Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/169

Rh The heading on “Arthur Lennard’s” letter was “Great Ka Island: Lat. 5° South; Long. 134° East.” There might be such a place; the description seemed precise enough, and I had no atlas which would enable me to determine. But, at any rate, the packet in which it came had not been posted there. The postmark was Deptford; the date yesterday’s. When I held the paper on which the letter had been written up to the light I found that the watermark was “Spiers and Pond. Freshwater Mill Note, London,” which, under the circumstances, seemed odd.

It was, perhaps, nothing that the will was obviously the production of an unlettered person. Such persons do make their own wills, and, probably, will continue to do so to the crack of doom. But it was something that it was both unwitnessed and undated. And when to this was added the fact that the letter which told of Mr. Batters’ decease was undated too, the conjunction struck one a trifle forcibly.

Then the conditions under which Mary Blyth was to inherit were so puerile, not to say outrageous. She was never to be out of the precious house in Camford Street after nine at night. She was to receive no visitors; have only a woman as a companion, and if that woman left her, was to occupy the premises alone. After I had read it for the fourth time I threw the paper on to the table.

“Monstrous! monstrous! It consigns the unfortunate woman to an unnatural existence; she cannot marry; is cut off from her fellows; sentenced to life-long imprisonment. Who would care to become even a millionaire on such conditions? Even if the thing is what it pretends to be, I doubt if it would be upheld by any court in England. I’m inclined to think that someone has been having a little joke at my expense.”

But there were the bonds. My experience of such articles is regrettedly small; but, such as it was, it went to show that they were genuine. Bonds for