Part 35 (1/2)
”No, sir.”
The lawyer straightened himself. Matters were becoming interesting.
”There was a second will,” he declared with deliberation. ”It was drawn up one morning in your aunt's room, with Miss Melvina Grey, Mr. Caleb Saunders, and the boy Tony as witnesses.”
Lucy waited breathlessly.
”This will,” went on Mr. Benton, ”provides for quite a different disposition of the property. I must beg you to prepare yourself for a disappointment.”
The girl threw back her head.
”Go on, please,” she commanded.
”Quite a different disposition of the property,” repeated Mr. Benton, dwelling on the cadence of the phrase.
”What is it?”
The man delayed.
”Have you any reason to suppose, Miss Webster, that your aunt was--shall we say annoyed, with you?”
”I knew she did not like the way I felt about some things,” admitted Lucy.
”But did not some vital difference of opinion arise between you recently?”
Mr. Benton persisted.
”I spoke my mind to Aunt Ellen the other day,” confessed the girl. ”I had to.”
”Ah! Then that explains matters!”
”What matters?”
”The somewhat strange conditions of the will.”
Having untangled the enigma to his own satisfaction, Mr. Benton proceeded to sit back and enjoy its solution all by himself.
”Can't you tell me what they are?” Lucy at last inquired impatiently.
”I can enlighten you, yes. In fact, it is my duty to do so.”
Rising, he went to the desk drawer and made a pretense of fumbling through his papers; but it was easy to see that the doc.u.ment he sought had been carefully placed on the top of the spa.r.s.e, untidy pile that cluttered the interior of the rickety piece of furniture.
”Perhaps,” he remarked, ”there is no real need to burden your mind with legal formalities; nevertheless----”
”Oh, don't bother to read me the whole will,” broke out Lucy sharply.
”Just tell me in plain terms what Aunt Ellen has done.”
It was obvious that Mr. Benton did not at all relish the off-handedness of the request.
He depended not a little on his professional pomposity to bolster up a certain lack of confidence in himself, and stripped of this legal regalia he shriveled to a very ordinary person indeed.