Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/308

296 “To pack the treasures of the temple in. They must have been rather conspicuous objects to carry about with you anyhow. Go on.”

“Then hang me if one evening I didn’t wake up and find that I’d been senseless for close on two days. The devil had hocussed me.”

“Hocussed you? Impossible!”

“He had. Then he’d slipped away, him and his blessed daughter, while I was more dead than alive, leaving me with as good as nothing in my pockets. What I had to go through no one knows. If I ever do set eyes on him again, I’ll”

The peroration was a study of adjectives.

“Then it appears that you are just as eager to have another interview with Mr. Benjamin Batters as we are. I am sorry your venture was not attended with better fortune. It deserved success. Pray what were you to have had out of it?”

“I was to have had half the blooming lot. And the girl”

“And the girl! Indeed? And the girl! Mr. Luke, I should dearly like”

Mr. Paine interposed.

“Excuse me, Captain Lander, but if it is of Mr. Benjamin Batters you are speaking, if it is to him so many mysterious references have been made as the Great Joss, then I may state that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, that gentleman is dead.”

“Dead?—to the best of your knowledge and belief?—what do you mean?”

As I stared at him, a remark was made by the young lady who so narrowly escaped being made the subject of an experiment in carving. Although evidently very far from being as much herself as she might have been, she had pulled herself together a little, and was holding both hands up to her throat.