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'Then, if that's so,' Morris broke forth, 'how about the body? You don't
mean to insinuate that thing I schemed and sweated for, and colported
with my own hands, was the body of a total stranger?'
'O no, we can't go as far as that,' said Michael soothingly; 'you may
have met him at the club.'
Morris fell into a chair. 'I would have found it out if it had come to
the house,' he complained. 'And why didn't it? why did it go to Pitman?
what right had Pitman to open it?'
'If you come to that, Morris, what have you done with the colossal
Hercules?' asked Michael.
'He went through it with the meat-axe,' said John. 'It's all in
spillikins in the back garden.'
'Well, there's one thing,' snapped Morris; 'there's my uncle again, my
fraudulent trustee. He's mine, anyway. And the tontine too. I claim the
tontine; I claim it now. I believe Uncle Masterman's dead.'
'I must put a stop to this nonsense,' said Michael, 'and that for ever.
You say too near the truth. In one sense your uncle is dead, and has
been so long; but not in the sense of the tontine, which it is even on
the cards he may yet live to win. Uncle Joseph saw him this morning; he
will tell you he still lives, but his mind is in abeyance.'
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