24
The man who had alighted from the automobile was young andcheerful. He wore a flannel suit of a gay blue and a straw hatwith a coloured ribbon, and he looked upon a world which, hismanner seemed to indicate, had been constructed according to hisown specifications through a single eyeglass. When he spoke itbecame plain that his nationality was English.
Nutty regarded his beaming countenance with a lowering hostility.The indecency of anyone being cheerful at such a time struck himforcibly. He would have liked mankind to have preserved tillfurther notice a hushed gloom. He glared at the young man.
Elizabeth, such was her absorption in her thoughts, was not evenaware 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 thenervous way automobiles have when standing still, suggestingsomehow that it were best to talk quick, as they can give you onlya few minutes before dashing on to keep some other appointment.Either this or a natural volatility lent a breezy rapidity to thevisitor's speech. He looked at Elizabeth across the gate, which ithad not occurred to her to open, as if she were just what he hadexpected her to be and a delight to his eyes, and burst intospeech.
'My name's Nichols--J. Nichols. I expect you remember getting aletter from me a week or two ago?'
The name struck Elizabeth as familiar. But he had gone on toidentify himself before she could place it in her mind.
'Lawyer, don't you know. Wrote you a letter telling you that yourUncle Ira Nutcombe had left all his money to Lord Dawlish.'
'Oh, yes,' said Elizabeth, and was about to invite him to pass thebarrier, when he began to speak again.
'You know, I want to explain that letter. Wrote it on a suddenimpulse, don't you know. The more I have to do with the law, themore 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--putyou out of your misery, and so forth--stop your entertaininghopes never to be realized, what? and all that sort of thing. Yousee, it was like this: Bill--I mean Lord Dawlish--is a great palof mine, a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well, being inthe know, you understand, through your uncle having deposited thewill with us, I gave Bill the tip directly I heard of MrNutcombe's death. I sent him a telephone message to come to theoffice, and I said: "Bill, old man, this old buster"--I beg yourpardon, this old gentleman--"has left you all his money." Quiteinformal, don't you know, and at the same time, in the sameinformal spirit, I wrote you the letter.' He dammed the torrentfor 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 havewondered what on earth I was talking about.'
In spite of her identity, this was precisely what Elizabeth wasdoing. Her mind, still under a cloud, had been unable tounderstand one word of Mr Nichols's discourse. Judging from hisappearance, which was that of a bewildered hosepipe or a snakewhose brain is being momentarily overtaxed, Nutty was in the samedifficulty. He had joined the group at the gate, abandoning thepebble which he had been kicking in the background, and was nowleaning 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 toprecedent. He loves red tape--wears it wrapped round him in winterinstead of flannel. He's all for doing things in the proper legalway, which, as I dare say you know, takes months. And, meanwhile,everybody's wondering what's happening and who has got the money,and so on and so forth. I thought I would skip all that and letyou know right away exactly where you stood, so I wrote you thatletter. 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 letterI have a notion that the governor will think so too. So I cameover here to ask you, if you don't mind, not to mention it whenyou get in touch with the governor. I frankly admit that thatletter, written with the best intentions, was a bloomer.'
With which manly admission the young man paused, and allowed therays of his eyeglass to play upon Elizabeth in silence. Elizabethtried to piece together what little she understood of hismonologue.
'You mean that you want me not to tell your father that I got aletter from you?'
'Exactly that. And thanks very much for not saying "withoutprejudice," or anything of that kind. The governor would have.'
'But I don't understand. Why should you think that I should evermention 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 themoney.'
'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 Idid. There you have the governor's methods! Couldn't want a betterexample. I suppose some legal formality or other has cropped upand laid him a stymie, and he's waiting to get round it. Youreally mean he hasn't written?
'Why, dash it,' said the young man, as one to whom all isrevealed, 'then you can't have understood a word of what I've beensaying!'
For the first time Elizabeth found herself capable of smiling. Sheliked 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 honour of knowing himpersonally--was the late Mr Nutcombe's whole life as eccentric ashis will-making? It seems to me--'
Nutty spoke.
'Uncle Ira's middle name,' he said, 'was Bloomingdale. That,' heproceeded, bitterly, 'is the frightful injustice of it all. I hadto suffer from it right along, and all I get, when it comes to afinish, is a miserable hundred dollars. Uncle Ira insisted onfather and mother calling me Nutcombe; and whenever he got a newcraze I was always the one he worked it off on. You remember thetime he became a vegetarian, Elizabeth? Gosh!' Nutty broodedcoldly on the past. 'You remember the time he had it all workedout that the end of the world was to come at five in the morningone February? Made me stop up all night with him, reading MarcusAurelius! And the steam-heat turned off at twelve-thirty! I couldtell you a dozen things just as bad as that. He always picked onme. And now I've gone through it all he leaves me a hundreddollars!'
Mr Nichols nodded sympathetically.
'I should have imagined that he was rather like that. You know, ofcourse, why he made that will I wrote to you about, leaving allhis money to Bill Dawlish? Simply because Bill, who met himgolfing at a place in Cornwall in the off season, cured him ofslicing his approach-shots! I give you my word that was the onlyreason. I'm sorry for old Bill, poor old chap. Such a good sort!'
'He's all right,' said Nutty. 'But why you should be sorry for himgets past me. A fellow who gets five million--'
'But he doesn't, don't you see?'
'How do you mean?'
'Why, this other will puts him out of the running.'
'Which other will?'
'Why, the one I'm telling you about.'
He looked from one to the other, apparently astonished at theirslowness of understanding. Then an idea occurred to him.
'Why, now that I think of it, I never told you, did I? Yes, youruncle made another will at the very last moment, leaving all hepossessed to Miss Boyd.'
The dead silence in which his words were received stimulated himto further speech. It occurred to him that, after that letter ofhis, perhaps these people were wary about believing anything hesaid.
'It's absolutely true. It's the real, stable information thi
stime. I had it direct from the governor, who was there when hemade the will. He and the governor had had a row about something,you know, and they made it up during those last days, and--Well,apparently your uncle thought he had better celebrate it somehow,so he made a new will. From what little I know of him, that wasthe way he celebrated most things. I took it for granted thegovernor would have written to you by this time. I expect you'llhear by the next mail. You see, what brought me over was the ideathat when he wrote you might possibly take it into your heads tomention having heard from me. You don't know my governor. If hefound out I had done that I should never hear the last of it. So Isaid to him: "Gov'nor, I'm feeling a bit jaded. Been working toohard, or something. I'll take a week or so off, if you can spareme." He didn't object, so I whizzed over. Well, of course, I'mawfully sorry for old Bill, but I congratulate you, Miss Boyd.'
'What's the time?' said Elizabeth.
Mr Nichols was surprised. He could not detect the connexion ofideas.
'It's about five to eleven,' he said, consulting his watch.
The next moment he was even more surprised, for Elizabeth, makingnothing of the barrier of the gate, had rushed past him and waseven now climbing into his automobile.
'Take me to the station, at once,' she was crying to the stout,silent man, whom not even these surprising happenings had shakenfrom his attitude of well-fed detachment.
The stout man, ceasing to be silent, became interrogative.
'Uh?'
'Take me to the station. I must catch the eleven o'clock train.'
The stout man was not a rapid thinker. He enveloped her in astodgy gaze. It was only too plain to Elizabeth that he was a manwho liked to digest one idea slowly before going on to absorb thenext. Jerry Nichols had told him to drive to Flack's. He haddriven to Flack's. Here he was at Flack's. Now this young womanwas telling him to drive to the station. It was a new idea, and hebent himself to the Fletcherizing of it.
'I'll give you ten dollars if you get me there by eleven,' shoutedElizabeth.
The car started as if it were some living thing that had had asharp instrument jabbed into it. Once or twice in his life it hadhappened to the stout man to encounter an idea which he couldswallow at a gulp. This was one of them.
Mr Nichols, following the car with a wondering eye, found thatNutty was addressing him.
'Is this really true?' said Nutty.
'Absolute gospel.'
A wild cry, a piercing whoop of pure joy, broke the summerstillness.
'Come and have a drink, old man!' babbled Nutty. 'This wantscelebrating!' His face fell. 'Oh, I was forgetting! I'm on thewagon.'
'On the wagon?'
'Sworn off, you know. I'm never going to touch another drop aslong as I live. I began to see things--monkeys!'
'I had a pal,' said Mr Nichols, sympathetically, 'who used to seekangaroos.'
Nutty seized him by the arm, hospitable though handicapped.
'Come and have a bit of bread and butter, or a slice of cake orsomething, and a glass of water. I want to tell you a lot moreabout Uncle Ira, and I want to hear all about your end of it. Gee,what a day!'
'"The maddest, merriest of all the glad New Year,"' assented MrNichols. 'A slice of that old 'eighty-seven cake. Just the thing!'