"Indeed?" said Mostyn interrogatively, seating himself in a chair indicated to him by the solicitor. "I am very much in the dark, Mr. Chester." "The matter concerns the testamentary disposition"--Mr. Chester was very precise in speech--"of our late client, Mr. Anthony Royce." The solicitor toyed with his gold-mounted glasses as he spoke, and stared hard at his visitor. "Mr. Royce?" Mostyn repeated the name in amazement. "Why, I only met Mr. Royce once," he stammered, "and that was on the day of his death." "Nevertheless you have an interest--a very considerable interest indeed--in Mr. Royce's will, and this will, or, rather, codicil, I may inform you, appears to have been written hastily, although duly signed and witnessed, upon the day that ended so tragically for our client." The solicitor carefully polished his glasses with the border of a silk pocket-handkerchief. "But this is extraordinary--inexplicable!" Mostyn could hardly believe his ears. It was true that Anthony Royce appeared to have taken a peculiar interest in him that Derby Day, and then, of course, there was the story about his having once been in love with Mostyn's mother, but that he should have gone straight home and made a new will, almost as though he had anticipated the tragedy that was to come--this was past understanding. "Our client was always a man who acted immediately upon any resolution he may have taken," Mr. Chester explained. "He had evidently made up his mind that afternoon, the day upon which he met you, and, as usual, followed his impulse. Of course, poor man, he could not have anticipated that he was to meet his death that night; indeed, as we happen to know, all his preparations were made for a second expedition into the heart of Africa. A fine fellow, Mr. Clithero, a man of sterling merit, and no one regrets his loss more than we do. It was a shocking accident: you know all the particulars, of course?" Mostyn nodded: the papers had been very full of the disaster on the day after it had happened. Anthony Royce, it appeared, had dined at his London house after his return from the Derby, and then, at a later hour of the evening, had left London in his motor-car for his country residence, which was in the neighbourhood of Ware; it was upon the road that the accident had happened. The night had been very dark, and Royce, who was driving himself, had apparently, through some accident to the machinery, lost control of the car upon one of the steep hills in the neighbourhood. The motor had dashed into a wall; Royce had been thrown out, receiving a terrible blow upon the head, the result of which had been almost immediately fatal.