To my cook, Eliza Jefferson, and my chauffeur, Albert Gordon, One Hundred Dollars each, for their loyal service.
The remainder of my estate, after these deductions, including my house and other personal belongings, to my dear grandson Harry Westler, hoping that it will help him to make the success of life of which I have always believed him capable.
Simon folded the sheet and dropped it on the table from his finger tips as if it were infected.
'Suffering Judas,' he said helplessly. 'After all you did for her--to pension you off on the same scale as the cook and the chauffeur! And what about Harry-- doesn't he propose to do anything about it?'
'Why should he? The will's perfectly clear.'
'Why shouldn't he? Just because the old crow went off her rocker in the last days of senile decay is no reason why he shouldn't do something to put it right. There must have been enough for both of you.'
'Not so much. They found that Granny had been living on her capital for years. There was only about twenty thousand dollars left--and the house.'
'What of it ? He could spare half.'
Jacqueline smiled--a rather tired little smile.
'You haven't met Harry. He's--difficult . . . He's been here, of course. The agents already have his instructions to sell the house and the furniture. He gave me a week to get out, and the week is up the day after tomorrow. ... I couldn't possibly ask him for anything.'
Simon lighted a cigarette as if it tasted of bad eggs and scowled malevolently about the room.
'The skunk! And so you get chucked out into the wide world with nothing but a hundred dollars.'
'And the letters,' she added ruefully.
'What the hell are these letters?'
'They're love letters,' she said; and the Saint looked as if he would explode.
'Love letters?' he repeated in an awful voice.
'Yes. Granny had a great romance when she was a girl. Her parents wouldn't let her get any further with it because the boy hadn't any money and his family wasn't good enough. He went abroad with one of these heroic young ideas of making a fortune in South America and coming back in a gold-plated carriage to claim her. He died of fever somewhere in Brazil very soon after, but he wrote her three letters--two from British Guiana and one from Colombia. Oh, I know them by heart--I used to have to read them aloud to Granny almost every night, after her eyes got too bad for her to be able to read them herself. They're just the ordinary simple sort of thing that you'd expect in the circumstances, but to Granny they were the most precious thing she had. I suppose she had some funny old idea in her head that they'd be just as precious to me.'
'She must have been screwy,' said the Saint. Jacqueline came up and put a hand over his mouth. 'She was very good to me when I was a kid,' she said.
'I know, but----' Simon flung up his arms hopelessly. And then, almost reluctantly, he began to laugh. 'But it does mean that I've just come back in time. And we'll have so much fun tonight that you won't even think about it for a minute.'
Probably he made good his boast, for Simon Templar brought to the solemn business of enjoying himself the same gay zest and inspired impetuosity which he brought to his battles with the technicalities of the law. But if he made her forget, he himself remembered ; and when he followed her into the living room of the house again much later, for a good-night drink, the desolate scene of interrupted packing, and the copy of the will still lying on the table where he had put it down, brought the thoughts with which he had been subconsciously playing throughout the evening back into the forefront of his mind.
'Are you going to let Harry get away with it?' he asked her, with a sudden characteristic directness.
The girl shrugged.
'What else can I do?'
'I have an idea,' said the Saint; and his blue eyes danced with an unholy delight which she had never seen in them before.
Mr Westler was not a man whose contacts with the Law had conspired to make him particularly happy about any of its workings; and therefore when he saw that the card which was brought to him in his hotel bore in its bottom left-hand corner the name of a firm with the words 'Attorneys at Law' underneath it, he suffered an immediate hollow twinge in the base of his stomach for which he could scarcely be blamed. A moment's reflection, however, reminded him that another card with a similar inscription had recently been the forerunner of an extremely welcome windfall, and with this reassuring thought he told the bellboy to bring the visitor into his presence.
Mr Tombs, of Tombs, Tombs, and Tombs, as the card introduced him, was a tall lean man with neatly brushed white hair, bushy white eyebrows, a pair of gold-rimmed and drooping pince-nez on the end of a broad black ribbon and an engagingly avuncular manner which rapidly completed the task of restoring Harry Westler's momentarily shaken confidence. He came to the point with professional efficiency combined with professional pomposity.
'I have come to see you in connection with the estate of the--ah--late Mrs Laine. I understand that you are her heir.'
'That's right,' said Mr Westler.
He was a dark, flashily dressed man with small greedy eyes and a face rather reminiscent of that of a sick horse.
'Splendid.' The lawyer placed his finger tips on his knees and leant forward peering benevolently over the rims of his glasses. 'Now I for my part am representing the Sesame Mining Development Corporation.'
He said this more or less as if he were announcing himself as the personal herald of Jehovah, but Mr Westler's mind ran in practical channels.
'Did my grandmother have shares in the company?' he asked quickly.
'Ah--ah--no. That is--ah--no. Not exactly. But I understand that she was in possession of a letter or document which my clients regard as extremely valuable.'
'A letter?'
'Exactly. But perhaps I had better give you an outline of the situation. Your grandmother was in her youth greatly--ah--enamoured of a certain Sidney Farlance. Perhaps at some time or other you have heard her speak of him.'
'Yes.'
'For various reasons her parents refused to give their consent to the alliance; but the young people for their part refused to take no for an answer, and Farlance went abroad with the intention of making his fortune in foreign parts and returning in due course to claim his bride. In this ambition he was unhappily frustrated by his--ah-- premature decease in Brazil. But it appears that during his travels in British Guiana he did become the owner of a mining concession in a certain very inaccessible area of territory. British Guiana, as you are doubtless aware,' continued Mr Tombs in his dry pedagogic voice, 'is traditionally reputed to be the source of the legend of El Dorado; the Gilded King, who was said to cover himself with pure gold and to wash it from him in the waters of a sacred lake called Manoa----'
'Never mind all that baloney,' said Harry Westler,
who was not interested in history or mythology. 'Tell me about this concession.'
Mr Tombs pressed his lips with a pained expression but he went on.
'At the time it did not appear that gold could be profitably obtained from this district and the claim was abandoned and forgotten. Modern engineering methods, however, have recently revealed deposits of almost fabulous value in the district, and my clients have obtained a concession to work it over a very large area of ground. Subsequent investigations into their title, meanwhile, have brought out the existence of this small --ah--prior concession granted to Sidney Farlance, which is situated almost in the centre of my client's territory and in a position which--ah--exploratory drillings have shown to be one of the richest areas in the district.'
Mr Westler digested the information, and in place of the first sinking vacuum which had afflicted his stomach when he saw the word Law on his visitor's card, a sudden and ecstatic awe localized itself in the same place and began to cramp his lungs as if he had accidentally swallowed a rubber balloon with his breakfast and it was being rapidly inflated by some supernatural agency.
'You mean my grandmother owned this concession?'
'That is what--ah--my clients are endeavouring to discover. Farlance himself, of course, left no heirs, and we
