your desperadoes here
to secure it. 'Tis useless fencing with us."

"During the time I held Mr. McTavish's place," he repeated
musingly. "That was for several months last year, until the day
when the owner of this property came of age--the day when Mr.
Humphrey Bold by trickery gained access to this house and
threatened my life. Has it gone from your recollection that I held
Mr. McTavish's place in right of a power of attorney from the legal
guardian of the estate, and that whatever I may have done I was
empowered to do? Does it not occur to you that the money you charge
me with stealing was appropriated to the payment of the men whom I
felt impelled to engage for the defense of this property against
the unlawful designs of Mr. Humphrey Bold?

"You will bear me out, Mr. Cludde, when I remind you that the owner
of the estate had fled from her lawfully-appointed guardian, aided
and abetted in her flight, I doubt not, by this upstart himself. I
am ready to account for my administration of the property to Sir
Richard Cludde, and to no one else, and I say you have no right to
call in question anything I may have done in his name."

The fellow's impudence fairly took my breath away. For some moments
I could do nothing but look at him, and he returned my gaze without
blinking, the old sneer playing about his lips. The brazen coolness
with which he ignored his recent attack on the house and sought to
put me in the wrong filled me with sheer amazement. I began to
wonder again whether, after all, the tale he had told to the
buccaneers was a lie, and he had come back to the house with no
further design than to wreak his spite upon it.

And yet this could hardly be, for he could easily have set fire to
it, and then the question flashed upon my mind suddenly, why had he
pressed home the attack on this particular room, when all the rest
of the house lay open to him? Did not that point to the probability
that the money he had spoken of was actually here, in this room?

'Twas vain to bandy more words with the fellow. I called in Joe
Punchard and one of my seamen, and bade them take him to the
kitchen and tie him up. He flushed and bit his lip when I gave this
order, but he saw 'twas folly to resist. When he had gone I told
the others what I had been thinking, and suggested that we should
search the room. A bureau stood against the wall; this was the only
article of furniture in which money could be secured, and Mr.
McTavish, who