On August 20th Norris took a five-day leave. On August 25th he returned. Coming by the guard at the gate he headed straight for the club with a vision of sandwiches and coffee in his mind. He had missed his dinner in order to make train connections. As chance provided, Norris had met nobody from Langstrom on his way out to the post. What had happened on the field that day was still the secret of the field as far as Norris was concerned.
Weyman and young Crawley were sitting on the club veranda as Norris came up the steps and through the screen door. He nodded to them and went inside, dropping his suit case in the hall.
He had his sandwiches and his coffee and smoked a cigarette to top off with, letting his thoughts meander idly, glad to rest comfortably after the heat and the grime of the trains. Weyman sitting with Crawley crossed his mind. Weyman recalled something to him. Oh, yes. Billy’s 609. It had been due that day. He must ask the surgeon how it turned out. He went out to the veranda and drew a chair beside the two who sat there.
“Where’s Bill tonight?†he asked.
He heard the surgeon’s chair scrape suddenly. Then he saw that Crawley was eying him with consternation written all over his smooth face.
“Hell!†exclaimed Norris, sitting bolt upright. “What’s the matter with you two?â€
Weyman cleared his throat.
“Haven’t you heard, John?†he said huskily.
“Heard? Heard what? What should I hear?â€
“Billy crashed, late this afternoon. He’s dead, John.â€
“Good God! How—-â€
“Nobody knows,†put in Crawley. “It was pretty late. There was only that old crew chief of Bill’s, Halliday, who saw it. Everybody else had gone home or was back in the hangars or somewhere. He just floated in, Halliday said, and made a regular landing. Then a tire blew and a wheel buckled and it was all over. His head got the gun butts. Belt broke, they say.â€
“But that isn’t all,†Weyman took up the thread. “I think Halliday’s brain is softening. He tells a yarn about Billy climbing out of the wreck and babbling to somebody who wasn’t there and making weird gestures⸺â€
“Wait a minute,†Norris interrupted. “Somebody who wasn’t there, you say? How do you know there wasn’t anybody there?â€
“Why, good Lord, man, there simply wasn’t! Halliday saw nobody.â€
“You think it strange, then—Billy’s babbling and gesturing before he died?â€
“Strange, certainly. Unless old Halliday⸺â€
“Well, I’ll tell you something else that may sound strange, coming from me who haven’t been near this post in five days. Doctor, isn’t it true that when Billy went up for his 609 this afternoon you disqualified him irrevocably, unconditionally, for good and all?â€
The surgeon gaped his astonishment.
“Good night!†he gasped. “How did you know that? It’s a fact!â€
“If I told you how I knew you’d disqualifyme, you’d say I was crazy. I’ll tell you some time—perhaps. But not tonight. I feel too low to brawl with a skeptic. But just to show you that I’m not simply a good guesser I’ll tell you something else.â€
Norris paused impressively, then affirmed:
“Billy didn’t know you’d disqualified him when he went out to fly. Something had interfered. You hadn’t told him.â€
Weyman gaped again.
“John, you’ve got me going! It’s so. I was trying to think up some way to break the bad news gently to Bill when a hurry call came in over the phone. An enlisted man’s wife had convulsions. I told Bill I’d be right back. But I was kept away for an hour and he must have thought everything was all right, because he wasn’t in the infirmary when I got back there. I sent an orderly to call him in but he was just taking off when the man reached the field. See here, John, how in hell did you guess that?â€
“I didn’t guess it,†protested Norris. “It’s simple enough. Bill wouldn’t have hopped if he’d known officially he was disqualified. He never deliberately broke a flying regulation in his life.â€
“Yes, he did,†recalled the surgeon. “I saw him do it. The day he went after you with the wheel he crossed the T on the take-off.â€
“Poor old Bill,†said Norris. “That was like him. Somebody else’s show was at stake then.â€
“Well,†said the surgeon, “you’ve explained your second guess, anyhow. But I’m damned if I see how you figured so surely that Bill had been disqualified. Nobody knows that yet excepting the three of us here.â€
“Never mind how I figured it, doctor. I’ll try to make it clear another time. But while you and Crawley are waiting for the explanation you might ask yourselves if the way events shaped themselves this afternoon wasn’t a little—a little—awesome. In a minute more, doctor, you would have told Bill he couldn’t fly—that the air was through with him. But something intervened at the critical moment. You were prevented. Then you sent an orderly. The orderly reached Billy just in time to miss him.Hewas prevented. That’s twice running. Do you think those things were accidents, or were theydeliberately arranged?â€
“Don’t be an idiot, John!†grunted the surgeon, who was careful to keep both his mental and physical feet on the ground all the time.
But young Crawley, who belonged to the air, stared wide-eyed at Norris.
“Gosh!†he exclaimed. “Gosh, it certainly looks⸺†Then catching the skeptical eye of the man of science frowning on him he held his peace.
Norris lay on his cot, staring into the dark. He was thinking of the things Weyman and Crawley had just said, of their divergent reactions to the things he had said to them, and of Billy. He couldn’t sleep. Whether it was the heat or grief at the loss of his friend he did not know. He rather thought it must be the heat, because he had lost many friends in his time, and grieved, and slept for all his grieving. It would be cooler on the open airdrome. He decided to go out and have a smoke. He slipped into a soft white shirt, a pair of khaki slacks, and tennis slippers, and left the hut.
A great moon silvered the silent hangars and the sweep of the close-cropped grass across the broad field as Norris strolled with a cigarette in his lips. He was glad he had come out. Itwascooler.
A sentry stopped on his beat and challenged sharply.
“Officer of the post,†said Norris and continued his stroll.
He came to the end of the hangar line. Beyond was the pilotage hut with the flaccid landing sock drooping at its staff by the door. Outside the last hangar stood an empty gasoline drum beside a girder. Norris sat down on the drum and leaned against the girder.
He had not thought it would be so cool out here. Decidedly this was pleasanter than the clammy sheets inside the torrid hut. He closed his eyes contentedly. His cigarette dropped to the ground and went out.
A little noise startled him. He must have been dozing. He opened his eyes to situate the noise. Somehow it sounded like a kiss. Then in wonderment he stared toward the near-by hut where the sock was stirring just a little in a vagrant draft.
Somebody was standing there in the moon-cast shadow. Somebody was moving. Not a sentry. A sentry would not move like that. Then Norris saw that there were two people in the shadow, not one. They walked together. At the edge of the shadow they paused. And he heard that little noise again, the noise that had startled him. It was such a noise as tokens the parting of close-pressed lips.
The two at the edge of the shadow stepped a little apart. They emerged reluctantly into the silver light beyond. Then, so close they passed that Norris might have reached a hand and touched them, Billy Cobb and Jennie Brent walked for the last time along the row of hangars and disappeared together, vanishing into the moon mist as a silver ship might fade into a cloud.
The moon, looking down, saw a sentry pacing the hangar line. The only other life in sight from end to end of Langstrom Field was a man in khaki slacks, a white shirt, and tennis slippers, perched on a gas drum, his head thrown back against a girder, who slept with a smile on his face.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 7, 1923 issue ofThe Popular Magazine.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 7, 1923 issue ofThe Popular Magazine.