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.
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