“That’s how it was,” said Maria. “I couldn’t read it either.”
“Nor I,” said Darcourt. “And I assure you I tried my very best.”
“Aha!” said Mr. Gwilt. It was a verbal pounce. “You admit ignorance of this book, considered by its author to be one of the greatest works of fiction in the realm of the philosophical novel to be produced in history, and yet you have had the mind-boggling gall to suppress it—”
“Nobody would take it,” said Darcourt.
“Please! I’m speaking! And I’m speaking now, not as a man of the law, but as a human soul peering into an abyss of snotty intellectual infamy! Now see here—if you don’t produce that manuscript for our examination and the opinion of the experts we shall put to work on it, you face legal action which will make you smart, let me tell you!”
“No alternative of any kind?” said Maria. She and the two professors seemed calm under the threat of exposure and ignominy.
“My client and I don’t want a stink, any more than you do. I know it may seem strange for me, as a lawyer, to advise against going to court. I suggest that a composition might be made.”
“A pay-off, you mean?” said Hollier.
“Not a legal term. I say a composition in the sum of, let’s say, a million dollars.”
Hollier and Darcourt, both of whom had experience of publishing books, laughed aloud.
“You natter me,” said Hollier. “Do you know what professors are paid?”
“You are not alone in this,” said Mr. Gwilt, smiling. “I don’t suppose Mrs. Cornish would have much trouble over a million.”
“Oh, not a bit,” said Maria. “I fling such sums to the needy, at church doors.”
“Let us keep this serious,” said Mr. Gwilt. “A million’s the word.”
“On what grounds?”
“I have already spoken of the ius naturale,” said Mr. Gwilt. “Common justice and decency. Let me recap: my client is the son of John Parlabane, and at the time of his death the late Mr. Parlabane did not know of the existence of that son. That’s the nub of it. If Mr. Parlabane had known, at the time he made that will, would he have overlooked the claim of his own child?”
“As I remember Mr. Parlabane he might have done anything at all,” said Darcourt.
“Well, the law wouldn’t allow it, if he tried to cut out his natural heir. This isn’t the eighteenth century, you know.”
“I think it’s time I put in my two cents’ worth,” said Mr. Carver, who had been as still as a very large cat during all that had been said. He now looked like a very wide-awake cat. “You can’t prove your client is the son of John Parlabane.”
“Oh, can’t I, indeed?”
“No, you can’t. I’ve made a few inquiries, and I have at least three witnesses, and I could probably find more, who had a crack at the late Mrs. Whistlecraft in her high and palmy days. If you’ll pardon a bit of the Raw, one of my informants said she was known as Pay As You Enter, and poor old Whistlecraft was laughed at as a notorious cuckold, though a decent guy and quite a poet. Who’s the father? Nobody knows.”
“Oh yes they do,” said Wally Crottel. “What about the organism? Eh? How about that? None of these guys you mention ever gave her the organism. She said so herself; she was always a very open woman. And without the organism how do you account for a child? Eh? Without the organism, no dice.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been reading, Mr. Crottel,” said Mr. Carver, “but you’re away off base. Take my wife, for instance; four fine kids, one of them just last week called to the bar (a lawyer like yourself, Mr. Gwilt), and she never had one of those things in her life. Told me so herself. And a very happy woman, adored by her family. You ought to see what goes on in our house on Mother’s Day! This organism, as you call it, may be all very well, but its not the real goods. So bang goes your organism. So far as it’s evidence, that’s to say.”
“Well, anyways, that’s what my mum always said,” said Wally, loyal even in defeat.
Mr. Gwilt seemed to be groping in his mind, perhaps for a useful scrap of Latin. He decided to do what he could with an old one.
“The ius naturale,” he said. “Natural justice. Are you going to fly in the face of that?”
“Yes, when it’s demanded at the point of a gun, and it’s an empty gun. That would be my advice,” said Mr. Carver, a pussy who had not yet retracted his claws.
“Come on, Merv,” said Wally. “Time to go.”
“I haven’t finished yet,” said his lawyer. “I want to get to the bottom of why that will is withheld.”
“Not a will,” said Hollier; “a personal letter.”
“The nearest thing to a will the late John Parlabane ever made. And why are these people refusing to produce the corpus delicti, by which I hasten to say I do not mean the body of the late John Parlabane, as it is commonly misunderstood, but the material object relating to the crime. I mean the manuscript of the novel about which all this dispute has arisen.”
“Because there’s no reason to produce it,” said Mr. Carver.
“Oh, there isn’t, eh? We’ll see about that?”
Mr. Carver was a pussycat again, his claws well in. He used an expression perhaps unexpected in a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a working private eye.
“Fiddlesticks!” he said.
With a great display of indignation, and inaudible mutterings, Mr. Mervyn Gwilt rose slowly, like a man who goes, only to return with renewed strength, and, followed by his disgruntled client, left the apartment. He gave vent to his feelings by slamming the door.
“Thank God we’re rid of them,” said Maria.
“Rid of Gwilt, maybe. I wouldn’t be sure you’re rid of Wally Crottel,” said Mr. Carver, rising. “I know a few things about Wally. Fellows like that can be very nasty. You’d better keep your eye peeled, Mrs. Cornish.”
“Why me? Why not Professor Hollier?”
“Psychology. You’re a woman, and a rich woman. People like Wally are very jealous. There’s not much to be got out of the professor, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, but a rich woman is an awful temptation to a fellow like Wally. I just mention it.”
“Thanks, George. You’ve been wonderful,” said Darcourt. “You’ll send me your statement, won’t you?”
“Itemized and in full,” said Mr. Carver. “But I must say its been a pleasure. I never liked that guy Gwilt.”
Mr. Carver declined the offer of a drink, and moved out of the apartment on pussycat feet.
“Where did you find that wonderful man?” said Maria.
“I was able to do something for his oldest boy when he was a student. Taught him a little Latin—just enough,” said Darcourt. “George is my key to the underworld. Everybody ought to have one.”
“If that’s that, then I’ll be going,” said Hollier. “Some work I want to finish. But if I may say so, Maria my dear, you really oughtn’t to throw anything away; as a scholar you ought to know that. Throw things away and what is there for the scholars of the future? It’s simple trade-unionism. Throw things away and what becomes of research?”
And he went.
“Do you have to go right away, Simon?” said Maria. “There are one or two things—Would you like a drink?”
An unnecessary question, thought Simon. In his state of authorial anxiety about his book he was always ready for a drink. He would have to watch that. A drunken priest. A drunken professor. Oh, shame!
“I will make you a drink if you want one,” he said. “It seems to me you drink a great deal more than you did when you were a student.”
“I need more than when I was a student. And I have inherited my Uncle Yerko’s head. I’m a long way from being a serious drinker, Simon. I’ll never be in the class with Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot.”