"You are the last man on earth to whom he will now either show or deliver them. Be assured of that."
"For what reason, sir?"
"The account he received from his sister and old Mike Treherne of your treatment of—well, I suppose we must call her yet—Mrs. Devereaux."
Downie's steel-gray eyes stared coldly, glassily, and spitefully at Sharkley. He longed for the power to pulverise, to annihilate him by a glance. He loathed and hated, yet feared this low-bred legal reptile, for he felt that he, and all his family, were somehow in his power. Yet he could not quite abandon his first position of indignant denial and proud incredulity.
He spread a sheet of foolscap paper before him, and making a broad margin on the left side thereof, an old office habit that still adhered to him, like many more that were less harmless, he dipped a pen in the inkstand, as if to make memoranda, and balancing his gold glasses on the bridge of his sharp slender nose, said, while looking keenly over them,
"Attend to me, sir—please. When was this pretended discovery made?"
"Some nine months ago."
"Where—I say, where?"
"At Montreal, in the chapel where this Latour, of whom we have heard so much, was curate."
"A rascally scheme—a forgery in which you have a share."