For reply I opened out the morning paper which I had been careful to bring along.
"See here!" I cried: "'Archibald Gillespie, the well-known broker, died suddenly last night, from the effects of some drug mysteriously administered.'" I was reading rapidly, anxious to see what kind of a story the reporters had made of it. "'He had been ill for some weeks back, but seemed perfectly restored up to half-past nine o'clock last evening, when he fell and died without warning, in the small room known as his den. A bottle of chloral was found on the mantel but there is no proof that he took any of it. Indeed, his symptoms were such that the action of a much more violent drug is suspected. His little grandchild was a witness to his last moments.' George, Leighton, and Alfred are now more than rich fellows. They are rich men," I suggested, relieved that my name had not appeared in the headlines.
"They need to be," was the short reply. "One of them at least stood in great need of money."
"Which?" I asked, with an odd sensation of choking in my throat.
"George. He's about played out, as I take it. To my certain knowledge he has lost in unfortunate bets thirty thousand dollars since summer set in. He has a mania for betting and card-playing, and as his father had little patience with vices of this nature, their relations of late have been more than strained. But he's a mighty big-hearted fellow for all that, and a great favourite with the men who don't play with him. I heard he was going to be married. That and this sudden windfall may set him straight again. He's a handsome fellow; did you ever meet him?"
"Once," I acknowledged. Then with an effort of which I was more or less ashamed, I asked the name of the girl who was willing to take such a well-known spendthrift for a husband.
Sam did not seem to be as well posted on this point as on some others.
"I have heard her name," he admitted. "Some cousin, who lives in the same house with him. The old gentleman fancied her so much, he promised to give a big fortune to the son who married her. It seems that George is likely to be the lucky one. Strange, what odd things come up in families."
"There is another brother—Alfred, I think they call him."
"Oh, Alph! He's a deuced handsome chap, too, but not such a universal favourite as George. More moral though. I think his sole vice is an inordinate love of doing nothing. I have known him to lie out half the night on a club-divan, saying nothing, doing nothing, not even smoking. I have sometimes wondered if he ate opium on the sly. Life would be stupid as he spends it, if dreams did not take the place of the pleasant realities he scorns."