18
The Green Bag
business capacity, who had bought the controlling interest in a brewery which was doing a good business. He lived with his uncle, whose right hand he was, and the old gentleman made no secret of the fact that his nephew would inherit most, if not all of his property. On first quarreling with his sons ten years before, Joshua had destroyed his former will and had made a new one in George Grantham's favor; and not withstanding his lawyer's remonstrance he had positively refused to leave any thing to either of his sons. If he had left this document with his attorney or with a trust company, there would have been little trouble after his death. But he insisted upon keeping it himself, and the result was that when he died the document was nowhere to be found. Every possible place was searched, every inquiry made, but to no avail. Arthur Garland therefore applied for an order for administration of his deceased father's estate. His cousin promptly opposed such a proceeding. The consequence was that the case came before the probate court for trial. The nephew's attorney argued that it was contrary to all reason and proba bility that his uncle would have des troyed his will himself, thereby trans mitting his whole property, as he must have known he would be doing, to his two sons, with whom he was not on friendly terms; that the deceased had often stated his intention of leaving the bulk of his property to his nephew, and that, on the whole, the explanation on which the other side relied was in view of the facts impossible. The brothers Garland, on their part, contended that their father had des troyed the will himself; and they pro duced a couple of letters written by the deceased to Arthur shortly before his death, showing some sign of relenting.
Many witnesses were called in sup port of both sides, and the judge decided in favor of the sons. It was quite natural, he considered, that towards the end of his life the old gentleman might have wished to repair what was cer tainly an act of injustice towards his own children, and he therefore held that Joshua Garland had died intestate. Thus the two brothers came into the whole of their father's estate, George Grantham's lawyers having told him that it would be useless to appeal. Nevertheless, this young man did not take his defeat well. He insisted that he had been cheated out of his uncle's estate, although he could not explain how his cousins had managed to get hold of the will, for neither of them had been inside their father's house for ten years. Still, it might not have been very difficult to bribe some person in his employ. George Grantham had a particular reason for disliking Arthur Garland. The two men had fallen in love with the same girl. She had refused the model young man and accepted his cousin. With George, the bitterest point in his failure to win the suit was not the loss of the money, but the fact that Arthur could now marry Ethel Watson, a thing which his serious indebtedness and his lack of funds had hitherto made impos sible. "If the will has been stolen," said Grantham to his attorney, whose name was Marsden, "you have the draft of the will, and we could offer it for pro bate if we could show that the will itself was stolen." "Certainly," was the reply, "but the hypothesis rests upon no substantial basis. If there were any thief, he could be relied upon to keep silent for his own sake." "I intend to drag the truth from
