Your late Managing Director, had
he lived--" Here Jimmy made a pause.
"You knew our Mr. Farrell, sir?" asked the present Managing Director,
sympathetically.
"He honoured me with his acquaintance. If he had lived," said Jimmy
. . . "But there! . . . By the way . . . that second marriage of
his--wasn't it rather sudden? I understood him to be a confirmed
widower."
"We know nothing about it, sir: nothing beyond what he conveyed in a
letter to our Vice-Chairman. In fact, sir, during the last year or
so of his life, when Mr. Farrell took his strange fancy for foreign
parts, it seemed to us--well, it seemed to us that, in his strange
condition of mind, anything might happen. To this day, sir, we
haven't what you might call any certitude of his demise. It is not,
up to this moment, legally proven--as they say. Our last letter from
him was dated from far up the coast--from a place called San Ramon,
which I understand to be in Peru. In it he announced that he was
married again, and to a lady (as we gathered) of Peruvian descent.
He added that he had never, previously to the time of writing or
thereabouts, known complete happiness.
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