Polly might have thought of that, she reflected, bitterly. She took the letter up again and saw that on the last page there was a postscript-
PS.-I don"t know how you are fixed for money, old girl, but if things are the same with you as in the old days you can"t be rolling. So I have paid for a pa.s.sage for you with the liner people this side, and they have cabled their English office, so you can sail whenever you want to. Come right over.
An hour later the manager of the Southampton branch of the White Star Line was dazzled by an apparition, a beautiful girl who burst in upon him with flushed face and shining eyes, demanding a berth on the steamship Atlantic and talking about a Lady Wetherby. Ten minutes later, her pa.s.sage secured, Claire was walking to the local theatre to inform those in charge of the destinies of The Girl and the Artist number one company that they must look elsewhere for a subst.i.tute for Miss Claudia Winslow. Then she went back to her hotel to write a letter home, notifying her mother of her plans.
She looked at her watch. It was six o"clock. Back in West Kensington a rich smell of dinner would be floating through the flat; the cook, watching the boiling cabbage, would be singing A Few More Years Shall Roll; her mother would be sighing; and her little brother Percy would be employed upon some juvenile deviltry, the exact nature of which it was not possible to conjecture, though one could be certain that it would be something involving a deafening noise.
Claire smiled a happy smile.
4
The offices of Messrs Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols were in Lincoln"s Inn Fields. The first Nichols had been dead since the reign of King William the Fourth, the second since the jubilee year of Queen Victoria. The remaining brace were Lord Dawlish"s friend Jerry and his father, a formidable old man who knew all the shady secrets of all the n.o.ble families in England.
Bill walked up the stairs and was shown into the room where Jerry, when his father"s eye was upon him, gave his daily imitation of a young man labouring with diligence and enthusiasm at the law. His father being at the moment out at lunch, the junior partner was practising putts with an umbrella and a ball of paper.
Jerry Nichols was not the typical lawyer. At Cambridge, where Bill had first made his acquaintance, he had been notable for an exuberance of which Lincoln"s Inn Fields had not yet cured him. There was an airy disregard for legal formalities about him which exasperated his father, an attorney of the old school. He came to the point, directly Bill entered the room, with a speed and levity that would have appalled Nichols Senior, and must have caused the other two Nicholses to revolve in their graves.
"Halloa, Bill, old man," he said, prodding him amiably in the waistcoat with the ferrule of the umbrella. "How"s the boy? Fine! So"m I. So you got my message? Wonderful invention, the telephone."
"I"ve just come from the club."
"Take a chair."
"What"s the matter?"
Jerry Nichols thrust Bill into a chair and seated himself on the table.
"Now look here, Bill," he said, "this isn"t the way we usually do this sort of thing, and if the governor were here he would spend an hour and a half rambling on about testators and beneficiary legatees, and parties of the first part, and all that sort of rot. But as he isn"t here I want to know, as one pal to another, what you"ve been doing to an old buster of the name of Nutcombe."
"Nutcombe?"
"Nutcombe."
"Not Ira Nutcombe?"
"Ira J. Nutcombe, formerly of Chicago, later of London, now a disembodied spirit."
"Is he dead?"
"Yes. And he"s left you something like a million pounds."
Lord Dawlish looked at his watch.
"Joking apart, Jerry, old man," he said, "what did you ask me to come here for? The committee expects me to spend some of my time at the club, and if I hang about here all the afternoon I shall lose my job. Besides, I"ve got to get back to ask them for-"
Jerry Nichols clutched his forehead with both hands, raised both hands to heaven, and then, as if despairing of calming himself by these means, picked up a paper-weight from the desk and hurled it at a portrait of the founder of the firm, which hung over the mantelpiece. He got down from the table and crossed the room to inspect the ruins.
Then, having taken a pair of scissors and cut the cord, he allowed the portrait to fall to the floor.
He rang the bell. The prematurely-aged office-boy, who was undoubtedly destined to become a member of the firm some day, answered the ring.
"Perkins."
"Yes, sir?"
"Inspect yonder soufflee."
"Yes, sir."
"You have observed it?"
"Yes, sir."
"You are wondering how it got there?"
"Yes, sir."
"I will tell you. You and I were in here, discussing certain legal minutiae in the interests of the firm, when it suddenly fell. We both saw it and were very much surprised and startled. I soothed your nervous system by giving you this half-crown. The whole incident was very painful. Can you remember all this to tell my father when he comes in? I shall be out lunching then."
"Yes, sir."
"An admirable lad that," said Jerry Nichols as the door closed. "He has been here two years, and I have never heard him say anything except "Yes, sir." He will go far. Well, now that I am calmer let us return to your little matter. Honestly, Bill, you make me sick. When I contemplate you the iron enters my soul. You stand there talking about your tuppenny-ha"penny job as if it mattered a cent whether you kept it or not. Can"t you understand plain English? Can"t you realize that you can buy Brown"s and turn it into a moving-picture house if you like? You"re a millionaire!"
Bill"s face expressed no emotion whatsoever. Outwardly he appeared unmoved. Inwardly he was a riot of bewilderment, incapable of speech. He stared at Jerry dumbly.
"We"ve got the will in the old oak chest," went on Jerry Nichols. "I won"t show it to you, partly because the governor has got the key and he would have a fit if he knew that I was giving you early information like this, and partly because you wouldn"t understand it. It is full of "whereases" and "peradventures" and "heretofores" and similar sw.a.n.k, and there aren"t any stops in it. It takes the legal mind, like mine, to tackle wills. What it says, when you"ve peeled off a few of the long words which they put in to make it more interesting, is that old Nutcombe leaves you the money because you are the only man who ever did him a disinterested kindness-and what I want to get out of you is, what was the disinterested kindness? Because I"m going straight out to do it to every elderly, rich-looking man I can find till I pick a winner."
Lord Dawlish found speech.
"Jerry, is this really true?"
"Gospel."
"You aren"t pulling my leg?"
"Pulling your leg? Of course I"m not pulling your leg. What do you take me for? I"m a dry, hard-headed lawyer. The firm of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols doesn"t go about pulling people"s legs!"
"Good Lord!"
"It appears from the will that you worked this disinterested gag, whatever it was, at Marvis Bay no longer ago than last year. Wherein you showed a lot of sense, for Ira J., having altered his will in your favour, apparently had no time before he died to alter it again in somebody else"s, which he would most certainly have done if he had lived long enough, for his chief recreation seems to have been making his will. To my certain knowledge he has made three in the last two years. I"ve seen them. He was one of those confirmed will-makers. He got the habit at an early age, and was never able to shake it off. Do you remember anything about the man?"
"It isn"t possible!"
"Anything"s possible with a man cracked enough to make freak wills and not cracked enough to have them disputed on the ground of insanity. What did you do to him at Marvis Bay? Save him from drowning?"
"I cured him of slicing."
"You did what?"