“I don’t understand about the three years,” said Tarboe, with rising colour.
“No, because I haven’t told you, but you’ll take it in now. I’m going to leave you the business as though you were going to have it for ever, but I’ll make another will dated a week later, in which I leave it to Carnac. Something you said makes me think he might come right, and it will be playing fair to him to let him run himself alone, maybe with help from his mother, for three years. That’s long enough, and perhaps the thought of what he might have had will work its way with him. If it don’t—well, it won’t; that’s all; but I want you to have the business long enough to baulk Belloc and Fabian the deserter. I want you for three years to fight this fight after I’m gone. In that second secret will, I’ll leave you two hundred thousand dollars. Are you game for it? Is it worthwhile?”
The old man paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching, both hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe did not reply.
“Have you nothing to say?” asked Grier at last. “Won’t you do it—eh?”
“I’m studying the thing out,” answered Tarboe quietly. “I don’t quite see about these two wills. Why shouldn’t the second will be found first?”
“Because you and I will be the only ones that’ll know of it. That shows how much I trust you, Tarboe. I’ll put it away where nobody can get it except you or me.”
“But if anything should happen to me?”
“Well, I’d leave a letter with my bank, not to be opened for three years, or unless you died, and it would say that the will existed, where it was, and what its terms were.”
“That sounds all right,” but there was a cloud on Tarboe’s face.
“It’s a great business,” said Grier, seeing Tarboe’s doubt. “It’s the biggest thing a man can do—and I’m breaking up.”