Free SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments by Francis Selwyn

twisted the needle in a candle-flame.
    'What can mend a 'orse can mend a man,' he said philosophically.
    Verity looked away and Stringfellow went to work.
    'You no idea the satisfaction of a cab,' he said, as Verity bit back a gasp of pain, 'jogging on, seeing places.'
    'Don't prose so!' said Verity breathlessly. 'I was a sojer against the Rhoosians at Inkerman, and in a manner o' speaking I'm a sojer now against Charley Wag and his kind.'
    Stringfellow broke the twine in his teeth.
    'Likewise,' he said, 'I have had cause to remark that you was never obligated to fight the Rhoosians in Paddington Green, nor expect your wife to caper about like one of Miss Nightingale's ladies.'
    'Mrs Verity ain't soft,' said Verity at length.
    Stringfellow stood back a little to admire his surgical skill more fully.
    'Soft?' he said thoughtfully, 'she went soft the first night you set foot in this 'ousel Whimpering to see the brave sojer that'd beat the Rhoosians at Inkerman! And then pining after the brave policeman that beat Ned Roper and all the swell mob, one-handed. Mind you, if Mrs Stringfellow 'adn't gone off with the cholera that summer of the Hyde Park exhibition, there'd a-bin a firmer hand on 'erl See her married to a 'usband that comes home four o' clock of a morning, cut to tatters, and sits in the kitchen a-bleedin' 'isself silly! A cabman's daughter, too!'
    'If it's all the same,' said Verity weakly, 'I ain't particular to discuss cabs tonight.'
    'What don't get discussed is liable to be forgot,' said Stringfellow sternly. 'Mind you, though, an old 'orse do get you by the throat a bit these warm summer nights, don't 'e?'
     
     
     
    3
     
    'Sergeant William Clarence Verity, you have been paraded on a charge of having made an unwarranted and brutal assault upon a member of the public, Captain John Ransome, late 73rd Foot. Of that charge I find you guilty. It is my duty to reprimand you severely and to inform you that you will lose twelve months' seniority in the rank of sergeant for this offence. The nature of the offence, the finding and the punishment will be entered in the divisional record. It is also my duty to warn you that you have now been reprimanded three times in all, once for insubordination and twice for assaults upon members of the public, and that a fourth such breach of discipline must result in your automatic dismissal from the force.'
    Inspector Henry Croaker looked up from the papers on his desk as he spoke the final words. There was an expectant gleam in his eyes at the promise of one mere reprimand standing between him and the dismissal of the portly, self-righteous sergeant. Hero of Inkerman or not, another reprimand would be the end of him. Croaker's dark whiskers were finely trimmed and his thin yellowish face, the colour of a fallen leaf, seemed a perfect match for the dry withered tone of his voice. At Verity's back, Sergeant Ziegler, the escort, breathed heavily on the nape of his neck, as though he might be chewing something slowly.
    'Defaulter stand fast!' said Croaker in his brittle voice. 'Escort dismissed!'
    Ziegler stamped about and marched from the room with the slow, swinging gait he had perfected for such occasions as this. It was the usual form. Once the official proceedings were over, the unofficial 'roasting' of the culprit followed. Verity stared ahead of him. When the house in Whitehall Place, Scotland Yard, had been a gentleman's residence, thirty years before, Croaker's office had served as upstairs drawing-room. Through the panes of the window Verity, stiff at attention, watched the coal wagons and collier brigs of Whitehall wharf. Beyond them the waves of the murky river sparkled in the morning sun. Penny steamers trailing a banner of black smoke from their tall stacks bore their top-hatted passengers across from Surrey to the Middlesex shore.
    Croaker kept him at attention, pushed back his chair a little and for several seconds indulged in the sheer pleasure of surveying his