Yes—­he would ensconce himself behind the drawing-room door and watch.  Perhaps “Fire” would be bobbery when the Colonel mounted him, would get “what-for” from whip and spur, and be put over the compound wall instead of being allowed to canter down the drive and out at the gate....

Colonel de Warrenne stepped into his office to get a cheroot.  Re-appearing in the verandah with it in his mouth he halted and thrust his hand inside his tunic for his small match-case.  Ere he could use the match his heart was momentarily chilled by the most blood-curdling scream he had ever heard.  It appeared to come from the drawing-room.  (Colonel de Warrenne never lit the cheroot that he had put to his lips—­nor ever another again.) Springing to the door, one of a dozen that opened into the verandah, he saw his son struggling on the ground, racked by convulsive spasms, with glazed, sightless eyes and foaming mouth, from which issued appalling, blood-curdling shrieks.  Just above him, on the fat satin cushion in the middle of a low settee, a huge half-coiled cobra swayed from side to side in the Dance of Death.

“It’s under my foot—­it’s moving—­moving—­moving out,” shrieked the child.

Colonel de Warrenne attended to the snake first.  He half-drew his sword and then slammed it back into the scabbard.  No—­his sword was not for snakes, whatever his son might be.  On the wall was a trophy of Afghan weapons, one of which was a sword that had played a prominent part on the occasion of the Colonel’s winning of the Victoria Cross.

Striding to the wall he tore the sword down, drew it and, with raised arm, sprang towards the cobra.  A good “Cut Three” across the coils would carve it into a dozen pieces.  No.  Lenore made that cushion—­and Lenore’s cushion made more appeal to Colonel de Warrenne than did Lenore’s son.  No.  A neat horizontal “Cut Two,” just below the head, with the deadly “drawing” motion on it, would meet the case nicely.  Swinging it to the left, the Colonel subconsciously placed the sword, “resting flat on the left shoulder, edge to the left, hand in front of the shoulder and square with the elbow, elbow as high as the hand,” as per drill-book, and delivered a lightning stroke—­thinking as he did so that the Afghan tulwar is an uncommonly well-balanced, handy cutting-weapon, though infernally small in the hilt.

The snake’s head fell with a thud upon the polished boards between the tiger-skins, and the body dropped writhing and twitching on to the settee.

Damocles appeared to be dead.  Picking him up, the callous-hearted father strode out to where Khodadad Khan held “Fire’s” bridle, handed him to the orderly, mounted, received him again from the man, and, holding him in his strong right arm, cantered to the bungalow of Major John Decies—­since it lay on the road to the parade-ground.

Would the jerking hurt the little beggar in his present comatose state?  Well, brats that couldn’t stand a little jerking were better dead, especially when they screamed and threw fits at the sight of a common snake.