III.
Do not forget the old bald-headed lawyer in the drawing-room.
“I suppose you are often summoned to the Grand Babylon, sir, living, as you do, just round the corner,” he remarked to me somewhat pompously. He had a big nose and a habit of staring at you over his eye-glasses with his mouth wide-open, after having spoken. We were alone together in the drawing-room. I was waiting for the arrival of the medicine, and he was waiting for—I didn’t know what he was waiting for.
“Occasionally. Not often,” I responded. “I am called more frequently to the Majestic, over the way.”
“Ah, just so, just so,” he murmured.
I could see that he meant to be polite in his high and dry antique legal style; and I could see also that he was very bored in that hotel drawing-room. So I proceeded to explain the case to him, and to question him discreetly about my patient and Miss Russell.
“You are, of course, aware, sir, that the young lady is Miss Spanton, Miss Adelaide Spanton?” he said.
“What? Not ‘the’ Spanton?”
“Precisely, sir. The daughter of Edgar Spanton, my late client, the great newspaper proprietor.”
“And this Miss Russell?”
“Miss Russell was formerly Miss Adelaide’s governess. She is now her friend, and profoundly attached to the young lady; a disinterested attachment, so far as I can judge, though naturally many people will think otherwise. Miss Adelaide is of a very shy and retiring disposition; she has no other friends, and she has no near relatives. Save for Miss Russell she is, sir, if I may so phrase it, alone in the world.”
“But Miss Spanton is surely very wealthy?”
“You come to the point, sir. If my young client reaches her twenty-first birthday she will be the absolute mistress of the whole of her father’s fortune. You may have noticed in the public press that I swore his estate at more than three millions.”
“And how far is Miss Spanton from her twenty-first birthday?” I demanded.
The old lawyer glanced at his watch.
“Something less than three hours. At midnight she will have legally entered on her 22nd year.”
“I see,” I said. “Now I can understand Miss Russell’s anxiety, which refuses to be relieved even by my positive assurance. No doubt Miss Russell has worked herself up into a highly nervous condition. And may I inquire what will happen—I mean, what would have happened, if Miss Spanton had not reached her majority?”
“The entire estate would have passed to a cousin, a Mr. Samuel Grist, of Melbourne. I daresay you know the name. Mr. Grist is understood to be the leading theatrical manager in Australia. Speaking as one professional man to another, sir, I may venture to remark that Mr. Grist’s reputation is more than a little doubtful—you may have heard—many transactions and adventures. Ha, ha! Still, he is my late client’s sole surviving relative, except Miss Adelaide. I have never had the pleasure of meeting him; he confines himself exclusively to Australia.”
“This night then,” I laughed, “will see the end of any hopes which Mr. Grist may have entertained.”
“Exactly, sir,” the lawyer agreed. “It will also see the end of Miss Russell’s immediate anxieties. Upon my word, since Mr. Spanton’s regrettable death, she has been both father and mother to my lonely young client. A practical woman, sir, Miss Russell! And the excessiveness of her apprehensions, if I may so phrase it, must be excused. She has begged me to remain here till midnight, in order that I may witness to Miss Spanton’s—er—vitality, and also in order to obtain Miss Spanton’s signature to certain necessary documents. I should not be surprised, sir, if she requested you also to remain. She is not a woman to omit precautions.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stop till twelve,” I said. The conversation ceased, and I fell into meditation.
I do not mind admitting that I was deeply impressed by what I will call the romantic quality of the situation. I thought of old Spanton, who had begun with something less than nothing and died virtually the owner of three daily papers and twenty-five weeklies and monthlies. I thought of Spantons, Ltd., and their colossal offices spreading half round Salisbury Square. Why, I even had a copy of the extra special edition of the Evening Gazette in my pocket! Do any of you fellows remember Spanton starting the Evening Gazette? He sold three hundred thousand the first day. And now old Spanton was dead—you know he died of drink, and there was nothing left of the Spanton blood except this girl lying there on the bed, and the man in Australia. And all the Spanton editors, and the Spanton sub-editors, and the Spanton artists, and the Spanton reporters and compositors, and the Spanton rotary presses, and the Spanton paper mills, and the Spanton cyclists, were slaving and toiling to put eighty thousand a year into this girl’s purse. And there she was, feeble and depressed, and solitary, except for Miss Russell, and the man in Australia perhaps hoping she would die; and there was Miss Russell, worrying and fussing and apprehending and fearing. And the entire hotel oblivious of the romantic, I could almost say the pathetic, situation. And then I thought of Miss Spanton’s future, burdened with those three millions, and I wondered if those three millions would buy her happiness.
“Here is the medicine, doctor,” said Miss Russell, entering the drawing-room hurriedly, and handing me the bottle with the chemist’s label on it. I went with her into the bedroom. The beautiful Adelaide Spanton was already better, and she admitted as much when I administered the medicine—two minims of a one per cent. solution of trinitrin, otherwise nitro-glycerine, the usual remedy for pseudo-angina.
Miss Russell took the bottle from my hand, corked it and placed it on the dressing-table. Shortly afterwards I left the hotel. The lawyer had been right in supposing that Miss Russell would ask me to stay, but I was unable to do so. I promised, however, to return in an hour, all the while insisting that there was not the slightest danger for the patient.