Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,28

dull metal. Major Putney-Wilson, having seen justice done, had begun walking away into the night.

The figure on the floor struggled to his feet. Moran’s tunic had been torn where the buttons and epaulettes were cut away. They had “played the rogues’ march” with him after all. But the tunic had also been stripped from his right arm and the shirt torn from that shoulder, which was not part of the custom when a man was drummed out of his regiment.

On the yellow-white flesh of the upper arm and shoulder, there was a crimson swelling, two or three inches across. Moran’s face was mottled red and white with anger and shock. He swung round as if he might knock down the lieutenant who had guarded the door. But that guardian had now drawn his Webley service revolver from its holster and was holding it in Moran’s full view.

The junior lieutenant by the door could see what his comrades could not. The crimson swelling on the upper arm bore an imprint, a brand. The farrier’s iron customarily carried three digits, one for the number of the regiment and two for the number of the horse. Major Putney-Wilson was a devout man, and the insignia which the glowing iron left behind was one that the world might recognise. It was “666,” the Mark of the Beast from the Book of Revelations. If memory served, those who bore the mark of the Beast were condemned to the lake that burns with everlasting fire and brimstone. Meanwhile, until the day of his death, Moran’s own body would burn before the world, proclaiming him for what he was.

And still no one in that mess room moved. Then Rawdon Moran swore, softly but clearly. The tone of his voice counted for even more than the words.

“By God, my turn shall come! I’ll be revenged upon the whole pack of you—you and all your kind!”

He swung round and lurched towards the outer door, then stumbled into the night.

“And they never saw him again,” said Jock, the young lieutenant facing me from his horsehair banquette. “No one knew whether he only swore harm to the men in that room or to all the world. Strictly speaking, he was absent without leave after he left his quarters, but who would mind about that? Colonel Tommy must have sung hosannas. And the less said about the subalterns’ court, the better. Officially, it never happened, you see. Unofficially, even with an oath of secrecy, you can’t stop a story like that from going the rounds!”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Frank butted in; “except that a cove I knew in the 109th swore it would be like trying to say good riddance to the devil himself! You can’t do it. He may be anywhere at any time, watching, waiting his chance. And just for a while, before they got their common sense back, every man in that mess room—almost every man in the regiment—was afraid of what Rawdon Moran might do.”

By the time we reached Lahore, I ended my journey a good deal more thoughtful than I had begun it. Even so, I could not see that this story would ever be my concern. If it was true, all this had happened a year before my arrival in India. It was history. The headlines now were full of Isandhlwana and the Zulu War. Moran was stale news. There had been no sign of him after that dramatic night. By now he might be in England, or still in India, or anywhere in between. He had vanished into the darkness, like the wounded beast of his own hunters’ legends. His last words were a promise of revenge, but what revenge had there been? He seemed done for. Yet I daresay many people would still have offered a good deal of money to know exactly where he was now and just what he was doing.

Jock and Frank had held my attention by the moral of their story. We went our separate ways, and I was left alone with my thoughts. By the time I reached Peshawar, I decided I had probably been treated to a highly coloured dramatisation of events. Did the God-fearing Putney-Wilson really have his minions in attendance to mark Moran for life if the villain should refuse to answer on the field of honour? It was the sort of tale one tells a sprog, a newcomer to the regiment, for the fun of seeing him grow pale and appalled. I was soon