“I’ve every inclination to be your friend, but I hardly know you, Mr. Beaumaroy.”

“And feel a few doubts about me?  From what you’ve heard from myself, and perhaps from others?”

The wind swished outside; save for that, the little room seemed very still.  The professional character of the interview did not save it, for Mary Arkroyd, from a sudden and rather unwelcome sense of intimacy, of an intimacy thrust upon her, though not so much by her companion as by circumstances.  She answered rather stiffly, “Perhaps I have some doubts.”

“You detect, very acutely, that I have a great influence over Mr. Saffron.  You ask, very properly, whether he has relations.  I think you threw out a feeler about his money affairs, whether he had anything to worry about was your phrase, wasn’t it?  Am I misinterpreting what was in your mind?”

As he spoke, he offered her a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece.  She took one and lit it at the top of the lamp-chimney; then she sat down again in the big chair; she had not accepted his earlier invitation to resume her seat.

“It was proper for me to put those questions, Mr. Beaumaroy.  Mr. Saffron is not a sound man, and he’s old.  In normal conditions his relations should at least be warned of the position.”

“Exactly,” Beaumaroy assented with an appearance of eagerness.  “But he hates them.  Any suggestion that they have any sort of claim on him raises strong resentment in him.  I’ve known old men, old moneyed men, like that before, and no doubt you have.  Well now, you’ll begin to see the difficulty of my position.  I’ll put the case to you quite bluntly.  Suppose Mr. Saffron, having this liking for me, this confidence in me, living here with me alone, except for servants; being, as one might say, exposed to my influence; suppose he took it into his head to make a will in my favor, to leave me all his money.  It’s quite a considerable sum, so far as our Wednesday doings enable me to judge.  Suppose that happened, how should I stand in your opinion, Dr. Arkroyd?  But wait a moment still.  Suppose that my career has not been very, well, resplendent; that my army record is only so-so; that I’ve devoted myself to him with remarkable assiduity, as in fact I have; that I might be called, quite plausibly, an adventurer.  Well, propounding that will, how should I stand before the world and, if necessary (he shrugged his shoulders), the Court?”

Mary sat silent for a moment or two.  Beaumaroy knelt down by the fire, rearranged the logs of wood which were smouldering there, and put on a couple more.  From that position, looking into the grate, he added, “And the change of doctors?  It was he, of course, who insisted on it, but I can see a clever lawyer using that against me too.  Can’t you, Dr. Arkroyd?”

“I’m sure I wish you hadn’t had to make the change!” exclaimed Mary.

“So do I; though, mind you, I’m not pretending that Irechester is a favorite of mine, any more than he is of my old friend’s.  Still, there it is.  I’ve no right, perhaps, to press my question, but your opinion would be of real value to me.”