The other nodded and touched his coat.
"One hundred in notes and a cheque-book. I'll take his specimen signature, and put a thousand to his credit to-morrow."
"Good!" said the Judge. "That's the style. I wish poor Forest was here. He'd 've enjoyed it thoroughly. Such a pathetic letter he wrote me when he sent the will. Blames himself out of all reason for keeping the document so long. I sent him a line on Friday to say that we'd found our man. I admit it was rather precipitate, but, all things considered, I think I was justified. By the time the letter reaches him it will be a fait accompli—and I wanted to ease his mind."
"If you ask me," said Blithe, "it's all over but the shouting. The talk I had with Plowman over the telephone settled it. In fact, that was when the shouting began. Which reminds me that the trunk line from London to Girdle requires attention. It was not a conversation at all. It was a joint rhapsody."
"Personally," said the Judge, "I detest the telephone. It's a pomp and a vanity of a wicked world. You can never be sure who you're talking to, nor how many people are listening; there's no record of what you've said and no evidence that you've even said it. The invention is a convenient nuisance, conducive to blasphemy, and should be abated."
The car rolled on.
Presently, though none of them knew it, they slipped past Anthony's cottage and so down Gallowstree Hill to the village they sought.
To say that Mr. Samuel Plowman was ready and waiting in no way describes his condition. The little lawyer was wellnigh beside himself with expectation. The prospect of meeting a Justice of the King's Bench intoxicated. The possibility of entertaining such a one in the flesh and the dining-room of The Nook, Girdle, made tales of Paradise seem tame. A burning discussion with Mrs. Plowman had resulted in a decision not to offer his lordship lunch. That would be attempting too much. Cakes and ale, however, flanked by a dish of sandwiches and a tantalus, made a collation at once independent of service and adaptable to every appetite. Furniture was moved, rugs were transferred, the first floor was spoiled to turn the spare bedroom into Mr. Plowman's conception of a Judge's lavatory. It had been mutually agreed that Mrs. Plowman's presence would be intrusive, but, in the circumstances, to go soberly to church was more than the good lady could stomach. An O. P. was therefore established in the bathroom beside the geyser, to which point of vantage Mrs. Plowman undertook to repair the moment the car was heard….
The Nook standing close to a corner of the London road, seven times was the O. P. occupied and evacuated between half-past eleven and twelve, and three times did Mr. Plowman actually throw open his door and advance, nervous but beaming, into the drive, only to hear the deceitful engine once more gathering speed. The fourth time, however, the purr of the engine fell to a steady mutter, which was maintained. The car was not at the gate, but it was not moving. Possibly its occupants were inquiring for The Nook…. Mr. Plowman tried not to run down the drive. With her heart in her mouth, Mrs. Plowman peered past the geyser to where the branches of a monkey-puzzler maddeningly obstructed her view of the front gate….
Two minutes later the little solicitor reappeared, walking most delicately and attending a tall, distinguished-looking man with every circumstance of veneration. Behind them came two other strangers, who might have been equerries. That, for all his ecstasy, Mr. Plowman remembered to throw a smile up to the bathroom window, literally reduced Mrs. Plowman to tears of joy.