"I don't see why not," Joe Kenyon began, but Arthur stopped him by saying.
"No! Absolutely! In no circumstances whatever! It isn't simply that I could not bear to profit now by his death—though that counts. But—well—perhaps it needn't apply to you and the rest of them—but last night, while I was watching that poor thing on the bed, I realised so profoundly that his one source of power had been his money. I assure you that he was a weak man and not clever. If you can't believe me, go upstairs and look at him. And without his money he would have had no authority, no power over you of any sort. It was just his money that gave him the chance to spoil all your lives. Oh, Lord! I'm talking like a father to you. Honestly, uncle, I feel nearly old enough for that, this morning. Want of sleep, perhaps. It does clear the head in a queer way sometimes."
"Hm! I dare say you're right, Arthur, about the money," Joe Kenyon mumbled. "I—I hope we shall make a better use of it. I don't think any of us has got the old man's cruelty—he was damned cruel, that's true enough."
"Not even Miss Kenyon?" Arthur put in.
"Esther? Oh, well! I don't know. Perhaps a little. But she has suffered like all the rest of us, and learnt her lesson."
There was no time to reply to that; for while Joe Kenyon was still speaking, the car turned in at the front gates, and they both hurried forward to meet it. When it stopped at their signal to Scurr, the specialist was introduced, and then both Arthur and his uncle got into the car, and they all went on together up to the house.
The conference in the old man's bedroom was a very short one, and the specialist had nothing to add to what they already knew, save the prestige of his authority. He was a tired, gray-looking little man of fifty or so, with an absent-minded manner, but when his anticipated acceptance of the diagnosis had been given, he looked keenly at Fergusson and said,—
"Made a lot of money, didn't he? All by his own efforts."
"It's more than half a million I've been told," Fergusson answered.