"Have you nothing to say? What meaning, Mr. Eversleigh, am I to place on your silence? Why don't you speak?"
Hitherto Bennet, believing like all the rest of the world that there could be nothing wrong with so eminent a firm as Eversleigh, Silwood and Eversleigh, had supposed there might be some explanation of these curious circumstances; he was suspicious, but imagined there might be a possible justification. What he could not understand was why Eversleigh had written and spoken to him as if the Mansions were still his. Eversleigh's silence now told him quite unmistakably there was something very wrong about the whole matter.
"Why don't you speak, Mr. Eversleigh?" he asked, roughly, springing from his chair and towering over the solicitor.
"Harry," began Eversleigh, brokenly, shrinking before the angry eyes of his client, "Harry, your property, as you know, was in Mr. Silwood's department of the office. Mr. Silwood——"
But Eversleigh paused tongue-tied; there was a slackening of the muscles of his face. He seemed on the point of collapse.
As Bennet regarded the solicitor the expression of his face become horrible; all the evil of his life seemed suddenly stamped upon it; it was cruel, fierce, brutal, devilish. He saw that Eversleigh had no explanation to offer; he realized that he had been the victim of fraud, and that his property was gone—it had been stolen from him by his solicitors! As this came home to him, his mood was little short of murderous, and it must be admitted there was some excuse for him.
"Silwood's death," he said harshly, "does not matter to me in the least. He is dead, and it is you that I have to deal with. What has become of my property?"
Harry's rough tones made Eversleigh shrink still more, but he managed to speak.
"Mr. Silwood is dead," he quavered, wishing the while that he was dead too. "But his death is so recent that there has not been sufficient time to go into all his affairs."
"I care nothing for his affairs. What has become of my property? Tell me that."