big
money," he said, "but I guess I don't lose." You see, by that time I was
doing a great deal more than accompany him on horseback in the morning
and play chess in the evening, which was mainly what he had required.
I was attending to his houses, his farm in Ohio, his shooting in
Maine, his horses, his cars, and his yacht. 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 two or three 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 some one he hates to the hangman?'

Mr Cupples moved sharply in his chair. 'You say Manderson was
responsible for his own death?' he asked.

Trent glan