Elizabeth, such was her absorption in her thoughts, was not even aware of his presence till he spoke to her.
“I beg your pardon, is this Flack’s?”
She looked up and met that sunny eyeglass.
“This is Flack’s,” she said.
“Thank you,” said the young man.
The automobile, a stout, silent man at the helm, throbbed in the nervous way automobiles have when standing still, suggesting somehow that it were best to talk quick, as they can give you only a few minutes before dashing on to keep some other appointment. Either this or a natural volatility lent a breezy rapidity to the visitor’s speech. He looked at Elizabeth across the gate, which it had not occurred to her to open, as if she were just what he had expected her to be and a delight to his eyes, and burst into speech.
“My name’s Nichols—J. Nichols. I expect you remember getting a letter from me a week or two ago?”
The name struck Elizabeth as familiar. But he had gone on to identify himself before she could place it in her mind.
“Lawyer, don’t you know? Wrote you a letter telling you that your Uncle Ira Nutcombe had left all his money to Lord Dawlish.”
“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth, and was about to invite him to pass the barrier when he began to speak again.
“You know, I want to explain that letter. Wrote it on a sudden impulse, don’t you know. The more I have to do with the law, the more it seems to hit me that a lawyer oughtn’t to act on impulse. At the moment, you see, it seemed to me the decent thing to do—put you out of your misery, and so forth—stop you entertaining hopes never to be realized, what, and all that sort of thing. You see, it was like this: Bill—I mean Lord Dawlish—is a great pal of mine, a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well, being in the know, you understand, through your uncle having deposited the will with us, I gave Bill the tip directly I heard of Mr. Nutcombe’s death. I sent him a telephone message to come to the office, and I said: ‘Bill, old man, this old buster—I beg your pardon—this old gentleman has left you all his money.’ Quite informal, don’t you know. And at the same time, in the same informal spirit, I wrote you the letter.” He dammed the torrent for a moment. “By the way, of course you are Miss Elizabeth Boyd, what?”
“Yes.”
The young man seemed relieved.
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “Funny if you hadn’t been. You’d have wondered what on earth I was talking about.”
In spite of her identity this was precisely what Elizabeth was doing. Her mind, still under a cloud, had been unable to understand one word of Mr. Nichols’ discourse. Judging from his appearance, which was that of a bewildered hosepipe or a snake whose brain is being momentarily overtaxed, Nutty was in the same difficulty. He had joined the group at the gate, abandoning the pebble which he had been kicking in the background, and was now leaning on the top bar, a picture of silent perplexity.
“You see, the trouble is,” resumed the young man, “my governor, who’s the head of the firm, is all for doing things according to precedent. He loves red tape—wears it wrapped round him in winter instead of flannel. He’s all for doing things in the proper legal way, which, as I dare say you know, takes months. And, meanwhile, everybody’s wondering what’s happened and who has got the money, and so on and so forth. I thought I would skip all that and let you know right away exactly where you stood, so I wrote you that letter. I don’t think my temperament’s quite suited to the law, don’t you know, and if he ever hears that I wrote you that letter I have a notion that the governor will think so too. So I came over here to ask you, if you don’t mind, not to mention it when you get in touch with the governor. I frankly admit that letter, written with the best intentions, was a bloomer.”
With which manly admission the young man paused, and allowed the rays of his eyeglass to play upon Elizabeth in silence. Elizabeth tried to piece together what little she understood of his monologue.
“You mean that you want me not to tell your father that I got a letter from you?”
“Exactly that. And thanks very much for not saying ‘without prejudice,’ or anything of that kind. The governor would have done it.”
“But I don’t understand. Why should you think that I should ever mention anything to your father?”
“Might slip out, you know, without your meaning it.”
“But when? I shall never meet your father.”
“You might quite easily. He might want to see you about the money.”
“The money?”
The eyebrow above the eyeglass rose, surprised.
“Haven’t you had a letter from the governor?”
“No.”
The young man made a despairing gesture.
“I took it for granted that it had come on the same boat that I did. There you have the governor’s methods! Couldn’t want a better example! I suppose some legal formality or other has cropped up and laid him a stymie, and he’s waiting to get round it. You really mean he hasn’t written? Why, dash it,” said the young man, as one to whom all is revealed, “then you can’t have understood a word of what I’ve been saying!”
For the first time Elizabeth found herself capable of smiling. She liked this incoherent young man.
“I haven’t,” she said.
“You don’t know about the will?”
“Only what you told me in your letter.”
“Well, I’m hanged! Tell me—I hadn’t the honor of knowing him personally—was the late Mr. Nutcombe’s whole life as eccentric as his will-making? It seems to me—”
Nutty spoke.
“Uncle Ira’s middle name,” he said, “was Bloomingdale. That,” he proceeded bitterly, “is the frightful injustice of it all. I had to suffer from it right along, and all
