Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/168

156 Of its contents I was not able, at first, to make head or tail. After prolonged examination, however, I arranged them thus:

Summed up, the contents of the packet amounted to this.

A certain Benjamin Batters was reported to have died on an island on the other side of the world of which I had never heard; why I was advised of the fact, there was nothing to show. His will was entrusted to my keeping—how my name had travelled through space so as to reach the cognisance of the Mr. Arthur Lennard who had reported the death of the said Benjamin Batters there was not the faintest hint. Bonds—“Goschens”—to the value of £20,000 accompanied the will; since they were payable to bearer this alone suggested profound confidence in an apparently perfect stranger. Finally, there was a smaller parcel which was sealed and endorsed “To be given to my niece, Mary Blyth, and to be opened by her only.”

The will—which was almost as rudimentary a document of the kind as I ever lighted on—bequeathed to the said Mary Blyth the income which was derived from the consols. As to the person in whose name the capital was to be vested not a word was said, nor did I perceive anything which would prevent her from dealing with it exactly as she chose. She was also, under curious and stringent conditions, to become the life tenant of a house in Camford Street of which, however, no title-deeds were enclosed, nor was their existence hinted at.

Had it not been for the presence of the bonds I should have set the whole thing down right away as a hoax.