The Begum's Millions

3. A News Item

 ing for her little bedroom, “you know what you told me one day, that Marcel was always right! I, for one, always believe what our friend Marcel says!” Then, kissing her mother, Jeanne retired for the night. A News Item Arriving at the fourth meeting of the Association of Hygiene Conference, Dr. Sarrasin could see that all his colleagues greeted him with utmost respect. Until then, Lord Glandover, Knight of the Garter, who held the office of president of the association , had scarcely deigned to notice the French doctor’s existence. This lord was an august personage,1 whose role was limited to declaring the meeting open or closed and to mechanically grant the floor to the speakers listed on the paper placed before him. He kept his right hand habitually in the breast of his buttoned frock coat—not because he had fallen from his horse—but just because this uncomfortable posture was used by English sculptors in their bronzes of men of state. His wan and beardless face, daubed with red spots, and topped with a brownish green wig raised pretentiously in a cowlick over a forehead that appeared hollow, seemed as comically aloof and ludicrously stiff as one could possibly imagine. Lord Glandover moved as one piece, as though he were made of wood or cardboard. Even his eyes did not seem to roll beneath their arched sockets, except by intermittent jerks, such as the eyes of a doll or a dummy. During the initial presentations, the president of the Association of Hygiene had offered Dr. Sarrasin a greeting that was both protective and condescending and which could have been interpreted this way: “Greetings, Mister Nobody! . . . You’re the one who labors on these little insignificant machines to earn a meager life? . . . I must surely have sharp vision to perceive a creature so distant from me in 3  the hierarchy of human beings! . . . You may remain in the shadow of My Lordship. You have my permission.” This time, Lord Glandover addressed him with the most gracious of smiles and pushed his courtesy so far as to point out an empty seat on his right. Moreover, all members of the association had risen when he approached. Rather surprised by these tokens of such flattering attention, and saying to himself that no doubt the blood-cell counter had appeared to his colleagues a more worthy discovery than they had at first supposed, Dr. Sarrasin took the seat that was offered him. But all his illusions as an inventor vanished when Lord Glandover leaned down toward his ear with such a contortion of cervical vertebrae as might result in a severe torticollis for His Lordship and whispered: “I hear that you are a man of considerable property? They say that you are worth twenty-one million pounds sterling?” Lord Glandover seemed very sorry at having treated so lightly the flesh-and-bone equivalent of such a large sum of money. His whole attitude seemed to reflect, “Why didn’t you let us know? Frankly, that was not very nice! To expose people to such misunderstandings !” Dr. Sarrasin, who did not feel “worth” one penny more than at the preceding sessions, wondered how the news had already been spread when his neighbor on the right, Dr. Ovidius from Berlin, told him with a false and lifeless smile: “Why you’re right up there with the Rothschilds! The Daily Telegraph carried the news! All my compliments!” And he showed him a copy of the paper, dated the very same day. One could read in it the following “news item” whose editing plainly revealed the author: “A Monstrous Inheritance. The famed estate in abeyance of the Begum Gokool has finally discovered its legitimate heir through the capable hands of Messrs. Billows, Green and Sharp, solicitors ,  Southampton Row, London. The fortunate proprietor of the twenty-one million pounds sterling, deposited at present in  the Bank of England, is the French Dr. Sarrasin, whose fine paper given at the Conference in Brighton was reported in our pages three days ago. Through great labor and despite impediments that would merit an entire novel in themselves, Mr. Sharp has managed to establish without any possible doubt that Dr. Sarrasin is the sole living descendant of Jean-Jacques Langévol, baronet, husband by second marriage to the Begum Gokool. This soldier of fortune was, it seems, born in the little French town of Bar-le-Duc...