“I don’t blame myself. It isn’t exactly that. But—but, well, what would you feel like in my place?”
“A two-year-old.”
“Wouldn’t you do anything?”
“I certainly would. By my halidom, I would! I would spend that money with a vim and speed that would make your respected ancestor, the Beau, look like a village miser.”
“You wouldn’t—er—pop over to America and see whether something couldn’t be arranged?”
“What!”
“I mean—suppose you were popping in any case. Suppose you had happened to buy a ticket for New York on tomorrow’s boat, wouldn’t you try to get in touch with this girl when you got to America, and see if you couldn’t—er—fix up something?”
Jerry Nichols looked at him in honest consternation. He had always known that old Bill was a dear old ass, but he had never dreamed that he was such an infernal old ass as this.
“You aren’t thinking of doing that?” he gasped.
“Well, you see, it’s a funny coincidence, but I was going to America anyhow tomorrow. I don’t see why I shouldn’t try to fix up something with this girl.”
“What do you mean—fix up something? You don’t suggest that you should give the money up, do you?”
“I don’t know. Not exactly that, perhaps. How would it be if I gave her half, what? Anyway I should like to find out about her, see if she’s hard up, and so on. I should like to nose round, you know, and—er—and so forth, don’t you know. Where did you say the girl lived?”
“I didn’t say, and I’m not sure that I shall. Honestly, Bill, you mustn’t be so quixotic.”
“There’s no harm in my nosing round, is there? Be a good chap and give me the address.”
“Well, with misgivings—Brookport, Long Island.”
“Thanks.”
“Bill, are you really going to make a fool of yourself?”
“Not a bit of it, old chap. I’m just going to—er—”
“To nose round?”
“To nose round,” said Bill.
Jerry Nichols accompanied his friend to the door, and when he had closed it turned to the boy Perkins, who was eating a sandwich and reading a handy pocket edition of Dillingwater on Torts.
“Perkins,” said Jerry.
“Yes, sir?”
“That was Lord Dawlish who just went out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s a fool.”
“Yes, sir?”
“But I wish to heaven there were a few more like him in this weary world.”
“Yes, sir?”
Jerry regarded his young assistant thoughtfully.
“Don’t you ever say anything except ‘Yes, sir,’ Perkins?”
“Yes, sir,” said the stripling with a touch of surprise in his voice. Jerry surveyed him a few moments longer, then with a resigned shrug of his shoulders picked up his hat and went out to lunch. The boy Perkins took another bite out of his sandwich and resumed his study of Dillingwater on Torts.
Peace reigned in the offices of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols and Nichols.
The time of a man who has at a moment’s notice decided to leave his native land for a sojourn on foreign soil is necessarily taken up with a variety of occupations; and it was not till the following afternoon, on the boat at Liverpool, that Bill had leisure to write to Claire, giving her the news of what had befallen him. He had booked his ticket by a Liverpool boat in preference to one that sailed from Southampton, because he had not been sure how Claire would take the news of his sudden decision to leave for America. There was the chance that she might ridicule or condemn the scheme, and he preferred to get away without seeing her. Now that he had received this astounding piece of news from Jerry Nichols he was relieved that he had acted in this way. Whatever Claire might have thought of the original scheme, there was no doubt at all what she would think of his plan of seeking out Elizabeth Boyd with a view to dividing the legacy with her.
He was guarded in his letter. He mentioned no definite figures. He wrote that Ira Nutcombe, of whom they had spoken so often, had most surprisingly left him in his will a large sum of money, and eased his conscience by telling himself that half of five million dollars undeniably was a large sum of money.
The addressing of the letter called for thought. She would have left Southampton with the rest of the company before it could arrive. Where was it that she said they were going next week? Portsmouth, that was it. He addressed the letter Care of The Girl and the Artist Company, to the King’s Theater, Portsmouth.
V
The village of Brookport, Long Island, is a summer place. It lives, like the mosquitoes that infest it, entirely on its summer visitors, that hardy race which, once a year for a period of three months, gives up the comfort and coolness of spacious New York apartments to stew in stuffy cottages along the shores of the Great South Bay. At the time of the death of Mr. Ira Nutcombe, the only all-the-year-round inhabitants were the butcher, the grocer, the drugstore man, the other customary fauna of villages, and Miss Elizabeth Boyd, who rented the ramshackle farm known locally as Flack’s and eked out a precarious livelihood by keeping bees.
If you take down your Encyclopedia Britannica—Volume III, Aus to Bis, you will find that bees are a “large and natural family of the zoological order Hymenoptera, characterized by the plumose form of many of their hairs, by the large size of the basal segment of the foot … and by the development of a tongue for sucking liquid food,” the last of which peculiarities, it is interesting to note, they shared with Claude Nutcombe Boyd, Elizabeth’s brother, who for quite a long time—till his money ran out—had made liquid food almost his sole means of sustenance. These things, however, are by the way. We
