JAMES LOGIE stood at the window of a house in a Dutch town. The pollarded beech, whose boughs were trimmed in a close screen before the walls, had shed its golden leaves and the canal waters were grey under a cloudy sky. The long room was rather dark, and was growing darker. By the chair that he had left lay a yellow cur.
He had been standing for some minutes reading a letter by the fading light, and his back was towards the man who had brought it. The latter stood watching him, stiff and tall, an object of suspicion to the dog.
As he came to the end, the hand that held the paper went down to James’s side. The silence in the room was unbroken for a space. When he turned, Callandar saw his powerful shoulders against the dusk and the jealous shadows of the beech-tree’s mutilated arms.
“I can never thank you enough for bringing me this,” said Logie. “My debt to you is immeasurable.”
“I did it for him—not for you.”
Callandar spoke coldly, almost with antagonism.
“I can understand that,” said James.
But something in his voice struck the other. Though he had moved as if to leave him, he stopped, and going over to the window, drew a playing-card from a pocket in his long coat.
“Look,” he said, holding out the ace scrawled with the picture of the sentry.