Of course I know there are clever people and people of taste in that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing in the end--empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make friends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after it all.

The seasons in New York and London! How I hated them! And our house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest--the same people, the same emptiness!