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The Floating Press - Roberts Rinehart Mary

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147 pages

English

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Though not exactly a mystery in the traditional sense, Mary Roberts Rinehart's Where There's a Will certainly has its fair share of intrigue, chicanery and deception. At stake is the ownership of Hope Springs, a family-owned health resort whose future appears uncertain in the aftermath of the longtime manager's demise. When a well-meaning group of employees band together to try to take matters into their own hands, all hell breaks loose.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776529971
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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WHERE THERE'S A WILL
* * *
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

*
Where There's a Will First published in 1912 Epub ISBN 978-1-77652-997-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77652-998-8 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - I Have a Warning Chapter II - Miss Patty Arrives Chapter III - A Will Chapter IV - And a Way Chapter V - Wanted—An Owner Chapter VI - The Conspiracy Chapter VII - Mr. Pierce Acquires a Wife Chapter VIII - And Mr. Moody Indigestion Chapter IX - Dolly, How Could You? Chapter X - Another Complication Chapter XI - Miss Patty's Prince Chapter XII - We Get a Doctor Chapter XIII - The Prince—Principally Chapter XIV - Pierce Disapproves Chapter XV - The Prince, with Apologies Chapter XVI - Stop, Thief! Chapter XVII - A Bunch of Letters Chapter XVIII - Miss Cobb's Burglar Chapter XIX - No Marriage in Heaven Chapter XX - Every Dog Has His Day Chapter XXI - The Mutiny Chapter XXII - Home to Roost Chapter XXIII - Back to Nature Chapter XXIV - Like Ducks to Water Chapter XXV - The First Fruits Chapter XXVI - Over the Fence is Out Chapter XXVII - A Cupboard Full of Rye Chapter XXVIII - Love, Love, Love Chapter XXIX - A Big Night To-Night Chapter XXX - Let Good Digestion
Chapter I - I Have a Warning
*
When it was all over Mr. Sam came out to the spring-house to say good-byto me before he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him go, after all wehad been through together, and I suppose he saw it in my face, for hecame over close and stood looking down at me, and smiling. "You savedus, Minnie," he said, "and I needn't tell you we're grateful; but doyou know what I think?" he asked, pointing his long forefinger at me."I think you've enjoyed it even when you were suffering most. Red-hairedwomen are born to intrigue, as the sparks fly upward."
"Enjoyed it!" I snapped. "I'm an old woman before my time, Mr. Sam. Whatwith trailing back and forward through the snow to the shelter-house,and not getting to bed at all some nights, and my heart going by fitsand starts, as you may say, and half the time my spinal marrow fairlychilled—not to mention putting on my overshoes every morning from forceof habit and having to take them off again, I'm about all in."
"It's been the making of you, Minnie," he said, eying me, with his handsin his pockets. "Look at your cheeks! Look at your disposition! I don'tbelieve you'd stab anybody in the back now!"
(Which was a joke, of course; I never stabbed anybody in the back.)
He sauntered over and dropped a quarter into the slot-machine by thedoor, but the thing was frozen up and refused to work. I've seen thetime when Mr. Sam would have kicked it, but he merely looked at it andthen at me.
"Turned virtuous, like everything else around the place. Not that Idon't approve of virtue, Minnie, but I haven't got used to putting myfoot on the brass rail of the bar and ordering a nut sundae. Hookthe money out with a hairpin, Minnie, and buy some shredded wheat inremembrance of me."
He opened the door and a blast of February wind rattled thewindow-frames. Mr. Sam threw out his chest under his sweater and wavedme another good-by.
"Well, I'm off, Minnie," he said. "Take care of yourself and don't sittoo tight on the job; learn to rise a bit in the saddle."
"Good-by, Mr. Sam!" I called, putting down Miss Patty's doily andfollowing him to the door; "good-by; better have something before youstart to keep you warm."
He turned at the corner of the path and grinned back at me.
"All right," he called. "I'll go down to the bar and get a lettucesandwich!"
Then he was gone, and happy as I was, I knew I would miss him terribly.I got a wire hairpin and went over to the slot-machine, but when I hadfinally dug out the money I could hardly see it for tears.
It began when the old doctor died. I suppose you have heard of HopeSanatorium and the mineral spring that made it famous. Perhaps youhave seen the blotter we got out, with a flash-light interior of thespring-house on it, and me handing the old doctor a glass of mineralwater, and wearing the embroidered linen waist that Miss Patty Jenningsgave me that winter. The blotters were a great success. Below thepicture it said, "Yours for health," and in the body of the blotter,in red lettering, "Your system absorbs the health-giving drugs in HopeSprings water as this blotter soaks up ink."
The "Yours for health" was my idea.
I have been spring-house girl at Hope Springs Sanatorium for fourteenyears. My father had the position before me, but he took rheumatism, andas the old doctor said, it was bad business policy to spend thousandsof dollars in advertising that Hope Springs water cured rheumatism, andthen have father creaking like a rusty hinge every time he bent over tofill a glass with it.
Father gave me one piece of advice the day he turned the spring-houseover to me.
"It's a difficult situation, my girl," he said. "Lots of people thinkit's simply a matter of filling a glass with water and handing it overthe railing. Why, I tell you a barkeeper's a high-priced man mostly, andhis job's a snap to this. I'd like to know how a barkeeper would makeout if his customers came back only once a year and he had to rememberwhether they wanted their drinks cold or hot or 'chill off'. And anotherthing: if a chap comes in with a tale of woe, does the barkeeper haveto ask him what he's doing for it, and listen while he tells how muchweight he lost in a blanket sweat? No, sir; he pushes him a bottle andlets it go at that."
Father passed away the following winter. He'd been a little bitdelirious, and his last words were: "Yes, sir; hot, with a pinch ofsalt, sir?" Poor father! The spring had been his career, you maysay, and I like to think that perhaps even now he is sitting by someeverlasting spring measuring out water with a golden goblet instead ofthe old tin dipper. I said that to Mr. Sam once, and he said he feltquite sure that I was right, and that where father was the water wouldbe appreciated. He had heard of father.
Well, for the first year or so I nearly went crazy. Then I found thingswere coming my way. I've got the kind of mind that never forgets a nameor face and can combine them properly, which isn't common. And whenfolks came back I could call them at once. It would do your heart goodto see some politician, coming up to rest his stomach from the freebar in the state house at the capital, enter the spring-house whereeverybody is playing cards and drinking water and not caring a rapwhether he's the man that cleans the windows or the secretary of thenavy. If he's been there before, in sixty seconds I have his name on mytongue and a glass of water in his hand, and have asked him aboutthe rheumatism in his right knee and how the children are. And in tenminutes he's sitting in a bridge game and trotting to the spring to havehis glass refilled during his dummy hand, as if he'd grown up inthe place. The old doctor used to say my memory was an asset to thesanatorium.
He depended on me a good bit—the old doctor did—and that winter he waspretty feeble. (He was only seventy, but he'd got in the habit of makingit eighty to show that the mineral water kept him young. Finally he gotto BEING eighty, from thinking it, and he died of senility in the end.)
He was in the habit of coming to the spring-house every day to get hismorning glass of water and read the papers. For a good many years it hadbeen his custom to sit there, in the winter by the wood fire and in thesummer just inside the open door, and to read off the headings aloudwhile I cleaned around the spring and polished glasses.
"I see the president is going fishing, Minnie," he'd say, or "Airbrakeis up to 133; I wish I'd bought it that time I dreamed about it. It wasyou who persuaded me not to, Minnie."
And all that winter, with the papers full of rumors that MissPatty Jennings was going to marry a prince, we'd followed it by thespring-house fire, the old doctor and I, getting angry at the Austrianemperor for opposing it when we knew how much too good Miss Patty wasfor any foreigner, and then getting nervous and fussed when we read thatthe prince's mother was in favor of the match and it might go through.Miss Patty and her father came every winter to Hope Springs and Icouldn't have been more anxious about it if she had been my own sister.
Well, as I say, it all began the very day the old doctor died. Hestamped out to the spring-house with the morning paper about nineo'clock, and the wedding seemed to be all off. The paper said theemperor had definitely refused his consent and had sent the prince, whowas his cousin, for a Japanese cruise, while the Jennings family wasgoing to Mexico in their private car. The old doctor was indignant, andI remember how he tramped up and down the spring-house, muttering thatthe girl had had a lucky escape, and what did the emperor expect ifbeauty and youth and wealth weren't enough. But he calmed down, and soonhe was reading that the papers were predicting an early spring, and hesaid we'd better begin to increase our sulphur percentage in the water.
I hadn't noticed anything strange in his manner, although we'd allnoticed how feeble he was growing, but when he got up to go back tothe sanatorium and I reached him his cane, it seemed to me he avoidedlooking at me. He went to the door and then turned and spoke to me overhis shoulder.
"By the way," he remarked, "Mr. Richard will be along in a day or so,Minnie. You'd