“Who has it then?” briskly demanded the startled man.  “Who? who? She?”

Mr. Harper never knew why he did it.  He was reserved as a man and, usually, more than reserved as a lawyer, but as Hazen lifted his hands from the table and turned to leave, he quietly remarked: 

“The chief legatee—­the one she chose to leave the bulk of her very large fortune to—­is a man we none of us know.  His name is Josiah Auchincloss.”

The change which the utterance of this name caused in Hazen’s expression threw them both into confusion.

“Why didn’t you tell me that in the beginning?” he cried.  “I needn’t have wasted all this time and effort.”

His eyes shone, his poor lips smiled, his whole air was jubilant.  Both Mr. Harper and his client surveyed him in amazement.  The lines so fast disappearing from his brow were beginning to reappear on theirs.

“Mr. Harper,” this hard-to-be-understood man now declared, “you may safely administer the estate of my sister.  She is surely dead.”

CHAPTER XXIII

A STARTLING DECISION

Before Mr. Ransom and the lawyer had recovered from their astonishment, Hazen had slipped from the room.  As Mr. Harper started to follow, he saw the other’s head disappearing down the staircase leading to the office.  He called to him, but Hazen declined to turn.

“No time,” he shouted back.  “I shall have to make use of somebody’s automobile now, to get to the Ferry in time.”

The lawyer did not persist, not at that moment; he went back to his client and they had a few hurried words; then Mr. Harper went below and took up his stand on the portico.  He was determined that Hazen should not leave the place without some further explanation.

It was light where he stood and he very soon felt that this would not do, so he slipped back into the shade of a pillar, and seeing, from the bustle, that Hazen was likely to obtain the use of the one automobile stored in the stable, he waited with reasonable patience for his reappearance in the road before him.

Meanwhile he had confidence in Ransom, who he felt sure was watching them both from the window overhead.  If he should fail in getting in the word he wanted, Ransom was pledged to shout it out without regard to appearances.  But this was not likely to occur.  He knew his own persistency to equal Hazen’s.  Nothing should stop the momentary interview he had promised himself.

Ah!  A well-known whirr and clatter is heard.  The automobile was leaving the stable.  Hazen was already in it and the man who had come up from New York was with him.  This was bad; they would flash by—­No; he would not be balked thus.  Stepping out into the road, he stopped full in the glare of the office lights and held up his hand.  They could not but see him and they did.  The chauffeur reversed the lever and the machine stopped to the accompaniment of low muttered oaths from Hazen, which were rather disagreeable than otherwise to Harper’s ear.