Potter’s prominent pale blue eyes were opened to their widest extent. “C-c-cousin S-s-susan!” he stuttered. “That forlorn old pauper left a fortune! Why, Craige, I fully expected to be called on to pay her funeral expenses. You mean to tell me, in all earnestness, that Cousin Susan had any money—”
“She did not have ‘any money,’ she had a large fortune,” declared Craige, laughing outright at Potter’s ludicrous expression of bewilderment.
“Then I am to understand that this newspaper is correct in its statements?” Potter asked.
“You are—” Craige leaned over and looked at the date on the newspaper. “You are a bit behind-hand, Ben. That paper of yours is a day old.”
“Well, I’ve only just seen it,” Potter’s tone had grown querulous. “I had to run on to New York night before last—the night of the inquest, to be exact, and Nina and I only got in this morning, having taken the midnight train. This paper was the first I opened when we reached home, and its account of Cousin Susan’s will astounded me.”
“It took our breath away also,” admitted Craige. “Rodgers was with us when we found the will; in fact it was through his agency that it was found at all.”
Potter swung around so hastily in his endeavor to face Rodgers that he knocked his cane off the desk.
“How’d you know there was a will?” he demanded. “Oh, never mind about the cane; let it stay on the floor.”
“Rodgers had no knowledge of the will’s existence any more than the rest of us,” declared Craige before Rodgers, who had stooped to pick up Potter’s cane, had a chance to answer the latter’s question. “He happened to open a trap-door to a hiding place in which lay directions, written by Susan Baird, telling us where to find her papers.”
Potter stared at his companions in unbounded astonishment. It was some moments before he collected his wits sufficiently to ask a question.