YEA AND NAY
Mr. Halfpenny, face to face with the fact that Barthorpe Herapath meant
mischief about the will, put on his thinking-cap and gave himself up to
a deep and serious consideration of the matter. He thought things over
as he journeyed home to his house in the country; he spent an evening in
further thought; he was still thinking when he went up to town next
morning. The result of his cogitations was that after giving certain
instructions in his office as to the next steps to be taken towards duly
establishing Jacob Herapath's will, he went round to Barthorpe
Herapath's office and asked to see him.
Barthorpe himself came out of his private room and showed some
politeness in ushering his caller within. His manner seemed to be
genuinely frank and unaffected: Mr. Halfpenny was considerably puzzled
by it. Was Barthorpe playing a part, or was all this real? That, of
course, must be decided by events: Mr. Halfpenny was not going to lose
any time in moving towards them, whatever they might turn out to be. He
accordingly went straight to the point.
"My dear sir," he began, bending confidentially towards Barthorpe, who
had taken a seat at his desk and was waiting for his visitor to speak,
"you have entered a caveat against the will in the Probate Registry."
"I have," answered Barthorpe, with candid alacrity. "Of course!"
"You intend to contest the matter?" inquired Mr. Halfpenny.
"Certainly!" replied Barthorpe.
Mr. Halfpenny gathered a good deal from the firm and decisive tone in
which this answer was made. Clearly there was something in the air of
which he was wholly ignorant.
"You no doubt believe that you have good reason for your course of
action," he observed.
"The best reasons," said Barthorpe.
Mr. Halfpenny ruminated a little, silently.
"After all," he said at last, "there are only two persons really
concerned--your cousin, Miss Wynne, and yourself. I propose to make an
offer to you."
"Always willing to be reasonable, Mr. Halfpenny," answered Barthorpe.
"Very good," said Mr. Halfpenny. "Of course, I see no possible reason for
doubting the validity of the will. From our side, litigation must go on in
the usual course. But I have a proposal to make to you. It is this--will
you meet your cousin at my office, with all the persons--witnesses to the
will, I mean--and state your objections to the will? In short, let us
have what we may call a family discussion about it--it may prevent much
litigation."
Barthorpe considered this suggestion for a while.
"What you really mean is that I should come to your offices and tell my
cousin and you why I am fighting this will," he said eventually. "That
it?"
"Practically--yes," assented Mr. Halfpenny.
"Whom do you propose to have present?" asked Barthorpe.
"Yourself, your cousin, myself, the two witnesses, and, as a friend of
everybody concerned, Professor Cox-Raythwaite," replied Mr. Halfpenny.
"No one else is necessary."
"And you wish me to tell, plainly, why I refuse to believe that the will
is genuine?" asked Barthorpe.
"Certainly--yes," assented Mr. Halfpenny.
Barthorpe hesitated, eyeing the old lawyer doubtfully.
"It will be a painful business--for my cousin," he said.
"If--I really haven't the faintest notion of what you mean!" exclaimed
Mr. Halfpenny. "But if--if it will be painful for your cousin to hear
this--whatever it is--in private, it would be much more painful for her
to hear it in public. I gather, of course, that you have some strange
revelation to make. Surely, it would be most considerate to her to make
it in what we may call the privacy of the family circle, Cox-Raythwaite
and myself."
"I haven't the least objection to Cox-Raythwaite's presence, nor yours,"
said Barthorpe. "Very good--I'll accept your proposal--it will, as you
say, save a lot of litigation. Now--when?"
"Today is Tuesday," said Mr. Halfpenny. "What do you say to next Friday
morning, at ten o'clock?"
"Friday will do," answered Barthorpe. "I will be there at ten o'clock. I
shall leave it to you to summon all the parties concerned. By the by,
have you Burchill's address?"
"I have," replied Mr. Halfpenny. "I will communicate with him at once."
Barthorpe nodded, rose from his seat, and walked with his visitor
towards the door of his private room.
"Understand, Mr. Halfpenny," he said, "I'm agreeing to this to oblige
you. And if the truth is very painful to my cousin, well, as you say,
it's better for her to hear it in private than in a court of justice.
All right, then--Friday at ten."
Mr. Halfpenny went back to his own office, astonished and marvelling.
What on earth were these revelations which Barthorpe hinted at--these
unpleasant truths which would so wound and hurt Peggie Wynne? Could it
be possible that there really was some mystery about that will of which
only Barthorpe knew the secret? It was incomprehensible to Mr. Halfpenny
that any man could be so cool, so apparently cocksure about matters as
Barthorpe was unless he felt absolutely certain of his own case. What
that case could be, Mr. Halfpenny could not imagine--the only thing
really certain was that Barthorpe seemed resolved on laying it bare when
Friday came.
"God bless me!--it's a most extraordinary complication altogether!"
mused Mr. Halfpenny, once more alone in his own office. "It's very
evident to me that Barthorpe Herapath is absolutely ignorant that he's
suspected, and that the police are at work on him! What a surprise for
him if the thing comes to a definite head, and--but let us see what
Friday morning brings."
Friday morning brought Barthorpe to Mr. Halfpenny's offices in good
time. He came alone; a few minutes after his arrival Peggie Wynne,
nervous and frightened, came, attended by Mr. Tertius and Professor
Cox-Raythwaite. All these people were at once ushered into Mr.
Halfpenny's private room, where polite, if constrained, greetings
passed. At five minutes past ten o'clock Mr. Halfpenny looked at
Barthorpe.
"We're only waiting for Mr. Burchill," he remarked. "I wrote to him
after seeing you, and I received a reply from him in which he promised
to be here at ten this morning. It's now----"
But at that moment the door opened to admit Mr. Frank Burchill, who, all
unconscious of the fact that more than one pair of sharp eyes had
followed him from his flat to Mr. Halfpenny's office, and that their
owners were now in the immediate vicinity, came in full of polite
self-assurance, and executed formal bows while he gracefully apologised
to Mr. Halfpenny for being late.
"It's all right, all right, Mr. Burchill," said the old lawyer, a little
testy under the last-comer's polite phrases, all of which he thought
unnecessary. "Five or ten minutes won't make any great difference. Take
a seat, pray: I think if we all sit around this centre table of mine it
will be more convenient. We can begin at once now, Mr. Barthorpe
Herapath--I have already given strict instructions that we are not to be
disturbed, on any account. My dear--perhaps you will sit here by
me?--Mr. Tertius, you sit next to Miss Wynne--Professor----"
Mr. Halfpenny's dispositions of his guests placed Peggie and her two
companions on one side of a round table; Barthorpe and Burchill at the
other--Mr. Halfpenny himself sat at the head. And as soon as he had
taken his own seat, he looked at Barthorpe.
"This, of course," he began, "is a quite informal meeting. We are here,
as I understand matters, to hear why you, Mr. Barthorpe Herapath, object
to your late uncle's will, and why you intend to dispute it. So I
suppose the next thing to do will be to ask you to state your grounds."
But Barthorpe shook his head with a decisive motion.
"No," he answered. "Not at all! The first thing to do, Mr. Halfpenny, in
my opinion, is to hear what is to be said in favour of the will. The
will itself, I take it, is in your possession. I have seen it--I mean, I
have seen the document which purports to be a will of the late Jacob
Herapath--so I admit its existence. Two persons are named on that
document as witnesses: Mr. Tertius, Mr. Burchill. They are both present
now; at your request. I submit that the proper procedure is to question
them both as to the circumstances under which this alleged will was
made."
"I have no objections to that," answered Mr. Halfpenny. "I have no
objection--neither, I am sure, has Miss Wynne--to anything you propose.
Well, we take it for granted that this document exists--it is, of
course, in my safe keeping. Every person has seen it, one time or
another. We have here the two gentlemen who witnessed Jacob Herapath's
signature and each other's. So I will first ask the elder of the two to
tell us what he recollects of the matter. Now, Mr. Tertius?"
Mr. Tertius, who since his arrival had shown as much nervousness as
would probably have signalised his appearance in a witness-box, started
at this direct appeal.
"You--er, wish me----" he began, with an almost blank stare at Mr.
Halfpenny. "You want me to----"
"Come, come!" said Mr. Halfpenny. "This is as I have already said, an
informal gathering. We needn't have any set forms or cut-and-dried
procedure. I want you--we all want you--to tell us what you remember
about the making of Jacob Herapath's will. Tell us in your own way, in
whatever terms you like. Then we shall hear what your fellow-witness has
to say."
"Perhaps you'll let me suggest something," broke in Barthorpe, who had
obviously been thinking matters over. "Lay the alleged will on the table
before you, Mr. Halfpenny--question the two opposed witnesses on it.
That will simplify things."
Mr. Halfpenny considered this proposition for a moment or two; then
having whispered to Peggie and received her assent, he went across to a
safe and presently returned with the will, which he placed on a
writing-pad that lay in front of him.
"Now, Mr. Tertius," he said. "Look at this will, which purports to have
been made on the eighteenth day of April last. I understand that Jacob
Herapath called you into his study on the evening of that day and told
you that he wanted you and Mr. Burchill, his secretary, to witness his
signature to a will which he had made--had written out himself. I
understand also that you did witness his signature, attached your own,
in Mr. Herapath's presence and Mr. Burchill's presence, and that Mr.
Burchill's signature was attached under the same conditions. Am I right
in all this?"
"Quite right," replied Mr. Tertius. "Quite!"
"Is this the document which Jacob Herapath produced?"
"It is--certainly."
"Was it all drawn out then?--I am putting these questions to you quite
informally."
"It was all written out, except the signatures. Jacob showed us that it
was so written, though he did not allow us to see the wording. But he
showed us plainly that there was nothing to do but to sign. Then he laid
it on the desk, covered most of the sheet of paper with a piece of
blotting paper and signed his name in our presence--I stood on one side
of him, Mr. Burchill on the other. Then Mr. Burchill signed in his
place--beneath mine."
"And this," asked Mr. Halfpenny, pointing to the will, "this is your
signature?"
"Most certainly!" answered Mr. Tertius.
"And this," continued Mr. Halfpenny, "is Jacob Herapath's?--and this Mr.
Burchill's? You have no doubt about it?"
"No more than that I see and hear you," replied Mr. Tertius. "I have no
doubt."
Mr. Halfpenny turned from Mr. Tertius to Barthorpe Herapath. But
Barthorpe's face just then revealed nothing. Therefore the old lawyer
turned towards Burchill. And suddenly a sharp idea struck him. He would
settle one point to his own satisfaction at once, by one direct
question. And so he--as it were by impulse--thrust the will before and
beneath Burchill's eyes, and placed his finger against the third
signature.
"Mr. Burchill," he said, "is that your writing?"
Burchill, calm and self-possessed, glanced at the place which Mr.
Halfpenny indicated, and then lifted his eyes, half sadly, half
deprecatingly.
"No!" he replied, with a little shake of the head; "No, Mr. Halfpenny, it
is not!"