“But do you know,” Mr. Prohack intervened, “that from that day to this I’ve never heard one single word from him?  Not even a picture-postcard.  And what’s more I’ve never heard a single word of him.”

“Just like Silas, that was!  Just!...  He died from a motor accident.  He was perfectly conscious and knew he’d only a few hours to live.  Spine.  He made his will in hospital, and died about a couple of hours after he’d made it.  I wasn’t there myself.  I was in New York.”

“Well, well!” muttered Mr. Prohack.  “Poor fellow!  Well, well!  This is the most amazing tale I ever heard in my life.”

“It is rather strange,” Mr. Bishop compassionately admitted.

A silence fell—­respectful to the memory of the dead.  The members’ coffee-room seemed to Mr. Prohack to be a thousand miles off, and the chat with his cronies at the table in the window-embrasure to have happened a thousand years ago.  His brain was in anarchy, and waving like a flag above the anarchy was the question:  “How much did old Silas leave?” But the deceitful fellow would not permit the question to utter itself,—­he had dominion over himself at any rate to that extent.  He would not break the silence; he would hide his intense curiosity; he would force Softly Bishop to divulge the supreme fact upon his own initiative.

And at length Mr. Bishop remarked, musingly: 

“Yes.  Thanks to the exchange being so low, you stand to receive at the very least a hundred thousand pounds clear—­after all deductions have been made.”

“Do I really?” said Mr. Prohack, also musingly.

CHAPTER III

THE LAW

His tranquil tone disguised the immense anarchy within.  Silas Angmering had evidently been what is called a profiteer.  He had made his money “out of the war.”  And Silas was an Englishman.  While Englishmen, and—­later—­Americans, had given up lives, sanity, fortunes, limbs, eyesight, health, Silas had gained riches.  There was nothing highly unusual in this.  Mr. Prohack had himself seen, in the very club in which he was now entertaining Softly Bishop, a man who had left an arm in France chatting and laughing with a man who had picked up over a million pounds by following the great principle that a commodity is worth what it will fetch when people want it very badly and there is a shortage of it.  Mr. Prohack too had often chatted and laughed with this same picker-up of a million, who happened to be a quite jolly and generous fellow.  Mr. Prohack would have chatted and laughed with Barabbas, convinced as he was that iniquity is the result of circumstances rather than of deliberate naughtiness.  He seldom condemned.  He had greatly liked Silas Angmering, who was a really educated and a well-intentioned man with a queer regrettable twist in his composition.  That Silas should have profiteered when he got the chance was natural.  Most men would do the same.  Most heroes would do the same.  The man with one arm would conceivably do the same.