Under the Chinese Dragon: A Tale of Mongolia

by F. S. Brereton

'Glad I'm not David,' he told himself. 'And from what I have learned I can't help feeling that Mr. Harbor must have executed a later will. But there you are; it is not to be found. We have no information about it, while our late client is undoubtedly dead, killed out in China. It's bad luck for David; I like the boy.'

'Perhaps,' he said, a moment later, 'you will obtain Mrs. Clayhill's signatures to these documents, when we can at once set about proving the will. As I am nominated as co-executor with Mrs. Clayhill, I can complete them when I return to the office. I shall of course leave the payment of David's allowance to Mrs. Clayhill.'

Mr. Ebenezer beamed when at length his visitor had gone. He rubbed his hands together craftily, and then blew his enormous nose violently.

'Well, Sarah, what do you think of that?' he asked, looking across at Mrs. Clayhill, who had joined him in his room. 'The matter is practically finished. The will is to be proved in the course of a few weeks, and then we can settle down. There will be no questions to ask, and none to answer.'

'And so far as I am concerned, no answers forthcoming,' replied his wife. 'After all, it is true that Edward wrote to me from China just before his death, saying that he was settling his affairs again, in other words that he was making a new will. But what is the good of mentioning that? If he did as he intimated, no new will has been found. Besides, I have reason to know that any alteration would not have been to my benefit. Edward had of late been a worry to me.'

At the back of her mind Mrs. Clayhill remembered how she had come to marry Edward Harbor. He was then forty years of age, and possessed of one boy, David. His wife had died some years before, and there was no doubt that Edward in selecting his second wife had chosen one whom he imagined would willingly travel with him. But, after a year or more of life in England, Mrs. Clayhill had resolutely refused to stir a foot out of the country. Edward, to his great sorrow, had to go alone, leaving David in his wife's charge. Moreover, there was little doubt but that once her husband was out of sight, Mrs. Clayhill had endeavoured to forget him, and that with some success, so that Edward received only the most fragmentary letters, with long intervals between. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, it was but natural that Edward Harbor, smarting under the treatment meeted out to him by a wife, to whom at the time of their marriage he had willed almost all his possessions, should have made drastic alterations. Let us say at once that he had made a new will, only the latter, owing to his untimely death, had never reached the hands of his solicitors. Nor was there any record of it in China. Mrs. Clayhill, it seemed, was the only one who knew that a change had been made, and she had craftily not uttered a word on the subject. So it happened that David was to be robbed of his father's possessions, while his stepmother, who had disliked the lad from the beginning, with Mr. Clayhill, the husband she had acquired after the death of Mr. Harbor, were to come in for all the money, knowing all the while that, though such a step was legal, it did not represent Edward Harbor's wishes.

'And the boy—what of him?' asked Mrs. Clayhill tartly.

Ebenezer grinned; matters were going splendidly for him. 'Oh, David,' he said. 'He's got to learn what it is to work; I'll send him up to a city firm. No more idling or riding blood horses for him, my dear.'

It was a heartless arrangement, and one is bound to admit, from the acquaintance we have already of Mr. Ebenezer, it was to be expected of him. As for Mrs. Clayhill, though boasting some attractions, she was not, as the reader will have guessed, a fascinating woman. Where David was concerned she could be a dragon, and we are stating but the truth when we say that, for the past three years, the lad had been glad to return to school to escape from a home which was that only in name to him.

'Ah, there he is,' suddenly exclaimed Mr. Ebenezer, as a heavy foot was heard in the hall, while, within a second, the door of the room was flung unceremoniously open, and David entered.