Casca 18: The Cursed Read Online Free PDF Page B

were not that many sergeants on the base, and few who could have singlehandedly dealt with the large officer. And no others with a motive. Indeed, there was not another man in the barracks who could be moved to give a damn about the murder of a Chinese harlot.
    "Dammit," the colonel snapped, "there's no bloody shortage of whores, and we're damned short of officers even if he was a no good, drunken, murderous slob. And now I suppose I'll have to hang you as well, and we're damned short of sergeants, too."
    He had Casca thrown into a cell to await trial, and had gone to the Army and Navy Club to drink away the nuisance of it all.
    The colonel was pleased to see that the club was already quite busy as colonial service army, and China Company officers took their first gin and quinine for the day, the essential preventive medicine in the pestilential tropics.
    He took a leather chair at the British consul's table and motioned to the Chinese servant standing by the oak paneled wall. He brought to the table a tray carrying a carafe, linen napkins, a gasogene, an ice bucket, and quinine.
    "Another Taiping Rebellion is what we're facing," the pink faced consul mumbled into his pink gin. "Fanatical bloody heathens shouting mixed up garbage compounded out of the bloody Bible and that fool Marx's socialist crap."
    "Ridiculous nonsense, of course," the colonel replied, shaking out his month old copy of the London Daily Mail. "Never should have taught the blighters to read. Bad business all round. Bound to cause trouble."
    "Teach the Chinese to read?" The consul looked up from his drink. "They were reading and writing thousands of years ago."
    "There you are then," said the colonel. "We should have known better than to let them see books in English. These bloody missionaries are to blame."
    "Well, whoever's to blame, it looks like we're in for big trouble. And we can't even find out what's happening in the countryside until it blows up in our faces, like it did last time. And last time, you recall, they gave us no bloody end of strife. Took us fourteen bloody years to pacify the country, and –"
    "I say," the colonel interrupted him, "listen to the mail about the Chinese: `It is because there are people like this in the world that there is an Imperial Britain. This sort of creature had to be ruled, so we rule him, for his good and our own.' Damned right.
    "Send out a scout." The colonel dismissed the problem as he waved at the Chinese servant for another drink.
    "A scout?" The consul was incredulous. "How many men do you have who can speak Chinese?"
    "Only one I know of, and now I've got to hang him," the colonel replied unhappily.
    The consul's head snapped up from his drink. "You do have a man who speaks Chinese?"
    "Did have. Damn fool killed that new subaltern, the drunk oaf Marshman, I think his name was. Marshman choked his whore."
    "The flagpole executioner?" asked the consul.
    "That's him. He'll be at the end of a rope in a day or two himself."
    "You could pardon him if he volunteered for a suicide mission."
    "Sure I could. You got one?"
    "Yes, I think I may have. Look, I'm going to go and see the ambassador. Be a good chap and don't hang this blighter for a bit. Hanging our own always looks bad to the Chinks anyway."
    The colonel shrugged as the consul hurried away, and the next day Casca was again paraded before the colonel. Casca had quite resigned himself to hanging, although death now held more terror for him than it ever had. During his time in the cell, his sleep, and even his waking moments, had been disturbed by recollections of that day on Golgotha when the Jew preacher had cursed him as he withdrew the spear from his side. "Soldier, you are content with what you are, So that you shall remain until we meet again."
    Then he relived the moment when he had brushed the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, and the blood that had run down the spear shaft touched his tongue, to send him crashing to the ground in a