'Precisely. You will secure the due and proper execution of your wishes by signing this paper.'
'I implore your lordship not to do your brother the crowning injustice of dying without doing something to protect his interests. He is already suffering much on your account. Sir Gregory, will you assist his lordship to sit up?'
Hancock raised the sick man, using as much gentleness as was possible, and the lawyer placed before him the sheet of paper on the blotting-pad. He also insinuated a pen between the wasted fingers.
'Your lordship understands what you are about to do? You are about to sign your will.'
'Exactly. You are leaving everything to Lord Reginald; as is set forth on this sheet of paper. Your lordship will please attach your signature here.'
The sick man dug the point of his pen into the paper at the place to which Foster had guided his hand. Then he stopped. He looked up, with on his face a very singular expression; as of wistfulness. We watched; wondering what it was he desired to say. There was evidently something. When it came it was not at all what any of us had supposed.
'I want--to see--a good woman. Isn't there--a good woman--in the world?'
I do not know what we had expected him to say. I, of course, cannot answer for all. But I am tolerably certain that neither of us had imagined him to be struggling to give expression to such a wish as that. We exchanged glances. Did it mean that his wits were wandering?
What immediately ensued seemed to suggest that his wits were, if anything, keener than ours.
I am inclined to think that I had not given Mr. Montagu Babbacombe credit for all the cleverness he possessed. I began, indeed, to suspect that to his cleverness--if it was only cleverness--there were no limits. While we stared and wondered, a waiter entered the room with a card on a salver, which he brought to me. It was Edith's card. On it she had pencilled a line:
'I am here with Violet. Can't I see him? I should like to.'
The instruction--it amounted to that--came from the man in the bed. It seemed that he had not only known that the women were in the house before I had had any intimation of their presence, and that the knowledge had prompted him to make his remark, but it also appeared that he knew what was written on that card. Was the fellow possessed of the occult powers of which we read in fairy-books? While the others eyed me askance, inquiring his meaning, I eyed him.