Foe-Farrell | Page 4

haven't worn since I took to a sedentary life. Higgs must have picked it up at our last move--"
"Do you want the date?" put in Otway. "If so, it was in January last--January the 18th, to be exact."
"But--"
"I mean the date of the inquest. The paper would be next morning's-- Wednesday the 19th," Otway went on in a curious level voice, as though spelling the information for them out of the lamplight on the table.
Barham stared. "But--" he began again--"but how, sir?"
Polkinghorne, who also had stared for a moment, broke in with a laugh. "The C.O. is pulling your leg, Sammy. He tore off the top of your paper--it was lying around all this morning--noted the date and thought he might safely make a pipe-spill."
"That won't do," retorted Barham, still searching Otway's face on which there seemed to rest a double shadow. "For when I turned it out of my valise this morning I carefully looked for the date--I'll swear I did--and it was missing."
"Then you tore the thing in unpacking, and the C.O. picked up the scrap you overlooked. Isn't that the explanation, sir?"
"No," said Otway after a pause, still as if he spoke under control of a muted pedal. He checked himself, apparently on the point of telling more; but the pause grew into a long silence.
Barham tried back. "January, you said, sir? . . . and now we're close upon the end of October--"
He could get nothing out of the C.O.'s eyes, which were bent on the table; and little enough could he read in his face, save that it was sombre with thought and at the same time abstracted to a degree that gave the boy a sudden uncanny feeling. It was like watching a man in the travail of second sight, and all the queerer because he had never seen an expression even remotely resembling it on the face of this hero of his, with whose praise he filled his home-letters--"One of the best: never flurried: and, what's more, you never catch him off his game by any chance."
Otway's jaw twitched once, very slightly. He put out a hand to pick up his pen and resume writing; but in the act fell back into the brown study, the trance, the rapt gaze at a knot in the woodwork of the table. His hand rested for a moment by the ink-pot around which his fingers felt, like a blind man's softly making sure of its outline and shape. He withdrew it to his tunic-pocket, pulled out pipe and tobacco-pouch and began to fill. . . .
At this point in came young Yarrell-Smith. Young Yarrell-Smith wore a useful cloak--French cavalry pattern--of black mackintosh, with a hood. It dripped and shone in the lamplight.
"Beastly night," he announced to the company in general and turned to report to Otway, who had sat up alert on the instant.
"Yes," quoted Otway,
"'Thou comest from thy voyage-- Yes, the spray is on thy cloak and hair.'"
That's Matthew Arnold, if the information conveys anything to you. Everything quiet?"
"Quite quiet, sir, for the last twenty minutes; and the Captain just come in and unloading. No accidents, though they very nearly met their match, five hundred yards down the road."
"We heard," said Polkinghorne.
"I tucked the Infant into his little O.P., and left him comfy. He won't see anything there to-night."
"He'll think he does," said Sammy Barham with conviction.
"The Infant is quite a good Infant," Otway observed; and then, sinking his voice a tone, "Lord, if at his age I'd had his sense of responsibility . . ."
Barham noted the change of tone, though he could not catch the words. Again he threw a quick look towards his senior. Something was wrong with him, something unaccountable. . . .
Yarrell-Smith noted nothing. "Well, he won't see anything to-night, sir; and if Sammy will pull himself together and pity the sorrows of a poor young man whose trembling knees--"
"Sorry," said Sammy, turning to the locker and fishing forth a bottle.
"--I'll tell you why," Yarrell-Smith went on as the tot was filled. "First place, the Bosch has finished hating us for to-night and gone to bye-bye. Secondly, it's starting to sleet--and that vicious, a man can't see five yards in front of him."
"I love my love with a B because he's Boschy," said Sammy lightly: "I'll take him to Berlin--or say, Bapaume to begin with--and feed him on Substitutes. . . . Do you know that parlour-game, Yarrell dear? Are you a performer at Musical Chairs? Were you by any chance brought up on a book called What Shall We do Now? The fact is--" Sammy, who could be irreverent, but so as never to offend, stole a look at Otway--"we're a trifle hipped in the old log cabin. I started a guessing-competition just now, and our Commanding Officer won't