I bowed silently.
"And you know me, Sir Richard?"
Again I bowed.
For a while he drummed with his fingers on the table, then once again he fixed his piercing eyes on me.
"I want you to listen to a short story," he said, quietly. "It's very short, and"—his voice shook a little—"your reception of it is very important. I am no spinner of glib phrases: I have no tricks of speech to captivate your imagination. But I have an idea that the story I have to tell requires no assistance. Nearly fifty years ago a son was born to a certain man and his wife. He was their only child; the woman was not strong enough to have another. But that son was enough: he was the heir that was needed to an historic house.... And then there was an accident, and the boy broke his neck out hunting...."
He broke off and stared out of the window.
"The woman was too old to have another child," he went on after a while, "and so it seemed that that historic name would pass out of the direct line. And it would go to a man who had recently been expelled from his London clubs for cheating at cards.... He was openly boasting of his good fortune: had already started to raise money on his prospects...." He paused again, his great fists clenched.
"A few months later the woman fell ill. And though she loved the man as it is given to few men to be loved, she was glad—for the sake of his family. She thought she was going to die, and then he could marry again.... She prayed to die, and her prayer was not heard, though maybe it was one of the most divinely unselfish prayers that a human heart has ever raised.... Then one night, as she was recovering, the man found her with a glass of something by her bedside.... And he didn't leave her till she had sworn that she would not take that way out...."
He shifted restlessly in his seat. "It was about then that the plan was conceived. It was hazy at first, and the man would have none of it.... But after a while he began to think of it more and more.... And, one day, to his amazement he found that the woman had an unexpected ally in the shape of the heart specialist who was attending her."
"Who was the heart specialist?" I asked, quietly.