Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Michel read through them with growing amazement. When he finished, he looked up and said: “Why did he state that I would be greatly in need of money?” Harrop shrugged again. “I wasn’t in your ancestor’s con- fidence, Mr. Michel. How- ever; another extraordinary thing about your family is that they maintained the trust, always retaining a sum equal to that which had been ear- marked by Pierre the first. The nearest it ever came to being lost was in 1843, when the current head of the family, Victor-Marie, bankrupted himself at the gaming tables and attempted to appropriate the legacy to hi$ own uses. However, someone—it is not quite clear who, a distant cousin, maybe—saw to it that this did not happen, and as a further precaution banked the lot, at compound interest, with his own bank. When the firm, which had in the mean- time shifted its headquarters from Paris to London, was amalgamated with a British 16 bank some ten years later, the legacy went too, and because of specific instructions from the family, who apparently believed quite implicitly in Pierre’s foresight, survived as an independent account right up to today, when it amounts to the not inconsiderable sum you inherit. “Anyway, at the same time, the original will which had been certified, generation after generation, was left in charge of a law firm here, with in- structions from the current head of the Michel family in a sealed envelope, to be opened on December 3lst, 1953. It survived two bankruptcies and the blitz, and in 1953, my firm, which had inherited the job along with other encum- brances from a firm called Cliveden Boschenheim and Richards, opened it and set about tracing the legatee. “Well, it took us three months, because your father died so long ago, but we managed it eventually. And you inherit.” comiclbooks.corn