"May I offer," said he, "the hospitalities of the city in the form of a
hot whisky toddy?"
I thanked him and asked to be excused.
"Your name," he ventured, after clearing his throat, "is Vandemark."
Then I looked at him still more sharply. How did he know my name?
"I have been looking for you," said he, "for some months--some months;
and I was so fortunate as to observe the fact when you made a call last
evening on our fellow-citizen, Doctor Rucker. I was--ahem--consulted
professionally by the late lamented Mrs. Rucker--I am a lawyer,
sir--before her death, for the purpose of securing my services in
looking after the interests of her son, Mr. Jacob H. Vandemark."
"Jacob T. Vandemark," said I.
"Why, damn me," said he, looking again at his book, "it _is_ a 'T.'
Lawyer's writing, Jacob, lawyer's writing--notoriously bad, you know."
I sat thinking about the expression, "the interests of Jacob T.
Vandemark," for a long time; but the truth did not dawn an me, my mind
working slowly as usual.
"What interests?" I asked finally.
"The interest," said he, "of her only child in the estate of Mrs.
Rucker."
Then there recurred to my mind the words in my mother's last letter;
that the money had been paid on the settlement of my father's estate,
and that she and Rucker were coming out West to make a new start in
life. I had never given it a moment's thought before, and should have
gone away without asking anybody a single question about it, if this
scaly pettifogger, as I now know him to have been, had not sidled up
to me.
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