"Say, Les," he cried, "guess you've maybe some news for me, too. It's
more than a month since--and you were expecting--Things all right?"

Standing reached towards the drawer beside him, and as he did so there
was a sound. It was a curious, inarticulate sound that Bat interpreted
into a laugh. The other opened the drawer and drew out the folded pages
of a letter. These he passed across the table, and his eyes were without
a shadow of the laugh which Bat thought he had heard.

"Best read it," he said. "Take your time. I'll just finish these figures
I'm working on."

It was the curious, cold tone that stirred Bat to his first misgiving.

He took the letter. There were pages of it. He set them in order and
commenced to read. And meanwhile Standing remained apparently engrossed
in his figures.

He read the letter through. He read it slowly, carefully. Then, like
the other had done, the man to whom it was addressed, he read it a
second time. And as he read every vestige of his previous satisfaction
passed from him. A cold constriction seemed to fasten upon his strong
heart. And a terrible realisation of the tragedy of it all took
possession of him. At the end of his second reading he handed the letter
back to its owner without comment of any sort, without a word, but with
a hand that, for once in his life, was unsteady.

"That was in the mail Idepski brought," Standing said, as he returned
the letter to its place, and shut and locked the drawer.