“Unexpectedly!” quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in him touched by this evidence of lay negligence.  “March hadn’t any lease, I suppose.”

“He didn’t need any,” said Mary.  “He owned it.”

“If he owns it how can they turn him out—­unexpectedly?”

“What he owned was the second story.  Well, he still does, of course.  But when they tear the first floor and the basement out from under him, as they’re going to do next week, his second story won’t do him much good.”

“But, good gracious, they can’t do that!” Wallace cried.  “They must leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now.  And his light.  They can build above and below—­I suppose that’s what they’re tearing the old building down for—­but that layer of space, if he really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it, belongs to him.”

“Do you mean seriously,” she demanded, “that it’s possible to buy the second story of a building?  It’s like Pudd’n-’head Wilson’s joke about buying half a dog and killing his half.”

“Of course I mean it,” he insisted.  “An easement like that cost our estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago.  Serious!  I should think it was!  Ask Rodney Aldrich.  See what he says.—­Of course, it’s nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his title.  But if he can it might be worth ...  Well, it’s just a question how badly they happen to need that particular bit of land.  Those people we fell foul of managed to hold us up for a tidy sum.”

She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just touching her lips.  “A minute ago,” she said, “I was about to fling myself upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as that would be.  And now I’m wondering ...  Wallace, I don’t suppose it would strike you that there would be anything—­shady about doing a thing like that.”

“Shady!” He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion.  Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at her.  “My dear Mary, do you think—­leaving my rectitude aside—­that I’d have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I’d felt that there was anything questionable about it?”

“I know,” she conceded.  “And Martin Whitney would feel the same way.  And father, I suppose, and Rush.  Everybody we know.  Yet I was wondering whether I’d say anything to Tony about it.  I’ve decided I will, but I’m going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I’ve talked to him.  I’d like it left—­altogether to him, you see.”

He agreed, rather blankly to this.  Presently she went on: 

“I’m glad he’s a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of them are.  There’s something—­robust about him.  And since that’s so, I don’t believe we’ll do him any real harm; we—­advantage-snatchers, you know.  That’s so very largely how we live, we nice people (it’s why we’re able to be nice, of course)—­that we get perfectly blind to it.  But he’s so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he’s safe.  That’s the belief I have to go on, anyhow.”