been called. These young officers had applied justice intended for minor social misdemeanours to a form of murder—and it had failed them. Then, before any of them could speak, a tall, pale, dark-haired man stood up at the far end of the prosecutor’s table. He had sat quietly and almost hesitantly throughout the proceedings without once offering to take part. This was Major Henry Putney-Wilson.
“Mr. President, sir, I am not a member of this court. However, if you will allow me, I will lay aside for a while my obligation to the manual of military law and even, as some will think, my regard for the Christian religion. Since he scorns common decency and common justice alike, I require Captain Moran to afford me that satisfaction which one gentleman owes to another.”
The onlookers watched in silence. This formula had only one meaning. Major Putney-Wilson had challenged Moran to a duel. By this date, duelling was illegal and seldom heard of between British officers. Such exchanges as occurred were invariably fought with pistols. But Major Putney-Wilson was no kind of shot. Moran could cut the heart out of the ace of spades at thirty-seven paces. If ever a man deserved the cliché of signing his own death warrant, it was the major at that moment.
Captain Canning was about to intervene, but Moran was there first. The mess-room rang with a short burst of scornful laughter.
“Duelling, sir, is a game for schoolboys. A game of chance. At twenty, I could shoot the buttons from a man’s epaulettes at thirty paces and never singe his tunic. But I was once challenged in my Oxford days at Magdalen College, and I fought a duel. We met in Christ Church Meadows at dawn. I shot at this idiot who had called me out. The distance was not thirty paces. Yet I missed. The other fellow was a milksop who had never truly handled a pistol in his life. Look at this!”
He pulled back his tunic cuff and undid the link of his shirt. There was a small track upon the skin over the bone where no yellow hair grew, rather as if it had been shaved. He buttoned his sleeve and looked round at them all.
“I knew no better at twenty, gentlemen. A close-run thing indeed! But now? Duelling? No, thank you very much! Let us rather roll a pair of dice or cut the cards!”
Though he was fierce enough in his humour, the worst of Rawdon Moran was a terrifying moral chasm in his character, a bottomless depth of hate and harm.
So they stood motionless for a moment, like actors taking a curtain call at the end of a play’s final scene. He had the whip hand over them. Everyone was looking at Moran, scarcely noticing one another. While they hesitated, he took his sword and thrust it into its scabbard. He swung round and walked towards the door that led to the ante-room. No one tried to prevent him leaving. Despite his contempt for duelling, they knew he would kill at that moment if he had to. And the law might find in his favour. The second lieutenant who was standing by the door closed it behind Moran and then, in an unexpected movement, stood with his back to it and with his arms folded, as if to prevent anyone else from following.
Presently there was a shout from beyond the closed door and the members of the subalterns’ court looked at one another. They heard a gasp and trapped-animal sounds of a struggle which lasted a full minute. The lieutenant standing at the door remained quite still with his back to it, to prevent anyone from following. Then their hearts jumped as there came a terrible cry and a roar of anger pierced by pain. A second roar followed that might have been agony in another man but was fury in this one. So long as Moran was in the mess room, almost all eyes had been upon him. Only now did most of them realise that Putney-Wilson was no longer there. He had not been part of the proceedings, and no one had thought his quiet departure important.
The door of the ante-room swung open awkwardly. Two powerfully built soldiers, not wearing regimental insignia and unfamiliar to the onlookers, were standing over a figure lying on the floor. A military farrier, also from some other regiment, stood upright with a branding iron in his hand. The bright heat was fading rapidly from the