Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table. “Business letters and documents, mostly,” said Mr. Murch. “Reports, prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, nothing in them that I can see. The American secretary—Bunner his name is, and a queerer card I never saw turned—he’s been through this desk with me this morning. He had got it into his head that Manderson had been receiving threatening letters, and that the murder was the outcome of that. But there’s no trace of any such thing; and we looked at every blessed paper. The only unusual things we found were some packets of banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of little bags of unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer place. It appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a speculation—it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed to amuse him.” “What about these secretaries?” Trent enquired. “I met one called Marlowe just now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes, unquestionably English. The other, it seems, is an American. What did Manderson want with an English secretary?” “Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his right-hand business man, one of his office staff, who never left him. Mr. Marlowe had nothing to do with Manderson’s business as a financier, knew nothing of it. His job was to look after Manderson’s horses and motors and yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson’s to have an English secretary. He’d had several before Mr. Marlowe.” “He showed his taste,” observed Trent. “It might be more than interesting, don’t you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a modern plutocrat with a large P. Only they say that Manderson’s were exclusively of an innocent kind. Certainly Marlowe gives me the impression that he would be weak in the part of Petronius. But to return to the matter in hand.” He looked at his notes. “You said just now that he was last seen alive here, ‘so far as the servants were concerned’. That meant—?” “He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story last night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is meat and drink to the servants of the house.” Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over the sun-flooded slopes. “Would it bore you to hear what he has to say again?” he asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A spare, clean-shaven, middle-aged man, having the servant’s manner in its most distinguished form, answered it.