"Can you give me theirs?"
Mr. Palamount had come well provided with documentary evidence. He drew a soiled and crumpled piece of print from another waistcoat pocket. It was only the name of the Canadian Pacific agent in Alberta. The straw was a very slender one.
"I'll cable them to-morrow, prepaid. And I'll see the lawyers first thing in the morning. Don't be afraid," for I thought I detected a slight look of anxiety on Mr. Palamount's battered face. "I'm after something better even than two hundred pounds."
VI
GENEALOGICAL
The first thing I did the next morning, after a sleepless night besieged by possibilities, was to send a prepaid cable to Alberta; rather for the relief of my own feelings than because my promptitude could effect any possible good. Indeed, as the telegraph clerk was at pains to inform me, eight o'clock in England is three o'clock in western Canada, and the very earliest of alarm clocks had not yet delivered its nerve-racking message there. Also I was pacing up and down the passage outside Pollexfen and Allport's offices fully three quarters of an hour before their managing clerk ascended the linoleum-covered stairs, rattling his keys and warbling a morning carol, to open them for the day.
Mr. Pollexfen, the senior partner, was a spruce, well-preserved man, with white hair and moustache, but as little of parchment in his manner as in his florid, supple skin. He swung round in his chair and listened to my story attentively, with the tips of his fingers joined, and clicking his well-groomed nails as I talked.
"Well! well! well!" said he, with a commentary sigh, when I had ended. "It's a strange case: the strangest, I verily believe, that I've had to deal with in the whole course of my practice."
He pulled a drawer open and tossed something to me across the table.
"Do you know anything of this?"