'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 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,
