The Case of the Mysterious Moll by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler [Keeler, Harry Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: wildsidepress.com
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

Strange Bequest

Kalver paused hardly a second, then drove desperately on.

“This little work,” he explained, “was set up in type, about five years ago, for a cousin of mine in Philadelphia, by a printer there who agreed to publish it for him on credit. But the printer was burned out before the publication of it—all the type, too—and my cousin obtained only this one hand-imprinted, hand-bound copy as a proof-copy. He couldn’t obtain further credit elsewhere. And-died in the bargain. And the copy came to me, with his personal things. And that’s why I possess it today.”

Now Kalver opened the booklet up to where a page corner was turned down. A crude drawing of a monocled man with extreme walrus mustaches—supposed, no doubt, to represent a typical elderly Englishman—was shown there, with a boldface all-capitals heading under it, and a dozen lines of fine type under that, spilling over to about a half of the next page, all of which ran:

STRANGEST BEQUEST OF ALL

STRANGE BEQUESTS

is the one made, roughly some twenty years ago, by Sir Dudley Excroft of England, covering disposition of a £35,000 sterling cash estate, but today held in trust in England, pending its distribution to the Crown in 1950, as specifically provided in Sir Dudley’s will if same should not ever have been claimed and qualified for by a rightful heir.

Sir Dudley was an eccentric, knighted merely because of some highly original work done in the field of moths; eccentric because he did not believe in the institution of bank-interest. And because his estate lies in trust today invested in non-interest bearing securities, after the terms of his will, it can be said to be worth exactly about $100,000 in American money, net, after costs and inheritance taxes are subtracted.

Sir Dudley, in his will drawn roughly some twenty years ago, left his estate in toto to his closest descendant. Or the latter’s guardians, heirs, or assigns, as the case might be. Payable, however, only if, at the time of claiming and qualifying, the said closest descendant had already erected, or caused to have been erected, upon the main street of any American city, a monument extolling Sir Dudley. [A test, no doubt, of the ingenuity of any true Excroft—since no American city would ordinarily permit a monument on its main street to an Englishman!]

But unfortunately for the will, however, there were no Excroft descendants ever to claim. Or even possibility for such to be. Not that Sir Dudley died the bachelor he had been at the time the will was drawn. But because—For, going to America, right after drawing his will, to consult the American Bureau of Eugenics at Cold Springs Harbor, New York, relative to tracing the occurrence and re-occurrence in his family tree of an inheritance-characteristic manifesting itself in him as a foot with all its toes webbed together, he died on his very first night in New York City. Though not exactly a bachelor. For he fell in love with a Russian girl who sat across from him at table, in the little uptown hotel where he had booked accommodations.

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