The Winslow mail., 1924-01-11
CHAPTER |
The Inheritance.

To be twenty-five, to be wearing
new seyenty-five-dollar suit, and to
walk down Broadway in the sun on
a Nav morning with the knowledge
that an inheritance of hundred thou
sand dollars is to be turned over by
ones trustee within half an hour. must
be quite an experience. II an accu-
mutation of such tri1es constitutes a
sum of happiness, Winton Garrett
ought 70 have been happy.
He was happy. He had left college
the day before The world was before
him. He had nothing to worry him.
He had no plans, no aims, and no
ambitions. He had resolved not to en-
tertain any until he received his
legacy.
Now that it was as good as his, Win
ton was beginning to wonder what it
would be like to have control of it.
He had not had much money to han
die; his bills had been paid for him,
and he had had a modest allowance
which he had never exceeded.
"PII have to do something useful
with It," he was rejecting, "if Archie
hasn't spent it all"
Archie Garrett, WintOn's cousin
was just twenty years older than him
SELF When Winton's mother died,
ten years before, and year after
her husband, who had left her every
thing Internationally, she had willed
all to Winton, her only child and ap-
pointed Archie her sole trustee.
The thing had puzzled everybody,
and it had worried Winton's~ relatives
quite little. For Archie Garrett was
the last person in the world whom the
average testator would select as a trus-
tee. Winton's mother believed in her
nephew, however.
He had once advised her about an
investment which was turning out bad
ly. She had listened to him, in the
face of expert opinion, and Archie had
plucked her out of the financial morass
into which she had strayed, and set
her on firm ground. People said it was
luck, but Winton's mother never for
got.
Archie, a bachelor of forty-four was
one of those men who never quite grow
up. His own money had been tied up
by a prudent father, but he lived on
the adequate income and played at
business. He was supposed to be in
terested in land development some
where But nobody who entered Ar
chie's office ever saw any signs of
business. Archie hadn't even stenOg-
rapher He read French novels with
his feet on the window-ledge, three
hundred feet above Broadway; and
his desk itself was as immaculate as
its owner.
Incorrigible in his optimism, moth
ing ever disturbed him. He did have
the knack OF falling on his feet after
sundry financial croppers. He was be-
neved to have made quite a little
money out of his income; but nobody
trusted Archie any the more for that,
though it was admitted that he was
honorable Archie was incapable of
wrongd0ing. But Archie as a trustee
was-unthinkable.
WintOn had never troubled very
much about his cousins handling of
his fortune. Archie had paid his bills
promptly, and had been generous. He
had written cordially to Winton week
before making an appointment for that
morning at his Office, tc be followed
nv luncheon. At the interview the
books were to be shown and the eS-
tate-which, Winton gathered from
aoron va oue statement made n few
months before, had increased consid-
erably-was to be handed over.
Winton crossed one of the squares Of
the city and made his way toward a
tall. triangular structure of great
height. the acute angle pointing up