TRENT'S LAST CASE

by E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley




CHAPTER I: Bad News

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 honour. 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 their labour,
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.