Cora was slim, precise, devoted to her conventions and to the young captain whom she served as yeoman (private secretary). Her captain was charged with the task of securing billets for American troops arriving in the city. No matter how many went with the colonel, “very soon” others would be coming—two transports had arrived that very day. For this reason Cora’s captain would remain in the city, and so too would Cora, which was, Gale guessed, just what Cora wanted—a good safe spot with a handsome captain at her side.
“And why not?” Gale asked herself. “Who could wish for a nicer safer way to fight a war?” She didn’t quite know the answer to that one, so she passed it up to turn an inquiring face toward the girl with a long face.
“Dearie, I just heard the strangest thing.” Cora could purr like a cat. She was purring now. “They shot down a Jap bomber near the airport this afternoon.”
“Did they?” Gale drawled. “How sort of thrilling.”
“Yes, of course. And do you know they say that somehow radar, that new invention, helped to bring him down,” Cora purred on.
Gale was seized with a mild panic. How much did this girl know? Whatever she knew she would tell—she was that kind. For a space of seconds Gale said nothing. Then she managed her slow drawl again: “Oh yes! Radar?”
“The bomber came down close to the gun that fired the shot.” Cora gave Gale a searching look. “Oh dear! I hope none of our group was mixed up in that.”
“Mixed up in a falling bomber?” Gale exclaimed. “Goodness yes! She might get hurt!”
“That’s not what I mean!” Cora dropped her purr. “You know as well as I do that some of the WACS have been trained in the use of radar. And you know also that we are not supposed to be in places of extreme danger!”
“Oh dear, no!” Gale drawled. “We’re ladies, all of us. And ladies don’t go in for rough stuff. They don’t even swear.”
That was a blow under the belt. Cora recoiled.
But in a moment she was purring again.
“Dearie, could you tell me a little about radar? How does it work? How can it help bring down a bomber?”
“What’s this?” Gale asked herself. “Is she a spy?”
To Cora she said, “No, I can’t tell you a thing. Radar’s been written up in a magazine—Life, I think. All that is to be known by common, everyday folks is written down there. The librarian can find the copy for you.”
At that she took up her own magazine. The interview was ended, but she did not yet know how much Cora knew about the affair and would not for worlds have asked.
“I’ll be sent back to America,” she told herself. Well, at least she had experienced one thrill, and that was a lot more than a girl like Cora would ever know.
At that she began again, rather sadly reviewing her past. What appeared to be the death blow to her fond hope of having what she considered to be a real part, a part filled with thrills and danger in a real war, had come shortly after her landing in India. A large group of WACS had been gathered in a USO recreation hall. There they had been assured in a lengthy and rather severe speech by a fellow WAC who had been a matron in a girls’ school that under no circumstances would they be asked, or allowed, to enter the field of actual battle. That, in fact, India was their ultimate destination, and that they had arrived.
“Well, what do you want?” a prim little gremlin was asking her at this moment. “You are in India, and today you have had a real part in a real battle of the air.”
“Yes,” was her reply to the gremlin. “The Japs were over this place three months ago. They were over again today. When the colonel and his grand American army get on the march, the Japs will be too busy for a return visit. So then we will be quite free to dream the happy hours away.”
“Bah!” she exclaimed aloud.
“What’s that about?” came in a brisk, masculine voice.
Startled, Gale sprang to her feet.
“As you were,” said the voice.
She found herself looking not into the face of a gremlin but at the colonel, their colonel, he of the hairy legs and the tommy gun over his shoulder—the little native girl’s dream of a great man, a real colonel.
“As you were,” the colonel repeated, dropping into the big easy chair at her side.
Gale was surprised and startled by her visitor. She had talked to the colonel once, and that only the day before. He had suggested that she go out and practice with Sergeant MacBride, and had named the hour. She had kept the appointment. But after that? Thrills and chills still coursed through her being at thought of those exciting moments.
The colonel carried no tommy gun now, and his dress was no longer unconventional. She found it difficult to believe that this immaculately dressed officer, whose buttons and insignia shone, and whose pink cheeks were the last touch in perfection, should ever have led a group of ragged barefooted men and girls down a river and over a mountain.
“Have good practice today?” he asked. A strange smile played about his lips.
“Yes. Ver—very good.” She swallowed hard. “Very fine practice, and—and” the words came unbidden “Grand hunting.”
He did not start or stare—merely smiled wisely—a smile that said plainer than words,—“Umm! You and I have a secret, a very fine secret.”
The colonel leaned forward in his chair. “I had been tipped off that there would be an air raid.” His voice was low. He glanced over his shoulder. “I have had a great deal of experience with men soldiers and nurses, but none at all with lady soldiers. I had my own ideas regarding their reactions once they were under fire. Others,” he paused, “Er—well—they had different ideas.
“I hope you’ll forgive me if—”
“Oh! You’re forgiven!” the girl exclaimed softly. “I—I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“For what?” he asked simply.
“For believing that I wasn’t soft—that I could take it.”
“That’s all right,” he beamed. “That’s exactly what I did believe, and now I know.
“Listen.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I lived in China a long time before the war. I speak Chinese like a Chinaman. I was in China for three years as an observer, watching the Japs fight the Chinese.
“I’m a hard man. War is my business. But China wrung my heart. I have seen whole families, men, women and children who had tramped five hundred miles to a place of safety where they could start again. And always with a merry laugh on their lips, a laugh at Fate. The Chinese people will win the war. A people who laugh at Fate as they have laughed, cannot lose.
“That does not mean that they have not suffered,” he went on. “I have seen women and children blown to bits by shells and bombs; seen them burned in their homes; watched delicately bred women trudge on foot weary miles day after day. And I have asked myself, ‘Are American women more important in the sight of God than these?’ Like American women Chinese women bear children and love them. They help to make a home for them. If occasion arises, they die for them cheerfully. No woman can do more. And these are the people we are to fight for. China is our destination—China and then Tokio. Time is precious. Too many already have perished. We must do all we can, all of us, men and women alike.”
“Yes.” Gale’s voice was husky. “Yes. That’s what I think. I—I would like to start tomorrow for Burma and then China.”
“I believe you would. I believe you would,” the colonel repeated solemnly.
They talked for some time about the mystery, the beauty and the enchantment of India.
“The temples are unusual and quite fascinating,” the colonel rumbled. “I suggest that you visit some of them, particularly the Buddhist temples. Those Buddhist priests are very hospitable. Everyone, the humblest and the very great are welcome there, welcome to food, shelter and all that they have to give.
“But don’t wait too long for that. The time is short. We shall be going—” The colonel brought himself up short. “As I was saying,” his voice rumbled again, “India is fascinating, very enchanting.
“But I have an appointment!” He looked at his watch, then leapt to his feet. “Well, goodbye and good hunting to you.” He shot her a flashing gleam, then he was gone.
“This surely is a crazy world,” Gale thought to herself. “Here is the colonel believing in us not as women but as soldiers, and here is Colonel Mary Noble Hatch, a perfect lady, who had devoted her life to the task of molding the character of young girls and who is now the head of all the WACS in India, holding up a nice, soft, refined finger and saying: ‘Tut! Tut! Naughty! Naughty! Girls weren’t made to fight wars. How utterly terrible!’” Rising, she marched away to her room, and there she met with a surprise.
A WAC she had seen but never spoken to, was seated in her favorite chair, and in the corner opposite was an extra bed.
“You’re Gale Janes?” The girl sprang up. “May I salute you?”
“You may do as you like about that,” Gale replied quietly. “As you know, I’m not an officer. My rank is the same as yours, so—”
In spite of this the girl’s hand rose in a snappy salute. “For gallantry in action,” she said soberly.
“Great Scott!” Gale exclaimed. “Has it gotten around like that? Mary Noble Hatch will send me back to America on the first boat.”
“No,” said the girl. “It’s not nearly as bad as that. Here. This must be your chair. I’m the latest comer, so—”
“Keep it.” Gale waved her back. “I really like this one with the mahogany seat. It’s so hard and sort of substantial, like—” the words came unbidden—“like our colonel.”
The girl’s big round eyes opened wide. “Just like our colonel,” she agreed. Then she settled back in her chair. She was a rather plump girl with a round face, eyes wide apart, and a high forehead. Gale was sure she was going to like her. She already had a roommate, but in this war people lived as they must.
“They crowded me in on you,” the girl apologized. “Wanted my room for one of the higherups. I—” Gale was due for a shock—“I’m only the colonel’s yeoman (secretary to you).”
“Are you the colonel’s secretary?” Gale leaned forward in her chair to extend a hand. “Here! Shake! You’re just the person I want to know most. You shall have my easy chair for keeps, my bed too, if you want it, and the five pound box of chocolates I just received from home.”
“Say! What’s this?” The girl’s lips parted. “I didn’t say I was the colonel—only his yeoman!”
At that they both laughed.
“I heard you the first time,” Gale said at last. “By the way, your first name is Isabelle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and the last is Jackson.”
“Well, Isabelle Jackson, you’re an angel sent from Heaven. There are a few little things I want from the colonel, and the colonel’s secretary is just the one to get them for me.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Isabelle replied modestly. “Just what is it you want?”
“The colonel is going back to Burma?” Gale leaned forward eagerly.
“Oh, undoubtedly!”
“And very soon?”
“That, of course, I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry. It really doesn’t matter just when. The point is, when he does go, I want to go with him.”
“There’s nothing much I can do about that.” Isabelle settled back in her chair. “You’ll have to win the right to go. Anyway, that’s my guess. And I might add, you’ve got a pretty swell start.”
“What do you know about all that?” Gale demanded.
“Everything,” was the quiet reply. “I’m the colonel’s secretary. There isn’t much I can tell you, but I guess it won’t hurt if I just whisper a word or two.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lieutenant Hatch was in the colonel’s headquarters late this afternoon and raised a merry fuss about some WAC who knows, it seems, all there is to know about radar, and who, this very afternoon, somehow got mixed up in the messy and dangerous business of shooting down a poor little Jap bomber. Perhaps you know who that WAC was.”
“Perhaps I do,” Gale agreed.
“That’s fine,” Isabelle beamed. “Let’s not mention her name.”
“We won’t,” Gale agreed. “But the colonel—how did he—”
“How’d he stand the storm?” Isabelle laughed happily. “How does he stand any storm? How did he stand defeat in Burma? How did he stand the long tough retreat? Like a man and a colonel, that’s how. And I don’t think—” the words came slowly—“I don’t think anyone is going to tell him how he is to use men and women under his command.”
“That,” said Gale, “is swell.”
Just then a miniature cyclone hit the place. That is to say Gale’s other roommate breezed in and with her was Than Shwe, the little Burmese nurse.
“Jan, this is our new roommate,” Gale said with a grin. Everyone who looked at Jan McPherson, the girl to whom Gale spoke, grinned. Jan was that kind of a person. More often than not she was grinning, as indeed she was at that moment.
“Oh! One more of us!” Jan exclaimed. “Golly! That’s swell!”
“She’s Isabelle Jackson, and what’s more, she’s the colonel’s secretary.”
“Oh, golly! The colonel’s lady!” Jan exploded.
Little Than Shwe was visibly impressed.
“I didn’t say the colonel’s lady. His yeoman—secretary!” Gale insisted.
“I’m sorry,” Jan apologized. “I was thinking of that poem, ‘Rosey O’Grady and the colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.’”
“Probably they are,” Gale said. “But the people who sent us over here to help fight a war seem to think we’re all ladies and should be kept in a good safe place.”
“Good safe place!” Jan scoffed. “Who wants that! My Dad was an army sergeant most of his life. I was born under a truck in the rain. I’ve been on a truck or a jeep all my life, and I’m going to this war if I have to take a crew haircut, fake my identification papers and turn myself into a buck private.”
“Oh! I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as that,” Isabelle protested.
“I don’t care.” Jan drew up her hundred and fifty odd pounds of good sturdy stuff, as she said: “With me it’s Burma or bust! Where the colonel goes, I go.”
“Burma or bust,” Than Shwe repeated. “That sounds like the colonel himself.”
“It does, at that,” Isabelle agreed.
“Suppose we draw up a petition, asking the colonel to take all of us along,” Gale suggested to Isabelle. “Do you think that would help?”
“It might,” Isabelle agreed. “I’m sure it would do no harm.”
At that they settled down to the task of drawing up a dignified and appropriate petition. When it was finished, Isabelle typed it, and they all—even Than Shwe—signed it.
“Who knows but this petition may help make history?” Isabelle murmured impressively. And indeed, who did know?
The petition was delivered and acknowledged, and there the matter rested for some time. The rainy season dwindled away more and more. Each day increased the suspense hanging over the vast army camp. More ships arrived, with guns, bombs, airplanes, tanks and men. Men were there from all over,—America, Alabama, Illinois, Vermont, Washington, Texas. Not a state but was represented. There were some guessed hundreds of thousands of Americans and perhaps as many British. All of which added up to one fact—the colonel was going back to Burma. Only one question remained for the girls—“Are we to go?”
Then one day, having recalled the colonel’s words about temples, Gale invited Isabelle to go temple hunting with her.
At first they wandered through the narrow streets in silence, just the two of them, in an utterly foreign world. As they saw the pinched faces of children and peeped into the narrow, cramped quarters where they lived their life away, strange questions passed through their minds.
“Do you know,” said Isabelle, “I have always thought of this war as if it effected only our own people in America. Now I find myself thinking of these strange people of India. Yes, and of China, Japan and Russia. But most of all, of these people of India—they hold my attention. They say there are a billion people in Asia. There are only a few of our people in America, compared to that. Life is strange. All this disturbs me. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn’t asked to come.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Gale exclaimed, squaring her shoulders. “For no matter how many worlds I live in after this, I can visit this one but once. I want to see it all.”
After that they walked on in silence until they came to a winding path leading up a hill. There were no homes on the hill—only ancient trees and the solemn air of early evening hours.
“Let’s follow the path,” Isabelle suggested. “There’s nothing I like better than following a strange path, and I’ve heard there’s a temple up here somewhere.”
“Okay. Let’s go.” Gale led the way.
The path grew steep and rocky as they advanced, but the rocks were worn smooth, as if ten million pairs of feet had passed that way.
“Ten million,” Gale thought. “India is very old. But where could they all have been going?”
The forest trees that loomed above the trail grew thicker and taller as they advanced until at last they shut out the sun.
“It’s like something I read in a book called Pilgrim’s Progress,” Isabelle said with a little shudder. “I’ve never cared much for shadows since I read that book. I was twelve then. I love the sunshine best.”
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” Gale murmured. “Perhaps we are pilgrims on some great quest.” She spoke more wisely than she knew, but this quest was to have a strange ending.
Gale was one of those persons whose mind is driven to thoughts of wild determination as she walked rapidly or climbed some steep hill. The steeper the path became, the deeper the shadows, the more fiercely her mind worked on the problem that she knew lay very close at hand. Would she, or would she not go forward with the colonel and his men as they retraced the steps he had taken in retreat?
“I’ll beard him in his den,” she whispered fiercely. “I’ll say to him, ‘Colonel, all my people have been fighters,—five generations that we know about. Dad was in the World War; Grandfather in the Spanish-American War, and my great grandfather in the Civil War. I have no brothers so my father sent me. You justmustlet me go with you on your march back to victory!’”
She closed her eyes for a moment and fell over a stone, nearly cracking a kneecap. She had been seeing Sheridan on his black charger shouting to his men, “Turn boys! We’re going back!”
“Turn boys! We’re going back!” she exclaimed as she picked herself up.
“Why?” Isabelle stared. “Why should we turn back? Look. There’s light at the end of the trail. I’m dying to see what’s up there.”
“Light at the end of the trail,” murmured Gale. “Oh! Oh! Yes—by all means, let’s go on. I—I must have been dreaming.”
“I’ll say you were!” Isabelle exclaimed.
Hurrying forward they at last burst out into a little world all aglow with golden sunset. Just before them were beds of flowers—such flowers as they had never before dreamed of—flowers and tall graceful palm trees. Back of all this was a temple. It was not large, but set as it was, a mass of red stone in the midst of a gorgeous garden of flowers, and contrasting so strangely with the shadows that lay behind them, it set the two girls back on their heels.
“Isabelle!” Gale murmured softly. “Did you ever see anything more wonderful?”
“Never!” Isabelle replied in a hoarse whisper.
“Do people fight wars to defend their temples?” Gale asked.
“Perhaps,” was the solemn reply.
Even as they stood there entranced, the light of day began to flicker and go out. As if they had been a thousand bright lamps, all alight, the flowers lost their brightness. As if loathe to leave it, the sunlight lingered for a moment on the dome of the temple. Then, all of a sudden, all was in shadow.
“Come on,” Isabelle whispered. “We must see this.”
Together they hurried along the path of red gravel leading to the temple door, and as they hurried, there came the melodious ringing of many temple bells.
The temple door was open. At first, the large room that in the shadows appeared vast and endless, seemed entirely dark and deserted. A closer look showed a single red light burning before the shadowy figure of a Buddha that even in this faint light appeared to smile.
“Come on.” Isabelle gripped Gale’s hand, and together they moved forward and to the left of the door until they came to a low bench. There they seated themselves.
Leaning far forward, Isabelle sat as a child sits before the opening of some entrancing drama.
Gale leaned back. With the shadows, serious problems had again entered her mind. “I am a soldier,” she thought fiercely. “Then I must fight!”
At that moment she seemed to see her toothless ninety-year-old great grandfather, and to hear him tell his tales of the Civil War. Weird and entrancing those tales had been. There was one,—a battle fought in a great forest. He had been wounded and lay all day behind a half-rotten log while the enemy’s bullets striking the log had knocked dirt in his face.
“Then at night,” he would go on, “A huge black man, lookin’ like a dark angel or a devil, found me and carried me away to a corncrib all full of good soft corn husks.
“My wound hurt something awful,” he would continue. “But I was dog tired. We’d fought for three days and three nights, so I fell asleep in that good soft bed, and never woke up until my own captain called my name. We had won the battle, and I had been found again.”
There had been more to the old man’s story, much more. He had told it over and over, but each time Gale’s soul was fired anew, and she would whisper:
“Oh! That’s wonderful! When I grow up I’m going to be a soldier.”
And always the old man had laughed his cackling laugh and exclaimed:
“Oh, no you won’t! Because then you’ll be a lady and ladies don’t go to war—just only men.”
“But women do go to war,” she assured herself as she sat there in the temple. “And I’m a soldier right now.”
On coming out of her day dream she was a little startled to find that Isabelle was no longer at her side.
“She’s poking around to see what she can discover,” she assured herself. That, she knew, was like Isabelle. As for herself, she had always been a little timid in strange places of religious worship. It was so easy to commit some prodigious blunder and to bring the wrath of gods down upon you.
So she sat on in the waning light. As her eyes became accustomed to the place, she made out the huge Buddha and the many banners that hung from the walls.
As she wondered what they all meant a breeze swept through the temple. Like avenging ghosts the banners flapped in the wind.
All of a sudden she caught the sound of movement. Then she made out the form of some person, perhaps a monk, or a visiting pilgrim, bending before the Buddha.
She had scarcely made this discovery when the person, who was garbed in a long robe, arose, turned about, then began making his way toward the door.
“He’s a monk,” she thought. “He’ll pass close to me and I’ll ask him about the temple.”
As if he had read her thoughts and wished to avoid her, the man turned at an angle, walked a few paces, then followed the opposite wall.
“That’s strange,” she thought. Her friends had visited such temples. They had found these monks most eager to talk, and more eager still to receive an offering.
There was something strange, almost fanatic about the man. He was of ordinary height, but quite thin, and he walked rather clumsily.
“As if he were a little lame in both feet,” she told herself.
In a moment he was gone, and the place, it seemed to her, save for herself, was deserted.
All of a sudden she started and stood up. The faint light of fading day had blinked out.
“The door!” she thought, in mild panic. “It has been closed!” At the same time she became conscious of a disturbing odor. “Incense,” she whispered.
Then she discovered that by some strange magic two great bronze apes, one on either side of the Buddha, had been set all aglow, and that from their nostrils thin columns of smoke rose straight toward the ceiling.
“It’s dark!” she thought. “We must be getting back. I wish Isabelle would come.”
Then, in a leisurely manner she moved toward the door. Arrived there, she put out a hand for the knob. Then she started back. There was no knob, no nothing—a very heavy teakwood door, perfectly blank. That was all. And the smoke of incense in the room grew thicker with every passing moment.
“Isabelle!” she called. No answer. “Isabelle!” Her voice rose. Still no answer.
Determined to remain calm, she walked slowly around the room searching for the door or some other opening. There was no door, only high, flat walls. And all the time the Buddha smiled and the bronze apes half hidden by smoke appeared to her.
In the meantime Isabelle found herself in a situation that in some ways seemed more precarious than that of her companion. Having found her way from the temple room through a narrow door, she had wandered all undisturbed down a hallway past several open doors. In one room she saw long tables with benches ranged on either side. Here, she concluded, pilgrims from distant parts were fed when they visited the shrine of Buddha. In another room their food was prepared, and in still another, on hard beds, they slept.
Realizing that it was growing late, she tiptoed back down the hall into the main temple room. She was about to join her companion, when all of a sudden she caught a gleam of light from a small room at the right.
As she looked within, she saw that a weird blue light shone upon a Buddha who sat bent over as if in silent meditation. The workmanship on this Buddha seemed quite wonderful. The face and hands were exquisitely carved.
She took three steps inside the room, studied the bowed figure for a moment, then prepared to go.
Turning half about, she uttered a low cry. The door had vanished. She faced a blank wall. This room, she discovered for the first time, was made of eight panels, each forming the side of a hexagon. Which panel was the door? She had no way of knowing, and if she knew, it would not help, for there was neither latch nor knob.
Here there was no stifling incense, only a pale, eerie light. But there was something more terrible—ABSOLUTE SILENCE!
Standing there breathing quite naturally she could hear each breath. She fancied she heard her quickening heart-beats. She had supposed that she had known absolute silence before. She now knew that she never had. The silence of the sea is broken by the rush of waters, the whisper of the wind. The silence of a vast forest is broken by the flutter of birds’ wings, the low notes of a bird’s song. Even in a vault there comes the low roar of street traffic far away. Here was neither murmur, whisper, song, nor low roar. Nothing. Absolute silence.
She examined the blue burning candle. It would last perhaps an hour. Then absolute night would join absolute silence. She pounded on the wall. The room roared. But when she had finished pounding, absolute silence returned,—that—and nothing more.
* * * * * * * *
Unlike Isabelle, Gale knew the location of the door through which she had entered the main temple hall, but try as she might, she could not budge it. It was as if it were made of iron. And indeed iron has little resisting power that six inches of solid teakwood does not possess.
After exhausting herself in a mad effort to escape, she resolved to conserve her energies for her battle with the fumes that rose from the nostrils of the two guardian apes.
That there would be a struggle she did not doubt, for already the fumes were making her drowsy. Lying flat down on the floor with her face next to the door she tried to secure at least a little fresh air through the crack beneath the door. In this she partially succeeded. How long she could retain her senses she could not tell.
“What an end for a soldier and the daughter of a soldier!” she thought, as a fit of wild desperation seized her. She wanted to get up and fight.
“Fight what?” she asked herself. Then suddenly she knew—fight those incense burners! Fight those leering apes!
At once she was on her knees. Bending low that she might avoid the fumes as much as possible, she crept toward the Buddha and the apes.
As she came close to her goal the odor was all but overpowering. She wanted to sleep. “Sleep!” She clenched her fists tight. “I must not sleep!”
At last her hands were on one of the black metal apes. She grasped its legs and pulled herself to a sitting position. The ape was solidly fastened to the floor.
“There is a way to put incense into this burner,” she told herself. “I’ll find it, open up the burner and scatter the fire on the stone floor.”
She felt the thing over, inch by inch, burning her fingers where the incense had heated the metal, but not a suggestion did she get regarding the manner in which the strange incense burner was opened.
“I—I can do nothing.” She sank down upon the floor.
For a full minute she lay there as if asleep. Then, as strength and courage returned, she dragged herself to the door and made one last attempt to drink in air from the crack beneath the door.
“I can’t die like a poisoned rat,” she told herself. “I am a soldier. I can’t die this way.” Only half conscious of what she was doing, she screamed:
“No! No! No!” at the top of her voice.
Shocked into sudden full consciousness, she listened. Did she hear footsteps? Encouraged, she screamed again:
“No! No! No!”
The door swung open and she rolled out on the floor.
Stunned by the sudden turn events had taken, she lay where she was for a full moment. After a struggle to bring back her drugged senses, she sat up to find herself staring at one of the strangest looking men she had ever seen. For a space of seconds she believed that she had not regained her full consciousness at all, but was in some strange dream world.
Then the man spoke, and she knew he was real. He was short and very fat. His hands and feet were very small. His finger nails were long and curved like the talons of an eagle. Dressed as he was in bright robes, he seemed like some huge bright-hued tropical bird.
“Who closed this door?” he demanded in a high-pitched voice. “Who is burning my incense? It is terrible, wasting a whole month’s supply in a single hour!”
Without waiting for a reply, he sprang to the leering apes, and tearing them apart by some trick known only to himself, spread powder and glowing sparks over the floor.
After that he danced away on his tiny feet to throw open a back door, and by some strange device to open a row of shutters beneath the eaves.
Dancing toward the girl he demanded again:
“Who did this? I was away but a moment. You or some other one did this!”
“Yes,” Gale agreed. She was standing now, and towered above him. “Someone did it, but not I. There was a man here when we came.”
“We!” he screamed. “Then there are others?”
“Only my companion,” she replied. “Don’t forget, we are soldiers—American soldiers.”
“But you are a woman!” He stared.
“Soldiers in uniform, all the same.”
“Ah, yes,” he sighed. “In China too the women fight. We shall win the war. When women fight they never lose.
“But you said there was a man.” His voice changed.
“Yes. Yes—I—I remember!” he exclaimed. “He was a slim man who walked a little lame.”
“In both feet,” Gale suggested.
“Yes, yes, in both feet. He said he was a pilgrim. Everyone is welcome here. Come.” He took a step. “It is time to eat. You and your companion are welcome. You shall eat. If you desire, you shall spend the night here.”
“Oh, no! no!” she protested. “I am not hungry. My companion has vanished. We must find her.”
“Come.” He grasped her hand. She squirmed a little. The hand with those talons was terrible, but she did not let go. She dared not. “Come,” he invited once more.
He led her through the door at the back of the large room and into the dark hallway beyond. Here he lit a large candle. Once again gripping her hand, he led her into room after room, murmuring again and again, “Not here. Not here. It is very strange.”
At last he paused. “There is but one other room,” he murmured. “That is the Room of Perpetual Silence. There the brethren go for meditation. If the door is closed, we dare not open it. Never is the door opened by another when a brother is in meditation.”
“Oh! But we must open the door,” she declared.
“Come. We will look.” He fairly dragged her along.
“The door is closed. We dare not open it.”
“What sort of room is it?” Gale stalled for time to think.
“The walls are very, very thick.” He spoke in a low chanting tone. “The door too, is thick. There is a Buddha, a meditating Buddha. The floor is thick. The ceiling is thick. No sound comes there. It is the Room of Absolute Silence.”
“Then I know what you must do,” said Gale, filled with sudden resolution as she thought what it must mean to be in such a room for a single hour. “You must open that door.”
“It has never been done.” He stamped a small foot.
“You will open that door or I will bring a whole company of soldiers.”
“They will be welcome,” he declared, squeezing her hand. “They shall be fed. They shall sleep here. Everyone is welcome here.”
“Even if they come to tear that door down?” she asked.
“Tear that door down?” he exclaimed. “It is impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible.” Her words carried conviction. “Our engineers could take this whole temple down and carry it to China.”
He stared at her in astonishment. Twice he appeared about to speak. At last he said very simply,—“In that case we shall open the door.”
That was just what he did. And there stood Isabelle, blinking at the light.
“Someone shut the door,” she murmured. “Such a terrible place! I must have been here a long time. I thought you’d never come.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” was Gale’s sober reply.
At that the fat little man must have thought of the soldiers who could “Tear down this temple and carry it to China.”
“Come!” he exclaimed, dancing about like an excited falcon. “I will guide you down the mountain. Wait I will light a torch. Then we will go.” He was away like a flash.
“What a strange place!” Isabelle whispered.
“We could stay all night. He said that.” Gale smiled mischievously. “These monks are really very hospitable.”
“Never! Never!” Isabelle exclaimed.
When each had told the other her experiences, they were well agreed that their club was a glorious place to be.
And then the gnomelike monk was at their side again. Holding a flaming pine knot torch high, he urged them to follow him.
They truly needed no urging. And so, with the little man hopping on ahead and the flaming torch making black giants of all the great trees, they found their way down the mountainside.
When they reached the first house at the foot of the hill, as if afraid of being seen, the little monk cast his torch on the ground, dashed out the flames—then vanished into the night.
“Such a weird experience,” Isabelle murmured.
“Tomorrow I shall visit your colonel,” Gale declared. “I shall say, ‘Colonel, I no longer feel safe in India. Please take me with you into Burma where there is a nice quiet war going on.’”
But for Gale, exciting events of quite a different nature, events that would help to shape her future career had been ordered by the gods for the morrow.
Gale did visit the colonel next day, but at his request, not hers. And not a word did she say about the temple adventure. She was rather ashamed of the whole affair. True enough, that had been her night off. “But that’s no excuse for risking one’s life in a foolish adventure,” she told herself savagely.
“How are you and Mac getting on with your practice?” the Colonel asked, once she was seated before his teakwood desk.
“Oh, fine!” she enthused. “We’ve been working nights. Shot down at least a dozen bombers only night before last.”
“That’s quite a record.” He laughed. “Strange we haven’t had a report on it.”
“Well, of course,” she smiled, “the enemies were only transparent plastic balls that light up and come floating down through the night sky when I locate them with radar and Mac shoots them down. But if they had been enemy bombers—”
“You would have scored a hit.”
“Oh, yes! More than one. Radar is wonderful!” Her eyes shone.
“It certainly is,” he agreed. “Of course,” he leaned back in his chair, “It’s comparatively new to the army. And I might add, that I haven’t another pair like you and Mac. Your record tops them all.”
“That—oh—” she stammered, “That’s fine.”
“Of course it is. You deserve some sort of a reward.”
“Reward?” Her face flushed. “I don’t want a reward. All I ask is a chance to serve my country as my father, my grandfather and all the others have done.”
“That’s the spirit!” He smiled his approval. “For all that, there may be some request that you would like to make.” A strange smile made bird-tracks about his eyes.
“No—er—at least—none that you would have a right to grant.”
“Oh! So that’s it!” He sat straight up. “In that case let us say that your unexpressed wish may have already been granted.”
“You can’t mean—” she hesitated. “Oh, all right, we’ll say that. I’ll be watching and waiting.”
As she left the large cool room that housed the colonel and his staff, Gale found her head in a whirl. What had the colonel meant? Did he know all that was in her mind, or did he know nothing? Only time would tell.
“I’ll work harder than ever,” she told herself. “No more temple bells for me.” In this she was partly right and partly wrong. In the end, temples were to play a very large part in her young life, and that very night, had she but known it, she was to meet someone who would join her in a rather wild temple adventure.