“I cured him of slicing.”
“You did what?”
“He used to slice his approach shots. I cured him.”
“The thing begins to hang together. A certain plausibility creeps into it. The late Nutcombe was crazy about golf. The governor used to play with him now and then at Walton Heath. It was the only thing Nutcombe seemed to live for. That being so, if you got rid of his slice for him it seems to me that you earned your money. The only point that occurs to me is, how does it affect your amateur status? It looks to me as if you were now a pro.”
“But, Jerry, it’s absurd. All I did was to give him a tip or two. We were the only men down there, as it was out of the season, and that drew us together. And when I spotted this slice of his I just gave him a bit of advice. I give you my word that was all. He can’t have left me a fortune on the strength of that!”
“You don’t tell the story right, Bill. I can guess what really happened—to wit, that you gave up your entire vacation helping the old fellow improve his game, regardless of the fact that it completely ruined your holiday.”
“Oh, no!”
“It’s no use sitting there saying ‘Oh, no!’ I can see you at it. The fact is, you’re such an infernally good chap that something of this sort was bound to happen to you sooner or later. I think making you his heir was the only sensible thing old Nutcombe ever did. In his place I’d have done the same.”
“But he didn’t seem even decently grateful at the time.”
“Probably not. He was a queer old bird. He had a most almighty row with the governor in this office only a month or two ago about absolutely nothing. They disagreed about something trivial, and old Nutcombe stalked out and never came in again. That’s the sort of old bird he was.”
“Was he sane, do you think?”
“Absolutely, for legal purposes. We have three opinions from leading doctors—collected by him in case of accidents, I suppose—each of which declares him perfectly sound from the collar upward. But a man can be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally insane, and old Nutcombe—well, suppose we call him whimsical. He seems to have zigzagged between the normal and the eccentric.
“His only surviving relatives appear to be a nephew and a niece. The nephew dropped out of the running two years ago when his aunt, old Nutcombe’s wife, who had divorced old Nutcombe, left him her money. This seems to have soured the old boy on the nephew, for in the first of his wills that I’ve seen—you remember I told you I had seen three—he leaves the niece the pile and the nephew only gets a hundred dollars. Well, so far there’s nothing very eccentric about old Nutcombe’s proceedings. But wait!
“Six months after he had made that will he came in here and made another. This left a hundred dollars to the nephew as before, but nothing at all to the niece. Why, I don’t know. There was nothing in the will about her having done anything to offend him during those six months, none of those nasty slams you see in wills about: ‘I bequeath to my only son John one shilling and sixpence. Now perhaps he’s sorry he married the cook.’ As far as I can make out he changed his will, just as he did when he left the money to you, purely through some passing whim. Anyway he did change it. He left the pile to support the movement those people are running for getting the Jews back to Palestine.
“He didn’t seem, on second thoughts, to feel that this was quite such a brainy scheme as he had at first, and it wasn’t long before he came trotting back to tear up this second will and switch back to the first one—the one leaving the money to the niece. That restoration to sanity lasted till about a month ago, when he broke loose once more and paid his final visit here to will you the contents of his stocking. This morning I see he’s dead after a short illness, so you collect. Congratulations!”
Lord Dawlish had listened to this speech in perfect silence. He now rose and began to pace the room. He looked warm and uncomfortable. His demeanor, in fact, was by no means the accepted demeanor of the lucky heir.
“This is awful!” he said. “Good Lord, Jerry, it’s frightful!”
“Awful—being left five million dollars?”
“Yes, like this, I feel like a bally thief.”
“Why on earth?”
“If it hadn’t been for me, this girl—what’s her name?”
“Her name is Boyd—Elizabeth Boyd.”
“She would have had the whole five millions if it hadn’t been for me. Have you told her yet?”
“She’s over in America. I was writing her a letter when you came in—informal, you know, to put her out of her misery. If I had waited for the governor to let her know in the usual course of red tape we should never have got anywhere. Also one to the nephew, telling him about his hundred dollars. I believe in humane treatment on these occasions. The governor would write them a legal letter with so many ‘hereinbefores’ in it that they would get the idea that they had been left the whole pile. I just send a cheery line, saying, ‘It’s no good, old top. Abandon hope,’ and they know just where they are. Simple and considerate!”
A glance at Bill’s face moved him to further speech.
“I don’t see why you should worry, Bill. How, by any stretch of the imagination, can you make out that you are to blame for this Boyd girl’s misfortune? It looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe’s came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for another outbreak
