The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

In some cases the offer was closed with at once; in others it was only agreed to after threats that the debt must be at once paid or an application would be made forthwith. So far the gambling-house keeper's expectations had not met with the success he had looked for. He had spent a good deal of time in endeavoring to find the descendants of persons who stood in the direct line of succession to properties, but of whom all clew had been lost. He had indeed obtained an insight into various family differences that had enabled him to successfully extort blackmail, but his gains in this way had not, so far, recouped him for the sums he had, as he considered, invested in the speculation.

He was, however, a patient man, and felt, no doubt, that sooner or later he should be able to make a coup that would set him up for life. Still he was disappointed; his idea had been the one held by many ignorant persons, that lawyers are as a class ready to resort to tricks of all kinds, in the interests of their clients or themselves. He had found that he had been altogether wrong, and that although there were a few firms which, working in connection with money-lenders, financial agents, and the lowest class of bill discounters, were mixed up in transactions of a more or less shady character, these were the black sheep of the profession, and that in the vast majority of cases the business transacted was purely technical and connected with the property of their clients. Nevertheless, he took copious notes of all he learned, contending that there was no saying what might come in useful some day.

"Well, Dawkins," he said one day to a dark-haired young fellow with a handsome face that already showed traces of the effect of late hours and dissipation, "I suppose it is the usual thing; the lawsuit as to the right of way at Brownsgrove is still going on, the settlements in Mr. Cochrane's marriage to Lady Gertrude Ivory are being drawn up, and other business of the same sort. You never give me a scrap of information that is of the slightest use. I am afraid that your firm is altogether too eminently respectable to have anything to do with doubtful transactions."

"I told you so from the first, Wilkinson; that whatever your game might be, there would be nothing in our office that could be of the least use to you, even if you had copies of every deed drawn up in it. Ours is what you might call a family business. Our clients have for the most part dealt with the firm for the last hundred years; that is to say, their families have. We have drawn their wills, their marriage settlements, their leases, and done everything relating to their property for years and years. My own work for the last two or three days has been drafting and engrossing the will of a General Mathieson, whose father and grandfather were our clients before him."

"Mathieson—he is an old Indian officer, isn't he, if it is the man I mean? He was in command at Benares twenty years ago. He was a handsome man, then, about my height and build."

"Yes, I have no doubt that is the man—John Le Marchand Mathieson."

"That is him. He was very popular with the troops. He used to spend a good deal of money in improving their rations and making them comfortable. Had a first-rate stable, and they used to say he was a rich man. Anyhow, he spent a good deal more than his pay."

"Yes, he was a second son, but his elder brother died, and he came into the property; but instead of coming home to enjoy it he stopped out in India for years after he came into it."

"He had a daughter, quite a little girl, in those days; her mother died out there. I suppose she inherits his property?"

"Well, no; she married some time back; she and her husband are both dead, and their son, a boy, six or seven years old, lives with the old man."