SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Read Free

screen, were marched smartly away and McCaffery saw for the first time a white wooden box lying by a short trench. It was not twenty yards away.
    "He cometh up and is cut down like a flower . . ."
    McCaffery's mind began to wander in the misty stupor induced by the hot rum. Why had the little bitch lied? Quickly! Why? Why? Faster and faster, the padre unrolled the cadences of the living man's burial service.
    "He fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay . . ."
    Before he clearly understood what they were doing to him, McCaffery was pushed to his knees on the white coffin. Another second and a black band over his eyes closed him from the sunlight.
    "Firing party, present!"
    From the edge of the field, in an instant of great stillness, he could hear the chatter of sparrows. He swayed as the twelve muskets came up to a level. The signal was the drop of the officer's arm, so that the condemned man should not hear the order and twist out of aim. The arm went down. But in the instant before the volley of bullets came, the men in the barrack field heard McCaffery give a wild cry. Whether it was a final protest, or a curse on them all, they never knew. To Corporal Alfred French it sounded as if, on the verge of eternity, Thomas McCaffery had solved the riddle of a lifetime and had only the fraction of a second to tell the world. The shout itself meant nothing to Corporal French, as it drifted away across the dry echoes of the field, and faded in the hot, distant plains. "Take her . . . ! "
    The last reverberations blended with the sharp, sputtering burst of eleven rifles. The firing party looked pale as any sick parade and one of the men had dropped his musket and collapsed. McCaffery's body was knocked sideways by the force of the bullets and fell at full length. The birds were silent, and for a long second not a man moved. Then the anonymous officer marched smartly towards the body, for the hands and feet still twitched in muscular spasms. He drew his Manton pistol, but before he could use it, all movement in the shattered chest of Thomas McCaffery was extinguished.
     
    McCaffery's final cry upset Colonel Collins, who complained angrily in the mess-room of the condemned man further dishonouring the regiment by "screaming like a damned girl when they shot him."
     
    Corporal Alfred French was puzzled by that final cry. "Take her!" Take who? And where? The girl Jolie, presumably.
    That evening, French spoke to Charlie Dalby, a gentleman-ranker of ten years' service. More ranker than gentleman, French thought. However, he asked Dalby what had become of the girl in the McCaffery case.
    "Too late, Frenchy!" chortled Dalby. "Too late m' boy! Gone to England. Goin' to be looked after by a charitabl e old couple. Make a pretty littl e horse-breaker, I dare say. Dammit, Frenchy! Don't mean you fancied the little whore yourself? Eh?"
    Alfred French walked slowly away and considered the facts again. Then he considered the charitable old couple. Charitable old couples might send money to India for the relief of distress. But they did not, as a rule, bring raped half-caste girls all the way to England to live in their own homes. French found Sergeant O'Sullivan.
    "Yes, Fred French, I recall exactly how we found 'im and the girl. No, Fred French, I ain't going to tell no one the prime bits of the story unless someone is going to moisten my bleeding throat with a quart of that Hodgson's India Pale. Why, 'ow 'andsome of you, Fred French! As I was saying, this bunch of natives tells us about the shindy, like, and off we go. Takes five, ten minutes. Just as we gets there, the poor little doxy starts squealing like she's got a bayonet in her bum . . ."
    "It didn't start till you got there? The shindy didn't start ..." "Not that we heard."
    "Then how did the natives who fetched you know it was going to happen?"
    " 'ow should I know?"
    "They bloody planned it, that's how," said French angrily. "They faked the whole lay to put