The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black, by
Edmund Clerihew Bentley

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Title: The Woman in Black
Author: Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Release Date: June 18, 2007 [EBook #21854]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE WOMAN IN BLACK

BY EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY

Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. NEW YORK Published, March,
1913

"... So shall you hear Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of
deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause, And, in this upshot,
purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads ..."
--Hamlet.

TO GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
My dear Gilbert:
I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble motive I
had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it. Second: because
I owe you a book in return for "The Man Who Was Thursday." Third:
because I said I would when I unfolded the plan of it to you,
surrounded by Frenchmen, two years ago. Fourth: because I remember
the past.
I have been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when
neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy
in the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea and our elders'
patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves
produced such light reading as was necessary; when (in the words of
Canada's poet) we studied the works of nature, also those little frogs;
when, in short, we were extremely young.
For the sake of that age I offer you this book.
Yours always, E. C. BENTLEY.

CONTENTS
Prologue
I Knocking the Town Endways
II Breakfast
III Handcuffs in the Air
IV Poking About
V Mr. Brunner on the Case
VI The Lady in Black
VII The Inquest
VIII A Hot Scent
IX The Wife of Dives
X Hitherto Unpublished
XI Evil Days
XII Eruption
XIII Writing a Letter
XIV Double Cunning
XV The Last Straw

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

PROLOGUE
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world
we know judge wisely?
When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was
scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing
worth a single tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder
of the vanity of such wealth as this dead man had piled up--without
making one loyal friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could
help his memory to the least honor. But when the news of his end came,
it seemed to those living in the great vortices of business as if the earth,
too, shuddered under a blow.
In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no
figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He
had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and
augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions
for so doing, had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had
been this singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing
especially dear to the hearts of his countrymen, had remained
incongruously about his head through the years when he stood in every
eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability, the stamper-out of
manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding chieftains that infest the
borders of Wall Street.
The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those
chieftains, on the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with
accretion through his father, who during a long life had quietly
continued to lend money and never had margined a stock. Manderson,
who had at no time known what it was to be without large sums to his
hand, should have been altogether of that newer American plutocracy
which is steadied by the tradition and habit of great wealth. But it was
not so. While his nurture and education had taught him European ideas
of a rich man's proper external circumstance; while they had rooted in
him an instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which does
not shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on
to him, nevertheless, much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer,

his forbear. During that first