"Perfectly sound," Mr. Harding admitted—"perfectly! Neither my partner nor I have anything to conceal. Last Christmas we were worth just over sixty thousand pounds and since then we've made a bit."
"You've no other partner?" Mr. Bundercombe inquired.
"Certainly not!" Mr. Harding replied.
"Then what about our friend Stanley?" Mr. Bundercombe asked quietly.
Almost as he spoke Stanley walked into the middle of the little group. I have never in the whole course of my life seen two men so thoroughly and entirely amazed. Mr. Harding dropped his cigar on the carpet, where he let it remain. They stared at Stanley as though they were looking upon a ghost. Both men seemed somehow to have lost their confident bearing— seemed to have shrunken into smaller, less assertive, meaner beings.
"Sixty thousand pounds," Mr. Bundercombe went on—"one-third of which belongs to Stanley here."
"Absurd!" Harding faltered.
"Nothing—nothing of the sort!" Densmore declared.
Mr. Bundercombe very carefully lit another cigar. Then he rang the bell. Harding rose to his feet. He was not looking in the least like the sleek, opulent gentleman who had entered the room a few minutes before.
"What's that for?" he demanded, pointing to the bell.