Gideon looked up from the file he had been reviewing when his clerk tapped on his office door to tell him Mrs. Darlington had arrived for her appointment. Smith was a firm believer in appointments, as his satisfied expression revealed. Gideon rose and walked around his desk to greet the lady, whom he knew very well. Her husband had been a longtime client of the firm and had left them in charge of his estate when he passed several years earlier.

Mrs. Darlington looked much as Gideon remembered her. She was a tiny birdlike woman with a helpless air who must have always inspired people to look out for her. Her blond hair had given way to silver now, and her face had settled into a web of wrinkles that only increased her air of fragility. Her eyes, however, no longer held that expression of vague confusion he had always known.

Gideon got her seated in one of the comfortable client chairs and exchanged the usual pleasantries about the state of her health and the weather. By then, he could see Mrs. Darlington was fairly bursting to tell him something.

“Now what can I do for you today, Mrs. Darlington?” he finally asked, thinking perhaps she was expecting a new grandchild or some other happy event and wished to make some financial arrangement for it.

She actually squirmed a little in her chair, as a child might when trying to contain her excitement, and then she glanced over her shoulder, as if checking to make sure Smith had closed the door behind himself. “I have come into some important information,” she confided with a sly little smile.

“Information about what?” Gideon asked.

“It’s confidential, you understand.”

“Of course. Anything you say to me is confidential, Mrs. Darlington.”

“That’s just it. I can’t share it with anyone at all, not even you.”

Gideon frowned and reminded himself that Mrs. Darlington was elderly and might well have been losing her faculties. Patience was key here, and he would be as patient as he needed to be. “If you can’t tell me about it, then I don’t think I can be of much help to you.”

“Oh, but you can. All I need for you to do is release some funds to me from my trust.”

Since Gideon had just been reviewing the Darlington file, he knew exactly what she meant. “As I’m sure you know, you receive an allowance from the trust your husband established for you, and if you require a larger sum for something, you need only ask and any reasonable request will be granted.”

Mrs. Darlington was nodding vigorously even before he had finished his explanation. “That is why I’ve come, you see. I need a larger sum for something.”