Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/90

78 shrank from being addressed by a stranger. Putting her arm through mine, she looked him in the face.

“I don’t know you.”

“Have you never heard your uncle speak of me—Max Lander?”

“I never knew my uncle.”

“You never knew your uncle?” He spoke, in echoing her words, almost as if he doubted her. “Then where is your uncle now?”

“He is dead.”

“Dead?”

“If you knew my uncle, as you say you did, you must know that he is dead. Come, Emily, let us go. I think this gentleman has made a mistake.”

“Stop, Miss Blyth, I beg of you. Where did your uncle die?”

“I don’t know where exactly, it was somewhere in Australia.”

“In Australia!” I never saw surprise written more plainly on a person’s face. “But when?”

“If, as you say, you knew him, then you ought to know better than I, who never did.”

“When I last saw Mr. Batters he didn’t look as if he meant to die.”

He gave a short laugh, as if he were enjoying some curious little joke of his own.

“Where did you see him last?”

“On the Flying Scud."

“The Flying Scud? What’s that?”

“My ship. Or, rather, it was my ship. The devil knows whose it is now.”

“Mr. Lander, if that really is your name, I don’t know anything about my uncle, except that he is dead. Was he a sailor?”

“A sailor?” He seemed as if he could not make her out. I stood close to him, so that I saw him well; it struck me that he looked at her with suspicion in his eyes. “He was no sailor. At least, so far as I know.