The Substitute Millionaire — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Substitute Millionaire
John Stuart Mill · en
"Eighty million!" murmured Jack, unable to grasp the idea of such a sum.
"Nearly five million a year; four hundred thousand a month; say
thirteen thousand a day."
The figures had a convincing ring. The color stole back into Jack's
cheeks, and a delicious warmth crept around his heart. He had no great
difficulty in believing his good fortune, because he had already
pictured it to himself in fancy. His first thought was of Kate. "I
can buy her anything now!"
For a moment or two he found nothing to say. Delamare seeing his eyes
become dreamy, smiled again. "Spending it already, I see!"
Jack blushed and descended to earth. "Please tell me all about it," he
said.
"I'll tell you what I know. As I said, I was not in Mr. Gyde's full
confidence--no man was. Indeed I knew him but slightly. He was a good
customer of the bank, but he did everything in his own peculiar way.
He rented a large vault from us, and had the locks changed under his
own supervision. I believe he kept the major part of his securities
there, but he may have other vaults too.
"Some five years or so ago, he came to me saying he wanted to rent a
small lock box in our vaults, the kind that we get ten dollars a year
for. He was so insistent upon the necessity for secrecy that we
allowed him to have it under an assumed name. Another officer of the
bank and myself were taken into the secret. Mr. Gyde left me a
duplicate key to this box with instructions to open it if ever a day
passed without my hearing from him. I believe he used to visit the box
himself to make sure that I had not been tampering with it, but his
peculiarities were so well known, one didn't mind that in him.
"Since then, every day of his life he dropped in here, or called me or
my secretary on the phone, just to report, he said. In the beginning I
often wondered why he had set himself such a task, but as time went on
it became a mere form, and at last I forgot how the custom had started.
"When word of his death was brought me day before yesterday, all
recollection of the small box had passed from my mind. My secretary
brought it back by remarking that the old gentleman's daily report was
now at an end. I found the keys and opened the box. The papers were
sealed into the box itself, so that they could not be removed without
breaking the wax. Very characteristic of Mr. Gyde.
"The contents consisted of his will; detailed instructions to me how to
find you and identify you, and several keys which I was directed to
hand you. Here they are. And here is the will, a model of clearness
and brevity you see."
Jack read: "I, Silas Gyde, being of sound mind and in the full
possession of my senses, do hereby devise and bequeath all that I die
possessed of to John Farrow Norman, son of John Goadby Norman and
Phoebe Farrow, and do appoint the said John Farrow Norman and Walter
Delamare, President of the National New York Bank, my executors."