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You see, it was like this: Bill I mean Lord Dawlish is a great pal of mine, a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well, being in the know, you understand, through your uncle having deposited the will with us, I gave Bill the tip directly I heard of Mr Nutcombe's death.
'How very rapid of you! To whom? 'To Elizabeth Boyd. 'I'm afraid I'm very ignorant, but who is Elizabeth Boyd? The ornate lady you were dancing with at the restaurant? 'No! 'Who then? 'She is old Ira Nutcombe's niece. The money ought to have been left to her. That was why I came over to America, to see if I could do anything for her. 'And you're going to marry her?
This seems to have soured the old boy on the nephew, for in the first of his wills that I've seen you remember I told you I had seen three he leaves the niece the pile and the nephew only gets twenty pounds. Well, so far there's nothing very eccentric about old Nutcombe's proceedings. But wait! 'Six months after he had made that will he came in here and made another.
How, by any stretch of the imagination, can you make out that you are to blame for this Boyd girl's misfortune? It looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe's came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for another outbreak he happened to meet you.
'I haven't, she said. 'You don't know about the will? 'Only what you told me in your letter. 'Well, I'm hanged! Tell me I hadn't the honour of knowing him personally was the late Mr Nutcombe's whole life as eccentric as his will-making? It seems to me Nutty spoke. 'Uncle Ira's middle name, he said, 'was Bloomingdale. That, he proceeded, bitterly, 'is the frightful injustice of it all.
'His only surviving relatives appear to be a nephew and a niece. The nephew dropped out of the running two years ago when his aunt, old Nutcombe's wife, who had divorced old Nutcombe, left him her money.
'You haven't the pleasure of Mr Ira Nutcombe's acquaintance, Claire, or you wouldn't talk like that. He wasn't the sort of man you could get things out of. He didn't even tip the caddie. Besides, can't you see what I mean? I couldn't trade on a chance acquaintance of the golf links to 'That is just what I complain of in you. You're too diffident. 'It isn't diffidence exactly.
He had sat up longer than he had intended, because he had been thinking about this letter. Immediately upon his arrival in America, Bill had sought out a lawyer and instructed him to write to Elizabeth Boyd, offering her one-half of the late Ira Nutcombe's money. He had had time during the voyage to think the whole matter over, and this seemed to him the only possible course.
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