“Have you got writing materials in the room, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “Will you put them on the table, if you please?”
While the writing materials were in process of collection, Mrs. Lecount made a new demand on the resources of her traveling-bag. She took two papers from it, each indorsed in the same neat commercial handwriting. One was described as “Draft for proposed Will,” and the other as “Draft for proposed Letter.” When she placed them before her on the table, her hand shook a little; and she applied the smelling-salts, which she had brought with her in Noel Vanstone’s interests, to her own nostrils.
“I had hoped, when I came here, Mr. Noel,” she proceeded, “to have given you more time for consideration than it seems safe to give you now. When you first told me of your wife’s absence in London, I thought it probable that the object of her journey was to see her sister and Miss Garth. Since the horrible discovery we have made upstairs, I am inclined to alter that opinion. Your wife’s determination not to tell you who the friends are whom she has gone to see, fills me with alarm. She may have accomplices in London—accomplices, for anything we know to the contrary, in this house. All three of your servants, sir, have taken the opportunity, in turn, of coming into the room and looking at me. I don’t like their looks! Neither you nor I know what may happen from day to day, or even from hour to hour. If you take my advice, you will get the start at once of all possible accidents; and, when the carriage comes back, you will leave this house with me!”
“Yes, yes!” he said, eagerly; “I’ll leave the house with you. I wouldn’t stop here by myself for any sum of money that could be offered me. What do we want the pen and ink for? Are you to write, or am I?”
“You are to write, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “The means taken for promoting your own safety are to be means set in motion, from beginning to end, by yourself. I suggest, Mr. Noel—and you decide. Recognize your own position, sir. What is your first and foremost necessity? It is plainly this. You must destroy your wife’s interest in your death by making another will.”
He vehemently nodded his approval; his color rose, and his blinking eyes brightened in malicious triumph. “She shan’t have a farthing,” he said to himself, in a whisper—“she shan’t have a farthing!”
“When your will is made, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, “you must place it in the hands of a trustworthy person—not my hands, Mr. Noel; I am only your servant! Then, when the will is safe, and when you are safe, write to your wife at this house. Tell her her infamous imposture is discovered; tell her you have made a new will, which leaves her penniless at your death; tell her, in your righteous indignation, that she enters your doors no more. Place yourself in that strong position, and it is no longer you who are at your wife’s mercy, but your wife who is at yours. Assert your own power, sir, with the law to help you, and crush this woman into submission to any terms for the future that you please to impose.”
He eagerly took up the pen. “Yes,” he said, with a vindictive self-importance, “any terms I please to impose.” He suddenly checked himself and his face became dejected and perplexed. “How can I do it now?” he asked, throwing down the pen as quickly as he had taken it up.
“Do what, sir?” inquired Mrs. Lecount.
“How can I make my will, with Mr. Loscombe away in London, and no lawyer here to help me?”