"If I have, I'll pay for it," said Selby, with a vicious look. "I pay my debts in full every time. Hello! This looks like something interesting! Well, perhaps this can be explained away, too!" He picked up from the mortar under the loose brick a glittering something and held it up with a triumphant air.
"It's my watch-chain and my charm, that I was robbed of; that's what it is." He shook it in his excitement until the links rattled. "Is that evidence or isn't it? Does that prove anything or doesn't it?"
"Is that chain yours?" asked Underwood gravely.
"Of course it's mine. My initials are on the charm and the date it was presented to me. I guess there isn't any one going to claim that chain but me."
He took it to Ralston and Hadley, talking excitedly. Underwood sat silent, with his head a little bent and his eyes on the floor. He looked as though a weight had fallen upon him. Burton tried to catch Leslie's eye for a reassuring glance, but she was anxiously watching her father and was regardless of everything else.
"It looks bad--bad," muttered Hadley, handing the chain back to Selby.
Henry had been glowering at Selby in somber silence, and now he startled every one by speaking out with a slow emphasis that stung.
"I've heard it said that those who hide can find," he said.
Henry lifted his shoulders in an exasperating shrug. "You went pretty straight to the right brick."
Selby walked up to Henry with out-thrust chin, and spoke in a manner that struck Burton as deliberately offensive and provocative.
"That's what you have to say, is it? Now my advice to you is that you say just as little as possible. You're not far enough out of the woods yourself to holler very loud."
"How so? Do you mean now that it was I who robbed you?" Henry asked tauntingly. "It would have been quite easy for me to wear my father's cloak, if I wanted to throw suspicion on him; and to hide these things in the room, wouldn't it? Come, now! Was it I, or wasn't it?"
Selby hesitated an instant. Burton wondered whether he were considering the advisability of changing his line of attack to that so audaciously suggested by Henry. Perhaps he regretted that he had not accused Henry in the first place, but saw that it was impossible consistently to do so now.
