"Are you going to let Harry get away with it?" he asked her, with a sudden characteristic directness.
The girl shrugged.
"What else can I do?"
"I have an idea," said the Saint; and his blue eyes danced with an unholy delight which she had never seen in them before.
Mr. Westler was not a man whose contacts with the Law had conspired to make him particularly happy about any of its workings; and therefore when he saw that the card which was brought to him in his hotel bore in its bottom left-hand corner the name of a firm with the words "Attorneys at Law" underneath it, he suffered an immediate hollow twinge in the base of his stomach for which he could scarcely be blamed. A moment's reflection, however, reminded him that another card with a similar inscription had recently been the forerunner of an extremely welcome windfall, and with this reassuring thought he told the bellboy to bring the visitor into his presence.
Mr. Tombs, of Tombs, Tombs, and Tombs, as the card introduced him, was a tall lean man with neatly brushed white hair, bushy white eyebrows, a pair of gold-rimmed and drooping pince-nez on the end of a broad black ribbon and an engagingly avuncular manner which rapidly completed the task of restoring Harry Westler's momentarily shaken confidence. He came to the point with professional efficiency combined with professional pomposity.
"I have come to see you in connection with the estate of the — ah — late Mrs. Laine. I understand that you are her heir."
"That's right," said Mr. Westler.
He was a dark, flashily dressed man with small greedy eyes and a face rather reminiscent of that of a sick horse.
"Splendid." The lawyer placed his finger tips on his knees and leant forward peering benevolently over the rims of his glasses. "Now I for my part am representing the Sesame Mining Development Corporation."