Page:Bentley- Trent's Last Case (Nelson, nd).djvu/365

Rh appeared conclusive, that I had expressed myself in talk as favouring the plan of a weekly abstinence from meat. Manderson's belief in regard to his secretary probably rested upon a much slighter ground. It was Mr Bunner, I think you said, who told you of his rooted and apparently hereditary temper of suspicious jealousy. . . . With regard to Marlowe's story, it appeared to me entirely straightforward, and not, in its essential features, especially remarkable, once we have admitted, as we surely must, that in the case of Manderson we have to deal with a more or less disordered mind.'

Trent laughed loudly. 'I confess,' he said, 'that the affair struck me as a little unusual.'

'Only in the development of the details,' argued Mr. Cupples. 'What is there abnormal in the essential facts? A madman conceives a crazy suspicion; he hatches a cunning plot against his fancied injurer; it involves his own destruction. Put thus, what is there that any man with the least knowledge of the ways of lunatics would call remarkable? Turn now to Marlowe's proceedings. He finds himself in a perilous position from which, though he is innocent, telling the truth will not save him.