e sunlight filtering
through gave the room a strangely translucent effect. It was like a
chamber under the sea.
It had been Monck's intention to have his drink and pass straight on to
his own quarters for a bath, but the letters on the table caught his eye
and he stopped. Standing in the green dimness with a tumbler in one
hand, he sorted them out. There were two for himself and two for Tommy,
the latter obviously bills, and under these one more, also for Tommy in
a woman's clear round writing. It came from Srinagar, and Monck stood
for a second or two holding it in his hand and staring straight out
before him with eyes that saw not. Just for those seconds a mocking
vision danced gnomelike through his brain. Just at this moment probably
most of the other men were opening letters from their wives in the
Hills. And he saw the chance he had not taken like a flash of far,
elusive sunlight on the sky-line of a troubled sea.
The vision passed. He laid down the letter and took up his own
correspondence. One of the letters was from England. He poured out his
drink and flung himself down to read it.
It came from the only relation he possessed in the world--his brother.
Bernard Monck was the elder by fifteen years--a man of brilliant
capabilities, who had long since relinquished all idea of worldly
advancement in the all-absorbing interest of a prison chaplaincy. They
had not met for over five years, but they maintained a regular
correspondence, and every month brought to Everard Monck the thin
envelope directed in the square, purposeful handwriting of the man who
had been during the whole of his life his nearest and best friend. Lying
back in the wicker-chair, relaxed and weary, he opened the letter and
began to read.
Ten minutes later, Tommy Denvers, racing in, also in polo-kit, stopped
short upon the threshold and stared in shocked amazement as if some
sudden horror had caught him by the throat.
"Great heavens above, Monck! What's the matter?" he ejaculated.
Perhaps it was in part due to the green twilight of the room, but it
seemed to him in that first startled moment that Monck's face had the
look of a man who had received a deadly wound. The impression passed
almost immediately, but the memory of it was registered in his brain for
all time.
Monck raised the tumbler to his lips and drank before replying, and as
he did so his customary grave composure became apparent, making Tommy
wonder if his senses had tric
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