vexed because he
had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the disappointment on
that score was the other way around, likely as not. His idea was all
right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by Mrs. Manderson's
French maid."

Trent looked up at him quickly. "Celestine!" he said; and his thought
was: "So that was what she was getting at!"

Mr. Bunner misunderstood his glance. "Don't you think I'm giving a man
away, Mr. Trent," he said. "Marlowe isn't that kind. Celestine just took
a fancy to him because he talks French like a native, and she would
always be holding him up for a gossip. French servants are quite unlike
English that way. And servant or no servant," added Mr. Bunner with
emphasis, "I don't see how a woman could mention such a subject to a
man. But the French beat me." He shook his head slowly.

"But to come back to what you were telling me just now," Trent said.
"You believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some
time. Who should threaten it? I am quite in the dark."

"Terror--I don't know," replied Mr. Bunner meditatively. "Anxiety, if
you like ... or suspense--that's rather my idea of it. The old man was
hard to terrify, anyway; and more than that, he wasn't taking any
precautions--he was actually avoiding them. It looked more like he was
asking for a quick finish--supposing there's any truth in my idea. Why,
he would sit in that library window, nights, looking out into the dark,
with his white shirt just a target for anybody's gun. As for who should
threaten his life--well, sir," said Mr. Bunner with a faint smile, "it's
certain you have not lived in the States. To take the Pennsylvania coal
hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with women and children
to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole through
the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms.
Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr. Trent.
There's a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been
known to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten
what he did. They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had
done them dirt in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the
Atlantic is going to stop them?... It takes some sand, I tell you, to be
a big business man in our country. No, sir: the old man knew--had always
known--that there was a whole crowd of dangerous men scattered up and
down the States who h