I glanced at the clock, then taking a telegraph form I wrote: “Shall be at Dunchester Station 8:30. Meet me there or later at the club.” Taking a cab I drove to St. Pancras, just in time to catch the train. In my pocket—so closely was I pressed for money, for my account at the bank was actually overdrawn—I had barely enough to pay for a third-class ticket to Dunchester. This mattered little, however, for I always travelled third-class, not because I liked it but because it looked democratic and the right sort of thing for a Radical M.P. to do.
The train was a fast one, but that journey seemed absolutely endless. Now at length we had slowed down at the Dunchester signal-box, and now we were running into the town. If my friend the lawyer had anything really striking to tell me he would send to meet me at the station, and, if it was something remarkable, he would probably attend there himself. Therefore, if I saw neither the managing clerk nor the junior partner, nor the Head of the Firm, I might be certain that the news was trivial, probably—dreadful thought which had not occurred to me before—that I was appointed executor under the will with a legacy of a hundred guineas.
The train rolled into the station. As it began to glide past the pavement of wet asphalt I closed my eyes to postpone the bitterness of disappointment, if only for a few seconds. Perforce I opened them again as the train was stopping, and there, the very first thing they fell upon, looking portly and imposing in a fur coat, was the rubicund-faced Head of the Firm himself. “It is good,” I thought, and supported myself for a moment by the hat-rack, for the revulsion of feeling produced a sudden faintness. He saw me, and sprang forward with a beaming yet respectful countenance. “It is very good,” I thought.
“My dear sir,” he began obsequiously, “I do trust that my telegram has not incommoded you, but my news was such that I felt it necessary to meet you at the earliest possible moment, and therefore wired to you at every probable address.”
I gave the porter who took my bag a shilling. Practically it was my last, but that lawyer’s face and manner seemed to justify the expenditure which—so oddly are our minds constituted—I remember reflecting I might regret if I had drawn a false inference. The man touched his hat profusely, and, I hope, made up his mind to vote for me next time. Then I turned to the Head of the Firm and said:—
“Pray, don’t apologise; but, by the way, beyond that of the death of my poor friend, what is the news?”
“Oh, perhaps you know it,” he answered, taken aback at my manner, “though she always insisted upon its being kept a dead secret, so that one day you might have a pleasant surprise.”
“I know nothing,” I answered.
“Then I am glad to be the bearer of such good intelligence to a fortunate and distinguished man,” he said with a bow. “I have the honour to inform you in my capacity of executor to the will of the late Mrs. Martha Strong that, with the exception of a few legacies, you are left her sole heir.”
Now I wished that the hat-rack was still at hand, but, as it was not, I pretended to stumble, and leant for a moment against the porter who had received my last shilling.