Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/263

Rh which I would have thanked him to have avoided.

"So, Ferguson, you're a humorist—practical and actual. I've been reading the news—still sane enough to read the papers—how you locked the coroner in his court. I'd have given one of Bernstein's forged bills to have been there to see, though it was on me that they were sitting. I thought I never should have done laughing. And she—the Goddess—she's laughing still." The lady put a question.

"What's that he's saying?"

"He's telling about some nonsense which he saw in the papers."

Lawrence interposed.

"Nonsense, he calls it! And excellent nonsense, too! Haven't you heard? Has no one told you? Don't you know? Charming sister of my dear friend Tom, to-day the coroner's been sitting on my corpse—as I live, upon my corpse! Ferguson's been there as witness. They wanted him to say, it seems, that you had killed me—yes, you, with your own two small hands; but he wouldn't. He said he'd see them—warmer first; as warm as I am now. I can't think where, at this time of the year, the heat can come from. I'm on fire inside and out. So they talked of sending him to gaol.

"But, bless their simple souls, they didn't