LITMIR.BIZ

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Street, Hampstead Road. Dr. Batson had not returned from his round when I arrived, but a few minutes later he burst into the surgery humming an air from the Mikado. "Ha! Here you are then! Punctual to the minute!" He hung his hat on a peg, laid his visiting-list on the desk of the dispensing counter and began to compound medicine with the speed of a prestidigitateur, talking volubly all the time. "That's for the old woman with the liver, Mrs. Mudge, Cumberland Market, you'll see her prescription in the day book. S'pose you don't know how to wrap up a bottle of medicine. Better watch me. This is the way." He slapped the bottle down on a square of cut paper, gave a few dextrous twiddles of his fingers and held out for my inspection a little white parcel like the mummy-case of a deceased medicine bottle. "It's quite easy when you've had a little practice," he said, deftly sticking the ends down with sealing-wax, "but you'll make a frightful mucker of it at first." Which prophecy was duly fulfilled that very evening.

      "What time had I better see that heart case?" said I.

      "Oh, you won't have to see it at ail. Man's dead. Message left half an hour go. Pity, isn't it? I should have liked to hear what you thought of him. Must have been fatty heart. I'll write out the certificate while I think of it. Maggie! Where's that note that Mrs. Samway left?"

      The question was roared out vaguely through the open door to a servant of unknown whereabouts, and resulted in the appearance of a somewhat scraggy housemaid bearing an opened note. "Here we are," said Batson, snatching the note out of its envelope and opening the book of certificate forms; "Septimus Maddock was the chappie's name, age fifty-one, address 23, Gayton Street, cause of death—that's just what I should like to know—primary cause, secondary causes—I wish these infernal government clerks had got something better to do than fill printed forms with silly connundrums. I shall put "Morbus Cordis"; that ought to be enough for them. Mrs. Samway—that's his landlady, you know—will probably call for the certificate during the evening."

      "Aren't you going to inspect the body?" I asked.

      "Lord, no! Why should I! It isn't necessary, you know. I'm not an undertaker. Wish I was. Dead people good deal more profitable than live ones."

      "But surely," I exclaimed, "the death ought to be verified. Why the man may not be dead at all."

      "I know," said Batson, scribbling away like a minor poet, "but that isn't my business. Business of the Law. Law wastes your time with a heap of silly questions that don't matter and leaves out the question that does. Asks exact time when I last saw him alive, which doesn't matter a hang, and doesn't ask whether I saw him dead. Bumble was right. Law's an ass."

      "But still," I persisted, "leaving the legal requirements out of consideration, oughtn't you for your own sake, and as a public duty, to verify the death? Supposing the man were not really dead?"

      "That would be awkward for him," said Batson, "and awkward for me, too, if he came to life before they buried him. But it doesn't really happen in real life. Premature burial only occurs in novels."

      His easy-going confidence jarred on me considerably. How could he, or anyone else, know what happened? "I don't see how you arrive at that," I objected. "It could only be proved by wholesale disinterment. And the fact remains that, if you don't verify a reported death you have no security against premature burial—or even cremation."

      Batson started up and stared at me, his wide-open, pale-blue eyes looking ridiculously small through his deep, concave spectacles. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I am glad you mentioned that—about cremation, I mean, because that is what will probably happen. I witnessed the chappie's will a couple of days ago, and I remember now that one of the clauses stipulated that his body should be cremated. So I shall have to verify the death for the purpose of the cremation certificate. We'd better pop round and see him at once."

      With characteristic impulsiveness he sprang to his feet, snatched his hat from its peg, and started forth, leaving me to follow. "Beastly nuisance, these special regulations," said Batson, as he ambled briskly up the street. "Give a lot of trouble and cause a lot of delay."

      "Isn't the ordinary death certificate sufficient in a case of cremation?" I asked.

      "For purposes of law it is, though there is some talk of new legislation on the subject, but the Company are a law unto themselves. They have made the most infernally stringent regulations, and, as there is no crematorium near London excepting the one at Woking, you have to abide by their rules. And that reminds me—" here Batson halted and scowled at me ferociously through his spectacles.

      "Reminds you?" I repeated.

      "That they require a second death certificate, signed by a man with certain special qualifications." He stood awhile frowning and muttering under his breath and then suddenly turned and bounced off in a new direction. "Going to catch the other chappie and take him with us," he explained, as he darted out into the Hampstead Road. "Be off my mind then. A fellow named O'Connor, Assistant Physician to the North London Hospital. He'll do if we can catch him at home. If not, you'll have to manage him."

      Batson looked at his watch—holding it within four inches of his nose—and broke into a trot as we entered a quiet square. Halfway up he halted at a door which bore a modest brass plate inscribed "Dr. O'Connor," and seizing the bell-knob, worked it vigorously in and out as if it were the handle of an air-pump. "Doctor in?" he demanded briskly of a startled housemaid; and, without waiting for an answer, he darted into the hall, down the whole length of which he staggered, executing a sort of sword-dance, having caught his toe on an unobserved door-mat.

      The doctor was in and he shortly appeared in evening dress with an overcoat on his arm, and apparently in as great a hurry as Batson himself. "Won't it do to-morrow?" he asked, when Batson had explained his difficulties and the service required.

      "Might as well come now," said Batson persuasively; "won't take a minute and then I can go away in peace."

      "Very well," said O'Connor, wriggling into his overcoat. "You go along and I'll follow in a few minutes. I've got to look in on a patient on my way up west, and I shall be late for my appointment as it is. Write the address on my card, here."

      He held out a card to my principal, and when the latter had scribbled the address on it, he bustled out and vanished up the square. Batson followed at the same headlong speed, and, again overlooking the mat, came out on the pavement like an ill-started sprinter.

      Gayton Street, at which we shortly arrived, was a grey and dingy side-street exactly like a score of others in the same locality, and Number 23 differed from the rest of the seedy-looking houses in no respect save that it was perhaps a shade more dingy. The door was opened in answer to Batson's indecorously brisk knock by a woman—or perhaps I should say a lady—who at once admitted us and to whom Batson began, without preface, to explain the situation. "I got your note, Mrs. Samway. Was going to bring my friend, here, round to see the patient. Very unfortunate affair. Very sad. Unexpected, too. Didn't seem particularly bad yesterday. What time did it happen?"

      "I can't say exactly," was the reply. "He seemed quite comfortable when I looked in on him the last thing at night, but when I went in about seven this morning he was dead. I should have let you know sooner, but I was expecting you to call."

      "H'm, yes," said Batson, "very unfortunate. By the way, Mr. Maddock desired that his remains should be cremated, I think?"

      "Yes, so my husband tells me. He is the executor of the will, you remember, in the absence of any relatives. All Mr. Maddock's relations seem to be in America."

      "Have you got the certificate forms?" asked Batson.

      "Yes. My husband got all the papers from the undertaker this afternoon."

      "Very well, Mrs. Samway, then we'll just take a look at the body—have to certify that I've seen it, you know."

      Mrs. Samway ushered us into a sitting-room where she had apparently been working alone, for an unfinished mourning garment of some kind lay on the table. Leaving us here, she went away and presently returned with a sheaf of papers and a lighted candle, when we rose and followed her to a back room on the ground floor. It was a smallish room, sparely furnished, with heavy curtains drawn across the window, and by one wall a bed, on which was a motionless

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