For a brief--very brief--moment, a mist gathered over the letter in the son's hand. "My dear friend Sadie Burch!" He choked back the exclamation of surprise that rose unconsciously to his lips and endeavored to suppress any facial evidence of his inner feelings. "Twenty-five thousand!" Then he held out the letter more or less casually to Tutt.
"Wee-e-ll!" whistled the lawyer softly, with a quick glance from under his eyebrows.
"Oh, it isn't the money!" remarked Payson in a sickly tone--although of course he was lying. It _was_ the money.
The idea of surrendering nearly half his father's estate to a stranger staggered him; yet to his eternal credit, in that first instant of bewildered agony no thought of disregarding his father's wishes entered his mind. It was a hard wallop, but he'd got to stand it.
"Oh, that's nothing!" remarked Tutt. "It's not binding. You don't need to pay any attention to it."
"Do you really mean that that paper hasn't any legal effect?" exclaimed the boy with such a reaction of relief that for the moment the ethical aspect of the case was entirely obscured by the legal.
"None whatever!" returned Tutt definitely.
"But it's part of the will!" protested Payson. "It's in my father's own handwriting."
"That doesn't make any difference," declared the lawyer. "Not being witnessed in the manner required by law it's not of the slightest significance."
"Not even if it is put right in with the will?"
"But I've often heard of letters being put with wills."
"No doubt. But I'll wager you never heard of any one of them being probated."
Payson's legal experience in fact did not reach to this technical point.
"Look here!" he returned obstinately. "I'll be hanged if I understand. You say this paper has no legal value and yet it is in my father's own hand and practically attached to his will. Now, apart from any--er--moral question involved, just why isn't this letter binding on me?"
"Have a cigarette?" he asked, and when Payson took one, he added sympathetically as he held a match for him, "Your attitude, my dear sir, does you credit. It is wholly right and natural that you should instinctively desire to uphold that which on its face appears to be a wish of your father. But all the same that letter isn't worth the paper it's written on--as matter of law."