“Now, I’ll attend to you,” said he severely to the special. “Only, don’t brag about your superior importance, next time.”
He opened it and glanced at the heading. “Connor,” said he, “this is from Mr. Bentley.”
“He says it is necessary for him to see me without delay.”
“Do you believe, Connor, that it is really as necessary as he pretends for Mr. Bentley to see me without delay?”
“Mr. Bentley is your lawyer, sir,” pointed out Connor firmly. “If he says so, sir, I think it would be so.”
“You’re wrong, Connor; you’re wrong! This letter is dated just seven weeks ago. As I haven’t seen Mr. Bentley yet, and am still in good health and spirits, it can’t have been vitally necessary that he see me without delay, can it? Necessity knows no law, Connor, and law knows no necessity that can’t wait seven weeks.”
“Mr. Bentley has been telephoning, sir, almost every day.”
“I tried to inform you about several telephone messages, Mr. Jacob—”
“So you did, when you met me at the pier.”
“And you told me if the telephone annoyed me, to have it taken out, sir.”
“Right; right; perfectly right! Did you have it taken out?”
“What a blessing is philosophic calm! I’ll take pattern by you and learn not to let it annoy me, either. That’s it ringing now. Let it ring. Are my dinner clothes laid out?”
“Yes, sir. And, beg pardon, sir; I think that’s the doorbell not the’phone. It’ll be Mr. Bentley. I took the liberty of ’phoning him, sir, that you’d be here in time to dress for dinner—”
“His blood be on your head. Let him in, Connor.”
Mr. Herbert Bentley, of Bench & Bentley, a huge, puffy man of fifty, rolled into the room, shook hands warmly with Remsen, went through the usual preliminary queries as to health, recent experience, and time of return, and then attacked the matter in hand.
“Some of us been distinguishing ourselves?”
“Not specially. But your cousins are threatening a will contest.”
“If they want to pry me loose from this grisly mausoleum,” observed Jacob, with an illustrative wave of the hand around the gloomful drawing-room, “I’ll listen to terms.”
“Nothing of that sort. The house is yours as long as you fulfill the terms of your grandfather’s will.”
“Then what’s the contest to me? Let my amiable cousins choke themselves and each other with law—”