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Mufti By: H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile (1888-1937) |
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MUFTI by HERMAN CYRIL McNEILE ("Sapper") Author of "No Man's Land," "Men, Women and Guns,"
"The Human Touch," "The Lieutenant and Others,"
"Sergeant Michael Cassidy," etc. Hodder and Stoughton
London New York Toronto
MCMXIX To P. B. D.
MUFTI
PROLOGUE I The officer lying back in the home made chair tilted the peak of his
cap over his eyes and let his book slip gently to the ground. A few
moments later, after various unavailing waves of the hand, he pulled
out a handkerchief of striking design and carefully adjusted it over
his face. Then, with his hands dug deep in his pockets to remove even
a square inch of skin from the ubiquitous fly, he prepared to slumber.
And shortly afterwards a gentle rise and fall of the centre bulldog, so
wonderfully portrayed on the bandana, announced that he had succeeded. To anyone fresh from England who desired to see War the scene would
have been disappointing. There were no signs of troops swinging down a
road, singing blithely, with a cheery smile of confidence on their
faces and demanding to be led back forthwith to battle with the Huns.
There were no guns belching forth: the grim Panoply of War, whatever it
may mean, was conspicuous by its absence. Only a very fat
quartermaster sergeant lay asleep in the sun and snored, while an
ancient and dissolute old warrior, near by, was engaged in clearing out
a drain as part of his Field Punishment, and had just discovered a dead
dog in it. He was not singing blithely: he had no cheery smile of
confidence on his face: he was just talking gently to himself. The field was on a slight ridge. Above the camp there floated one of a
line of sausage balloons, and the cable to which it was attached
stretched up taut from some point near the farmhouse behind. A
triangular flag, like a burgee, flew straight out in the breeze from
half way up the cable, and the basket, looking absurdly small, hung
down like a black dot below the balloon. Peace was the keynote of the whole situation. In front the country lay
stretched out, with its hedges and trees, its fields and farmhouses.
In certain places there ran long rows of poles with strips of brown
material stretched between them, which a spectator would rightly
conclude was camouflage erected to screen the roads. Only from what?
Where was the Boche in this atmosphere of sleep and quiet? Beyond the silent countryside rose a line of hills. They seemed to
start and finish abruptly an excrescence in the all pervading
flatness. On the top of the near end of the line, clear cut against
the sky, the tower and spires of a great building; at the far end, on a
hill separated almost isolated from the main ridge, a line of stumps,
gaunt tooth pick stumps standing stiffly in a row. There was no sign
of life on the hills, no sign of movement. They were dead and cold
even in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Especially the isolated
one at the far end with its row of sentinel trees. There was something
ghostly about it something furtive. And then suddenly a great column of yellow smoke rose slowly from its
centre and spread like a giant mushroom. Another and another appeared,
and the yellow pall rolled down the side twisting and turning, drifting
into the air and eddying over the dark, grim slope. Gradually it
blotted out that isolated hill, like fog reeking round a mountain top,
and as one watched it, fascinated, a series of dull booms came lazily
through the air. "Jerry gettin' it in the neck on Kemmel." Two men passing by were
regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple
bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not
cease talking to himself. "Derek scooped the bally lot as usual." An officer appeared at the
entrance of a tin structure in one corner of the field with a bundle of
letters in his hand. "Look at the dirty dog there sleeping like a
hog in the only decent chair." He disappeared inside to emerge again in a moment with a badminton
racket and a shuttlecock... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Mystery |
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