Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/62

50 except her companion, enter the house. She is not to allow any man, under any circumstances whatever, to come inside the house, or to cross the doorstep. These are my wishes and orders. If she disobeys any one of them, then may my curse light on her, and I will see that it does, and the house, and the income, and everything, is to be taken from her, and given to the Society for Befriending Sailors. “Signed, .’”

“That, Miss Blyth, is what purports to be your uncle’s will.”

“But,” I gasped, “what is that at the end about stopping in the house, and letting no one come in, and all the rest of it?”

“Those are the conditions on which you are to inherit. Before, however, touching on them I should like to point out in what respect the will seems to me to be most irregular. First of all, it is undated. There could hardly be a more serious flaw. There is nothing to show if it was made last week or fifty years ago. In the interim all sorts of things may have happened to render it null and void. Then a signature to a will requires two witnesses; this has none. Then the wording is extremely loose. For instance, should you fail to fulfil certain conditions, the property is to pass to the Society for Befriending Sailors. So far as I can learn there is no such society. Societies for befriending sailors there are in abundance, but there is not one of that exact name, and it would become a moot point which one of them the testator had in his mind’s eye.”

“All of which amounts to—what?”

“Well, it amounts to this. You can receive the money referred to, and live in the house in question, at your own risk, until someone comes forward with a better title. It will not need a very good title, I am sorry to say, Miss Blyth, to be better than that which