"May _I_ venture to tell you what it contains?" Mr. Cowl suggested. "There
can be no indiscretion on my part, as all wills after probate are public
property and can be inspected by any Tom, Dick or Harry for a fee of one
shilling."

He took the document and gazed at it intently, turning over a page and
turning back, for an extraordinarily long time.

Audrey said to herself again and again, with exasperated impatience: "He
knows now, and I don't know. He knows now, and I don't know. He knows now,
and I don't know."

At length Mr. Cowl spoke:

"It is a perfectly simple will. The testator leaves the whole of his
property to Mrs. Moze for life, and afterwards to you, Miss Moze. There are
only two legacies. Ten pounds to James Aguilar, gardener. And the
testator's shares in the Zacatecas Oil Development Corporation to the
National Reformation Society. I may say that the testator had expressed to
me his intention of leaving these shares to the Society. We should have
preferred money, free of legacy duty, but the late Mr. Moze had a reason
for everything he did. I must now bid you good-bye, ladies," he went on
strangely, with no pause. "Miss Moze, will you convey my sympathetic
respects to your mother and my thanks for her most kind hospitality? My
grateful sympathies to yourself. Good-bye, Miss Ingate.... Er, Miss
Ingate, why do you look at me in that peculiar way?"

"Well, Mr. Cowl, you're a very peculiar man. May I ask whether you were
born in this part of the country?"