even in those days, he owned too many precious stones and feared robbers. Nick had been playing he was Father, protecting his jewels against burglars. Mother, smiling, had come in the door, and he had pointed the gun at her, said "Boo!" and pulled the trigger with all the strength of his small hands.
Knotting his tie before the cracked, brown-spotted mirror, Nick drew a long sigh. Aimed by fate, by devils, by anything but his luckless clumsiness, the bullet had shot straight for his mother's heart, and almost before he had known that his world was ended, she had lain dead upon the floor, scarlet spreading out into the white muslin flounces beneath her breast.
His father had run into the room, his face white as the muslin gown. He had looked at Mother upon the floor and Nick crying because his hand hurt and the gun had made such a noise and he was frightened, and then Father's huge fist had smashed down upon him and Nick had remembered nothing more of that scene. Yes, his father had loved Mother as he had loved his beautiful jewels, with an insane idolatry. And Nick had killed her.
As he thought of the hell his childhood had been from that time on, Nick's face darkened. This bequest was a late reward for cruelty, for what he had endured. He was marked until he died by the things that had happened to him, the years that he had dragged out in wretched homes, more wretched schools, everywhere finding that the story he had killed his mother had preceded him. At eighteen, the bare grudging subsistence he had received from his father, whom he had never seen since the day of his mother's death, had ceased, and, ill prepared, he had been thrown into a bad world.
Nick closed his door behind him. The hall smelled of cabbage, peppery French dishes, and unwashed stairs. Well, the amends were late but they had come; he was through with hell. His lips formed a whistle again; he smiled at the concierge's bearded face, looking up at him suspiciously.
Beyond the windows of Stevens and Brewster's New York office, pigeons wheeled in the sun. Nick contemplated the sealed letter addressed to him, the neatly wrapped small box, lying in his hands. "So really," he said, tapping the letter, "unless I find in this the answer to what Father did with his fortune, I'm no better off than before?"
"It amounts to that," Mr. Stevens admitted. "As I told you, as soon as he knew he would not recover, he began to convert everything he possessed—real estate, securities—into jewels. A queer business—you must realize he took terrific losses doing it—without turning a hair."
Nick watched the gray-feathered pigeons turning in the sun an instant, and then he said bitterly, "It can't be any news to you, Mr. Stevens, that my father hated me. Perhaps this is his latest joke at my expense—I can hardly believe that he really meant me to be his heir." He pocketed the thick letter and the little box.
"It was too bad, terrible," Mr. Stevens said uncomfortably. "A childish accident, a pity!" He moved his dry white hands together on his desk. "You are his heir, however, right enough, if you can only locate your heirdom. Of course you have the house. You might sell it—although a place like that, a castle really, is a white elephant on this market."
"I dare say I shall go up and look it over," Nick said, picking up the keys from the desk. "Any servants there?"
"No—they were dismissed after Mr. Carruthers' death, by his instructions. It's clean, though—a woman goes in to sweep and air it every two weeks."
