SANTA CLAUS ARRIVES
It was not long after this that Mr. Smith found a tall, gray-haired
man, with keen gray eyes, talking with Mrs. Jane Blaisdell and
Mellicent in the front room over the grocery store.
“Well—” began Mr. Smith, a joyful light of recognition in his eyes.
Then suddenly he stooped and picked up something from the floor. When
he came upright his face was very red. He did not look at the tall,
gray-haired man again as he advanced into the room.
Mellicent turned to him eagerly.
“Oh, Mr. Smith, it’s the lawyer—he’s come. And it’s true. It _is_
true!”
“This is Mr. Smith, Mr. Norton,” murmured Mrs. Jane Blaisdell to the
keen-eyed man, who, also, for no apparent reason, had grown very
red. “Mr. Smith’s a Blaisdell, too,—distant, you know. He’s doing a
Blaisdell book.”
“Indeed! How interesting! How are you, Mr.—Smith?” The lawyer smiled
and held out his hand, but there was an odd constraint in his manner.
“So you’re a Blaisdell, too, are you?”
“Er—yes,” said Mr. Smith, smiling straight into the lawyer’s eyes.
“But not near enough to come in on the money, of course,” explained
Mrs. Jane. “He isn’t a Hiller-Blaisdell. He’s just boarding here, while
he writes his book.”
“Oh I see. So he isn’t near enough to come in—on the money.” This time
it was the lawyer who was smiling straight into Mr. Smith’s eyes.
But he did not smile for long. A sudden question from Mellicent seemed
to freeze the smile on his lips.
“Mr. Norton, please, what was Mr. Stanley G. Fulton like?” she begged.
“Why—er—you must have seen his pictures in the papers,” stammered the
lawyer.
“Yes, what was he like? Do tell us,” urged Mr. Smith with a bland
smile, as he seated himself.
“Why—er—” The lawyer came to a still more unhappy pause.
“Of course, we’ve seen his pictures,” broke in Mellicent, “but those
don’t tell us anything. And _you knew him_. So won’t you tell us
what he was like, please, while we’re waiting for father to come up?
Was he nice and jolly, or was he stiff and haughty? What was he like?”
“Yes, what was he like?” coaxed Mr. Smith again. Mr. Smith, for some
reason, seemed to be highly amused.
The lawyer lifted his head suddenly. An odd flash came to his eyes.
“Like? Oh, just an ordinary man, you know,—somewhat conceited, of
course.” (A queer little half-gasp came from Mr. Smith, but the lawyer
was not looking at Mr. Smith.) “Eccentric—you’ve heard that, probably.
And he _has_ done crazy things, and no mistake. Of course, with
his money and position, we won’t exactly say he had bats in his
belfry—isn’t that what they call it?—but—”
Mr. Smith gave a real gasp this time, and Mrs. Jane Blaisdell
ejaculated:—
“There, I told you so! I knew something was wrong. And now he’ll come
back and claim the money. You see if he don’t! And if we’ve gone and
spent any of it—” A gesture of despair finished her sentence.
“Give yourself no uneasiness on that score, madam,” the lawyer assured
her gravely. “I think I can safely guarantee he will not do that.”
“Then you think he’s—dead?”
“I did not say that, madam. I said I was very sure he would not come
back and claim this money that is to be paid over to your husband and
his brother and sister. Dead or alive, he has no further power over
that money now.”
“Oh-h!” breathed Mellicent. “Then it _is_—ours!”
“It is yours,” bowed the lawyer.
“But Mr. Smith says we’ve probably got to pay a tax on it,” thrust in
Mrs. Jane, in a worried voice. “Do you know how much we’ll _have_
to pay? And isn’t there any way we can save doing that?”
Before Mr. Norton could answer, a heavy step down the hall heralded
Mr. Frank Blaisdell’s advance, and in the ensuing confusion of his
arrival, Mr. Smith slipped away. As he passed the lawyer, however,
Mellicent thought she heard him mutter, “You rascal!” But afterwards
she concluded she must have been mistaken, for the two men appeared to
become at once the best of friends. Mr. Norton remained in town several
days, and frequently she saw him and Mr. Smith chatting pleasantly
together, or starting off apparently for a walk. Mellicent was very
sure, therefore, that she must have been mistaken in thinking she had
heard Mr. Smith utter so remarkable an exclamation as he left the room
that first day.
During the stay of Mr. Norton in Hillerton, and for some days
afterward, the Blaisdells were too absorbed in the mere details of
acquiring and temporarily investing their wealth to pay attention to
anything else. Under the guidance of Mr. Norton, Mr. Robert Chalmers,
and the heads of two other Hillerton banks, the three legatees set
themselves to the task of “finding a place to put it,” as Miss Flora
breathlessly termed it.
Mrs. Hattie said that, for her part, she should like to leave their
share all in the bank: then she’d have it to spend whenever she wanted
it. She yielded to the shocked protestations of the others, however,
and finally consented that her husband should invest a large part of it
in the bonds he so wanted, leaving a generous sum in the bank in her
own name. She was assured that the bonds were just as good as money,
anyway, as they were the kind that were readily convertible into cash.
Mrs. Jane, when she understood the matter, was for investing every cent
of theirs where it would draw the largest interest possible. Mrs. Jane
had never before known very much about interest, and she was fascinated
with its delightful possibilities. She spent whole days joyfully
figuring percentages, and was awakened from her happy absorption only
by the unpleasant realization that her husband was not in sympathy with
her ideas at all. He said that the money was his, not hers, and that,
for once in his life, he was going to have his way. “His way” in this
case proved to be the prompt buying-out of the competing grocery on the
other corner, and the establishing of good-sized bank account. The rest
of the money he said Jane might invest for a hundred per cent, if she
wanted to.
Jane was pleased to this extent, and asked if it were possible that she
could get such a splendid rate as one hundred per cent. She had not
figured on that! She was not so pleased later, when Mr. Norton and the
bankers told her what she _could_ get—with safety; and she was
very angry because they finally appealed to her husband and she was
obliged to content herself with a paltry five or six per cent, when
there were such lovely mining stocks and oil wells everywhere that
would pay so much more.
She told Flora that she ought to thank her stars that _she_ had
the money herself in her own name, to do just as she pleased with,
without any old-fogy men bossing her.
But Flora only shivered and said “Mercy me!” and that, for her part,
she wished she didn’t have to say what to do with it. She was scared
of her life of it, anyway, and she was just sure she should lose it,
whatever she did with it; and she ’most wished she didn’t have it, only
it would be nice, of course, to buy things with it—and she supposed she
would buy things with it, after a while, when she got used to it, and
was not afraid to spend it.
Miss Flora was, indeed, quite breathless most of the time, these days.
She tried very hard to give the kind gentlemen who were helping her
no trouble, and she showed herself eager always to take their advice.
But she wished they would not ask her opinion; she was always afraid
to give it, and she didn’t have one, anyway; only she did worry, of
course, and she had to ask them sometimes if they were real sure the
places they had put her money were perfectly safe, and just couldn’t
blow up. It was so comforting always to see them smile, and hear them
say: “Perfectly, my dear Miss Flora, perfectly! Give yourself no
uneasiness.” To be sure, one day, the big fat man, not Mr. Chalmers,
did snap out: “No, madam; only the Lord Almighty can guarantee a
government bond—the whole country may be blown to atoms by a volcano
to-morrow morning!”
She was startled, terribly startled; but she saw at once, of course,
that it must be just his way of joking, for of course there wasn’t any
volcano big enough to blow up the whole United States; and, anyway,
she did not think it was nice of him, and it was almost like swearing,
to say “the Lord Almighty” in that tone of voice. She never liked that
fat man again. After that she always talked to Mr. Chalmers, or to the
other man with a wart on his nose.
Miss Flora had never had a check-book before, but she tried very
hard to learn how to use it, and to show herself not too stupid. She
was glad there were such a lot of checks in the book, but she didn’t
believe she’d ever spend them all—such a lot of money! She had had a
savings-bank book, to be sure, but she not been able to put anything in
the bank for a long time, and she had been worrying a good deal lately
for fear she would have to draw some out, business had been so dull.
But she would not have to do that now, of course, with all this money
that had come to her.
They told her that she could have all the money she wanted by just
filling out one of the little slips in her check-book the way they had
told her to do it and taking it to Mr. Chalmers’s bank—that there were
a good many thousand dollars there waiting for her to spend, just as
she liked; and that, when they were gone, Mr. Chalmers would tell her
how to sell some of her bonds and get more. It seemed very wonderful!
There were other things, too, that they had told her—too many for her
to remember—something about interest, and things called coupons that
must be cut off the bonds at certain times. She tried to remember it
all; but Mr. Chalmers had been very kind and had told her not to fret.
He would help her when the time came. Meanwhile, he had rented her a
nice tin box (that pulled out like a drawer) in the safety-deposit
vault under the bank, where she could keep her bonds and all the other
papers—such a lot of them!—that Mr. Chalmers told her she must keep
very carefully.
But it was all so new and complicated, and everybody was always talking
at once, so!
No wonder, indeed, that Miss Flora was quite breathless with it all.
By the time the Blaisdells found themselves able to pay attention
to Hillerton, or to anything outside their own astounding personal
affairs, they became suddenly aware of the attention Hillerton was
paying to _them_.
The whole town was agog. The grocery store, the residence of Frank
Blaisdell, and Miss Flora’s humble cottage might be found at nearly
any daylight hour with from one to a dozen curious-eyed gazers on the
sidewalk before them. The town paper had contained an elaborate account
of the bequest and the remarkable circumstances attending it; and
Hillerton became the Mecca of wandering automobiles for miles around.
Big metropolitan dailies got wind of the affair, recognized the magic
name of Stanley G. Fulton, and sent reporters post-haste to Hillerton.
Speculation as to whether the multi-millionaire was really dead was
prevalent everywhere, and a search for some clue to his reported South
American exploring expedition was undertaken in several quarters.
Various rumors concerning the expedition appeared immediately, but
none of them seemed to have any really solid foundation. Interviews
with the great law firm having the handling of Mr. Fulton’s affairs
were printed, but even here little could be learned save the mere fact
of the letter of instructions, upon which they had acted according
to directions, and the other fact that there still remained one more
packet—understood to be the last will and testament—to be opened in
two years’ time if Mr. Fulton remained unheard from. The lawyers were
bland and courteous, but they really had nothing to say, they declared,
beyond the already published facts.
In Hillerton the Blaisdells accepted this notoriety with characteristic
variation. Miss Flora, after cordially welcoming one “nice young man,”
and telling him all about how strange and wonderful it was, and how
frightened she felt, was so shocked and distressed to find all that she
said (and a great deal that she did not say!) staring at her from the
first page of a big newspaper, that she forthwith barred her doors, and
refused to open them till she satisfied herself, by surreptitious peeps
through the blinds, that it was only a neighbor who was knocking for
admittance. An offer of marriage from a Western ranchman and another
from a Vermont farmer (both entire strangers) did not tend to lessen
her perturbation of mind.
Frank, at the grocery store, rather welcomed questioners—so long as
there was a hope of turning them into customers; but his wife and
Mellicent showed almost as much terror of them as did Miss Flora
herself.
James Blaisdell and Fred stoically endured such as refused to be
silenced by their brusque non-committalism. Benny, at first welcoming
everything with the enthusiasm he would accord to a circus, soon
sniffed his disdain, as at a show that had gone stale.
Of them all, perhaps Mrs. Hattie was the only one that found in it any
real joy and comfort. Even Bessie, excited and interested as she was,
failed to respond with quite the enthusiasm that her mother showed.
Mrs. Hattie saw every reporter, talked freely of “dear Cousin Stanley”
and his wonderful generosity, and explained that she would go into
mourning, of course, if she knew he was really dead. She sat for two
new portraits for newspaper use, besides graciously posing for staff
photographers whenever requested to do so; and she treasured carefully
every scrap of the printed interviews or references to the affair that
she could find. She talked with the townspeople, also, and told Al
Smith how fine it was that he could have something really worth while
for his book.
Mr. Smith, these days, was keeping rather closely to his work,
especially when reporters were in evidence. He had been heard to
remark, indeed, that he had no use for reporters. Certainly he fought
shy of those investigating the Fulton-Blaisdell legacy. He read the
newspaper accounts, though, most attentively, particularly the ones
from Chicago that Mr. Norton kindly sent him sometimes. It was in one
of these papers that he found this paragraph:—
There seems to be really nothing more that can be learned about the
extraordinary Stanley G. Fulton-Blaisdell affair. The bequests have
been paid, the Blaisdells are reveling in their new wealth, and Mr.
Fulton is still unheard from. There is nothing now to do but to await
the opening of the second mysterious packet two years hence. This,
it is understood, is the final disposition of his estate; and if he
is really dead, such will doubtless prove to be the case. There are
those, however, who, remembering the multi-millionaire’s well-known
eccentricities, are suspecting him of living in quiet retirement
somewhere, laughing in his sleeve at the tempest in the teapot that
he has created; and that long before the two years are up, he will
be back on Chicago’s streets, debonair and smiling as ever. The fact
that so little can be found in regard to the South American exploring
expedition might give color to this suspicion; but where on this
terrestrial ball could Mr. Stanley G. Fulton find a place to live in
_unreported_ retirement?
Mr. Smith did not show this paragraph to the Blaisdells. He destroyed
the paper containing it, indeed, promptly and effectually—with a
furtive glance over his shoulder as he did so. It was at about this
time, too, that Mr. Smith began to complain of his eyes and to wear
smoked glasses. He said he found the new snow glaring.
“But you look so funny, Mr. Smith,” said Benny, the first time he saw
him. “Why, I didn’t hardly know you!”
“Didn’t you, Benny?” asked Mr. Smith, with suddenly a beaming
countenance. “Oh, well, that doesn’t matter, does it?” And Mr. Smith
gave an odd little chuckle as he turned away.