Trent's Last Case

by E. C. Bentley

“I used to think that his strain of Indian blood, remote as it was, might have something to do with the cunning and ruthlessness of the man. Strangely enough, its existence was unknown to any one but himself and me. It was when he asked me to apply my taste for genealogical work to his own obscure family history that I made the discovery that he had in him a share of the blood of the Iroquois chief Montour and his French wife, a terrible woman who ruled the savage politics of the tribes of the Wilderness two hundred years ago. The Mandersons were active in the fur trade on the Pennsylvanian border in those days, and more than one of them married Indian women. Other Indian blood than Montour’s may have descended to Manderson, for all I can say, through previous and subsequent unions; some of the wives’ antecedents were quite untraceable, and there were so many generations of pioneering before the whole country was brought under civilization. My researches left me with the idea that there is a very great deal of the aboriginal blood present in the genealogical make-up of the people of America, and that it is very widely spread. The newer families have constantly intermarried with the older, and so many of them had a strain of the native in them—and were often rather proud of it, too, in those days. But Manderson had the idea about the disgracefulness of mixed blood, which grew much stronger, I fancy, with the rise of the negro question after the war. He was thunderstruck at what I told him, and was anxious to conceal it from every soul. Of course I never gave it away while he lived, and I don’t think he supposed I would; but I have thought since that his mind took a turn against me from that time onward. It happened about a year before his death.”

“Had Manderson,” asked Mr. Cupples, so unexpectedly that the others started, “any definable religious attitude?”

Marlowe considered a moment. “None that ever I heard of,” he said. “Worship and prayer were quite unknown to him, so far as I could see, and I never heard him mention religion. I should doubt if he had any real sense of God at all, or if he was capable of knowing God through the emotions. But I understood that as a child he had had a religious upbringing with a strong moral side to it. His private life was, in the usual limited sense, blameless. He was almost ascetic in his habits, except as to smoking. I lived with him four years without ever knowing him to tell a direct verbal falsehood, constantly as he used to practise deceit in other forms. Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant matter? Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one. I suppose you might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard it. Only with them it is always wartime.”

“It is a sad world,” observed Mr. Cupples.

“As you say,” Marlowe agreed. “Now I was saying that one could always take Manderson’s word if he gave it in a definite form. The first time I ever heard him utter a downright lie was on the night he died; and hearing it, I believe, saved me from being hanged as his murderer.”

Marlowe stared at the light above his head and Trent moved impatiently in his chair. “Before we come to that,” he said, “will you tell us exactly on what footing you were with Manderson during the years you were with him?”

“We were on very good terms from beginning to end,” answered Marlowe. “Nothing like friendship—he was not a man for making friends—but the best of terms as between a trusted employee and his chief. I went to him as private secretary just after getting my degree at Oxford. I was to have gone into my father’s business, where I am now, but my father suggested that I should see the world for a year or two. So I took this secretaryship, which seemed to promise a good deal of varied experience, and I had let the year or two run on to four years before the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing in the world I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post, and that was chess.”

At the word Trent struck his hands together with a muttered exclamation. The others looked at him in surprise.

“Chess!” repeated Trent. “Do you know,” he said, rising and approaching Marlowe, “what was the first thing I noted about you at our first meeting? It was your eye, Mr. Marlowe. I couldn’t place it then, but I know now where I had seen your eyes before. They were in the head of no less a man than the great Nikolay Korchagin, with whom I once sat in the same railway carriage for two days. I thought I should never forget the chess eye after that, but I could not put a name to it when I saw it in you. I beg your pardon,” he ended suddenly, resuming his marmoreal attitude in his chair.

“I have played the game from my childhood, and with good players,” said Marlowe simply. “It is an hereditary gift, if you can call it a gift. At the University I was nearly as good as anybody there, and I gave most of my brains to that and the O.U.D.S. and playing about generally. At Oxford, as I dare say you know, inducements to amuse oneself at the expense of one’s education are endless, and encouraged by the authorities. Well, one day toward the end of my last term, Dr. Munro of Queen’s, whom I had never defeated, sent for me. He told me that I played a fairish game of chess. I said it was very good of him to say so. Then he said, ‘They tell me you hunt, too.’ I said, ‘Now and then.’ He asked, ‘Is there anything else you can do?’ ‘No,’ I said, not much liking the tone of the conversation—the old man generally succeeded in putting people’s backs up. He grunted fiercely, and then told me that enquiries were being made on behalf of a wealthy American man of business who wanted an English secretary. Manderson was the name, he said. He seemed never to have heard it before, which was quite possible, as he never opened a newspaper and had not slept a night outside the college for thirty years. If I could rub up my spelling—as the old gentleman put it—I might have a good chance for the post, as chess and riding and an Oxford education were the only indispensable points.