“Come from? I don’t know. The other end of the world, I fancy myself. Where he went to I don’t know neither. I fancy myself he took up with a bad lot at the Hall, and turned me up. Howsomever, I got my dues out of him, so it’s no concern of mine. There you are, mister. Now, what have you got for me?”
The captain looked doubtful and shook his head.
“I’m afraid it’s not right after all,” said he. “It doesn’t correspond with the particulars I have. Had you no other lodgers?”
“What did I tell you,” snarled the woman, perceiving she was to be done out of her reward after all. “Come, are you going to give me what you promised or not? If you ’aint, clear out of here, my beauty, or I’ll break every bone of your ugly body.”
And since, with a stick in her hand, she looked very like putting her threat into execution, the captain beat a hasty retreat, chuckling to himself at the thought of his own excellent cleverness.
“Upon my word,” said he to himself as he strolled westward, “I am having a most interesting time. What a versatile genius my co-trustee appears to be—a tutor to an heir, a defaulting and rusticated undergraduate, a penniless music-hall cad. Dear, dear! what a curious settlement of scores we shall have, to be sure—or rather, should have had, had our poor dear Roger remained with us. Heigho! what a curious sensation it will be, to be sure, to own a fortune.”
At the hotel the porter met him with a telegram. He expected as much. He could guess what was inside. It really seemed waste of energy to open it.
But he must go through with his melancholy functions, and he therefore took a seat in the hall and composed his face for the worst.
“Thankful to say good night; fever abated, all hopeful.
“Rosalind.”
Captain Oliphant turned pale, crushed the pink paper viciously in his hands, and uttered an exclamation which called forth the sympathy of the hotel servants who loitered in the hall.