The Impostor by Edgar Saltus

Tatum, a fortnight later, looked up at Glendenning and in his mayonnaise voice inquired:

"Do you play golf?"

Glendenning, who had just entered the office, sat down.

"No, I loathe the stupid game."

Tatum caressed his aggressive jaw.

"It's fortunate that stupidity does not hurt. If it did, yelling would be continuous and New York is noisy enough already."

Glendenning twisted.

"I thought you wanted to see me."

"Yes," Tatum replied, "and it's just for that reason that I asked if you play golf. We seem to have run into a bunker."

As the ogre purred, he took up a letter, glanced at it, put it down, and purred anew.

"My San Francisco correspondents write that your cousin registered at the Hotel St. Francis the evening of the ninth November, which is just five days after he left his father's house. My correspondents say that the next morning he asked for a reputable attorney and was directed to the firm that attend to the hotel's law business. According to my correspondents, he applied to this firm to have his will drawn, stating that he was in a hurry and wanted it at once. The will was then drawn for him; after which, he copied it out in his own hand, had his signature witnessed, settled with the firm, returned to the St. Francis, paid his bill, took his grip, and -- goodbye."

Tatum looked again at the letter, refreshed his memory with it, and lit a cigar.

"Months later, or, to be exact, on the twenty-eighth of March, at four o'clock in the morning, he turned up at the Morrow House, where, on the following day, he died."

Tatum wreathed himself in smoke and added:

"And that is the bunker that we are up to."

Glendenning swore.

"Your correspondents say nothing else?"

"Plenty," Tatum trilled. "They enter into all manner of irrelevant details. It appears that when Mike turned up at the Morrow House, he was accompanied by a man who paid his lodging in advance, saw him up to the room assigned, came down, and went away, but not until he had summoned a physician for your cousin, who badly needed one. The physician, Doctor Towers, diagnosed the case as pneumonia, to which alcoholism, complicated with exposure, had been contributory. Your cousin then was dying. What is it, Freddie?"

A clerk entered. Apparently young, he was quite bald.

"It's Jerolomon about the St. Chrysostom Church matter -- "