Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
WHERE THERE'S A WILL
By Mary Roberts Rinehart
CONTENTS
I I HAVE A WARNING II MISS PATTY ARRIVES III A WILL IV AND A WAY V WANTED--AN OWNER VI THE CONSPIRACY VII MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE VII AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION IX DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU X ANOTHER COMPLICATION XI MISS PATTY'S PRINCE XII WE GET A DOCTOR XIII THE PRINCE--PRINCIPALLY XIV PIERCE DISAPPROVES XV THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES XVI STOP, THIEF! XVII A BUNCH OF LETTERS XVIII MISS COBB'S BURGLAR XIX NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN XX EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY XXI THE MUTINY XXII HOME TO ROOST XXIII BACK TO NATURE XIV LIKE DUCKS TO WATER XXV THE FIRST FRUITS XXVI OVER THE FENCE IS OUT XXVII A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE XXVIII LOVE, LOVE, LOVE XXIX A BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT XXX LET GOOD DIGESTION
WHERE THERE'S A WILL
CHAPTER I
I HAVE A WARNING
When it was all over Mr. Sam came out to the spring-house to say good-byto me before he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him go, after all wehad been through together, and I suppose he saw it in my face, for hecame over close and stood looking down at me, and smiling. "You savedus, Minnie," he said, "and I needn't tell you we're grateful; but doyou know what I think?" he asked, pointing his long forefinger at me."I think you've enjoyed it even when you were suffering most. Red-hairedwomen are born to intrigue, as the sparks fly upward."
"Enjoyed it!" I snapped. "I'm an old woman before my time, Mr. Sam. Whatwith trailing back and forward through the snow to the shelter-house,and not getting to bed at all some nights, and my heart going by fitsand starts, as you may say, and half the time my spinal marrow fairlychilled--not to mention putting on my overshoes every morning from forceof habit and having to take them off again, I'm about all in."
"It's been the making of you, Minnie," he said, eying me, with his handsin his pockets. "Look at your cheeks! Look at your disposition! I don'tbelieve you'd stab anybody in the back now!"
(Which was a joke, of course; I never stabbed anybody in the back.)
He sauntered over and dropped a quarter into the slot-machine by thedoor, but the thing was frozen up and refused to work. I've seen thetime when Mr. Sam would have kicked it, but he merely looked at it andthen at me.
"Turned virtuous, like everything else around the place. Not that Idon't approve of virtue, Minnie, but I haven't got used to putting myfoot on the brass rail of the bar and ordering a nut sundae. Hookthe money out with a hairpin, Minnie, and buy some shredded wheat inremembrance of me."
He opened the door and a blast of February wind rattled thewindow-frames. Mr. Sam threw out his chest under his sweater and wavedme another good-by.
"Well, I'm off, Minnie," he said. "Take care of yourself and don't sittoo tight on the job; learn to rise a bit in the saddle."
"Good-by, Mr. Sam!" I called, putting down Miss Patty's doily andfollowing him to the door; "good-by; better have something before youstart to keep you warm."
He turned at the corner of the path and grinned back at me.
"All right," he called. "I'll go down to the bar and get a lettucesandwich!"
Then he was gone, and happy as I was, I knew I would miss him terribly.I got a wire hairpin and went over to the slot-machine, but when I hadfinally dug out the money I could hardly see it for tears.
It began when the old doctor died. I suppose you have heard of HopeSanatorium and the mineral spring that made it famous. Perhaps youhave seen the blotter we got out, with a flash-light interior of thespring-house on it, and me handing the old doctor a glass of mineralwater, and wearing the embroidered linen waist that Miss Patty Jenningsgave me that winter. The blotters were a great success. Below thepicture it said, "Yours for health," and in the body of the blotter,in red lettering, "Your system absorbs the health-giving drugs in HopeSprings water as this blotter soaks up ink."
The "Yours for health" was my idea.
I have been spring-house girl at Hope Springs Sanatorium for fourteenyears. My father had the position before me, but he took rheumatism, andas the old doctor said, it was bad business policy to spend thousandsof dollars in advertising that Hope Springs water cured rheumatism, andthen have father creaking like a rusty hinge every time he bent over tofill a glass with it.
Father gave me one piece of advice the day he turned the spring-houseover to me.
"It's a difficult situation, my girl," he said. "Lots of people thinkit's simply a matter of filling a glass with water and handing it overthe railing. Why, I tell you a barkeeper's a high-priced man mostly, andhis job's a snap to this. I'd like to know how a barkeeper would makeout if his customers came back only once a year and he had to rememberwhether they wanted their drinks cold or hot or 'chill off'. And anotherthing: if a chap comes in with a tale of woe, does the barkeeper haveto ask him what he's doing for it, and listen while he tells how muchweight he lost in a blanket sweat? No, sir; he pushes him a bottle andlets it go at that."
Father passed away the following winter. He'd been a little bitdelirious, and his last words were: "Yes, sir; hot, with a pinch ofsalt, sir?" Poor father! The spring had been his career, you maysay, and I like to think that perhaps even now he is sitting by someeverlasting spring measuring out water with a golden goblet instead ofthe old tin dipper. I said that to Mr. Sam once, and he said he feltquite sure that I was right, and that where father was the water wouldbe appreciated. He had heard of father.
Well, for the first year or so I nearly went crazy. Then I found thingswere coming my way. I've got the kind of mind that never forgets a nameor face and can combine them properly, which isn't common. And whenfolks came back I could call them at once. It would do your heart goodto see some politician, coming up to rest his stomach from the freebar in the state house at the capital, enter the spring-house whereeverybody is playing cards and drinking water and not caring a rapwhether he's the man that cleans the windows or the secretary of thenavy. If he's been there before, in sixty seconds I have his name on mytongue and a glass of water in his hand, and have asked him aboutthe rheumatism in his right knee and how the children are. And in tenminutes he's sitting in a bridge game and trotting to the spring to havehis glass refilled during his dummy hand, as if he'd grown up inthe place. The old doctor used to say my memory was an asset to thesanatorium.
He depended on me a good bit--the old doctor did--and that winter he waspretty feeble. (He was only seventy, but he'd got in the habit of makingit eighty to show that the mineral water kept him young. Finally he gotto BEING eighty, from thinking it, and he died of senility in the end.)
He was in the habit of coming to the spring-house every day to get hismorning glass of water and read the papers. For a good many years it hadbeen his custom to sit there, in the winter by the wood fire and in thesummer just inside the open door, and to read off the headings aloudwhile I cleaned around the spring and polished glasses.
"I see the president is going fishing, Minnie," he'd say, or "Airbrakeis up to 133; I wish I'd bought it that time I dreamed about it. It wasyou who persuaded me not to, Minnie."
And all that winter, with the papers full of rumors that MissPatty Jennings was going to marry a prince, we'd followed it by thespring-house fire, the old doctor and I, getting angry at the Austrianemperor for opposing it when we knew how much too good Miss Patty wasfor any foreigner, and then getting nervous and fussed when we read thatthe prince's mother was in favor of the match and it might go through.Miss Patty and her father came every winter to Hope Springs and Icouldn't have been more anxious about it if she had been my own sister.
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Well, as I say, it all began the very day the old doctor died. Hestamped out to the spring-house with the morning paper about nineo'clock, and the wedding seemed to be all off. The paper said theemperor had definitely refused his consent and had sent the prince, whowas his cousin, for a Japanese cruise, while the Jennings family wasgoing to Mexico in their private car. The old doctor was indignant, andI remember how he tramped up and down the spring-house, muttering thatthe girl had had a lucky escape, and what did the emperor expect ifbeauty and youth and wealth weren't enough. But he calmed down, and soonhe was reading that the papers were predicting an early spring, and hesaid we'd better begin to increase our sulphur percentage in the water.
I hadn't noticed anything strange in his manner, although we'd allnoticed how feeble he was growing, but when he got up to go back tothe sanatorium and I reached him his cane, it seemed to me he avoidedlooking at me. He went to the door and then turned and spoke to me overhis shoulder.
"By the way," he remarked, "Mr. Richard will be along in a day or so,Minnie. You'd better break it to Mrs. Wiggins."
Since the summer before we'd had to break Mr. Dick's coming to Mrs.Wiggins the housekeeper, owing to his finding her false front where ithad blown out of a window, having been hung up to dry, and his wearingit to luncheon as whiskers. Mr. Dick was the old doctor's grandson.
"Humph!" I said, and he turned around and looked square at me.
"He's a good boy at heart, Minnie," he said. "We've had our troubleswith him, you and I, but everything has been quiet lately."
When I didn't say anything he looked discouraged, but he had a fine wayof keeping on until he gained his point, had the old doctor.
"It HAS been quiet, hasn't it?" he demanded.
"I don't know," I said; "I have been deaf since the last explosion!" AndI went down the steps to the spring. I heard the tap of his cane as hecame across the floor, and I knew he was angry.
"Confound you, Minnie," he exclaimed, "if I could get along without youI'd discharge you this minute."
"And if I paid any attention to your discharging me I'd have been gonea dozen times in the last year," I retorted. "I'm not objecting to Mr.Dick coming here, am I? Only don't expect me to burst into song aboutit. Shut the door behind you when you go out."
But he didn't go at once. He stood watching me polish glasses and getthe card-tables ready, and I knew he still had something on his mind.
"Minnie," he said at last, "you're a shrewd young woman--maybe more headthan heart, but that's well enough. And with your temper under control,you're a CAPABLE young woman."
"What has Mr. Dick been up to now?" I asked, growing suspicious.
"Nothing. But I'm an old man, Minnie, a very old man."
"Stuff and nonsense," I exclaimed, alarmed. "You're only seventy. That'swhat comes of saying in the advertising that you are eighty--to showwhat the springs have done for you. It's enough to make a man die ofsenility to have ten years tacked to his age."
"And if," he went on, "if anything happens to me, Minnie, I'm countingon you to do what you can for the old place. You've been here a goodmany years, Minnie."
"Fourteen years I have been ladling out water at this spring," I said,trying to keep my lips from trembling. "I wouldn't be at home any placeelse, unless it would be in an aquarium. But don't ask me to stay hereand help Mr. Dick sell the old place for a summer hotel. For that's whathe'll do."
"He won't sell it," declared the old doctor grimly. "All I want is foryou to promise to stay."
"Oh, I'll stay," I said. "I won't promise to be agreeable, but I'llstay. Somebody'll have to look after the spring; I reckon Mr. Dickthinks it comes out of the earth just as we sell it, with the wholepharmacopoeia in it."
Well, it made the old doctor happier, and I'm not sorry I promised, butI've got a joint on my right foot that throbs when it is going to rainor I am going to have bad luck, and it gave a jump then. I might haveknown there was trouble ahead.