“Well all I have to say,” went on the little man, astonished into honesty, “Is that it is the most shameful thing I ever heard of!”
“Indeed, Mr. Todd, is it? Well now, may I ask you: am I leaving this property, or are you? Don’t trouble yourself to answer that, however, but just attend. Either you draw up that will at once, while I wait, or you say good-bye to about £2000 a year, for that’s what Meeson’s business is worth, I reckon. Now you take your choice.”
Mr. Todd did take his choice. In under an hour, the will, which was very short, was drawn and engrossed.
“Now then,” said Meeson, addressing himself to Mr. Todd and the managing clerk, as he took the quill between his fingers to sign, “do you two bear in mind that at the moment I execute this will I am of sound mind, memory, and understanding. There you are; now do you two witness.”
It was night, and King capital, in the shape of Mr. Meeson, sat alone at dinner in his palatial dining-room at Pompadour. Dinner was over, the powdered footman had departed with stately tread, and the head butler was just placing the decanters of richly coloured wine before the solitary lord of all. The dinner had been a melancholy failure. Dish after dish, the cost of any one of which would have fed a poor child for a month, had been brought up and handed to the master only to be found fault with and sent away. On that night Mr. Meeson had no appetite.
“Johnson,” he said to the butler, when he was sure the footman could not hear him, “has Mr. Eustace been here?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, Sir. He came to fetch his things, and then went away in a cab.”