When Mr. Norwood came home that evening both she and Momsy noticed at once that he was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last few days, the lawyer’s wife and daughter would before this have noticed his worriment of mind.
“Is it that Ellison case, Robert?” Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner table.
“It is the bane of my existence,” declared the lawyer, with exasperation. “Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women tell—and stick to—bears weight with the Surrogate.”
“Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?” his wife asked.
“Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last! Well!”
“Can’t you find her?” asked Momsy, who had, 118 it seemed, known something about the puzzling case before.
“Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha Poole’s house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.
“But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly practitioner. He has been bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a sporty crowd—race track habitues, and all that. The other woman—her name is Bothwell—has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular speed fiend, they tell me.
“Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.
“Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs. Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony diametrically opposes several 119 items which McCracken has written into the unsigned testament of the deceased.