“Well, tha’s funny—tha’s awful funny!” the man muttered, regarding Hawley with sudden suspicion. “How the deuce do you know anything about that will? I thought I was the only one who was wise to it—and I haven’t told anybody in Oldham a word about it, ’cept my friend Gale. Old Sam Leggett’s got her down in his will for fifty thousand dollars. Pretty soft for our friend Gale, eh?”
Hawley had difficulty in concealing his astonishment. So Fred Carroll’s fiancée, instead of being a penniless orphan, was really an heiress. Here was good news, indeed. The Camera Chap was glad that he had set out on this trip to New York. He had already learned enough to enable him to understand Gale’s motive for suddenly desiring to marry his cousin. But there were several things he still wanted to know. By adroit questioning, he succeeded in eliciting these details from his babbling acquaintance.
Samuel Leggett, a New York merchant, he learned, was a distant relative of Melba Gale on her mother’s side. The old man was worth millions, and, having no near kin, had made a will leaving most of his money to various charities and institutions in which he was interested. Remembering the existence of his young kinswoman, however, he had mentioned her in his will to the extent of fifty thousand dollars. It was a small amount compared[Pg 57] with some of the other bequests, but old Leggett had not been on particularly good terms with that branch of the family from which Melba was descended; otherwise she would have been heiress to millions instead of thousands.
Fifty thousand dollars, however, was a big enough fortune to appeal to the cupidity of old Delancey Gale and his son. They had learned about his legacy from the man with the flushed face, who was a clerk in the office of the lawyer who had drawn up Leggett’s will, and who had thus had a chance to see that document.
Happening to be in Oldham on some business for his employer, this man had called on his friend Gale, whom he had known when the latter was a reporter on the New York Daily News, and had told him of Melba’s prospective good fortune.
Gale had been greatly interested, and had urged him not to talk about the will to his Cousin Melba, nor to anybody else in Oldham. Gale had confided to him that he and Melba were secretly engaged—so the garrulous law clerk informed the Camera Chap—and had explained with seeming ingenuousness that if the girl learned that she was an heiress to fifty thousand dollars she might get an idea into her head that he—Gale—was not good enough for her.
“Modest fellow, our friend Gale, isn’t he?” remarked the law clerk to Hawley, at this point in the narrative.
“Oh, very!” the Camera Chap agreed dryly. “Just one more question, old man: Is Mr. Leggett in good health?”
The law clerk grinned. “You bet he is! He’s as hard as nails, and, although he’s past seventy, is as spry as a man of forty. Comes of a long-lived family, too, I understand. His father was nearly ninety before he cashed in. Poor Gale may have to wait a long time, after all, before he gets his hands on that money.”
“I’ve an idea that he’ll have to wait a very long time,” the Camera Chap answered grimly.