particularly pious, far from learned, and delighting in the society of his fellow men, Trent never came in contact with the life of piety, erudition and seclusion without yearning to be a part of it. It was, as he put it to himself in a familiar phrase of godliness and scholarship, too damned silly for words.
‘What a wonderful sunset, Mrs McOmish!’ Trent said.
His housekeeper, who was laying the table for his solitary dinner, glanced briefly at the flaming sky. ‘I’ve seen waur,’ she said. She was a person whose words, thought usually of the driest, were as usually highly charged with unspoken significance. In this case, Mrs McOmish contrived to convey the strongly held opinion that nothing was to be gained by encouraging either this sunset, or sunsets as a class.
Trent shook his head. ‘Sophisticated!’ he said sadly. ‘To you, Mrs McOmish, all nature is old, outmoded stuff, I suppose. The sublime, unapproachable self-sufficiency of art—that is your whole creed.’
‘No the whole,’ Mrs McOmish replied guardedly. ‘I dinna ken what a’ that means aboot airt, and it may be pairt of the confession of the United Presbyterian Kirk, but there’s a guid deal else forbye, I assure ye.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Trent said absently. ‘But a truce to theology, Mrs McOmish. We were talking animatedly about the sunset, and you were just going to recall to me those moving lines in which Sir Walter Scott describes a similar phenomenon in the neighbourhood of the Trossachs. But what says another poet, Mrs McOmish; the one who uttered nothing base, though occasionally something silly? It is, he observed, a beauteous evening, calm and free—’
‘Weel, we a’ ken there’s nae chairge for it,’ Mrs McOmish admitted.
‘The holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration—’
‘It’s a peety,’ Mrs McOmish commented with some severity, ‘he couldna appreciate the weather without being popish aboot it. There’s a gentleman turning in at the gate, Mr Trent. Is it a friend of yours? Is it like he’ll be staying to dinner?’
Trent looked at the tall, quietly dressed young man who was approaching the house. ‘I know who it is,’ he said, ‘though he is a good deal changed in his looks. He doesn’t give me the idea that dinner would agree with him just now—had some kind of a shock, I should think. Now,’—Trent went nearer to the window—‘what on earth can it be that he’s picking up from the path?’
Mrs McOmish, an elbow clasped in either hand, also came to overlook the proceedings of the visitor. ‘It might be a wee piece of coal,’ she opined, with more display of interest than she usually permitted herself. ‘We had the new coal in three days syne. It’s terrible good luck to pick up a wee piece of coal—or what is better still, an auld rusty nail. Only the nail maun be crookit, ye ken. Oh ay, it’s a nail; he’s putting it in his inside pouch. Twenty years, and mair, I’ve keepit a rusty nail I found just by the Tammas Coats statue in Dunn Square—Oh preserve us! What a loup he gave, Mr Trent, seeing ye at the window!’
‘His nerves must be in a shocking state,’ Trent said. ‘There’s never been anything frightening about me, has there, Mrs McOmish? The beasts that roam over the plain my form with indifference see; let alone the private secretaries of Congregationalist millionaires. Well, if he wants to see me, will you show him into the studio? It isn’t so maddeningly tidy in there.’ And Trent walked to the door communicating with that scene of his labours.
‘I wouldna wonder!’ the housekeeper said grimly. ‘Ye’ve been in it a full half hoor since ye came back.’ She went out to admit the visitor.
‘Mr Verney to see you, sir,’ Mrs McOmish soon announced in what she would have described as an English voice.
Mr Verney, whose age might have been guessed at twenty-seven or thereabouts, was a person of somewhat damaged aspect, for he looked harassed and distraught to the last degree. But there was nothing weak in the essence of his appearance. His frame was spare and athletic, his carriage erect, and in his fresh-coloured eagle-featured face there was a pair of restless bright-blue eyes that did not give an impression of spiritual sloth.
It was he who spoke the first words as his hand met Trent’s in a rather perfunctory salutation.
‘What do you think,’ he said earnestly, ‘of this terrible news?’
‘What do you mean?’ Trent said. ‘I haven’t heard of any terrible news, believe me, my dear fellow. I only hope it’s not too bad—for you.’
Verney stared at him intensely. ‘How can you have missed it?’ he demanded, with a puzzled look in his very expressive eyes. ‘It’s been in all the early afternoon papers—it’s all over the town. Or do you mean that old James Randolph’s death doesn’t distress you at all?’
Trent was thoroughly taken aback, and for the best of reasons. Himself, at a little after six o’clock the evening before, he had left the same James Randolph not only alive but in a furiously bad temper, a picture of choleric vitality. ‘Randolph dead!’ he said blankly. ‘Why, did he have a stroke or something?’
‘A bullet was what killed him, Trent,’ Verney said coldly. ‘I can’t conceive—’
‘Oh! he was shot!’ A light broke over Trent’s mind. ‘Now I understand. You see, Verney, I drove down to Glasminster to a wedding this morning, and I’ve only just got back after all the merrymaking. If anyone had heard of it down there, it wasn’t mentioned in my hearing. But the early editions! They all had it, of course—I see that now. But you know how they like to keep you guessing. On the way back, I should think I saw a score of bills saying that a well-known millionaire had been found shot. I didn’t care if fifty millionaires, each more well-known than the last, had been found shot. It never occurred to me that it was Randolph. My dear fellow, what a shocking thing! It must have been a bad blow for you, being what you were to him. Tell me what happened.’
‘That’s just what I can’t tell you,’ Verney said in a dull tone. He sat with hands clasped between his knees, and stared at the floor. ‘All I know is he was shot by someone last night in his bedroom at Newbury Place, when nobody else was there—it’s the evening his manservant always had free every week. The man found his master lying dead when he came home, and at once sent for the police. You cannot imagine the shock the news was to me—I didn’t even know Randolph was in London. The first I heard of it was when a C.I.D. man called on me early this morning, to see if I knew anything that could give them a line. All I could say was that the old man hadn’t an enemy in the world, as far as I knew. And I said the last I had seen of Randolph had been last week, when I was staying at Brinton Lodge, having various matters to talk over with him; and that then he had seemed quite at ease and free from any anxiety. Since I heard the news I’ve been living in a sort of bad dream. I had a very real feeling for the old man; more like veneration than anything else. And this means more of a chaotic smashup than you can very well imagine. At last I took to walking aimlessly about the streets, just to take the edge off my nerves; and when I found myself near your place, I thought I would look in for a talk. I suppose you had not seen Randolph lately?’
Trent looked at his visitor consideringly. What he had just been told by Verney made one thing clear: he, Trent, must have been one of the last persons to see Randolph before his being murdered. And he had strong reasons for wishing that interview of his with the old man to remain a private affair. It had concerned the reputation of a woman for whom he had a deep regard; and it had been of a decidedly unpleasant, not to say scandalous, nature. The less said about it the better, in Trent’s judgment; above all, to those with whom Randolph had left an honourable memory. As for the police, of course they must be told; for one thing, the information would set a limit in one direction on the time during which the murder had been committed. But Trent saw no reason for taking Verney into his confidence.
‘It is some time since I saw him,’ Trent therefore replied, with more truth than candour. ‘It’s no use offering you a drink, is it?’ he asked; and Verney shook his head. ‘Very often a cigarette helps you to pull yourself together,’ Trent went on. ‘You look all to pieces. Try one of these.’
Verney