CHAPTER THREESUSPECTS
In the busy days that followed, Nancy, with the other girls of her unit, was plunged into the intensive work of preparing for service in the fighting zones. Fully alert to the importance of these instructions, Nancy worked even harder than she had during her nurse’s training. Here they must put the lectures and discussions into practice at once.
The day after her arrival there were lectures on military courtesy and customs of the service. They were told how to wear their uniforms, and how to recognize the various insignia of office.
In their room afterwards Nancy and Mabel had lots of fun practicing the military salute.
“You’ve got to learn to do it automatically,” said Mabel. “Your fingers should go to your forehead when you see a superior officer as instinctively as your foot goes to the car brake in an emergency.”
“And I suppose it will prove to be ‘a restriction’ emergency if you don’t,” Nancy came back with a laugh.
For the next day or two they saluted every time they passed each other in their room and had somegood laughs over their actions.
“Tini Hoffman says she hates to salute,” Mabel confided. “She says it makes her feel inferior.”
“If Tini isn’t careful she’s going to get kicked out of this training camp,” Nancy said. “I don’t like her attitude one bit.”
“Neither do the instructors. But she’s got an uncle who’s a colonel or something—anyhow he’s one of the bigwigs in the training program.”
“I don’t imagine that will have any influence if she doesn’t make the grade,” Nancy replied. “I’d hate to think of the kind of army we’d have if it did.”
“You may be right,” Mabel conceded. “But what’s more, I don’t even like her name. It’s much too German.”
“I think we ought to be careful about things like that,” warned Nancy. “There’re plenty of good, loyal Americans, you know, with foreign-sounding names.”
“Yes, of course. But when a foreign name goes along with a rebellious attitude it makes you wonder.”
Something happened a week later to make the two girls think more seriously than ever of Tini Hoffman and her strange conduct. After their eight hours of work, the nurses were free to seek recreation, go into the village on shopping tours or to movies. And they were usually ready for a change when their day’s work was over.
One evening Nancy and Mabel had stopped in adrugstore for a soda after going to the movies, and they came unexpectedly upon Tini. The drugstore they had entered was very narrow in the rear, with little, private booths down each wall and an aisle in between for serving. The girls slipped into one of the booths to have their soda and chat about the picture. Couples filled all the other seats and crowded around the tables in front. Most of them were men and women in uniform.
“We’re lucky to get seats,” said Mabel.
While waiting for their order to be filled, Nancy said, “Oh, I meant to get some cleansing tissues.”
“I’ll get ’em for you,” offered Mabel. “I promised to pick up a package here for Miss Hauser. She phoned her order over.”
While Mabel was at the drug counter Nancy sat idly gazing around at the chatting groups. Then suddenly she noticed Tini Hoffman directly across the aisle. Tini was so busy talking to a man in civilian clothes that she hadn’t noticed her dormitory mates. She sat with her elbows on the table, her hands folded under her dimpled chin, while her blond countenance beamed on her companion. Nancy felt sure Tini’s hair was bleached, and wondered what it would look like after several months in the Pacific islands. It was too golden-blond to be natural. It proved amusing to find Tini so pleased with her situation for once.
So fascinated was Nancy in watching Tini that Mabel was returning before she gave the gentlemanopposite Tini a fleeting glance. Then suddenly her eyes became fixed. Where had she seen that lean profile before? She tried to hold herself under control as her mind tied up the loose ends of memory. The longer she stared, the more positive she became that the horn-rimmed glasses and small mustache belonged to the same man who had sat beside the blond corporal the day she left her home town. Though she had had only a hasty glance as she went down the aisle of the train those faces had become indelibly impressed upon her mind.
As Mabel came nearer, Nancy saw Tini’s companion watching covertly. She couldn’t blame any man for being attracted by Mabel, for she was really worth looking at in her trimly fitting uniform with her cap sitting jauntily on her golden curls. But the man’s heavy-lidded glance had little admiration in it, only a sort of cynical calculation.
Nancy felt she must know if he was really the blond corporal’s train mate. Impulsively she said as Mabel handed her the package she had bought, “Danke schoen.”
She deliberately used the German word for “thank you,” and spoke loud enough to be heard across the aisle.
Her trick brought the expected result, for the man turned sharply toward her. Mabel glided into the seat opposite and glanced at her with a puzzled frown. When it was too late for regrets, Nancy felt the hot blood welling to her face. Others may have heard her, too, and what would they think?
Nancy Discovered Tini Across the Aisle
Nancy Discovered Tini Across the Aisle
Nancy Discovered Tini Across the Aisle
There was even a chance that the man might recognize her as the same girl who had sat in front of them on the train, even though she had worn a green suit then and was now clad in olive drab.
“At least,” she thought ruefully, “I could swear he’s the same man. But what’s he doing here with Tini Hoffman?”
Mabel had to speak to her twice before she heeded.
“They make grand sodas here, don’t they?”
“Sure do!” Nancy stuck a couple of straws in hers so hard they bent double.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mabel under her breath.
Nancy glanced warily at the couple across the aisle, nudged Mabel with her foot, and laid her finger cautiously on her lips before she placed the fresh straws in her glass.
Mabel wisely changed the subject, and remarked, “Cleansing tissues are sure hard to get now. Guess we’ll have to get all ours hereafter at the P.X.”
“We’ll need plenty to take across—if we get to go over.”
“Yeah, my friend Lydia, in North Africa, wrote me we’d better take along plenty of stuff like that.”
Suddenly Nancy was impatient to be through with their sodas and out of the drugstore. She meant to take no chances on suspects this time, but report what she had seen to Captain Lewis. She finishedher soda in a hurry and reached to the back of the table for her purse.
“Let’s get going,” she suggested.
“Not till I finish the last spoonful of this ice cream,” Mabel said firmly. “I’d think about it regretfully every time I’m marooned somewhere on a desert over there.”
“Then I’ll go ahead and be paying.”
“What’s all the hurry?” Mabel wanted to know, an edge in her tone.
Out of the corner of her eye Nancy saw that the sleek gentleman across the aisle was watching them. Then she noticed that Tini’s attention had wandered sufficiently from her companion to recognize them.
“Hiya!” she said with a proud toss of her head, which plainly showed her personal triumph over their dateless condition.
Nancy returned the greeting and led the way out. When they were on the street, Mabel slipped her arm through Nancy’s and inquired, “What’s wrong? You acted as though you were sitting on nettles.”
“Nettles would have been mild to the prickles I felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man with Tini looked exactly like the one who was with the blond corporal I told you about on the train.”
“Oh! So that’s why you thanked me in German?”
“Of course. I wanted to see if I could get a reactionout of him.”
“And did you?”
“I’ll say. He shot a glance at me as if I’d poked him in the ribs.”
Mabel grunted. “Don’t see where that proves anything. Anybody using German words in these times should surely make people sit up and take notice.”
“But I could swear he’s the same, Mabel. Dark-rimmed glasses, small mustache, lean face, and a very immaculate, tailored look about his clothes.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Go straight to Captain Lewis. I’m taking no chances again, even if it gets Tini into trouble.”
“She may be working with him.”
“She’s certainly acted in a way to make us suspicious,” agreed Nancy.
“Oh, she’s always acted like that—behind the backs of those over her. I never paid much attention to that. She’s an only child, very spoiled. Her parents have oodles of money.”
“Then she didn’t have to take nurse’s training—for a way to make a living.”
Mabel laughed significantly again. “At the time she went in she was in love with one of the hospital internes. It gave her a chance to be with him more.”
“Evidently she didn’t get him.”
“She sure didn’t. Soon after he got settled with his practice, he married a real sweet girl. By that time Tini was so nearly through her training she couldn’tquit without causing lots of talk.”
“Strange for her to take on the hardships of the Army Nurse Corps.”
“She wanted to get away from home and the catty people who enjoyed her being jilted.”
“Too bad to have such an experience so young,” said Nancy, suddenly feeling sorry for Tini.
“She surely was thrilled at having that new fellow tonight.”
They were moving into the throng at the bus stop now, and fell silent, for they had been warned about too much talk within the hearing of others.
“Spies can find meaning in your most innocent remarks,” Major Reed had warned them.
They couldn’t find seats together anyhow, so the girls rode in silence back to the camp. Quite a number of other nurses were coming back to the camp on the same bus, but Nancy was glad not to sit with any of them, for she wanted to think about what she would say to Captain Lewis.
When she went straight on to their room with Mabel, her friend said, “Thought you were going to report what you saw to Cap’n Lewis.”
“I didn’t want any of the others to see me going to her,” explained Nancy. “I’ll wait a few minutes till they’re all in their rooms. This thing is best kept under lid.”
“Sure. I agree with you.”
“Tini’s made enough enemies without adding suspicionto her troubles.”
When the halls were empty Nancy slipped downstairs. Miss Lewis’s bedroom was next to her office, but to her consternation she found all the lights out. She hesitated to wake her, yet didn’t want to wait till morning to make her revelations.
Over and over again she had been haunted by the idea that the train wreck might have been averted if those German-speaking passengers had been apprehended in time. Yet she still couldn’t see what she might have done about it. But this time she did know what to do, and she meant to do it.
She was still hesitating in the hall when she noticed a light in an office farther down, and heard men talking. Suddenly she recognized Major Reed’s hearty laughter. The hours they had worked together that night at the wreck had made him seem so human and likeable to Nancy, that their difference in station could never again be a barrier to understanding.
Eagerly she hurried toward his office. The door stood open. She paused in the doorway till her eyes came to rest on the major among the group of men.
“May I speak to you, Major Reed?” she asked. He glanced at her, surprised, then asked, “Anything wrong, Miss Dale?”
He crushed his cigarette into an ash tray before he moved toward the door.
“I meant to talk to Captain Lewis, but her lights were out,” Nancy explained, as she backed into thehall, indicating that their conversation must be private. “I must speak to someone.”
“Yes,” he said when they were outside and the door was closed. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I just saw the man who was with the corporal that day on the train.”
“Where?”
“In a drugstore in the village. I don’t want him to get away as the blond man did.”
“The blond didn’t!” stated Major Reed with a chuckle. “The FBI now have him in their possession.”
“Not really!” exclaimed Nancy, her face lighting.
“Yes. It will be some time before he’s in circulation again, if ever. But this other—where’d you say you saw him?”
Nancy gave a hurried report of her encounter with the suspect and Tini in the drugstore. While she talked the major stroked his chin and stared at the floor.
“Uh-huh. I see. You say he was dating Miss Hoffman?”
“I haven’t any idea where she met him, of course.”
Major Reed glanced at his watch. “You came in on the last bus?” he asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Did Tini Hoffman come with you?”
“I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure. The bunch of us came up from the bus stop together.”
“Then she’ll have to come on the next bus, or belate checking in.” He was silent a moment, then spoke again as if thinking aloud. “He would already have put her on the camp bus before anyone could make it to town in a car to follow him.”
Nancy admitted this was true. It seemed too late to put anyone on his trail tonight. “Tini will probably be dating him again,” she said. “She seemed tickled pink with him.”
Major Reed dug his hands deep in his pockets and admitted, “Yes, that seems the surest chance. But I can’t ask you to act as a spy against one of your fellow students.”
“Nor do I want any such position,” stated Nancy frankly, “but where the welfare of our unit or our country is involved, Major Reed, I fear we have no choice.”
He looked her squarely in the eyes then with frank admiration.
“You have a wise head on your shoulders, Miss Dale. If anything else comes up let me know.”
They heard the last busload of girls out front long after Mabel and Nancy were already in bed. It was so much later than Nancy expected. Major Reed might after all have reached the bus station in time to see their suspect put Tini aboard. She wondered what he had done about it.
CHAPTER FOURTHE GAS CHAMBER
The following morning a scheduled lecture on military law was postponed for an impromptu talk by Major Reed. Nancy’s heart skipped a beat when Lieutenant Hauser introduced the major to the assembled unit. Instinctively she felt his appearance had something to do with what she had told him last night. And she was right.
He talked to them for an hour on the subtle ways in which the enemy succeeded in getting information. He admonished the nurses about silence in public places, and prohibited discussion outside the camp grounds about what was going on inside. He warned them against picking up conversations with strange men who might craftily get information from them. He finished his talk by giving a half-dozen actual incidents where absolutely loyal men and women had witlessly supplied the enemy with vital information.
“This is for your protection as well as for our boys out there on the battlefronts,” he told them. “I warn you to make no close contacts with strangers.”
As the girls filed out of the lecture room there was awe in their whispered remarks. Most of them felt more keenly than ever the responsibilities of the task ahead.
As they went to the grounds for instructions in using gas masks, Ida Hall and Tini Hoffman were close to Nancy and Mabel.
“I noticed you had a mighty swell-looking date last night,” Nancy heard Ida saying to Tini. “Where’d you pick him up?”
“I didn’t pick him up,” retorted Tini. “I met him in Charleston.”
“Recently?”
“When I was on vacation after finishing my nurse’s training.”
“Oh, I see.” Ida’s manner showed she didn’t like Tini any more than most of the others.
“You surely can’t accuse him of trying to pick me up,” Tini flared, fully aware of the implications in Ida’s remarks, following so close on that lecture. “He encouraged me to come into the ANC. In fact he was the very one who suggested it.”
“You must have made a hit with him,” put in Nancy, “to have him come all the way over here to see you.”
Tini looked pleased, and toyed with her blond curls before she said, “Well, you see he’s a traveling salesman and gets around.”
“Huh, he must be luckier than most if he can stillget gas to be a traveling salesman,” commented Mabel.
“Oh, he uses the trains. His territory is too wide for a car in these times.”
Nancy smiled disarmingly as she asked, trying to seem casual, “Dating him tonight?”
“If he can arrange his business so he can be back in the village.”
There was no more time for probing, for their instructor, Sergeant Fuller, was calling them to attention on the pine-clad hill where they had already received their preliminary instruction in putting on and taking off their gas masks. The structure of the masks had been explained in detail, and a lecture given on the various types of gas, and how to care for gas casualties.
This morning, however, came their first really difficult test. They had to go through the gas chamber, as they called the little house on the hill where the tests were made.
“Gosh, I’ll sure be glad when this is over,” moaned a small, brown-eyed girl, Grace Warner, whom they had dubbed “Shorty.”
Grace actually looked no more than sixteen and wore her hair with a bang-bob which made her round, childish face seem even more immature. Her voice, too, had a thin, babyish quality. Though the nurses teased her quite a bit, she was a general favorite.
Shorty was between Nancy and Mabel when they lined up for the gas-chamber test. Her big brown eyes were apprehensive as she looked at Nancy and said, “If we could go through there once and have it over with I wouldn’t mind so much. But three times—gosh!”
“The first won’t be so hard,” Nancy said consolingly. “We just walk through the front door and out the back—to be sure our masks don’t leak or anything.”
“Only tear gas, anyhow,” Mabel added. “It’s not nearly so bad as the others.”
“That’s what you think,” said Shorty. “One of our nurses back home said she got badly burned about the neck and wrists when she took the test.”
“She probably wasn’t as snugly protected as we are. That’s why they make our shirts now with the extra protection flaps at the cuffs and front. No skin exposed,” explained Mabel.
The nurses stood in line, their gas masks on. Already they could hear laughter and nervous giggles on the other side, as the first of the group marched through and came out triumphantly to take off their masks till time for the next test.
Nancy and her friends didn’t mind the first test so much, though they were glad enough to hurry out the back door. On the second trip they went in with their gas masks on, took them off inside, then hurried out.
“I’ll Be Glad When This Is Over,” Moaned Shorty
“I’ll Be Glad When This Is Over,” Moaned Shorty
“I’ll Be Glad When This Is Over,” Moaned Shorty
“Oh, boy, is this fresh air good!” exclaimed Nancy, when she rushed out the back door.
“It was awful!” wailed Shorty. “My face is stinging all over. I wouldn’t go in there again for anything!”
“But you have to!” stated Nancy. “The hardest test is yet to come.”
“I can’t! I just can’t!” wailed Shorty, her cheeks wet with tears that had not all been caused by the stinging gas.
“If you don’t go through it you’ll never get overseas,” Nancy warned her.
“I don’t see why they put us through all this misery,” wailed Shorty. “We know how to put on gas masks in case there’s any trouble over yonder. No sense in torturing ourselves like this when we may never have to put ’em on again.”
Nancy caught Shorty by the shoulders and shook her slightly. “Now you cut out that kind of talk, or they’ll not let you go down under with us.”
“Come on,” warned Mabel. “It’s our turn again.”
Nancy caught Shorty’s hand. “Come on, honey,” she said in a wheedling tone. “We’ll go through together.”
Nancy, herself, had really dreaded this final ordeal, but having to bolster Shorty’s confidence left her little thought for her own fears. She shoved her little friend through the door saying, “Now, put on the mask—quick!”
Shorty already had her mask over her face when Nancy followed through the door. In spite of their speed their trembling hands fumbled a bit before the masks could be put into place, and so they felt a bit of stinging. When they were securely masked, however, Nancy urged the excited girl toward the back door.
“It wasn’t so bad after all, was it?” asked Nancy, after she jerked her mask off and filled her lungs with fresh air.
“Could’ve been worse. But I guess I never would have got through at all, Nancy, if you hadn’t made me,” Shorty admitted in a shamefaced manner.
“Hope we don’t ever have to use these for the real thing,” Mabel said.
“I heard a major, just returned from overseas, tell about how the Japs often cry ‘Wolf’ about gas,” said Nancy, sitting on the brown pine carpet with the others to rest a bit.
“What do you mean—cry wolf?” asked Shorty.
“When our men are coming ashore from the landing craft the Japs often throw up a smoke-screen and cry, ‘Gas’. They say there’s nothing breaks the men’s morale easier than the fear of gas,” Nancy explained.
“That’s just too horrible to conceive of,” said Ida Hall.
“At least it’s consoling to know it hasn’t been used so far,” put in Mabel.
“No telling what they’ll do at the desperate end,”Nancy warned them. “I don’t mean to miss a trick in these gas-mask drills.”
“I heard we’ll have to go through the gas chamber again at the port of embarkation,” Ida Hall informed them.
“Good night!” flared Shorty. “As if three times would not be enough.”
“These masks belong at the training center. They’ll issue us new ones at the port. We have to test them out,” Ida explained.
The weather had turned warm and Nancy was glad to get back to their quarters and have a good shower when the day’s classes and drills were over.
Mail came twice a day, and the nurses always haunted their boxes right after breakfast and just before the evening meal. Nancy talked with her parents every Sunday over long-distance telephone and had letters from them and friends back home almost every day. Letters had never meant so much to her in all her life. She could now appreciate how important they were to Tommy and the other boys out there.
That evening Nancy was thrilled to find a letter from Tommy, which had been sent on from home. “One from the South Pacific!” she cried, waving the letter at Mabel, who was just opening her own box.
“And I have one from my Jake!” exclaimed Mabel. “What a red-letter day for the long and short of our unit!”
The girls moved out of the milling crowd at the mail boxes and opened their letters near a window.
Nancy stopped in the midst of her reading to tell Mabel joyfully, “He has only a few more missions to fly and then he’ll be coming home. Now wouldn’t that be something if I got sent out there while he comes back!”
“Surely fate wouldn’t play you such a mean trick as that, Nancy!”
“Is your sweetie all right?” asked Nancy.
“He is now, but the poor chap’s been in the hospital. He didn’t say what for. Isn’t that just like a man?”
“Better watch out. He may fall for some of those nurses.”
“If he’s that fickle I’d rather know it now,” Mabel said with a toss of her head. “But really I’m not uneasy. Jake’s sold on my red head. There aren’t so many redheads, you know.”
“He’d better not go to Turkey then. They tell me there’re plenty of red-headed dames there,” put in one of the nurses near by, who had overheard their conversation.
Nancy finished her letters and while waiting for Mabel she noticed Tini standing not far from them. There was a scowl on her face as she impatiently tapped her fingers on the window ledge. A slit envelope and an open letter were in her hands. Nancy couldn’t help noticing the return address on the envelope, “Hotel Carlton.”
“Bad news?” asked Nancy.
“My good-looking date had to leave unexpectedly,” Tini replied. “Makes me sick!”
“You’ve been lucky to have him here at all,” Nancy said. “Most of us have been dateless for three weeks.”
“Huh, I always have dates wherever I go.”
“Sure, you’re different,” Mabel said sarcastically. Her long acquaintance with Tini left little patience with her superior attitude. “The rest of us made up our minds when we came into the Army Nurse Corps, to give personal consideration second place for the duration.”
“Zat so!” snapped Tini, rudely turning her back.
Nancy and Mabel exchanged significant glances as they left for the mess hall. As Nancy ate her appetizing dinner she thought over what she had just learned. She felt actually sick at heart over this unpleasant business of suspecting a fellow student.
She had no desire to be a spy. Yet when she recalled the horrible scenes at that wreck, caused by sabotage, she shivered. She would never forget the dead and dying she had ministered to that awful morning. As much as she hated the unpleasant position into which circumstances had again thrust her, Nancy was determined to let no squeamishness make her keep silent. She had no choice but to report what she had just learned about Tini’s date to Major Reed. If the man was really an enemy spy, he must not be allowed to escape again.
CHAPTER FIVEOFFICIAL NOTICE
Nancy excused herself before Mabel and her friends had finished eating, and left the mess hall. She found Major Reed alone this time, sitting at his desk. She was not unmindful of the brightening of his face when he saw her. He was such a large man he seemed older than he really was. Nancy had at first thought he was about thirty, but now he seemed nearer twenty-five. He had gone far for one so young.
“Come in, Miss Nancy,” he said cordially. He jumped up and placed a chair for her, then closed the door. “You have more information?”
“It may or may not be important,” she told him a little sadly. “Frankly, Major Reed, I don’t like this business of reporting on a fellow student—yet I dare not hide what I hear.”
“I fully appreciate the awkwardness of the situation,” he said with understanding, “but these are really times that try men’s souls. We have to do many things differently now.”
“I’ll say,” she agreed.
“I was just reading here,” said the major, indicating a magazine he had put down at her entrance,“that our vice-president says the time is past when we must see no evil, hear no evil, and tell no evil. We must do all three until evil is wiped out. Right now you are in a peculiar position and the only one on whom I can rely.”
“I’ll try not to betray your trust,” she said. “I learned just now that Tini’s friend had been staying at Hotel Carlton over in the city. I’m afraid he’s already left there. He wrote her he had to leave unexpectedly.”
Suddenly the major’s hearty laughter filled the little room. “So he got wise to the fact that he was being watched!”
“Oh—so you already knew he was staying there?”
Major Reed became wary. “We had a line on him.”
“But how?” asked Nancy. “Tini did come in on that next bus the other night. Nobody here had time to get into the village and follow him after he put Tini on the bus.”
“I acted on your information promptly. There’s such a thing as the telephone,” he reminded Nancy.
He made this unsatisfactory explanation with a finality that told her she must inquire no further into his end of the business.
“Have you learned anything else?” he asked.
“Yes. Tini told us she met him in Charleston. He’s a traveling salesman, uses the trains instead of a car. He suggested that Tini join the Army Nurse Corps.”
“So!” Major Reed’s dark eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Mabel Larsen took nurse’s training in the same hospital with her. She said Tini went into it originally because she was crazy about one of the internes. But that may be only gossip, for it does sound mean. I’m afraid Tini isn’t very well liked.”
Major Reed was abstractedly making crosses on a scrap of paper. Finally his pencil stopped, and he looked squarely across at Nancy.
“Has Miss Hoffman done anything to make you feel she has gotten on the inside merely to supply information to our enemies?”
“That’s a stiff question, Major.”
“I know it is. But you’re in a better position to judge of such things than any of the instructors.”
“Tini gripes a lot about regulations and the hardships of the military training, but Mabel said she was always complaining during her nurse’s training. She’s an only child. Her family has plenty of money, and she’s rather spoiled. All those things have to be taken into consideration.”
Nancy saw the ghost of a smile flicker around the major’s nice lips. Then he said, “But you’ve evaded my question.”
“Oh, no. I’m not trying to evade, because I honestly don’t think Tini has the makings of a spy. I think she’s motivated entirely by selfishness. She would be horribly bored here without dates—she’ll go with most anybody rather than be dateless.”
“I suppose with a little flattery a man couldwheedle a good bit out of her.”
“You may be right,” Nancy conceded.
She rose to leave and he stood up.
“All this has been a great help,” he told her. “But keep in mind it’s still between us two.”
She was almost at the door when he added, “And by the way—a notice has just been put on the bulletin board that will interest you.”
“Oh, are we going to be sent overseas soon?”
He laughed again. “You’re optimistic! Some nurses have been waiting to go over for a year or more, and here you’re expecting to go in a few weeks.”
“It has been done,” Nancy came back promptly. “Oh, Major Reed, if they’d only send me to the South Pacific in a hurry! I have a brother out there who’s almost finished his flying missions. If I get there before he comes back, I may have a chance to see him.”
“Just keep your shirt on,” he told her. “You’ll probably get into the thick of it before it’s all over. I’m afraid there’s more than we dreamed of ahead. That notice out there says you’re to get a taste of tent life, starting Monday.”
“Oh, that’s really to my liking!” exclaimed Nancy. She hurried away to find Mabel and tell her the news.
On Sunday just before supper Nancy and Mabel were packed to start off by army truck at dawn next morning. It was exciting to put into practice their instructions about packing compactly for travel, for they were to move on now as if they were going intoa combat area.
“Seems like the real thing,” said Mabel eagerly.
They had had their supper and were ready for bed early when they heard a knock on their door. It proved to be Lieutenant Hauser.
“Long-distance call for you, Miss Dale,” she said when they opened the door.
Nancy stood stunned for a moment. Her arrangement with the folks back home was that she would call them every Sunday at two o’clock, as long as phone calls of that kind were permissible. She had talked with her mother and father only a few hours ago, though she had not been able to tell them she was moving on to another address. They would have to be informed about that later when the unit had arrived safely. To have them call back like this alarmed her. She knew no one else who would call her by long-distance telephone here.
“She said you had a long-distance call,” Mabel repeated, when Nancy still stood where she had received the message.
“But why would they be calling back?” Nancy wanted to know.
“Oh come on, gal!” exclaimed Mabel, wrapping her housecoat around her and taking Nancy’s arm. “How will you ever face all those bombs if you get so scared over a little telephone bell ringing?”
Nancy could think only that something terrible must have happened to her parents. She let Mabellead her like a sleep-walker to the phone in Lieutenant Hauser’s office.
“Hello! Yes—this is Nancy. Oh Dad, that you? I was afraid something was wrong with you or Mom.”
Mabel could hear Mr. Dale’s deep voice as she stood close to Nancy: “No, we’re all right, but we had upsetting news just now from the government—”
“From the government—you—you mean about Tommy?” asked Nancy.
“They report he’s been missing in action over enemy territory since the second of March.”
“Oh Dad!” wailed Nancy. “It can’t be true! It just can’t! God wouldn’t let anything happen to our Tommy.”
“Not if our prayers can keep it from happening, darling,” came the firm voice confidently over the wire. “You just keep on praying like we’ve been doing all along, and he’ll be taken care of.”
“Oh Dad, how I wish I could be there with you and Mom right now! How is she?”
“Just the same brave saint she’s always been. She’s writing you a letter now to hearten you.”
“Kiss her for me,” said Nancy. “And tell her I’ll pray harder than ever.”
Nancy put down the phone and faced Mabel.
“I could hear what he said,” her friend told her gently. “Don’t give up hope, Nancy. Lots of times they turn up after they’re reported missing. Maybe he’s not dead.”
“Oh, no, he’s not!” Nancy asserted firmly. “I’m not going to think of it for a minute. He wrote me in that last letter he could feel our prayers helping protect him, and he’s going to feel it more than ever now.”
From sunrise till mid-afternoon the following day the convoy rolled smoothly west along the paved highway. At noon they stopped in a large city to eat a lunch the canteen girls had prepared. It was good to get out and stretch their legs after sitting on the hard truck seats all morning. No one knew where they were going, or how long they would be on their way, so the nurses made the best of their hour’s rest. They took turns in the canteen dressing room, freshening up to continue their journey.
While they rested Nancy slipped her brother’s last letter from her pocket and re-read it. Mabel caught her at it and tried to cheer her.
“Come on now,” she said, “it does no good grieving.”
“I’m not grieving. It—it makes me feel more certain he’s going to come out all right when I re-read his letter.”
“Let’s take a sprint around the block,” suggested Mabel. “We have a few minutes before we take off.”
“Not a bad idea. A little exercise will do us good.”
“We may never get a peep at this burg again. I sure don’t mean to miss anything on the way.”
Other girls were out pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of the canteen, but Nancy and Mabelwanted to see more. They were in the heart of town, and the street back of the canteen had many attractive shop windows. Nancy kept glancing at her watch as they paused to admire the pretty dresses.
“Do you feel like someone who’s renounced the world when you look at those dresses?” asked Mabel.
“Oh, well, it won’t be forever,” Nancy said consolingly. “At least we can still wear evening dresses for dances on the post, Miss Hauser said.”
“Yeah! That will be a slight morale booster.”
“I never felt more smartly dressed than I do in this uniform,” continued Nancy.
“I must admit they do look rather stunning,” Mabel agreed.
The next store carried drugs, and they were about to pass by when Nancy seized Mabel’s arm. “Say, that looks like Tini in there!”
Mabel stepped back and looked in. “Sure is! Come on, I’ll get some dental floss and see what she’s up to.”
As they went in, Tini’s back was toward them. She sat on a stool at the soda counter, drinking a coke. Why had she come here for a coke when they had all the cold drinks they wanted back at the canteen? Tini was leaning across the counter, turning her charm on the soda jerker who was at least five years her junior. What was she up to now, Nancy wondered?