“Well!” said Buffham, raising his newly-refilled glass, “here’s to a successful beano. I suppose you contemplate laying a delicate wash of carmine over the British landscape. Or is it to be a full tint of vermilion?”
“Now you are talking in tropes and metaphors,” said Pippet, with an indulgent smile, “but, as I interpret the idiom, you think we are going to make things hum.”
“I assume that you are over here to have a good time.”
“We always like to have a good time if we can manage it, wherever we may be,” said Pippet, “and I hope to pass the time pleasantly while I am in the Old Country. But I have come over with a more definite purpose than that; and, if I should tell you what that purpose is, I should make you smile.”
“And a very pleasant result, too,” said Buffham. “I like to be made to smile. But, of course, I don’t want to pry into your private affairs, even for the sake of a smile.”
“My private affairs will probably soon be public affairs,” said Pippet, “so I need not maintain any particular reticence about them; and, in any case, there’s nothing to be ashamed or secret about. If it interests you to know, my visit to England is connected with a claim to an English title and the estates that go with it.”
Buffham was thunderstruck. But he did not smile. The affair was much too serious for that. Instead, he demanded in a hushed voice: “Do you mean that you are making a claim on your own behalf?”
Mr. Pippet chuckled. “Sounds incredible, doesn’t it? But that is the cold-drawn fact. I am setting up a claim to the Earldom of Winsborough and to the lands and other property that appertain to it, all of which I understand to be at present vacant and calling aloud for an owner.”
Mr. Buffham pulled himself together. This looked like a good deal bigger affair than he had anticipated. Indeed, he had not anticipated anything in particular. His professional habits—if we may so designate them—led him to cultivate the society of rich men of all kinds, and by preference that of wealthy Americans making an European tour. Not that the globe-trotting American is a peculiarly simple and trustful soul. But he is in a holiday mood; he is in unaccustomed surroundings and usually has money to spend and a strong inclination to spend it. Mr. Buffham’s role was to foster that inclination, and, as far as possible, to collaborate in the associated activities. He had proposed to fasten upon Mr. Pippet, if he could, in a Micawber-like hope that something profitable might turn up. But the prospect opened up by Mr. Pippet’s announcement was beyond his wildest dreams.
“I suppose,” Mr. Pippet continued after a brief pause, “you are wondering what in creation a middle-aged American in comfortable circumstances wants with an English title and estates?”
“I am not wondering anything of the kind,” replied Buffham. “The position of a great English nobleman is one that might well tempt the ambition of an American if he were twenty times a millionaire. Think of the august dignity of that position! Of the universal deference that it commands! Think of the grand old mansions and the parks planted with immemorial trees, the great town house and the seat in the House of Lords, and—and—”
“Yes, I know,” chuckled Pippet, “I’ve had all that rubbed into me, and, to tell the bald truth, I wouldn’t give a damn for the whole boiling if I had only myself to consider. I don’t want to have people calling me ‘My Lord’ and making me feel like a fool; and I’ve no use for baronial mansions or ancestral halls. A good comfortable hotel where they know how to cook answers all my requirements. But I’ve got to go in for this business whether I like it or not. My womenfolk have got me fairly in tow, especially my sister. She’s just mad to be Lady Arminella—in fact, if I hadn’t put my foot down she’d have settled the matter in advance and taken the title on account, so to speak.”
“I suppose,” said Buffham, “you have got your claim pretty well cut and dried? Got all your evidence, I mean, and arranged with your lawyer as to the plan of campaign?”
“Well, no!” replied Pippet, “at present things are rather in the air. But, if we have finished, perhaps we might take our coffee up in my sitting room. We can talk more freely there. But don’t let me bore you. After all, it isn’t your funeral.”
“My dear sir!” exclaimed Buffham, with genuine sincerity, “you are not boring me. I assure you that I am profoundly interested. If you won’t consider me inquisitive, I should like to hear the whole story in as much detail as you care to give.”
Mr. Pippet nodded and smiled. “Good!” said he, as they ascended the stairs to the private suite, “you shall have all the detail you want. I shall enjoy giving it to you, as it will help to get the affair into my own head a trifle more clearly. It’s a queer story and I must admit that it does not sound any too convincing. The whole claim rests upon a tradition that I heard from my father.”
Mr. Buffham was a little disappointed; but only a little. As his host had said, it—the claim—was not his funeral. A wild cat claim might answer his purpose as well as any other; perhaps even better. Nevertheless, he remarked with an assumption of anxiety: “I hope there is something to go on besides the tradition. You’ll have to deal with a court of law, you know.”
“Yes, I realize that,” replied Pippet, “and I may say that there is some corroborative matter. I’ll tell you about that presently. But there’s this much about the tradition; that it admits of being put to the test, as you’ll see when I give you the story. And I will do that right away.
“The tradition, then, as I had it from my father from time to time, in rather disjointed fragments, was that his father was a very remarkable character; in fact, he was two characters rolled into one, for he led a double life. As my father and mother knew him, he was Mr. Josiah Pippet, the landlord of a house of call in the City of London known as ‘The Fox and Grapes.’ But a persistent tradition had it that the name of Josiah Pippet was an assumed name and that he was really the Earl of Winsborough. It is known that he was in the habit of absenting himself from his London premises from time to time and that when he did so he disappeared completely, leaving no hint of his whereabouts. Now, it seems that the Earl, who was a bachelor, was a somewhat eccentric gentleman of similar habits. He also was accustomed periodically to absent himself from the Castle, and he also used to disappear, leaving no clue to his whereabouts. And rumour had it that these disappearances were, as the scientists would say, correlated; like the little figures in those old-fashioned toy houses that foretold the weather. When the old man came out, the old woman went in, and vice versa. So it was said that when Josiah disappeared from ‘The Fox and Grapes,’ his lordship made his appearance at Winsborough Castle; and when his lordship disappeared from the Castle, Josiah popped up at ‘The Fox and Grapes.’”
“Is there any record of the movements of the two men?” Buffham asked.
“Well, there is a diary, along with a lot of letters and other stuff. I have just glanced at some of it but I can’t I say of my own observation that there is a definite record. However, my sister has gone through the whole lot and she says that it is all as plain as a pike-staff.”
Buffham nodded with an air of satisfaction that was by no means assumed. He began to see splendid possibilities in his host’s case.
“Yes,” said he, “this is much more hopeful. If you can show that these disappearances coincided in time, that will be a very striking piece of evidence. You have got these documents with you?”
“Yes, I have got them in a deed box in my bedroom. I have been intending to make a serious attack on them and to go right through them.”
“What would be much more to the point,” said Buffham, “would be to hand the box to your lawyer and let him go through them. He will be accustomed to examining documents, and he will see the significance—the legal significance, I mean—of little, inconspicuous facts that might easily escape a non-professional eye. I think you said you had a lawyer?”
“No. That’s a matter that I shall have to attend to at once; and I don’t quite know how to go about it. I understan
d that they don’t advertise in this country.”
“No,” said Buffham, “certainly not. But I see your difficulty. You naturally want to get a suitable man, and it is most important. You want to secure the services of a solicitor whose position and character would command the respect and confidence of the court, and who has had experience of cases of a similar kind. That is absolutely vital. I recall a case which illustrates the danger of employing a lawyer of an unsuitable kind. It was, like yours, a case of disputed succession. There were two claimants whom we may call ‘A’ and ‘B.’ Now Mr. ‘A’ had undoubtedly the better case. But unfortunately for him, he employed a solicitor whose sole experience was concerned with commercial law. He was an excellent man, but he knew practically nothing of the intricacies of succession to landed property. Mr. ‘B,’ on the other hand, had the good fortune to secure a lawyer whose practice had been very largely concerned with these very cases. He knew all the ropes, you see; and the result was that the case was decided in Mr. ‘B’s’ favour. But it ought not to have been. I had it, in confidence, from his lawyer (whom I happened to know rather well) that if he had been acting for Mr. ‘A,’ instead of for Mr. ‘B,’ the decision would certainly have gone the other way. ‘A’ had the better claim, but his lawyer had not realized it and had failed to put it before the court in a sufficiently convincing manner.”
Having given this striking instance, Buffham looked anxiously at his host, and was a trifle disappointed at its effect. Still more so was he with that gentleman’s comment.
“Seems to me,” the latter remarked, “that that court wasn’t particularly on the spot if they let your lawyer friend bluff them into giving Mr. ‘B’ the property that properly belonged to Mr. ‘A.’ And I shouldn’t have thought that your friend would have found it a satisfactory deal. At any rate, I am not wanting any lawyer to grab property for me that belongs to somebody else. As long as I believe in this claim myself, I’m going for it for all I am worth. But I am not going to drop my egg into somebody else’s rightful nest, like your Mr. B.’”
“Of course you are not!” Buffham hastened to reply, considerably disconcerted by his host’s unexpected attitude; so difficult is it for a radically dishonest man to realize that his is not the usual and normal state of mind. “But neither do you want to find yourself in the position of Mr. ‘A.’”
“No,” Pippet admitted, “I don’t. I just want a square deal, and I always understood that you could get it in an English court.”
“So you can,” said Buffham. “But you must realize that a court can only decide on the facts and arguments put before it. It is the business of the lawyers to supply those facts and arguments. And I think you are hardly just to my lawyer friend—his name, by the way, is Gimbler—a most honourable and conscientious man. I must point out that a lawyer’s duty is to present his client’s case in the most forcible and convincing way that he can. He is not concerned with the other man’s case. He assumes—and so does the court—that the opposing lawyer will do the same for his client; and then the court will have both cases completely presented. It is the client’s business to employ a lawyer who is competent to put his case properly to the court.”
Mr. Pippet nodded. “Yes,” he said, reflectively, “I see the idea. But the difficulty in the case of a stranger like myself is to find the particular kind of lawyer who has the special knowledge and experience that is required. Now, as to this friend of yours, Gimbler; you say that he specializes in disputed claims to property.”
“I didn’t say that he specialized in them, but I know that he has had considerable experience of them.”
“Well, now, do you suppose that he would be willing to take up this claim of mine?”
Mr. Buffham did not suppose at all. He knew. Nevertheless he replied warily:
“It depends. He wouldn’t want to embark on a case that was going to result in a fiasco. He would want to hear an about the claim and what evidence there is to support it. And especially he would want to go very carefully through those documents of yours.”
“Yes,” said Pippet, “that seems to be the correct line, and that is what I should want him to do. I’d like to have an expert opinion on the whole affair before I begin to get busy. I am not out to exploit a mare’s nest and make a public fool of myself. But we didn’t finish the story. We only got to the Box and Cox business of Josiah and the Earl. It seems that this went on for a number of years, and nothing seems to have been thought of it at the time. But when Josiah’s wife died and his son—my father—was settled, he appears to have wearied of the complications of his double life and made up his mind to put an end to them. And the simplest and most conclusive way to write Finis on the affair seemed to him to be to die and get buried. And that is what he did. According to the story, he faked a last illness and engineered a sham death. I don’t know how he managed it. Seems to me pretty difficult. But the rumour had it that he managed to get people to believe that he had died, and he had a funeral with a dummy coffin, properly weighted with lumps of lead, and that this was successfully planted in the family vault. I am bound to admit that this part of the story does sound a trifle thin. But it seems to have been firmly believed in the family.”
It would have been a relief to Mr. Buffham to snigger aloud. But sniggering was not his role. Still, he felt called on to make some kind of criticism. Accordingly, he remarked judicially:
“There do certainly seem to be difficulties; the death certificate, for instance. You would hardly expect a doctor to mistake a live, healthy man for a corpse—unless Josiah made it worth his while. It would be simple enough then.”
“I understand,” said Mr. Pippet, “that doctors often used to give a certificate without viewing the body. But the lawyer will know that. At any rate, it is obvious that someone must have been in the know; and that is probably how the rumour got started.”
“And when did the Earl die?”
“That I can’t tell you, off hand. But it was some years after Josiah’s funeral.”
“And who holds the title and estate now?”
“Nobody; at least, so I understand. The last—or present—Earl went away to Africa or some other uncivilized place, big game shooting, and never came back. As there was never any announcement of the Earl’s death, things seem to have drifted on as if he was alive. I have never heard of any claimant.”
“There couldn’t be until the Earl’s death was either proved or presumed by the permission of the court. So the first thing that you will have to do will be to take proceedings to have the death of the Earl presumed.”
“Not the first thing,” said Pippet. “There is one question that will have to be settled before we definitely make the claim. The tradition says that Josiah’s death was a fake and that his coffin was a dummy weighted with lead. Now, that is a statement of fact that admits of proof or disproof. The first thing that we have got to do is to get that coffin open. If we find Josiah inside, that will settle the whole business, and I shan’t care a hoot whether the Earl is alive or dead.”
Once again Mr. Buffham was sensible of a slight feeling of disappointment. In a man who was prepared to consider seriously such a manifestly preposterous cock and bull story as this, he had not looked for so reasonable a state of mind. Of course, Pippet was quite right from his own idiotic point of view. The opening of the coffin was the experimentum crucis. And when it was opened, there, of course, would be the body, and the bubble would be most effectively burst. But Mr. Buffham did not want the bubble burst. The plan which was shaping itself vaguely in his mind was concerned with keeping that bubble in a healthy state of inflation. And again, his crooked mind found it hard to understand Pippet’s simple, honest, straightforward outlook. If he had been the claimant, his strongest efforts would have been devoted to seeing that nobody meddled with that coffin. And he had a feeling that his friend Gimbler would take the same view.
“Of course,” he conceded, “you are perfectly correct; but there may be difficulties that you don’t qui
te realize. I don’t know how it is in America, but in this country you can’t just dig up a coffin and open it if you want to know who is inside. There are all sorts of formalities before you can get permission; and I doubt whether faculty would be granted until you had made out some sort of a case in the courts. So the moral is that you must get as impressive a body of evidence together as you can. Have you got any other facts besides what you have told me? For instance, do you know what these two men—Josiah and the Earl—were like? Do they appear to have resembled each other?”
Mr. Pippet grinned. “If Josiah and the Earl,” said he, “were one and the same person, they would naturally be a good deal alike. I understand that they were. That is one of the strong points of the story. Both of them were a bit out-size; well over six feet in height. Both were fair, blue-eyed men with a shaved upper lip and long sandy side-whiskers.”
“You can prove that, can you?”
“I can swear that I had information to that effect from my father, who knew one and had seen the other. And there is one other point; only a small one, but every little bit of corroboration helps. My father told me on several occasions that his father—Josiah—had often told him that he was born in Winsborough Castle.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Buffham, “that’s better. That establishes a definite connexion. It’s a pity, though, that he was not more explicit. And now, with regard to these documents that you spoke of; what is the nature of them?”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 136