13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

"I opened a letter, that's all. I open all his letters at the office, of course, but this one was marked 'private and con­fidential.' I came in rather late that morning, and I was in such a hurry I didn't notice what it said on the envelope. I'd just finished reading it when Walter came in, and he was furious. He threw me out then and there—it was only yester­day."

"What was this letter about?" asked Mr. Kinsall.

"It was about your father's will," she told him; and sud­denly Mr. Kinsall sat up. "It was from a man who's been to see him once or twice before—I've listened at the keyhole when they were talking," said the girl shamelessly, "and I gather that the will which was reported in the papers wasn't the last one your father made. This fellow—he's a solicitor— had got a later one, and Walter was trying to buy it from him. The letter I read was from the solicitor, and it said that he had decided to accept Walter's offer of ten thousand pounds for it."

Mr. Willie's eyes had recovered from their temporary shrinkage. During the latter part of her speech they had gone on beyond normal, and at the end of it they genuinely bulged. For a few seconds he was voiceless; and then he exploded.

"The dirty swine!" he gasped.

That was his immediate and inevitable reaction; but the rest of the news took him longer to grasp. If Walter was willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the will. . . . Ten thousand pounds! It was an astounding, a staggering figure. To be worth that, it could only mean that huge sums were at stake—and Willie could only see one way in which that could have come about. The second will had disinherited Walter. It had left all the Kinsall millions to him, Willie. And Walter was trying to buy it and destroy it—to cheat his out of his just inheritance.

"What's this solicitor's name?" demanded Willie hoarsely.

Patricia smiled.

"I thought you'd want that," she said. "Well, I know his name and address; but they'll cost you money."

Willie looked at the clock, gulped, and reached into a drawer for his cheque-book.

"How much?" he asked. "If it's within reason, I'll pay it."

She blew out a wreath of smoke and studied him calcu­latingly for a moment.

"Five hundred," she said at length.

Willie stared, choked, and shuddered. Then, with an ex­pression of frightful agony on his predatory face, he took up his pen and wrote.

Patricia examined the cheque and put it away in her hand­bag. Then she picked up a pencil and drew the note-block towards her.

Willie snatched up the sheet and gazed at it tremblingly for a second. Then he heaved himself panting out of his chair and dashed for the hat-stand in the corner.

"Excuse me," he got out. "Must do something about it. Come and see me again. Goodbye."

Riding in a taxi to the address she had given him, he barely escaped a succession of nervous breakdowns every time a traffic stop or a slow-moving dray obstructed their passage. He bounced up and down on the seat, pulled off his hat, pulled out his watch, looked at his hat, tried to put on his watch, mopped his brow, craned his head out of the window, bounced, sputtered, gasped, and sweated in an anguish of impatience that brought him to the verge of delirium. When at last they arrived at the lodging-house in Bayswater which was his destination, he fairly hurled himself out of the cab, hauled out a handful of silver with clumsy hands, spilt some of it into the driver's palm and most of it into the street, stumbled cursing up the steps, and plunged into the bell with a violence which almost drove it solidly through the wall. While he waited, fuming, he dragged out his watch again, dropped it, tried to grab it, missed, and kicked it savagely into the middle of the street with a shrill squeal of sheer insanity; and then the door opened and a maid was inspecting him curiously.

"Is Mr. Penwick in?" he blurted.

"I think so," said the maid. "Will you come in?"

The invitation was unnecessary. Breathing like a man who had just run a mile without training, Mr. Willie Kinsall ploughed past her, and kicked his heels in a torment of suspense until the door of the room into which he had been ushered opened, and a tall man came in.

It seems superfluous to explain that this man's name was not really Penwick; and Willie Kinsall did not even stop to consider the point. He did look something like a solicitor of about forty, which is some indication of what Simon Tem­plar could achieve with a black suit, a wing collar and bow tie, a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez, and some powder brushed into his hair.

Willie Kinsall did not even pause to frame a diplomatic line of approach.

"Where," he demanded shakily, "is this will, you crook?"

"Mr. Penwick" raised his grey eyebrows.

"I don't think I have—ah—had the pleasure——"

"My name's Kinsall," said Willie, skipping about like a grasshopper on a hot plate. "And I want that will—the will you're trying to sell to my dirty swindling brother. And if I don't get it, I'm going straight to the police!"