McTavish's place in right of a power of attorney from the legal
guardian of the estate, and that whatever I may have done I was
empowered to do? Does it not occur to you that the money you charge
me with stealing was appropriated to the payment of the men whom I
felt impelled to engage for the defense of this property against
the unlawful designs of Mr. Humphrey Bold?
"You will bear me out, Mr. Cludde, when I remind you that the owner
of the estate had fled from her lawfully-appointed guardian, aided
and abetted in her flight, I doubt not, by this upstart himself. I
am ready to account for my administration of the property to Sir
Richard Cludde, and to no one else, and I say you have no right to
call in question anything I may have done in his name."
The fellow's impudence fairly took my breath away. For some moments
I could do nothing but look at him, and he returned my gaze without
blinking, the old sneer playing about his lips. The brazen coolness
with which he ignored his recent attack on the house and sought to
put me in the wrong filled me with sheer amazement. I began to
wonder again whether, after all, the tale he had told to the
buccaneers was a lie, and he had come back to the house with no
further design than to wreak his spite upon it.
And yet this could hardly be, for he could easily have set fire to
it, and then the question flashed upon my mind suddenly, why had he
pressed home the attack on this particular room, when all the rest
of the house lay open to him? Did not that point to the probability
that the money he had spoken of was actually here, in this room?
'Twas vain to bandy more words with the fellow.
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