“Oh?”
I began to smell a rat. Mr. Paine waved his hand towards the young lady the cursing gentleman had been about to practise on.
“This is Miss Purvis, the feminine friend whom Miss Blyth chose to be her sole companion. Other conditions were attached to the bequest equally mysterious. Indeed, it would really seem as if there was something in that house in Camford Street the existence of which the late Mr. Batters was particularly anxious should be concealed from the world. Miss Blyth only entered on the occupation of her property yesterday. Yet Miss Purvis came at an early hour this morning to tell me that something extraordinary had happened in the middle of the night. Something, she doesn’t quite know what, but fancies it was some wild animal, made a savage attack upon Miss Blyth without the slightest provocation. And when Miss Purvis recovered from the shock which the occurrence gave her, she found that she herself had been thrown into the street.”
“Mr. Paine!” I laid my hand upon the lawyer’s shoulder. “Do you know what’s inside that house?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion. How should I have?”
“It’s the late Mr. Batters!”
“The late Mr. Batters?”
“The thing the existence of which Mr. Batters was most anxious to keep concealed, was Mr. Batters himself—for reasons. So he’s put about a cock and bull story making out he’s dead, and then hidden himself in this house of which you’re talking.”
“Captain Lander!”
“Mind, it’s only my guess, as yet. But I don’t think you’ll find that I’m sailing very wide of the wind. The more I turn things over, after listening to what you’ve said, the more likely it seems to me that the Great Joss, whom we’ve all been on tiptoe to get a peep at, has hidden himself in that house which he pretends to have left to his niece, and is waiting there for us to find him. And I’m off to do it!”