About this story
One brings fifty pounds from an old friend; the second, a solicitor's notice that a dead stranger has left you five million pounds; the third announces a visitor, Prince Lucio Rimanez, who arrives and finds you sitting in the dark rather than admit your poverty. He treats your reversal as amusement, not rescue, and offers his hand toward a life you have not decided whether to trust.
How it opens
January hail worried the window of a rented room whose grate held no fire.
You were Geoffrey Tempest, an unpublished writer with an overdue rent bill and no money for supper.
LandladyI must ask for the month's rent tomorrow, sir, however sorry I am to trouble you.
Three letters are all I have between that promise and another failure.
Choose
Open the Australian envelope from Boffles, who already knows how desperate matters are.
Examine the long blue envelope that looks most likely to contain another demand.