“Would you be surprised to hear that I had a vast amount of money in the deposit companies in Philadelphia?”
“No, Mr. Tyler,” replied Sydney. “It has always been supposed that you were a man of wealth.”
“I am, I am,” muttered the miser. “I have something like half a million. And yet what good has it done me? I have hoarded it just for the sake of hoarding. It began to come to me when I was quite young. I was surprised. Some property was wanted by the city. They paid me well for it. I invested what I got and doubled it, I kept on making money till I loved it for itself alone and could not bear to part with it even on the chance of making more. So I left it all to draw interest except what little it takes to support me in the poor way in which I live.”
He paused and Sydney adjudged it proper to inquire.
“Then you have no relatives, no one dependent on you?”
“I have outlived them all,” was the reply. “There was a boy, though, who was once in my employ and whom I came to think a good deal of. But he grew up and went into stocks and tried to bear the market against me. I never forgave Maurice Darley for that. And yet I loved him once. I brought him up, out of the gutter, as it were, and there was a time when he loved me. There is another brother in your family whom I see sometimes and who reminds me of him.”
“Reginald—Rex, as we call him—you mean?”
“Yes, but perhaps he would not have done for me what Roy did this afternoon. You have heard of it. He risked his life for mine. He will make a good man. I am sure of it. And he is unselfish. To make him happy you must make others happy around him. Yes, I will do it. Quick, write down that I leave all my fortune unreservedly, to—what is his full name?”
“Whose full name?” Sydney had dropped his pen and sat staring at Mr. Tyler as if in a daze.
“Why your brother—Roy Pell’s.”