The Plattner Story, and OthersWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
The Plattner Story, and Others
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories, English
"That was the end of my uncle. You can imagine me and my mother saw
that he had a decent funeral. Then, of course, came the hunt for the
will. We began decent and respectful at first, and before the day was
out we were ripping chairs, and smashing bureau panels, and sounding
walls. Every hour we expected those others to come in. We asked the
housekeeper, and found she'd actually witnessed a will--on an ordinary
half-sheet of notepaper it was written, and very short, she said--not
a month ago. The other witness was the gardener, and he bore her out
word for word. But I'm hanged if there was that or any other will to
be found. The way my mother talked must have made him turn in his
grave. At last a lawyer at Reigate sprang one on us that had been made
years ago during some temporary quarrel with my mother. I'm blest if
that wasn't the only will to be discovered anywhere, and it left every
penny he possessed to that 'Take 'im away' youngster of his second
cousin's--a chap who'd never had to stand his talking not for one
afternoon of his life."
The man with the glass eye stopped.
"I thought you said"--I began.
"Half a minute," said the man with the glass eye. "_I_ had to wait
for the end of the story till this very morning, and I was a blessed
sight more interested than you are. You just wait a bit too. They
executed the will, and the other chap inherited, and directly he was
one-and-twenty he began to blew it. How he did blew it, to be sure! He
bet, he drank, he got in the papers for this and that. I tell you, it
makes me wriggle to think of the times he had. He blewed every ha'penny
of it before he was thirty, and the last I heard of him was--Holloway!
Three years ago.
"Well, I naturally fell on hard times, because, as you see, the only
trade I knew was legacy-cadging. All my plans were waiting over to
begin, so to speak, when the old chap died. I've had my ups and downs
since then. Just now it's a period of depression. I tell you frankly,
I'm on the look-out for help. I was hunting round my room to find
something to raise a bit on for immediate necessities, and the sight
of all those presentation volumes--no one will buy them, not to wrap
butter in, even--well, they annoyed me. I'd promised him not to part
with them, and I never kept a promise easier. I let out at them with my
boot, and sent them shooting across the room. One lifted at the kick,
and spun through the air. And out of it flapped--You guess?
"It was the will. He'd given it me himself in that very last volume of
all."
He folded his arms on the table, and looked sadly with the active eye
at his empty tankard. He shook his head slowly, and said softly, "I'd
never _opened_ the book, much more cut a page!" Then he looked up, with
a bitter laugh, for my sympathy. "Fancy hiding it there! Eigh? Of all
places."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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