for the watch in his jacket pocket to know that the two hours of racing over the deadly, rutted road had nearly come to an end, for not only did he feel the fatigue in his muscular arms but every five minutes since leaving London Blatherbell had thumped on the roof and bellowed that he had so many more minutes to reach the castle.
He breathed a sigh of relief as four lights, two on each side, materialized out of the dark, recognizing them as mounted grooms from the castle come to light his way for the last two miles to their destination. As they sped along the straight, smooth, tree-lined driveway, he rapped lightly on the roof flap, then opened it.
“We’ll be arrivin’ in a shake, kind Gentlemen,” he announced.
“Thank God,” came the squeak of Mr. Poopendal. “An absolute nightmare, these past two hours. Absolute nightmare. Could not have survived it a moment longer. Do you not agree, Mr. Snoddergas?”
Mr. Snoddergas did not answer. Feet planted firmly on the floor, fingers gripping the edge of the seat, shoulders thrust back against the cushion, Mr. Snoddergas was sound asleep, snoring with a buoyant gusto.
Mr. Poopendal peered down from his towering height of six-feet-six affixed longitudinally by one hundred and thirty-two pounds of skin and bones at Mr. Blatherbell’s five-feet-two form gallantly struggling to hold up two hundred and ten pounds of quivering, restless flesh.
“Do you not agree, Mr. Blatherbell?” asked Mr. Poopendal.
“Not more than three minutes left,” said Mr. Blatherbell hoarsely.
“I mean, do you not agree that these two hours have been an absolute nightmare?”
Mr. Blatherbell ran a sweat-soaked handkerchief over his face and turned his ornamented pocket-watch in all directions, vainly trying to read its dial. “Two?” he shouted harshly. “It cannot be. It has to be nearer to three minutes left.”
“Not minutes, hours,” squealed Mr. Poopendal. “An utter nightmare.” He peered again at Mr. Snoddergas, hoping to find him awake, and was struck once more by Mr. Snoddergas’ ape-like appearance. He was five feet-six, a hard-boned, hard-muscled man of forty years of age, the same as Mr. Blatherbell and himself, without the least trace of a waist, the lines of his body running straight up from his hips to his shoulders, shoulders which were square and heavy and held the shortest of necks on which sat a small rounded head covered by cropped hair. His eyes, even when closed, were small and round, and so were his lips and nose and chin. But not his ears. Mr. Poopendal shook his head in wonder as he looked at Mr. Snoddergas’ ears. They were the largest he had ever seen on a man, huge sails which stood straight out like those of an alarmed elephant, measuring almost two-thirds of the distance from his pate to his chin. “Are you awake, Mr. Snoddergas?” he asked hopefully, impatient to explain what a nightmare the past two hours had been.
Mr. Blatherbell came to his aid by jabbing Mr. Snoddergas in his stomach with the point of his cane.
“Wake up, Snoddergas,” he snapped. Mr. Blatherbell could speak in such fashion to Mr. Snoddergas, since he was the senior of the three partners.
The only evident sign that Mr. Snoddergas awakened instantly was the parting of his eyelids by a fraction of an inch. Then his mouth opened wide in a luxurious yawn. “Have we arrived already?” he asked in a soft, sweet voice.
“Already!” screeched Mr. Poopendal. “Two hours of absolute terror, that is what it has been. A veritable nightmare.” He drew his long, black cloak more tightly around himself and tugged down on his silk, stovepipe hat. “I cannot begin to tell you how close to eternity we have been …”
His voice trailed away as the carriage was brought to an abrupt halt. The right-door was jerked open to reveal a line of liveried footmen holding umbrellas. At their head stood a ramrod-stiff, grim-faced butler, impeccably garbed in black tails and striped trousers, a white starched shirt, white bow tie and white cotton gloves.
“This way, gentlemen,” said the butler testily. “Please hurry.” His request was made with only slightly more courtesy than a gimlet-eyed colonel employs while raking down a subaltern who drank the last drop of scotch at the club.
Jumping out of the carriage, they stumbled up the stone steps, the footmen hurrying to shield them with the umbrellas, and then through a massive, brass-studded oak door entrance into a large hall. Other servants waited there to take off their cloaks and relieve them of their stovepipe hats, gloves and canes. With practiced dexterity, the solicitors allowed themselves to be peeled to their cutaways without losing grip on their thick, black brief cases.
“Please hurry,” ordered the grim-faced butler, motioning with an impatient wave of his hand to two footmen carrying gleaming candelabra holding slender, clean-burning tapers. The footmen started walking rapidly across the main hall to a wide, curved staircase leading upward to the first floor, the butler and the three solicitors hard on their heels, their boots echoing loud on the stone steps. At the top of the stairs, the servants turned down a hall to another massive, brass-studded oak door, a twin of the one downstairs, and here they stood aside to allow the butler to draw it open.
Inside the huge bedroom several doctors and servants were grouped around the figure of a white-haired man lying on a giant-sized four-poster bed. The room simmered from the heat of a leaping, log-devouring inferno in a shoulder-high stone fireplace and from charcoal braziers dotted about the chamber.
As the solicitors approached the bed, it became immediately apparent that His Grace, the Thirteenth Duke of Wesfumbletonshire was on the point of kicking the bucket. His bristling white hair was now limp, his long slender patrician nose was pinched, his face waxen and drawn, his thin lips slack and parted, exposing his toothless gums as he gasped for the last few breaths remaining to him.
“Your Grace,” shouted the butler an inch from his ear, since it was common knowledge that the Duke was almost stone deaf, “your solicitors are here.”
The old man’s eyes flickered open, a wicked little tongue popped out to moisten the dry lips, color came to his cheeks, and his hair grew stiff like the hackles of an angry dog.
“Is that you, you blundering beggars?” he gasped.
“Yes, Your Grace,” shouted the three solicitors in unison.
“Lower your faces, you blithering idiots,” panted the Duke. Instantly, the three men leaned forward until they were nose to nose with the dying man. “Where is my will?” he growled.
“Right here, Your Grace,” said Mr. Blatherbell smoothly. “We have a copy in my case, another copy at our office, a copy is with the Lord Chamberlain, and you have three copies hidden about the castle.”
“Tell me what they say,” ordered the old man.
“They say that every bit of your estate goes to your nephew, Lord Percival, and not one farthing to your nephew, Paul.”
“Say it again,” gasped the Duke.
“Every bit of your estate…”
“Not that,” interrupted the Duke. “Tell me again about the part concerning that worthless, shiftless, hell-damned wastrel nephew, Paul.”
“Not a worn farthing, a withered blade of grass, nor a stale turd from the stables. That is how it is phrased.”
A sweet, contented smile crossed the dying man’s lips. “Say it again,” he ordered.
“Not a worn farthing, a withered blade of grass, nor a stale turd from the stables.”
“Show it to me in the will again,” said the Duke.
Mr. Blatherbell opened his case, drew out the will, turned it to the proper page and held it close to the Duke’s eyes. The Duke read it carefully, his smile becoming broader and broader. “The happiest day of my life,” he sighed. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. “Where is Percival?” he asked.
The butler bent down to his ear. “He is on his way, Your Grace,” he roared. “He should be here at any moment.”
“Send