J. S. Fletcher

“ CHAPTER XVI THE BROWN HAND That was a summer morning of great beauty, by land and sea, and under any circumstances, I should have rejoiced in my surroundings. The sun was already well up in a cloudless sky, the deep blue of which was reflected in the lightly dancing waves all round me—dancing under the gentle stirrings of a soft wind that blew shoreward from the south and drove the surface waters to a long ripple of white against the dark outline of the mainland, three miles away. ”

“ I looked at Uncle Joseph, as if he were an authority, and he nodded in ready response.
“Just so, Benjamin,” he replied. “Water is what we cannot do without. But I made inquiry on that there point. Of Mr. Getch, of course. Mr. Getch is a clever man, Benjamin—a man of ideas! Mr. Getch pointed out that once upon a time this here island was tenanted by monks. This very tower, as we’re a-sitting in, is the tower of their church. Monks, Benjamin, is men. Where men lives, there must be water—that’s how Mr. Getch argued it, and I take it to ha’ been very clever of him. ”

“ Through the open doorway I saw him standing with it, there closely held, as he stood on the platform of rocky land outside the tower, looking from one point of the compass to another; he continued to hold it there all the time he stood or strolled about there, and he had it still folded in his arm when he came back. And I said to myself on seeing this that I was quite willing to lay any odds, however extravagant in figure, that packed within that beastly old bag was the Kang-he vase! ”