Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  Trent did, on the contrary, know very well, but he had no desire at all to discuss the matter of Wetherill’s infamous book, and the blackmailing use he had made of it. If Eunice, in her innocence, believed that transaction to be a secret from all the world, so much the better. So he merely said, ‘All right; go ahead. You were saying you had to find a sum of money.’

  ‘It took everything I had,’ she said, ‘and as much as I could raise. That hit me pretty hard; but I got it done and over, and there was an American tour being fixed up for me that would have pulled things straight again. Then that fell through. I really began to feel as if the gods had got a grudge against me. Still, I have always been able to earn my living, and soon I was on my feet again with the name part in Northmour’s play. It was just then that I began to receive those letters from Randolph that I was telling you about. I suppose the reason why they upset me so much was just because, from what I had seen of him, they seemed so utterly unnatural and out of character. I have met with a good many nasty old men in my time, and though I could imagine Randolph being a brute in all sorts of ways, I had simply never thought of him in that particular way—no more than I should of the Cobden Statue in Hampstead Road. So I got more and more wrought up, and first I let slip something about it to Bryan, like a chattering fool, and then I relieved my feelings by telling Judith all about it, and then—well, what happened then really did surprise me.’

  ‘Do you mean that Randolph flung off the mask, and revealed that he was quite respectable after all?’

  ‘Yes, if that’s all that being respectable means. I got a letter from him saying he had hoped to make everything plain in a personal interview, but I must have misunderstood his earlier letters. He said that two years before he had commissioned a firm of inquiry agents to find out whether any relations of his were alive, because he felt it was time he made up his mind what was to happen to his money, or something like that. The agents had found no trace of his son; but they had got on the trail of his only sister Caroline, and they had established the fact that she was my mother, who died when I was nineteen. He gave a few details that showed there was no doubt about it. He said his sister had left home to marry an actor named Hunt. Well, I had always known that was my father’s real name; and I had known there was some sort of row about the marriage, because my mother had never let slip a single word about any of her relations in my hearing, and she would never tell me what her maiden name had been. Neither would my father, even when he wasn’t sober, which was pretty often.

  ‘Randolph’s letter mentioned the place where I was born, and gave the addresses where my parents had lived since then, and—oh! there was a lot more, but what it all came to was that I was certainly the old man’s niece. And that wasn’t at all a pleasant surprise, I can tell you. For one thing, I hated the idea of my parents’ history being nosed out like that. You see, Phil, my father had some lovable qualities, and had a splendid appearance, and was quite a good actor with a reputation of his own in the provinces; but he had serious weaknesses, and he died soon after he was forty. After that my mother kept a boarding-house in Portsmouth, and she did well enough out of that to keep us decent, and send me to a good school. But she was what they call soured, I suppose. I never saw her look happy, and though she was never unkind to me, she was not exactly a doting parent. The long and the short of it is that I was an unhappy kid, and I have always thought about my early years as little as possible. Then here came somebody I hardly knew, and didn’t much like, full of information about my parentage and childhood, and proving himself to be an uncle who I didn’t even know existed.’

  Trent, as he listened to Eunice’s tale, reflected that there were not, perhaps, very many women supporting themselves in an arduous calling who would have been seriously displeased by the discovery of a millionaire uncle looking about him for someone to inherit his wealth. But Eunice, as he knew, had always been one of those who seem able to steer a more or less happy course through life without troubling themselves about money. Not that she was one of the Skimpole family of that tribe; for she was devoted to her art, was a tireless worker, and for years had enjoyed such success that she might have laid the foundations of a fortune by now if she had been so inclined. As it was, though she valued her independence as much as life itself, she had never done anything to secure it in the pecuniary sense. She was generous and careless in the extreme. Sometimes she would make the pleasing discovery that there was a respectable balance to her credit at the bank; sometimes she was deep enough in debt to have alarmed a less mercurial spirit. She trusted to luck and to her genius to make ends meet; and when they even overlapped, it was not for long.

  ‘That was what his letter told me,’ she said, ‘and it ended by asking me to have lunch with him and talk things over on a certain day when he would be next in London—that was last Wednesday, of course; the last day of his life.’ She raised her shoulders in a movement of distress, and for a moment her eyes closed.

  ‘So that is the explanation of your meeting with him,’ Trent said quietly. ‘A good deal of what I have been hearing and finding out is fitting itself together now—not all of it, unfortunately, but a lot. Do you care to tell me what happened when you saw him?’

  ‘I want to tell you,’ she said. ‘It was the worst part of the whole business. I wrote back to him at Brinton accepting his invitation. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see how I could decently do anything else. After all, it was perfectly natural he should do what he had done; it was natural he should want to see me; and I had been doing him an injustice, though I still didn’t blame myself at all for that. So I accepted; and on the day, I met him as you know. He was quite frank and pleasant at the start; talked about my mother a little, and told me I was much more like my father—which I knew better than he did—and said that in his old age his being alone in the world had begun to trouble him for the first time. Then he spoke of the time when we had met in Scotland, and he confessed that he had gone to that hotel knowing I was to be there, because he wanted to see what kind of a person I was.’

  Trent nodded. ‘I rather thought that might be so,’ he observed. ‘But you say that was about a year ago. I suppose he liked the look of you then—it’s usual to like the look of you. Why, I wonder, was he such a devilish long time about taking action? I should have expected him to bring the family tree to your notice without delay, after satisfying himself that you were all his fancy painted you.’

  Eunice’s look hardened. ‘Well, you didn’t understand my uncle, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Not many men would understand him, I should think—or I should hope. You will soon see why he took his time. After speaking of that time in Scotland, he went on to asking about my career. That gave me something to talk about, which I was glad of; and I told him how I had started, and how I had got on—a regular autobiography. He took it all in, but looking a little bit grim, I thought; and then he asked me how I had been doing lately. So I told him, quite frankly, it was the worst year I had had since I qualified as a star. Then he put questions, and I told about the way the Westlake papers had been crabbing me, and how my American tour had failed to materialize for some reason; and I said I had lost a lot of money, for me, in a private venture—by which I meant that unpleasant affair I mentioned to you without telling you what it was. Randolph wanted to know about that, and I told him I preferred not to discuss it.

  ‘And then, Phil, I got the jolt that he had been saving up for me. He said to me something like this: “Well, my dear, you see you can’t reckon on the stage as a means of support all your life. You have had a good innings, but it looks to me as if your reputation was beginning to decline, and unless you have saved money your future is uncertain, to say the least of it. But I am your near relative. I am a rich man. I wish to place you in the position in life you are entitled to, as my niece, and I propose to leave you the bulk of my estate by will. But there are conditions attached to this; and one of them is that you give up the stage, which I regard as an immoral and disreputa
ble way of earning a living. I would rather see anyone I cared for dead at my feet than winning success in the theatre.”’

  Eunice, who had put the whole of her talent into this impersonation of the dour old man, and reproduced his very accents with startling effect, now shook back her clipped hair and turned a wide smile on Trent. ‘How did that go with you?’ she asked. ‘It has made me feel much better, anyhow. I can’t swear to the actual words, except “immoral and disreputable way of earning a living,” and the “dead at my feet” gag; but I swear I got the general sense of it right. And perhaps you can imagine how it got me going! I was bursting! But I didn’t let myself explode. I simply said I didn’t want his money, that I had got on without it before and could get on without it for the future. I said I was used to looking out for myself, and was quite ready to take my chance, and that I preferred it anyhow.

  ‘The next minute I was very glad I hadn’t let my temper get the better of me, because he turned white with rage, and if it gets to being thoroughly unpleasant I always think it’s a much better arrangement if the other party starts it. He told me that I was a fool, that everybody wanted money. He said, if I had had money I should never have taken to this vagabond existence—those were his very words, my dear. So I just looked at him—like this—as if he was a bad smell, but as if I supposed he couldn’t help being a bad smell. That made him madder, of course. He said I might talk about taking my chance, but that I hadn’t any chance, and he could see to it that I didn’t get one. He said he didn’t mind telling me that it was he who had worked it so as to make the Westlake papers give me the bird, and get my American tour messed up, but that that was only the start, just to show me what a rotten game the stage was, and if I wanted any more I could have plenty.’

  ‘You are giving me, as you say, his very words,’ Trent suggested.

  ‘Of course not—don’t be aggravating, Phil. I’m merely putting what he said into ordinary English. He said he did not withdraw the proposal he had made me, because he meant to have his way. He said he knew it wouldn’t be long before I came to him with my pride humbled, and that then I should have to agree to another condition which he hadn’t mentioned yet. At that I looked snootier still, and he looked as if he was going to have a fit. He said the other condition was that I should have to break off my association with Eugene Wetherill and any other blackguards I might be mixed up with. Well, when he went as far as that, I just got up and began to put on my cloak. Then he went on that I was much too unreserved in all my relations with men, according to the reports he had received; and he had the damned insolence to mention Bryan’s name.’

  ‘Oho! He mentioned Bryan, did he? That,’ Trent said, ‘sheds a bright light on another of the enigmas. I wondered what he could possibly have got against Bryan.’

  ‘He would hate any man he came across who was half-way decent,’ Eunice said viciously. ‘Now here’s the last thing. He said that before I went there was just one thing more for me to bear in mind. I won’t tell you what that thing was, Phil, because it is a private matter. I hadn’t the ghost of a notion he knew anything about it, and hearing him speak of it nearly knocked me out. I’ll just say this much: he had bought—something—from Eugene, which he had had to pay a high price for, he said; and if I drove him to making use of it, he would do so. I’m sorry I can’t make it plainer. And by the way, plain wasn’t the word for the language I used to Eugene when I wrote to him about it a few days ago.’

  ‘Well, all that doesn’t matter,’ Trent said. ‘It was something Randolph was going to hold over you. He had a taste for that sort of thing, it appears.’

  ‘If I had had anything to hold over him just then—something hard and heavy—there would have been an end of his tastes,’ Eunice said. ‘That last threat of his was the worst thing he had said yet. Just at that moment the waiter came into the room, and I grabbed up my bag and legged it without another word. God knows what I should have said if I had opened my mouth—probably I should have been like the girls in the novels, who hear themselves saying words they didn’t even know they had ever heard. Well, there you are, Phil; that is the whole story. Pretty, isn’t it?’ Eunice shut her eyes, stretched out her feet and dropped her arms limply, in the manner adopted by boxers in the intervals between rounds.

  ‘And you heard nothing more from him?’ Trent inquired, realising that his own breath was coming quicker under the effect of Eunice’s torrent of impetuous speech.

  ‘Not a peep—nor a line either, if you mean writing. There wasn’t much time for anything, was there? When I left him, I was in such a fury I hadn’t room for anything else; but when I had cooled off, I began to think about the prospect for me, and you can guess how I felt about it. When you know a man with a disposition like that is going to use all his power to smash you, it’s no merry jest, believe me. I couldn’t study my new part. I couldn’t sleep. It was well on into the next day before I could pull myself together and get back my pluck. And then, as soon as I went out, I heard the news of Randolph having been shot. If that had been all, it would have been—well, I won’t say an answer to prayer; like a reprieve when one’s just going to be hanged, let’s say. But what the papers had about Bryan simply shattered me, as I told you. The only thing I could think of was getting away right out of things, and trying to get my balance again.’

  Trent took off his hat and fanned himself with it. ‘You have made it so exciting,’ he said, ‘that I feel all hot and agitated. By the way, there’s one thing I can tell you that comes into the story. You are not in any danger of inheriting the old man’s money. His prodigal son has turned up, and as far as I can see, he will get every farthing of what is left when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had his whack. So you, my dear, will be just where you were before the band began to play.’

  ‘Praise the Lord for that!’ Eunice said with fervour. ‘It’s all I ask.’ She got up and stretched her arms abroad. ‘Mabel and that innocent child of yours have done me more good than I thought possible; but having got that long, long story off my chest with you has really completed the good work, I believe—that, and knowing you are once more upon the war-path, as Stamping Bull would say. Now, what my vocal cords chiefly need is rest.’ She took his arm. ‘I won’t say another word till I have got outside at least two cups of tea. Lead me to it.’

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE WHISPERED WORD

  A LONG day’s work in the studio had followed upon Trent’s return from Didbury, and diverted his mind from the tormenting doubts that arose at every turn in the labyrinth of the Randolph case. He had dined late, and now, after an hour with a pipe and a volume of Boswell, he sat thinking of the next move to be made in his adopted task of running down the truth that eluded him so persistently. There was little question, in fact, what that move should be. He had heard that morning that leave for him to visit Bryan Fairman in the prison infirmary at Newhaven had been granted, that Fairman wished to see him, and would probably be fit for the interview in two days’ time. If his friend meant now at last to clear up the mystification brought about by his crazy-seeming avowal of guilt and subsequent dogged silence, it was idle to go on with guess-work in the meantime. The best to be done was to consider the points on which Fairman, it might be hoped, would shed some light.

  It was still in the studio, the centre of his private life, that Trent was turning over these things in his mind. Outside, he knew, the weather was heavy and windless; and he was roused at length to consciousness of the fact that some slight noise, hard to account for in such conditions, had for some time been coming from the direction of the French window opening upon the garden.

  He listened now with attention. This was a gentle tapping on the window-glass—a few light taps; then an interval of a quarter of a minute or more; then a few light taps again. No dog or cat could produce such sounds. A twig moved by the breeze might do it; but there was no branch close to the window, nor any breeze to stir it if there had been. Heavy rain had fallen earlier in the evening, and Trent tho
ught of the possibility of water dripping from some gutter or cornice. But the tapping, almost certainly, had been upon the surface of the window.

  The noise made itself heard again; and Trent went to the window quickly, twitched the curtains aside, unfastened and threw open the glass doors. The night was moonless, and no gleam penetrated from the lamp-lit road on the far side of the house. Outside the path of radiance shed from the open window, it was too dark in the garden even to distinguish the outline of trees against the sky. The air was heavy with the smell of wet soil. There was little fault to be found, Trent thought, with the night as a night. There was as much of nature’s healing gift of darkness as could fairly be expected within the limits of St Marylebone, and the life of the earth was to be felt stirring in the warm dampness. Only there had been that noise.

  Trent, loving, as ever, the mere sound of the words, began murmuring to himself:

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

  But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

  And the only word there spoken was the whispered word …

  ‘Guv’nor!’

  The whispered word came from the black shadows under the wall to the right.

  ‘Guv’nor,’ the husky voice repeated. ‘Can I ’ave a word with you … for Gord’s sake?’

  There was a pleading urgency in the whisper. Trent, deciding that he was really awake, and ready always to welcome and fall in with the unusual, answered quietly, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Are you alone, sir?’

  The question was asked in a slightly improved accent; and Trent, now vaguely conscious of having heard the voice before, answered ‘Yes.’