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.
"It's the sort of thing that you might do, easy enough, we all know that," he said bitingly. "We haven't forgotten your tricks here six years ago, and you needn't think it. Just because the police didn't catch you, you needn't think that you fooled anybody."
"Gentlemen," the doctor tried to interpose, but no one heard him. Henry was evidently enjoying himself. He seemed curiously determined to provoke Selby to the uttermost, and the insolent mockery of his manner was all the more strange because of its contrast to his former taciturnity.
"You're a poor loser, Selby. What's a few dollars more or less to make a fuss over? Some time you may lose something that you really will miss. As for this robbery, if you really were held up,--I don't know whether you were or not, since I have only your word for it,--I'm sure you didn't have money enough to pay for that cheap handkerchief. And as for that plated chain!" He lifted his shoulders.
"What's mine is mine," said Selby, with the ineffective viciousness of a badgered animal.
"But the point is, is everything yours that you think is?"
"I'm going to find out who got my money," said Selby doggedly. "And as for you,--I'll get you yet."