ROYCE. Yes, I can see how attractive the word must have looked—up at Bradford.
OLIVER. You don’t think it looks so well down here?
ROYCE. I’m afraid not.
OLIVER. Well, why not? Which is more probable, that Oliver Blayds carried out this colossal fraud for more than sixty years, or that when he was an old man of ninety his brain wobbled a bit, and he started imagining things?
ROYCE (shaking his head regretfully). No.
OLIVER. It’s all very well to say “No.” Anybody can say “No.” As the Old Man said yesterday, you [245]refuse to face the facts, Royce. Look at all the Will cases you see in the papers. Whenever an old gentleman over seventy leaves his money to anybody but his loving nephews and nieces, they always bring an action to prove that he can’t have been quite right in the head when he died; and nine times out of ten they win. Well, Blayds was ninety.
ROYCE. Yes, but I thought he left you a thousand pounds.
OLIVER. Well, I suppose that was a lucid interval.... Look here, you think it over seriously. I read a book once about a fellow who stole another man’s novel. Perhaps Blayds read it too and got it mixed up. Why not at that age? Or perhaps he was thinking of using the idea himself. And turning it over and over in his mind, living with it, so to speak, day and night, he might very easily begin to think that it was something that had happened to himself. At his age. And then on his death-bed, feeling that he must confess something—thoroughly muddled, poor old fellow—well, you see how easily it might happen. Hallucination.
ROYCE (regarding him admiringly). You know, Oliver, I think you underrate your intrinsic qualities as a politician. You mustn’t waste yourself on engineering.
OLIVER. Thanks very much. I suppose Father hasn’t mentioned the word “hallucination” to you yet?