The Chief Legatee Part 24

There was no mistaking the continued intensity of Hazen's gaze. Ransom felt his color rise, but succeeded in preserving his quiet tone, as he added:

"Besides, this character is not a wholly new one to me. My attention was called to it months ago. It was when I was courting Georgian. She was writing a note one day when she suddenly stopped to think and I saw her pen making some marks which I considered curious. But I should not have remembered them five minutes, if she had not impulsively laid her hand over them when she saw me looking. That fixed the memory of them in my mind, and when I saw this combination of lines again, I remembered it.

That is why I lent myself so readily to this experiment. I lent that what you said about her acquaintance with this odd arrangement of lines was true."

Hazen's hand stole up to his neck, a token of agitation which Ransom should have recognized by this time.

"And her account of the use we made of it tallied with mine?"

"She gave me no account of any use she had ever made of it."

"That was because you didn't ask her."

"Just so. Why should I ask her? It was a small matter to trouble her about."

"You are right," acquiesced Hazen, wheeling himself away towards the window. Then after a momentary silence, "It was so then, but it is likely to prove of some importance now. Let me see if the hall is empty."

As he bent to open the door, the lawyer, who had not moved nor spoken till now, turned a quick glance on Ransom and impulsively stretched out his hand. But he dropped it very quickly and subsided into his old att.i.tude of simple watchfulness, as Hazen glanced back with the remark:

"There's n.o.body stirring; now's your time, Ransom."

The moment for action had arrived.

Ransom stepped into the hall. As he pa.s.sed Hazen, the latter whispered:

"Don't forget that last downward quirk. That was the line she always emphasized."

Ransom gave him an annoyed look. His nerves as well as his feelings were on a keen stretch, and this persistence of Hazen's was more than he could bear.

"I'll not forget the least detail," he answered shortly, and pa.s.sed quickly down the hall, while Hazen watched him through the crack of the door, and the lawyer watched Hazen.

Suddenly Mr. Harper's brow wrinkled. Hazen had uttered such a sigh of relief that the lawyer was startled. In another moment Ransom re-entered the room.

"She's coming," said he, striving to hide his extreme emotion. "I heard her voice in the hall beyond."

Hazen sprang to the door which Ransom had carefully closed, and was about to fall on his knees before the keyhole when he suddenly stiffened himself and, turning towards the lawyer, cried with a new strain of loftiness in his tone:

"You. You shall do the looking, only promise to be very minute in your description of her behavior. It's a great trust I repose in you. See that you honor it."

The revulsion of feeling caused in the lawyer by this show of confidence was not perceptible. But it softened his step as well as his manner as he crossed to do the other's bidding.

The remaining two stood at his side breathless, waiting for his first word.

It came in a whisper:

"She's approaching her room. She looks tired. Her eyes are stealing this way;--no, they are resting on her own door. She sees the sign. She stands staring at it, but not like a person who has ever seen it before. It's the stare of an uneducated woman who runs upon something she does not understand. Now she touches it with one finger and glances up and down the hall with a doubtful shake of the head. Now she is running to another door, now to another. She is looking to see if this scrawl is to be found anywhere else; she even casts her eye this way--I feel like leaving my post. If I do, you may know that she's coming--No, she's back at her own door and--gentlemen, her bringing up or rather coming up a.s.serts itself.

She has put her palm to her mouth and is vigorously rubbing off the marks."

The next instant Mr. Harper rose. "She's gone into her room," said he.

"Listen and you will hear her key click in the lock."

Ransom sank into a seat; Hazen had walked to the window. Presently he turned.

"I am convinced," said he. "I will not trouble you gentlemen further.

Mr. Ransom, I condole with you upon your loss. My sister was a woman of uncommon gifts."

Mr. Ransom bowed. He had no words for this man at a moment of such extreme excitement. He did not even note the latent sting hidden in the other's seeming tribute to Georgian. But the lawyer did and Hazen perceived that he did, for pausing in his act of crossing the room, he leaned for a moment on the table with his eyes down, then quickly raising them remarked to that gentleman:

"I am going to leave by the midnight train for New York. To-morrow I shall be on the ocean. Will it be transgressing all rules of propriety for me to ask the purport of my sister's will? It is a serious matter to me, sir. If she has left me anything--"

"She has _not_," emphasized the lawyer.

A shadow darkened the disappointed man's brow. His wound swelled and his eyes gleamed ironically as he turned them upon Ransom.

Instantly that gentleman spoke.

"I have received but a moiety," said he. "You need not envy me the amount."

"Who has it then?" briskly demanded the startled man. "Who? who? _She?_"

Mr. Harper never knew why he did it. He was reserved as a man and, usually, more than reserved as a lawyer, but as Hazen lifted his hands from the table and turned to leave, he quietly remarked:

"The chief legatee--the one she chose to leave the bulk of her very large fortune to--is a man we none of us know. His name is Josiah Auchincloss."

The change which the utterance of this name caused in Hazen's expression threw them both into confusion.

"Why didn't you tell me that in the beginning?" he cried. "I needn't have wasted all this time and effort."

His eyes shone, his poor lips smiled, his whole air was jubilant. Both Mr. Harper and his client surveyed him in amazement. The lines so fast disappearing from his brow were beginning to reappear on theirs.

"Mr. Harper," this hard-to-be-understood man now declared, "you may safely administer the estate of my sister. She is surely dead."

CHAPTER XXIII

A STARTLING DECISION

Before Mr. Ransom and the lawyer had recovered from their astonishment, Hazen had slipped from the room. As Mr. Harper started to follow, he saw the other's head disappearing down the staircase leading to the office.

He called to him, but Hazen declined to turn.

"No time," he shouted back. "I shall have to make use of somebody's automobile now, to get to the Ferry in time."

The lawyer did not persist, not at that moment; he went back to his client and they had a few hurried words; then Mr. Harper went below and took up his stand on the portico. He was determined that Hazen should not leave the place without some further explanation.

It was light where he stood and he very soon felt that this would not do, so he slipped back into the shade of a pillar, and seeing, from the bustle, that Hazen was likely to obtain the use of the one automobile stored in the stable, he waited with reasonable patience for his reappearance in the road before him.

Meanwhile he had confidence in Ransom, who he felt sure was watching them both from the window overhead. If he should fail in getting in the word he wanted, Ransom was pledged to shout it out without regard to appearances. But this was not likely to occur. He knew his own persistency to equal Hazen's. Nothing should stop the momentary interview he had promised himself.