The next moment he had incentive for other thoughts. Ducie scanned the caption of the paper in his hand, turned the page to observe its signature, then lifted his head. His voice, although clear, trembled.
“Here is the release of the mortgage, duly executed and with the original deed of trust inclosed.”
There was a moment of tense silence. Then ensued a hearty clapping of hands about the table.
Floyd-Rosney satirically inclined his head to this outburst of involuntary congratulation. “Thank you, very much,” he said with an ironical smile.
The group seemed somewhat disconcerted, and several attempted justification.
“Always gratifying that the lost should be found,” said one. “Nothing personal to you, however.”
“I am sure you, too, would wish the right to prevail,” said a priggish gentleman, who looked as if he might be a Sunday-school superintendent.
“Well, I hate to see an old family kept out of its own on a legal quibble,” said one fat gentleman uncompromisingly; he knew better how to order a dinner acceptably than his discourse.
“It will be difficult to prove an ouster after forty years of adverse possession,” said Floyd-Rosney, “even if the release or quit-claim, or whatever the paper is, shall prove to be entirely regular.”
“You surely will not plead the prescription in bar of the right,” the broker seemed to remonstrate.
“Of the remedy, you mean,” Floyd-Rosney corrected with his suave, unsmiling smile. “I should, like any other man of affairs, act under the advice of counsel.”
“Why, yes, of course,” assented the broker, accessible to this kind of commercial logic. However, the situation was so contrary to the general run of business that it seemed iniquitous somehow that the discovery of the papers restoring the title of this great estate to its rightful owners, after forty years of deprivation of its values, should be at last nullified and set at naught by a decree of a court on the application of the doctrine of the statute of limitations. There was a pervasive apprehension of baffled justice even before the paper was examined.
Ducie was disposed to incur no further Floyd-Rosney’s supercilious speculations as to the contents of the paper. Instead, he spread it before Colonel Kenwynton.