“Little idiot!” muttered Meeson; “I’ll give him the sack, too, if he isn’t more careful. By Jove! why should I not have my own resident solicitor? I could get a sharp hand with a damaged character for about £300 a year, and I pay that old Todd quite £2000. There is a vacant place in the Hutches that I could turn into an office. Hang me, if I don’t do it. I will make that little chirping grasshopper jump to some purpose, I’ll warrant,” and he chuckled at the idea.
Just then Mr. Todd returned with the will, and before he could begin to make any explanations his employer cut him short with a sharp order to read the gist of it.
This the lawyer proceeded to do. It was very short, and, with the exception of a few legacies, amounting in all to about twenty thousand pounds, bequeathed all the testator’s vast fortune and estates, including his (by far the largest) interest in the great publishing house, and his palace with the paintings and other valuable contents, known as Pompadour Hall, to his nephew, Eustace H. Meeson.
“Very well,” he said, when the reading was finished; “now give it to me.”
Mr. Todd obeyed, and handed the document to his patron, who deliberately rent it into fragments with his strong fingers, and then completed its destruction by tearing it with his big white teeth. This done, he mixed the little pieces up, threw them on the floor, and stamped upon them with an air of malignity that almost frightened jerky little Mr. Todd.
“Now then,” he grimly said, “there’s an end of the old love; so let’s on with the new. Take your pen and receive my instructions for my will.”
Mr. Todd did as he was bid.
“I leave all my property, real and personal, to be divided in equal shares between my two partners, Alfred Tom Addison and Cecil Spooner Roscoe. There, that’s short and sweet, and, one way and another, means a couple of millions.”
“Good heavens! Sir,” jerked out Mr. Todd. “Why, do you mean to quite cut out your nephew—and the other legatees?” he added by way of an afterthought.
“Of course I do; that is, as regards my nephew. The legatees may stand as before.”