'Then she's dead,' the doctor announced. 'Here's the certificate.'
7
Our hero now sets out for the City of New York to find Mr Samuel Zuckermann. He travelled on foot, and he slept under hedges, and he lived on berries and wild herbs, and it took him sixteen days to reach the metropolis.
'What a fabulous place this is!' he cried as he stood at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, staring around him. 'There are no cows or chickens anywhere, and none of the women looks in the least like Aunt Glosspan.'
As for Mr Samuel Zuckermann, he looked like nothing that Lexington had ever seen before.
He was a small spongy man with livid jowls and a huge magenta nose, and when he smiled, bits of gold flashed at you marvellously from lots of different places inside his mouth. In his luxurious office, he shook Lexington warmly by the hand and congratulated him upon his aunt's death.
'I suppose you knew that your dearly beloved guardian was a woman of considerable wealth?' he said.
'You mean the cows and the chickens?'
'I mean half a million bucks,' Mr Zuckermann said.
'How much?'
'Half a million dollars, my boy. And she's left it all to you.' Mr Zuckermann leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his spongy paunch. At the same time, he began secretly working his right forefinger in through his waistcoat and under his shirt so as to scratch the skin around the circumference of his navel - a favourite exercise of his, and one that gave him a peculiar pleasure. 'Of course, I shall have to deduct fifty per cent for my services,' he said, 'but that still leaves you with two hundred and fifty grand.'
'I am rich!' Lexington cried. 'This is wonderful! How soon can I have the money?'
'Well,' Mr Zuckermann said, 'luckily for you, I happen to be on rather cordial terms with the tax authorities around here, and I am confident that I shall be able to persuade them to waive all death duties and back taxes.'
'How kind you are,' murmured Lexington.
'I should naturally have to give somebody a small honorarium.'
'Whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann.'
'I think a hundred thousand would be sufficient.'
'Good gracious, isn't that rather excessive?'
'Never undertip a tax inspector or a policeman,' Mr Zuckermann said. 'Remember that.'
'But how much does it leave for me?' the youth asked meekly.
'One hundred and fifty thousand. But then you've got the funeral expenses to pay out of that.'
'Funeral expenses?'
'You've got to pay the funeral parlour. Surely you know that?'
'But I buried her myself, Mr Zuckermann, behind the cowshed.'
'I don't doubt it,' the lawyer said. 'So what?'
'I never used a funeral parlour.'
'Listen,' Mr Zuckermann said patiently. 'You may not know it, but there is a law in this State which says that no beneficiary under a will may receive a single penny of his inheritance until the funeral parlour has been paid in full.'
'You mean that's a law?'
'Certainly it's a law, and a very good one it is, too. The funeral parlour is one of our great national institutions. It must be protected at all costs.'
Mr Zuckermann himself, together with a group of public-spirited doctors, controlled a corporation that owned a chain of nine lavish funeral parlours in the city, not to mention a casket factory in Brooklyn and a postgraduate school for embalmers in Washington Heights. The celebration of death was therefore a deeply religious affair in Mr Zuckermann's eyes. In fact, the whole business affected him profoundly, almost as profoundly, one might say, as the birth of Christ affected the shopkeeper.