But there were alleviations. I'm not denying it. They were alleviations of a good and solid kind. That aristocrat at San Francisco hadn't been far out when he talked of his million dollars a year. I made some roundabout inquiries in the proper quarter, and learned that there were accumulations in the neighbourhood of a million sterling awaiting the Marquis's going home. That was apart from the annual income. The property had been carefully nursed, and those seven figures represented savings only. That's what it is to have a reasonably honest man of business. I do like honesty in another man. A million! If I could only get hold of that I wouldn't worry about the income for a year or two. This was going to be a bigger thing even than I'd supposed. What kind of an idiot that San Francisco ruffian could have been was beyond my fathoming. I've had a few deals with sample idiots, but he was too much in the wholesale. I took it that he'd cut and run because, happening to be one of nature's blackguards, he'd done something, or perhaps two or three somethings, which didn't smell altogether sweet in the nostrils of the good. If he'd only had his character to live upon, that would have been reason enough. But seeing that there was somebody else's money, in truckfulls, the fact that that was all he had got was just the reason why he should keep hard by. The members of the Twickenham family would find that the head of the house had changed; mercifully. Time had worked the usual wonders; we'll call it time. The days of his prodigality were at an end; relatively, let us say. And he wasn't anything near the fool he used to be. Also, certain members of the family would find that he'd developed quite a novel strain of generosity. There sometimes is a motive for crime--though a sufficient motive is not by many chalks as indispensable a criminal property as wise folk like to think. Plenty do evil for the love of doing it. I've tried both. I've found doing evil quite as amusing as doing good. Often more. Even when you don't get any pull out of it when it's done. It's the sporting instinct in a man. When a man tells me that he's fond of sport, I know that there's more significance in his words than he himself supposes. But in the case of Mr. John Smith the motive was pretty plain. The Marquis had better be dead than keep away from his sorrowing family. You could have an occasional cut at him if you knew where he was; you couldn't if he was the Lord knows where. In his absence the law looked after his interests; cuts--except by the law itself--were barred. And there were so many who wanted one--including Mr. John Smith. So it was necessary that the Marquis should die, in order that he might have a cut at his successor. If I had only understood what he was driving at from the first, things might have been arranged in quite a different way. I might have said: