A splendid vote of confidence in Thayer, Madden reflected. Tenure, too. Very nice for him.

He went on to personal bequests, a list of names largely unknown to him. Twenty-five thousand to each of the great-nieces in Oregon (not much to blood relatives out of millions) ten thousand to this friend and that, five thousand to another; to Brian Thayer, the sum of ten thousand dollars; to the Pecks, ten thousand each; to Joan Sheldon the conditional bequest of ten thousand to be paid to her in the event that she was still in Mrs. Meeker's employ at the time of the latter's death. (No additional five thousand for each year after Joan's twenty-first birthday; Mrs. Meeker hadn't got around to taking care of that.)

Too bad, Madden thought. Joan Sheldon had earned the larger bequest.

Mr. Hohlbein was left twenty thousand, Garth ten. There were no other names Madden recognized. Arthur Williams's might well have been included, he felt. Mrs. Meeker had spent a small fortune on a search for him but had made no provision for him in her will if he should be found after her death, and had never mentioned his name to her lawyers.

Madden took up this point with Garth, who shrugged it off. ``Old people have their idiosyncrasies.''

``This one came a bit high at thirty thousand or more.''

``Well, she had a number of them where money was concerned,'' Garth said. ``Sometimes we'd have trouble persuading her to make tax-exempt charitable contributions, and I've known her to quarrel with a plumber over a bill for fixing a faucet; the next moment she'd put another half million into the scholarship fund or thirty thousand into something as impractical as this unfortunate Johnston affair. There was no telling how she'd react to spending money.''