Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/63

 formation of some special importance. He had had such telegrams before. He picked it up and opened it.

Who was John Willis? For a moment he stood quite still with the telegram in his hand, uncomprehending. Then for a second he felt suddenly ill. And slowly it began to make sense to him.

Aunt Bessie was dead and he was a rich man. His whole life was changed. He need no longer live in Brinoë because he had no money. He need no longer write grudging book reviews and bits of gossip about people he did not know. Aunt Bessie was dead. Aunt Bessie, who was younger than himself and whom he had never expected to die. She could not have been more than forty-two and she had stood between him and his uncle's wealth for nearly twenty years. Aunt Bessie with her Cockney accent and low manners who had kidnapped into marriage a rich old man three times her age. All that money was his. It was an act of God.

When he had recovered his senses a little, he sat down at the table and stuck the telegram in the letter-rack. He was a careful man and he knew that when he wakened in the morning he would need to see it there in order to believe that he had not been dreaming.

Then his eye fell upon the pile of paper on which was written his weekly correspondence for the Ladies' Own World. An hour later he would have