'No, that won't do,' I answered. 'My cue must be now to keep myself as aloof as possible from Harold and Harold's backers. I must put up at an hotel. It will sound so much better in cross-examination.'
'She's quite right,' the Maharajah broke in, with sudden conviction. 'One must block every ball with these nasty swift bowlers.'
'Where's Harold?' I asked, after another pause. 'Why didn't he come to meet me?'
'My dear, how could he? He's under examination. A cross-eyed Q.C. with an odious leer. Southminster's chosen the biggest bully at the Bar to support his contention.'
'Drive to some hotel in the Jermyn Street district,' I cried to the Maharajah's coachman. 'That will be handy for the law courts.'
He touched his hat and turned. In a sort of dickey behind sat two gorgeous-turbaned Rajput servants.
That evening Harold came round to visit me at my rooms. I could see he was much agitated. Things had gone very badly. Lady Georgina was there; she had stopped to dine with me, dear old thing, lest I should feel lonely and give way; so had Elsie Petheridge. Mr. Elworthy sent a telegram of welcome from Devonshire. I knew at least that my friends were rallying round me in this hour of trial. The kind Maharajah himself would have come too, if I had allowed him, but I thought it inexpedient. They explained everything to me. Harold had propounded Mr. Ashurst's will—the one I drew up at Florence—and had asked for probate. Lord Southminster intervened and opposed the grant of probate on the ground that the signatures were forgeries. He propounded instead another will, drawn some twenty years earlier, when they were both children, duly executed at the time, and undoubtedly genuine; in it, testator left everything without reserve to the eldest son of his eldest brother, Lord Kynaston.
'Marmy didn't know in those days that Kynaston's sons would all grow up fools,' Lady Georgina said tartly. 'Besides which, that was before the poor dear soul took to plunging on the Stock Exchange and made his money. He had nothing to leave then but his best silk hat and a few paltry hundreds. Afterwards, when he'd feathered his nest in soap and cocoa, he discovered that Bertie—that's Lord Southminster—was a first-class idiot. Marmy never liked Southminster, nor Southminster Marmy. For after all, with all his faults, Marmy was a gentleman; while Bertie—well, my dear, we needn't put a name to it. So he altered his will, as you know, when he saw the sort of man Southminster turned out, and left practically everything he possessed to Harold.'
'Who are the witnesses to the will?' I asked.
'There's the trouble. Who do you think? Why, Higginson's sister, who was Marmy's masseuse, and a waiter—Franz Markheim—at the hotel at Florence, who's dead they say—or, at least, not forthcoming.'