. I had
become a walking railway-guide and an expert cigar-buyer. I was always
learning something.

"Well, now you understand what my position was in regard to Manderson
during the last few years of my connection with him. It was a happy life
for me on the whole. I was busy, my work was varied and interesting. I
had time to amuse myself, too, and money to spend. At one time I made a
fool of myself about a girl, and that was not a happy time; but it
taught me to understand the great goodness of Mrs. Manderson." Marlowe
inclined his head to Mr. Cupples as he said this. "She may choose to
tell you about it. As for her husband, he had never varied in his
attitude towards me, in spite of the change that came over him in the
last months of his life, as you know. He treated me well and generously
in his unsympathetic way, and I never had a feeling that he was less
than satisfied with his bargain--that was the sort of footing we lived
upon. And it was that continuance of his attitude right up to the end
that made the revelation so shocking when I was suddenly shown, on the
night on which he met his end, the depth of crazy hatred of myself that
was in Manderson's soul."

The eyes of Trent and Mr. Cupples met for an instant.

"You never suspected that he hated you before that time?" asked Trent,
and Mr. Cupples asked at the same moment: "To what did you attribute
it?"

"I never guessed until that night," answered Marlowe, "that he had the
smallest ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know. I
cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I
considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a
case of a madman's delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against
him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at
the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can
you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death with
the object of delivering someone he hates to the hangman?"

Mr. Cupples moved sharply in his chair. "You say Manderson was
responsible for his own death?" he asked. Trent glanced at him with an
eye of impatience, and resumed his intent watch upon the face of
Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less pale and drawn.

"I do say so," Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in
the face. Mr. Cupples nodded.

"Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement," observed the
old g