Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/215

Rh his bold, yet shifty eyes, as if he were endeavouring to ascertain what sort of person I might be. When he spoke again it was to put a question for which I was unprepared. “Where’s Batters?”

“Mr. Batters—if you are referring to the late Mr. Benjamin Batters—is dead.”

“Dead? Oh! Late, is he? Ah! He was the sort to die early, was Batters. Where might he happen to have died?”

“On Great Ka Island.”

“Great Ka Island? Ah! And where might that be?”

“On the other side of the world.”

“That’s some way off, isn’t it? Most unfortunate. I take it most uncivil of Batters to go and die in a place like that. Especially when I should like to have a look at his grave. You don’t happen to know where it is.”

“I do not, except that I have been given to understand that he was buried where he died.”

“That so? He would be. In the local cemetery, with the flowers growing all around. In a nice deep grave with a stone on top to keep him from getting out of it, and some words cut on it, like ‘He lies in peace.’ There’s no doubt about his lying, anyhow, I’ll take my oath to that.” He emitted a sound which might have been meant for a chuckle. It startled Miss Purvis. “You don’t happen to know when he died?”

“I do not know the precise date, but it was at any rate some three or four months ago.”

“That’s odd, very. Because, as it happens, I was with him some three or four months ago, and I never saw nothing about him that looked like dying. So far from dying, he was lively, uncommon; fleas wasn’t in it with the liveliness of Batters. And to think that he should have died with me looking at him all the time, and yet knowing nothing at all about