“I will. And now prepare to receive a shock. The will leaving me this fortune was found in the safe discovered among the débris of Château d’Uzerche, after the fire?”
Chapter Twenty Four.
A Further Tangle.
Certainly, this was a most remarkable development. I listened without comment.
Yet when Faulkner had given me, at the luncheon table, all the details by way of “explanation,” as he put it, the tangle seemed even greater than before he had begun.
The will, dated three years previously, had been drawn up by a well-known firm of London lawyers. It was quite in order, and the testator’s name was Whichelo, Samuel Whichelo, formerly of Mexico City, merchant, but then resident at Wimbledon Common. The testator, who had been unmarried, left a few legacies to friends and servants, but practically the whole of his fortune he bequeathed entirely to Frank Faulkner, “in return for the considerable service he once rendered me.”
Faulkner had handed me a copy of the will—it was quite a short will. When I came to this sentence I naturally looked up.
“Ah!” I said, “then there is a method in the testator’s madness. But I thought you told me you had never even heard his name.”