He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.
"Let me have a whisky and soda before you go," he added, as the boy was leaving the room.
He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable. But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had drunk the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned over the pages of Punch. In a few minutes he would go to the club and play a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his mind to hear what his boy had to say and he waited for his return. In a little while the boy came back and he brought the overseer with him.
"What are you having a grave dug for?" he asked the overseer point blank. "Nobody's dead."
"I no dig glave," said the man.
"What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a grave this afternoon."
The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.
The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.
"But damn it all, I saw it myself," were the words on the tip of his tongue.
But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his breath failed him.