Trent's Last Case

by E. C. Bentley

  CHAPTER XI: Hitherto Unpublished

  My Dear Molloy:--This is in case I don't find you at your office. Ihave found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. Thiswas my problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It definitelycharges an unsuspected person with having a hand in the crime, andpractically accuses him of being the murderer, so I don't suppose youwill publish it before his arrest, and I believe it is illegal to do soafterwards until he has been tried and found guilty. You may decide topublish it then; and you may find it possible to make some use or otherbefore then of the facts I have given. That is your affair. Meanwhile,will you communicate with Scotland Yard, and let them see what I havewritten? I have done with the Manderson mystery, and I wish to God I hadnever touched it. Here follows my dispatch. P.T.

  Marlstone, June 16th.

  I begin this, my third and probably my finaldispatch to the Record upon the Manderson murder, with conflictingfeelings. I have a strong sense of relief, because in my two previousdispatches I was obliged, in the interests of justice, to withhold factsascertained by me which would, if published then, have put a certainperson upon his guard and possibly have led to his escape; for he isa man of no common boldness and resource. These facts I shall now setforth. But I have, I confess, no liking for the story of treachery andperverted cleverness which I have to tell. It leaves an evil tastein the mouth, a savour of something revolting in the deeper puzzle ofmotive underlying the puzzle of the crime itself, which I believe I havesolved.

  It will be remembered that in my first dispatch I described thesituation as I found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday morning.I told how the body was found, and in what state; dwelt upon thecomplete mystery surrounding the crime, and mentioned one or twolocal theories about it; gave some account of the dead man's domesticsurroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed description of hismovements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a little factwhich may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of whiskymuch larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappearedfrom his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. Onthe following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than anabstract of the proceedings in the coroner's court, of which a verbatimreport was made at my request by other representatives of the Record.That day is not yet over as I write these lines; and I have nowcompleted an investigation which has led me directly to the man who mustbe called upon to clear himself of the guilt of the death of Manderson.

  Apart from the central mystery of Manderson's having arisen long beforehis usual hour to go out and meet his death, there were two minor pointsof oddity about this affair which, I suppose, must have occurred tothousands of those who have read the accounts in the newspapers: pointsapparent from the very beginning. The first of these was that, whereasthe body was found at a spot not thirty yards from the house, all thepeople of the house declared that they had heard no cry or other noisein the night. Manderson had not been gagged; the marks on his wristspointed to a struggle with his assailant; and there had been at leastone pistol-shot. (I say at least one, because it is the fact that inmurders with firearms, especially if there has been a struggle, thecriminal commonly misses his victim at least once.) This odd fact seemedall the more odd to me when I learned that Martin the butler was a badsleeper, very keen of hearing, and that his bedroom, with the windowopen, faced almost directly toward the shed by which the body was found.

  The second odd little fact that was apparent from the outset wasManderson's leaving his dental plate by the bedside. It appeared that hehad risen and dressed himself fully, down to his necktie and watch andchain, and had gone out of doors without remembering to put in thisplate, which he had carried in his mouth every day for years, and whichcontained all the visible teeth of the upper jaw. It had evidently notbeen a case of frantic hurry; and even if it had been, he would havebeen more likely to forget almost anything than this denture. Any onewho wears such a removable plate will agree that the putting it in onrising is a matter of second nature. Speaking as well as eating, to saynothing of appearances, depend upon it.

  Neither of these queer details, however, seemed to lead to anything atthe moment. They only awakened in me a suspicion of something lurking inthe shadows, something that lent more mystery to the already mysteriousquestion how and why and through whom Manderson met his end.

  With this much of preamble I come at once to the discovery which, in thefirst few hours of my investigation, set me upon the path which so muchingenuity had been directed to concealing.

  I have already described Manderson's bedroom, the rigorous simplicityof its furnishing, contrasted so strangely with the multitude of clothesand shoes, and the manner of its communication with Mrs. Manderson'sroom. On the upper of the two long shelves on which the shoes wereranged I found, where I had been told I should find them, the pair ofpatent leather shoes which Manderson had worn on the evening before hisdeath. I had glanced over the row, not with any idea of their giving mea clue, but merely because it happens that I am a judge of shoes, andall these shoes were of the very best workmanship. But my attention wasat once caught by a little peculiarity in this particular pair. Theywere the lightest kind of lace-up dress shoes, very thin in the sole,without toe-caps, and beautifully made, like all the rest. These shoeswere old and well worn; but being carefully polished, and fitted, as allthe shoes were, upon their trees, they looked neat enough. What caughtmy eye was a slight splitting of the leather in that part of the upperknown as the vamp--a splitting at the point where the two laced parts ofthe shoe rise from the upper. It is at this point that the straincomes when a tight shoe of this sort is forced upon the foot, and itis usually guarded with a strong stitching across the bottom of theopening. In both the shoes I was examining this stitching had parted,and the leather below had given way. The splitting was a tiny affair ineach case, not an eighth of an inch long, and the torn edges having cometogether again on the removal of the strain, there was nothing that aperson who was not something of a connoisseur of shoe-leather would havenoticed. Even less noticeable, and indeed not to be seen at all unlessone were looking for it, was a slight straining of the stitches unitingthe upper to the sole. At the toe and on the outer side of eachshoe this stitching had been dragged until it was visible on a closeinspection of the join.

  These indications, of course, could mean only one thing--the shoes hadbeen worn by some one for whom they were too small.

  Now it was clear at a glance that Manderson was always thoroughly wellshod, and careful, perhaps a little vain, of his small and narrow feet.Not one of the other shoes in the collection, as I soon ascertained,bore similar marks; they had not belonged to a man who squeezed himselfinto tight shoe-leather. Someone who was not Manderson had worn theseshoes, and worn them recently; the edges of the tears were quite fresh.

  The possibility of some one having worn them since Manderson's deathwas not worth considering; the body had only been found about twenty-sixhours when I was examining the shoes; besides, why should any one wearthem? The possibility of some one having borrowed Manderson's shoes andspoiled them for him while he was alive seemed about as negligible. Withothers to choose from he would not have worn these. Besides, the onlymen in the place were the butler and the two secretaries. But I do notsay that I gave those possibilities even as much consideration as theydeserved, for my thoughts were running away with me, and I have alwaysfound it good policy, in cases of this sort, to let them have theirheads. Ever since I had got out of the train at Marlstone early thatmorning I had been steeped in details of the Manderson affair; the thinghad not once been out of my head. Suddenly the moment had come when thedaemon wakes and begins to range.

  Let me put it less fancifully. After all, it is a detail of psychologyfamiliar enough to all whose business or inclination brings them incontact with difficult affairs of any kind. Swiftly and spontaneously,when chance or effort puts one in possession of the key-fact in anysystem of baffling circumstances, one's ideas seem to rush to groupth
emselves anew in relation to that fact, so that they are suddenlyrearranged almost before one has consciously grasped the significanceof the key-fact itself. In the present instance, my brain had scarcelyformulated within itself the thought, 'Somebody who was not Mandersonhas been wearing these shoes,' when there flew into my mind a flock ofideas, all of the same character and all bearing upon this new notion.It was unheard-of for Manderson to drink much whisky at night. It wasvery unlike him to be untidily dressed, as the body was when found--thecuffs dragged up inside the sleeves, the shoes unevenly laced; veryunlike him not to wash when he rose, and to put on last night's eveningshirt and collar and underclothing; very unlike him to have his watch inthe waistcoat pocket that was not lined with leather for its reception.(In my first dispatch I mentioned all these points, but neither I norany one else saw anything significant in them when examining the body.)It was very strange, in the existing domestic situation, that Mandersonshould be communicative to his wife about his doings, especially at thetime of his going to bed, when he seldom spoke to her at all. It wasextraordinary that Manderson should leave his bedroom without his falseteeth.

  All these thoughts, as I say, came flocking into my mind together,drawn from various parts of my memory of the morning's enquiries andobservations. They had all presented themselves, in far less time thanit takes to read them as set down here, as I was turning over the shoes,confirming my own certainty on the main point. And yet when I confrontedthe definite idea that had sprung up suddenly and unsupported beforeme--'It was not Manderson who was in the house that night'--it seemed astark absurdity at the first formulating. It was certainly Manderson whohad dined at the house and gone out with Marlowe in the car. Peoplehad seen him at close quarters. But was it he who returned at ten? Thatquestion too seemed absurd enough. But I could not set it aside. Itseemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the wholeexpanse of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently thesun would be rising. I set myself to think over, one by one, the pointsthat had just occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, whyany man masquerading as Manderson should have done these things thatManderson would not have done.

  I had not to cast about very long for the motive a man might have inforcing his feet into Manderson's narrow shoes. The examination offootmarks is very well understood by the police. But not only was theman concerned to leave no footmarks of his own: he was concerned toleave Manderson's, if any; his whole plan, if my guess was right, musthave been directed to producing the belief that Manderson was inthe place that night. Moreover, his plan did not turn upon leavingfootmarks. He meant to leave the shoes themselves, and he did so. Themaidservant had found them outside the bedroom door, as Mandersonalways left his shoes, and had polished them, replacing them on theshoe-shelves later in the morning, after the body had been found.

  When I came to consider in this new light the leaving of the falseteeth, an explanation of what had seemed the maddest part of the affairbroke upon me at once. A dental plate is not inseparable from its owner.If my guess was right, the unknown had brought the denture to the housewith him, and left it in the bedroom, with the same object as he had inleaving the shoes: to make it impossible that any one should doubt thatManderson had been in the house and had gone to bed there. This, ofcourse, led me to the inference that Manderson was dead before the falseManderson came to the house, and other things confirmed this.

  For instance, the clothing, to which I now turned in my review of theposition. If my guess was right, the unknown in Manderson's shoeshad certainly had possession of Manderson's trousers, waistcoat, andshooting jacket. They were there before my eyes in the bedroom; andMartin had seen the jacket--which nobody could have mistaken--upon theman who sat at the telephone in the library. It was now quite plain(if my guess was right) that this unmistakable garment was a cardinalfeature of the unknown's plan. He knew that Martin would take him forManderson at the first glance.

  And there my thinking was interrupted by the realization of a thingthat had escaped me before. So strong had been the influence of theunquestioned assumption that it was Manderson who was present thatnight, that neither I nor, as far as I know, any one else had noted thepoint. Martin had not seen the man's face, nor had Mrs. Manderson.

  Mrs. Manderson (judging by her evidence at the inquest, of which, asI have said, I had a full report made by the Record stenographers incourt) had not seen the man at all. She hardly could have done, as Ishall show presently. She had merely spoken with him as she lay halfasleep, resuming a conversation which she had had with her livinghusband about an hour before. Martin, I perceived, could only haveseen the man's back, as he sat crouching over the telephone; no doubta characteristic pose was imitated there. And the man had worn his hat,Manderson's broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in the backof a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been ofabout Manderson's build, had had no need for any disguise, apart fromthe jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry.

  I paused there to contemplate the coolness and ingenuity of the man.The thing, I now began to see, was so safe and easy, provided thathis mimicry was good enough, and that his nerve held. Those two pointsassured, only some wholly unlikely accident could unmask him.

  To come back to my puzzling out of the matter as I sat in the dead man'sbedroom with the tell-tale shoes before me. The reason for the entranceby the window instead of by the front door will already have occurredto any one reading this. Entering by the door, the man would almostcertainly have been heard by the sharp-eared Martin in his pantry justacross the hall; he might have met him face to face.

  Then there was the problem of the whisky. I had not attached muchimportance to it; whisky will sometimes vanish in very queer ways in ahousehold of eight or nine persons; but it had seemed strange that itshould go in that way on that evening. Martin had been plainly quitedumbfounded by the fact. It seemed to me now that many a man--fresh,as this man in all likelihood was, from a bloody business, from theunclothing of a corpse, and with a desperate part still to play--wouldturn to that decanter as to a friend. No doubt he had a drink beforesending for Martin; after making that trick with ease and success, heprobably drank more.

  But he had known when to stop. The worst part of the enterprise wasbefore him: the business--clearly of such vital importance to him, forwhatever reason--of shutting himself in Manderson's room and preparinga body of convincing evidence of its having been occupied by Manderson;and this with the risk--very slight, as no doubt he understood, but howunnerving!--of the woman on the other side of the half-open door awakingand somehow discovering him. True, if he kept out of her limited fieldof vision from the bed, she could only see him by getting up and goingto the door. I found that to a person lying in her bed, which stoodwith its head to the wall a little beyond the door, nothing was visiblethrough the doorway but one of the cupboards by Manderson's bed-head.Moreover, since this man knew the ways of the household, he would thinkit most likely that Mrs. Manderson was asleep. Another point with him, Iguessed, might have been the estrangement between the husband and wife,which they had tried to cloak by keeping up, among other things, theirusual practice of sleeping in connected rooms, but which was well knownto all who had anything to do with them. He would hope from this thatif Mrs. Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the supposedpresence of her husband.

  So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom,and saw him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my ownbreath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heardthe sound of all others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice from theadjoining room.

  What Mrs. Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at theinquest. She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had agood run in the car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think, wecome to a supremely significant point. Not only does he--standing rigidthere, as I picture him, before the dressing-table, listening to thesound of his own leaping heart--not only does he answer
the lady in thevoice of Manderson; he volunteers an explanatory statement. He tellsher that he has, on a sudden inspiration, sent Marlowe in the carto Southampton; that he has sent him to bring back some importantinformation from a man leaving for Paris by the steamboat that morning.Why these details from a man who had long been uncommunicative to hiswife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest her? Why thesedetails about Marlowe?

  Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definitepropositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the carstarted, and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot--probablyat a considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; thatthe body was brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outerclothing; that at some time round about eleven o'clock a man who wasnot Manderson, wearing Manderson's shoes, hat, and jacket, entered thelibrary by the garden window; that he had with him Manderson's blacktrousers, waistcoat, and motor-coat, the denture taken from Manderson'smouth, and the weapon with which he had been murdered; that he concealedthese, rang the bell for the butler, and sat down at the telephonewith his hat on and his back to the door; that he was occupied with thetelephone all the time Martin was in the room; that on going up to thebedroom floor he quietly entered Marlowe's room and placed the revolverwith which the crime had been committed--Marlowe's revolver--in the caseon the mantelpiece from which it had been taken; and that he then wentto Manderson's room, placed Manderson's shoes outside the door, threwManderson's garments on a chair, placed the denture in the bowl by thebedside, and selected a suit of clothes, a pair of shoes, and a tie fromthose in the bedroom.

  Here I will pause in my statement of this man's proceedings to go into aquestion for which the way is now sufficiently prepared:

  Who was the false Manderson?

  Reviewing what was known to me, or might almost with certainty besurmised, about that person, I set down the following five conclusions:

  (1.) He had been in close relations with the dead man. In his actingbefore Martin and his speaking to Mrs. Manderson he had made no mistake.

  (2.) He was of a build not unlike Manderson's, especially as to heightand breadth of shoulder, which mainly determine the character of theback of a seated figure when the head is concealed and the body looselyclothed. But his feet were larger, though not greatly larger, thanManderson's.

  (3.) He had considerable aptitude for mimicry and acting--probably someexperience too.

  (4.) He had a minute acquaintance with the ways of the Mandersonhousehold.

  (5.) He was under a vital necessity of creating the belief thatManderson was alive and in that house until some time after midnight onthe Sunday night.

  So much I took as either certain or next door to it. It was as far as Icould see. And it was far enough.

  I proceed to give, in an order corresponding with the numberedparagraphs above, such relevant facts as I was able to obtain about MrJohn Marlowe, from himself and other sources:

  (1.) He had been Mr. Manderson's private secretary, upon a footing ofgreat intimacy, for nearly four years.

  (2.) The two men were nearly of the same height, about five feet eleveninches; both were powerfully built and heavy in the shoulder. Marlowe,who was the younger by some twenty years, was rather slighter about thebody, though Manderson was a man in good physical condition. Marlowe'sshoes (of which I examined several pairs) were roughly about oneshoemaker's size longer and broader than Manderson's.

  (3.) In the afternoon of the first day of my investigation, afterarriving at the results already detailed, I sent a telegram to apersonal friend, a Fellow of a college at Oxford, whom I knew to beinterested in theatrical matters, in these terms:

  PLEASE WIRE JOHN MARLOWE'S RECORD IN CONNECTION WITH ACTING AT OXFORDSOME TIME PAST DECADE VERY URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.

  My friend replied in the following telegram, which reached me nextmorning (the morning of the inquest):

  MARLOWE WAS MEMBER O.U.D.S FOR THREE YEARS AND PRESIDENT 19-- PLAYEDBARDOLPH CLEON AND MERCUTIO EXCELLED IN CHARACTER ACTING AND IMITATIONSIN GREAT DEMAND AT SMOKERS WAS HERO OF SOME HISTORIC HOAXES.

  I had been led to send the telegram which brought this very helpfulanswer by seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe's bedroom a photographof himself and two others in the costume of Falstaff's three followers,with an inscription from The Merry Wives, and by noting that it bore theimprint of an Oxford firm of photographers.

  (4.) During his connection with Manderson, Marlowe had lived as oneof the family. No other person, apart from the servants, had hisopportunities for knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in detail.

  (5.) I ascertained beyond doubt that Marlowe arrived at a hotel inSouthampton on the Monday morning at 6.30, and there proceeded to carryout the commission which, according to his story, and according to thestatement made to Mrs. Manderson in the bedroom by the false Manderson,had been entrusted to him by his employer. He had then returned in thecar to Marlstone, where he had shown great amazement and horror at thenews of the murder.

  ***

  These, I say, are the relevant facts about Marlowe. We must now examinefact number 5 (as set out above) in connection with conclusion number 5about the false Manderson.

  I would first draw attention to one important fact. The only person whoprofessed to have heard Manderson mention Southampton at all before hestarted in the car was Marlowe. His story--confirmed to some extent bywhat the butler overheard--was that the journey was all arranged in aprivate talk before they set out, and he could not say, when I put thequestion to him, why Manderson should have concealed his intentions bygiving out that he was going with Marlowe for a moonlight drive. Thispoint, however, attracted no attention. Marlowe had an absolutelyair-tight alibi in his presence at Southampton by 6.30; nobody thoughtof him in connection with a murder which must have been committed after12.30--the hour at which Martin the butler had gone to bed. But it wasthe Manderson who came back from the drive who went out of his way tomention Southampton openly to two persons. He even went so far asto ring up a hotel at Southampton and ask questions which bore outMarlowe's story of his errand. This was the call he was busy with whenMartin was in the library.

  Now let us consider the alibi. If Manderson was in the house that night,and if he did not leave it until some time after 12.30, Marlowe couldnot by any possibility have had a direct hand in the murder. It is aquestion of the distance between Marlstone and Southampton. If he hadleft Marlstone in the car at the hour when he is supposed to have doneso--between 10 and 10.30--with a message from Manderson, the run wouldbe quite an easy one to do in the time. But it would be physicallyimpossible for the car--a 15 h.p. four-cylinder Northumberland, anaverage medium-power car--to get to Southampton by half-past six unlessit left Marlstone by midnight at latest. Motorists who will examine theroad-map and make the calculations required, as I did in Manderson'slibrary that day, will agree that on the facts as they appeared therewas absolutely no case against Marlowe.

  But even if they were not as they appeared; if Manderson was dead byeleven o'clock, and if at about that time Marlowe impersonated him atWhite Gables; if Marlowe retired to Manderson's bedroom--how can allthis be reconciled with his appearance next morning at Southampton? Hehad to get out of the house, unseen and unheard, and away in the car bymidnight. And Martin, the sharp-eared Martin, was sitting up until 12.30in his pantry, with the door open, listening for the telephone bell.Practically he was standing sentry over the foot of the staircase, theonly staircase leading down from the bedroom floor.

  With this difficulty we arrive at the last and crucial phase of myinvestigation. Having the foregoing points clearly in mind, I spent therest of the day before the inquest in talking to various persons and ingoing over my story, testing it link by link. I could only find the oneweakness which seemed to be involved in Martin's sitting up until 12.30;and since his having been instructed to do so was certainly a part ofthe plan, meant to clinch the alibi for Marlowe, I knew there must be anexplanation somewhere. If I could not fi
nd that explanation, my theorywas valueless. I must be able to show that at the time Martin went up tobed the man who had shut himself in Manderson's bedroom might have beenmany miles away on the road to Southampton.

  I had, however, a pretty good idea already--as perhaps the reader ofthese lines has by this time, if I have made myself clear--of how theescape of the false Manderson before midnight had been contrived. But Idid not want what I was now about to do to be known. If I had chanced tobe discovered at work, there would have been no concealing the directionof my suspicions. I resolved not to test them on this point until thenext day, during the opening proceedings at the inquest. This was to beheld, I knew, at the hotel, and I reckoned upon having White Gables tomyself so far as the principal inmates were concerned.

  So in fact it happened. By the time the proceedings at the hotel hadbegun I was hard at work at White Gables. I had a camera with me. Imade search, on principles well known to and commonly practised by thepolice, and often enough by myself, for certain indications. Withoutdescribing my search, I may say at once that I found and was able tophotograph two fresh fingerprints, very large and distinct, on thepolished front of the right-hand top drawer of the chest of drawersin Manderson's bedroom; five more (among a number of smaller and lessrecent impressions made by other hands) on the glasses of the Frenchwindow in Mrs. Manderson's room, a window which always stood open atnight with a curtain before it; and three more upon the glass bowl inwhich Manderson's dental plate had been found lying.

  I took the bowl with me from White Gables. I took also a few articleswhich I selected from Marlowe's bedroom, as bearing the most distinctof the innumerable fingerprints which are always to be found upon toiletarticles in daily use. I already had in my possession, made upon leavescut from my pocket diary, some excellent fingerprints of Marlowe'swhich he had made in my presence without knowing it. I had shown him theleaves, asking if he recognized them; and the few seconds during whichhe had held them in his fingers had sufficed to leave impressions whichI was afterwards able to bring out.

  By six o'clock in the evening, two hours after the jury had brought intheir verdict against a person or persons unknown, I had completed mywork, and was in a position to state that two of the five large printsmade on the window-glasses, and the three on the bowl, were made by theleft hand of Marlowe; that the remaining three on the window and the twoon the drawer were made by his right hand.

  By eight o'clock I had made at the establishment of Mr. H. T. Copper,photographer, of Bishopsbridge, and with his assistance, a dozenenlarged prints of the finger-marks of Marlowe, clearly showing theidentity of those which he unknowingly made in my presence and thoseleft upon articles in his bedroom, with those found by me as I havedescribed, and thus establishing the facts that Marlowe was recently inManderson's bedroom, where he had in the ordinary way no business,and in Mrs. Manderson's room, where he had still less. I hope it may bepossible to reproduce these prints for publication with this dispatch.

  At nine o'clock I was back in my room at the hotel and sitting down tobegin this manuscript. I had my story complete. I bring it to a closeby advancing these further propositions: that on the night of the murderthe impersonator of Manderson, being in Manderson's bedroom, told MrsManderson, as he had already told Martin, that Marlowe was at thatmoment on his way to Southampton; that having made his dispositions inthe room, he switched off the light, and lay in the bed in his clothes;that he waited until he was assured that Mrs. Manderson was asleep; thathe then arose and stealthily crossed Mrs. Manderson's bedroom in hisstocking feet, having under his arm the bundle of clothing and shoes forthe body; that he stepped behind the curtain, pushing the doors ofthe window a little further open with his hands, strode over the ironrailing of the balcony, and let himself down until only a drop of a fewfeet separated him from the soft turf of the lawn.

  All this might very well have been accomplished within half an hour ofhis entering Manderson's bedroom, which, according to Martin, he did atabout half-past eleven.

  What followed your readers and the authorities may conjecture forthemselves. The corpse was found next morning clothed--rather untidily.Marlowe in the car appeared at Southampton by half-past six.

  I bring this manuscript to an end in my sitting-room at the hotel atMarlstone. It is four o'clock in the morning. I leave for London by thenoon train from Bishopsbridge, and immediately after arriving I shallplace these pages in your hands. I ask you to communicate the substanceof them to the Criminal Investigation Department.

  PHILIP TRENT.