“I conclude, from your manner, that you do not agree with me?” said the Viscount.
“Your Lordship opines truly. I take a very different view of this transaction. I have had all the documents of Conway's claim before me. Far more competent judges have seen and pronounced upon them. They constitute a most formidable mass of evidence, and, save in a very few and not very important details, present an unbroken chain of testimony.”
“So, then, there is a battery preparing to open fire upon us?” said the Viscount, with a laugh of ill-affected indifference.
“There is a mine whose explosion depends entirely upon your Lordship's discretion. If I say, my Lord, that I never perused a stronger case, I will also say that I never heard of one so easy of management The individual in whose favor these proofs exist has not the slightest knowledge of them. He has not a suspicion that all his worldly prospects put together are worth a ten-pound note. It is only within the last three months that I have succeeded in even discovering where he is.”
“And where is he?”
“Serving as a soldier with his regiment in the Crimea. He was in hospital at Scutari when I first heard, but since that returned to duty with his regiment.”
“What signifies all this? The fellow himself is nothing to us!”
Dunn again waited till this burst of anger had passed, and then resumed,—
“My Lord, understand me well. You can deal with this case now; six months hence it may be clear and clean beyond all your power of interference. If Conway's claim derive, as I have strong ground to believe it, from the elder branch, the estate and the title are both his.”
“You are a hardy fellow, a very hardy fellow, Mr. Dunn, to make such a speech as this!”