Miss Calmour bitterly regretted having insisted upon twelve months’ probation, for although she was soon very happily married to her cousin, and although his earnings and their joint little incomes brought in a total of six hundred a year, this was very far short of what would have been theirs had they inherited under Mr Calmour’s stupid and eccentric will.
They did not doubt that Mrs Calmour learnt somehow that we were employed to trace the heiress, and had counter-schemed to prevent the discovery we were so anxious to make.
A few months after this painful failure of ours, I was in the neighbourhood of Calmour Grange, and saw the lady of the house driven past me in great style. I was naturally curious as to her personality, and am not sure that I was quite as surprised as I might have been at the discovery I made.
I knew now that success would have been will nigh impossible for me.
Mrs Calmour was no other than Mrs Deane, the clever lady detective who stayed in our employment three months, and to whom we confided all the details about the great will case.
I have another story to relate about her.
IV. Dora Turns the Tables
“There will soon be very little of my uncle Calmour’s property left, if this woman is allowed to pursue her present reckless course of extravagance,” observed Mr Churchill, discontentedly, about two years after the incidents narrated in the last story.
He had come to consult me as to the possibility of still outwitting Mrs Calmour, and of regaining possession of the family acres. He had but the haziest idea as to the plan most likely to realise his wishes, and admitted that the widow’s position seemed unassailable from an ordinary point of view; yet, in spite of our previous failure, he was imbued with such an extravagant belief in the abnormal ability of Messrs Bell and White that he had taken it into his head to see if we could not unseat the adventuress, even now.
“According to the law of England,” I observed to Mr Churchill, “Mrs Calmour is perfectly entitled to squander the property. The will has been duly proved, and unless we could show that this clever schemer’s title is base there is little chance of ousting her.”