FIGHTERS
for
FREEDOM
Series

The Girl on the Cot Next to Hers Whispered Something

CHAPTER I
 
GIRLS IN UNIFORM

Norma Kent stirred uneasily. Her army cot
creaked.

“You’ll have to lie still,” she told herself sternly.
“You’ll keep the other girls awake.”

Even as she thought this, the girl on the cot next
to her own half rose to whisper:

“We’re Mrs. Hobby’s horses now.”

“That’s the girl called Betty,” Norma thought as
she barely suppressed a disturbing laugh.

“Shish,” she managed to whisper. Then all was
silent where, row on row, fifty girls were sleeping.
Fifty! And Norma had spoken to barely half a
dozen of them! It was all very strange.

Strange and exciting. Yes, it had surely been all
that. They had all been jumpy, nervous as colts, on
the train from Chicago. If they were walking down
the aisle and the train tipped, they had laughed
loudly. They had been high-pitched, nervous laughs.
And why not? Had they not launched themselves on
a new and striking adventure?

As Norma recalled all this she suddenly started,
then rose silently on one shoulder. She had caught
a flash of light where no light was supposed to be.

“A flash of light,” she whispered silently. At the
same instant she caught the gleam of light once
more. This time she located it—at the head of the
cot by the nearest window.

“Rosa Rosetti!” she thought, with a start. She did
not know the girl, barely recalled her name. She had
a beaming smile, yet beyond doubt was foreign-born.

“What would you do if you suspected that someone
was a spy?” That question had, not twenty-four
hours before, been put to her by a very important
person. She had answered as best she could. Had her
answer been the correct one? Her reply had been:

“Nothing. At least, not at once.”

Now she settled back in her place. The flash of
light from the head of Rosa Rosetti’s cot did not
shine again. Nor did Norma Kent fall asleep at
once.

“A flash of light in the night,” she was thinking.
“How very unimportant!”

And yet, as her thoughts drifted back to her
childhood days not so long ago—she was barely
twenty-one now and just out of college—she recalled
a story told by her father, a World War veteran.
The story dealt with a stranger in an American uniform
who, claiming to be lost from his outfit, had
found refuge in their billet for the night.

“That night,” her father had said, “flashes of light
were noticed at the window of our attic lodging.
And that night, too, our village was bombed.”

“Suppose we are bombed tonight?” the girl
thought. Then she laughed silently, for she was
lodged deep in the heart of Iowa, at old Fort Des
Moines.

As the name drifted through her dreamy
thoughts, it gave her a start. She was fully awake
again, for the full weight of the tremendous move
she had made came crashing back upon her.

“I’m a WAC,” she whispered, “a WAC! I’m in
the Army now!”

Yes, that was it. She was a member of the
Woman’s Army Corps. So, too, were all the
girls sleeping so peacefully there. Here at Fort Des
Moines in four short weeks they would receive their
basic training. And then—“I may drive a truck,” she
thought with a thrill, “or operate an army short-wave
set, or help watch for enemy planes along the
seacoast, or—” she caught her breath, “I may be
sent overseas.” North Africa, the Solomons, the
bleak shores of Alaska—all these and more drifted
before her mind’s eye.

“Come what may,” she whispered, “I am ready!”

She might have fallen asleep then had not a cot
less than ten feet from her given out a low creak
as a tall, strong girl, who had caught her eye from
the first, sat straight up in her bed to whisper three
words.

The words were whispered in a foreign tongue.
Norma was mildly shocked at hearing them whispered
here in the night.

“She was talking in her sleep,” Norma assured
herself as the girl settled quietly back in her place.
Then it came to her with the force of a blow. “She
too might be a spy!”

“What nonsense!” she chided herself. “How jittery
I am tonight! I’ll go to sleep. And here’s hoping
I don’t dream.”

She did fall asleep, and she did not dream.

From some place very, very far away, a bugle was
blowing and someone seemed to sing, “I can’t get
’em up, I can’t get ’em up. I can’t get ’em up in the
morning.” Then an alarm clock went off with a
bang and Norma, the WAC recruit, was awake.

Her feet hit the floor with a slap and she was putting
on her clothes before she knew it. A race to the
washroom, a hasty hair-do, a dash of color to her
cheeks and, twenty minutes later, together with
thirty other raw recruits, she lined up for Assembly.

It was bitter cold. A sharp wind was blowing. A
bleak dawn was showing in the east. Norma shivered
in spite of her thick tweed coat. She looked at the
slender girl next to her and was ashamed. The girl’s
lips were blue. Her thin and threadbare coat flapped
in the breeze. She wanted to wrap this girl inside
her coat, but did not. This would be quite unsoldierlike.
So she stood at rigid attention. But out
of the corner of her mouth she said:

“It won’t be long now. Those soldier suits we’ll
wear are grand.”

“It wo-won’t be-be long!” the girl replied cheerfully
through chattering teeth.

Norma permitted herself one quick flashing look
to right and left. To her right, beyond the slender
girl, stood the tall girl who had whispered so
strangely in her sleep. Wrapped in a long black fur
coat she stood primly at attention. There was something
about this girl’s prim indifference to those
about her that irritated Norma.

She turned to the left to find herself looking into
a pair of smiling blue eyes. The girl said never a
word but her bright smile spoke volumes. This
girl’s dress, short squirrelskin coat, heavy skirt, neat
shoes, and small hat spoke both of taste and money.
Beyond this girl stood the little Italian who flashed
a light at night. She stood, lips parted, eyes shining,
sturdy young body erect, very sure of herself and unafraid.

“Whatever happens, I’m going to like her a lot,
and that can’t be helped,” Norma assured herself.

Five minutes later they were all back in the barracks
making up their bunks and preparing for a
busy day ahead.

“Bedding down Mrs. Hobby’s horses,” said a
laughing voice.

“Say! What does that mean?” Norma demanded,
looking up from her work into a pair of laughing
blue eyes.

“Don’t you know?” asked the other girl, as she
sat down on her cot.

“I don’t. That’s a fact,” Norma admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you. But first,” the other girl put
out a hand, “my name’s Betty Gale. Something tells
me that we’ve both just finished college and that
we’re likely to be pals in this great adventure until
death or some Lady Major does us part.”

“You’re right in the first count,” Norma laughed.
“And I hope you are in the second. My name is
Norma Kent.”

“Swell,” said Betty Gale. “Now—about Mrs. Hobby’s
Horses.”

CHAPTER II
 
THE TEST THAT TOLD

“Mrs. Hobby’s Horses.” Betty laughed. “That’s
really no great secret. Perhaps you didn’t notice it,
but we’ve been sleeping in a stable.”

“A stable!” Norma stared. “A stable with polished
floors?”

“Oh, they fixed them up, of course. But the row
of buildings to which this belongs was all stables
only a short while ago.”

“For horses?”

“Why not?” Betty laughed again. “Fort Des
Moines has always been a cavalry post.”

“Oh! And I suppose it was from these very stables
that cavalry horsemen rode thundering away to
fight the Indians.”

“Absolutely!”

“How romantic!” Norma exclaimed. “But I still
don’t see what that’s got to do with hobby horses.”

“I didn’t say hobby horses. I said they called us
Mrs. Hobby’s horses. Don’t you see?” Betty’s voice
dropped. “Mrs. Hobby is director of the Corps. And
they say she’s a wonder. All of us raw recruits must
spend a week in these stables before we go to live
in Boom Town. So you see, they call us Mrs. Hobby’s
horses.”

“But Boom Town? Where’s that?” Norma demanded.

“Oh! Come on!” Betty exclaimed. “You want to
know too much too soon. Let’s get our bunks made.
We have a lot of things to do this day. One of them
is to eat breakfast. That cold air made me hungry.
Let’s get going.”

A short time later they found themselves caught
in a brown stream of WACs pouring toward a
long, low building. Once inside they were greeted
with the glorious odor of frying bacon, brewing
coffee, and all that goes with a big delicious breakfast.

And was it big! In this mess hall twenty-five hundred
girls were being served.

As she joined the long line that moved rapidly
forward Norma was all but overcome by the feeling
that she was part of something mammoth and
wonderful.

“It’s big!” she exclaimed.

“Biggest thing in all the world.” Betty pressed her
arm. “We’re in the Army now!”

Yes, they were in the Army. And this was Army
food. On their sectional trays, oatmeal, toast and
bacon were piled.

Their cups were a marvel to behold. Half an inch
thick, big as a pint jar, and entirely void of handles,
they presented a real problem. But Norma mastered
the art of an Army coffee drinker in one stride. So
too did Millie, the girl from a department store.

“Boy!” Millie giggled, balancing her cup in one
hand. “Now let the Japs come! I’ll get one of them
and never even nick this cup! Honest,” she confided,
“I think this is going to be fun.”

“Fun, and lots of work,” was Norma’s reply.

“Oh! Work!” Millie sobered. “Lead me to it! It
can’t be worse than Shield’s Bargain Basement during
the Christmas rush. It’s ‘Can you find me this?’
or ‘Can you give me that?’ and ‘Miss Martin, do
this,’ and ‘Miss Martin, do that,’ hours and hours
on end. Bad air, cross customers, bossy floorwalkers.
And for what? I ask you? Sixteen dollars a week!”

“Could you live on that?” Norma asked in surprise.

“No, but I did,” Millie giggled. “But honest, I
think this will be a lot better.”

“It’s not so much a matter of it being better or
worse,” Norma replied soberly, “as it is of what
we have to give. This is war, you know. Our war!”

“Yes, I know.” The little salesgirl, it seems, had
a serious side to her nature. “I’ve thought about
that, too. In the city where they examined us they
said I might do library work. I sold books, you
know, and I know an awful lot about them. And I
can cook, too,” she added hopefully.

“They have a cooking and baking school,” Betty
encouraged. “They teach you how to cook in a mess
hall and out of doors for a few people and a great
many. Perhaps for a thousand people at a time.
And you do it all in the baggage car of a special
train.”

“Ee-magine little me cooking for a thousand people!”
Millie wilted like an unwatered flower. “Honest,
girls, I’m just scared stiff! I couldn’t go back! I
just couldn’t! I’d rather die! And today they give us
our special interviews and everything.”

“You’ll make it all right,” Betty assured her. “Just
drink the rest of your coffee. That will pep you up.”

Once again Millie lifted her huge army cup.
“Here’s to us all,” she laughed.

At that they clinked their cups and drank to their
day that had just begun.

Mid-afternoon found Norma sitting at the end of
a row of girls, waiting her turn at a private interview.
In twenty-five open booths twenty-five interviewers
sat smilingly asking questions in low tones
of twenty-five new recruits, and carefully writing
down the answers. In her row as she sat waiting her
turn Norma saw Lena, the tall, strong girl who
whispered strangely in the night, Rosa, who had
flashed a light, Betty, Millie, and a few others.

As she waited—just waited—she began to be a little
afraid. The interviewers were smiling, but after
all, those were serious smiles. She could not hear
the questions. She could guess them. These interviewers
were asking, “What can you do? What would
you like most to do? What else can you do?”

All of a sudden Norma realized that she had
never done a real day’s work in all her life. She had
always gone to school. Oh, yes! She could cook, just
a little. But so little!

“I guess,” she thought, “that I’m what they call
a typical American college girl, not a bad student,
and not too good, fairly good at tennis and basketball.
I’ve got brown hair and eyes, and I’m not too
tall nor yet too short.” She laughed in spite of herself.
“A good fellow, and all that. But,” she sobered,
“what can I do? What do I want to do? What
else can I do?”

She had felt a little sorry for the shopgirl, Millie.
Now she envied her. Millie knew all about books
and she could really cook. At this very moment,
smiling with fresh-born confidence, Millie was stepping
into a booth for her trial-by-words. And she,
Norma Kent, a college graduate, sat there shivering
in her boots! Surely this was a strange world.

The booth that Millie had entered was wide
open. Norma could see all but hear nothing of what
went on. At first she was interested in watching the
smiles and frowns that played across Millie’s frank
and mobile face. Of a sudden her interest was caught
and held by the examiner. Tall, slim, looking very
much the soldier in her neatly pressed uniform that
bore a lieutenant’s bar on its shoulder, this examiner
seemed just what Norma hoped in time to become—a
real soldier.

“She’s not too young—perhaps thirty,” the girl
told herself. “And she’s wearing some sort of medal
pinned to her breast. Say! That’s strange!”

And indeed it was strange. The Woman’s Army
Corps was as yet very young. Only a few had
gone overseas and none, as far as she knew, had
either won honors or returned to America.

“She’s keen,” she whispered to the girl next to
her.

“Who?” The girl stared.

“That examiner,” Nonna nodded toward the
booth.

“Oh! Oh sure!” The other girl resumed polishing
her nails.

“All the same she is,” Norma told herself. “And
I’d like to know her.”

As Millie, the shopgirl, at last rose from her
place, a happy smile played about her lips.

“She made it,” Norma said aloud. “And am I
glad!” She smiled at Millie as she passed.

Lena, the “night whisperer” was next to enter
the vacated booth. As the interviewer began her
task her body appeared to stiffen.

“On her guard,” Norma thought. “I wonder
why.”

On the officer’s face there was still a smile, but
somehow it was a different sort of smile.

And the tall girl? She too seemed rather strange.
She appeared always on her guard. “As if she were
speaking a piece and feared she might forget,” was
Norma’s thought.

Still, in the end all must have gone well for, as
she passed her on the way out, the tall girl flashed
Norma a look that said plainer than words. “See?
That’s how you do it.”

Whatever may have been Norma’s reactions to
this they were quickly lost, for suddenly she realized
that the black eyes of the examining officer
were upon her and that her name was being called.
Her time had come. Swallowing hard, she rose to
step into the booth.

“You are Norma Kent,” said the examiner, flashing
her a friendly smile. “And your home is—”

“Greenvale, Illinois,” was the prompt reply. The
date of her birth, when she entered and left grade
school, high school, and college, and other details
followed.

“And now,” said the examiner, leaning forward,
“what can you do?”

“I—I really don’t know,” the girl faltered. “I’ve
never worked at anything.”

“Ah! So you’ve never worked? Can you cook?”

“Not very well.”

“I see.” The examiner studied Norma’s face.

“How many in your family?”

“Just father and I.”

“And your father? What does he do?”

“He’s with the Telephone Company, in charge
of a wide territory—equipment and all that.”

“Hmm.” The examiner studied her report. “Just
two of you. You should be great pals.”

“Oh—we are!” Norma’s eyes shone. “You see,”
she exclaimed, “Dad was in the other World War.
I’ve always loved him for that. He was in France.”

“France,” said the examiner, with a quick intake
of breath. Norma did not at all understand. “What
a lovely land to die for.”

“Dad lost his right arm,” Norma stated in a matter-of-fact
tone. “That’s why he can’t go back this
time, and—and that’s why he wants me to go.”

“Would you like to go overseas?” The examiner’s
eyes shone with a strange new light.

“I’d love to!” the girl whispered hoarsely. “But
what could I do?”

“Oh! Loads of things.” The examiner made a record
on her sheet. “Your father must have driven
about a great deal looking things over in his present
occupation.”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever go with him?”

“Oh! Many, many times!”

“Did you ever assist him?”

“Oh, yes! Of course! It was all great fun. He had
big charts showing every center, every phone. I
helped him mark down each new installation.”

“Ah!” the examiner breathed.

“Yes, and we had a grand little shop in the basement
where we worked things out—lots of new
things.” Norma’s eyes shone. “There were many
rural centers where the switchboards were in stores.
When a number was called a light shone on the
board. But that wasn’t enough. The storekeeper
couldn’t always see the light.”

“And what did you do about it?”

“We fixed up a new board, just Dad and I. Put a
tiny bell on every line.”

“I see. The light flashed, the bell rang, and then
the storekeeper really knew all about it?”

“Yes. But the light sometimes failed, so we put
on bells with different tones. Each line spoke for
itself.” Norma laughed. “We called it the musical
switchboard.”

“And you say you’ve never worked?” The examiner
laughed.

“That! Why, that was just fun!”

“Perhaps it was. The best work in the world is
the kind we can think of as fun. All that time you
were fitting yourself for two of our most important
departments—Communication and Interceptor
Control.”

“Can—can you really use me?” Norma was close
to tears.

“Can we? Oh! My child!” The examiner all but
embraced her. “We’ll make a major out of you! See
if we don’t!”

CHAPTER III
 
INTERCEPTOR CONTROL

Norma was not long in discovering the reason for
that last surprising outburst of her examiner. When
at last the report was finished, they looked up to
find the row of chairs empty.

“Well!” the examiner breathed. “That’s all for
today. This,” she added, “is not my regular work.
My training was finished many weeks ago. I have
been away from the Fort for some time doing a—well”
she hesitated—“a rather special sort of work.
Now I’m back for a brief spell. They were shorthanded
here.”

“So you’ve been helping out?”

“That’s it.” The examiner rose. Norma too stood.
“We all have one great purpose. Each of us must do
what she can wherever she is.”

“To bring this terrible war to an end,” Norma
added.

“You’re right again,” the other smiled.

“Whew!” she exclaimed after looking Norma
over from head to toe. “You certainly do look fit.”

“I should,” Norma grinned. “Our college has put
us through some training, I can tell you. We
marched five miles bare-legged in shorts, with the
snow blowing across the field!”

“Climbed fences. I’ll bet.” The examiner smiled.

“Yes, and walls too. We did gym work and took
corrective exercises.”

“Grand! They were preparing you for—”

“Just anything.”

“That’s swell. My name is Warren.” The officer
put out a hand. “Lieutenant Rita Warren, to be
exact. I’m going up to Boom Town. Want to go
along?”

“I’d love to!”

“Right! Then come. Let’s go.” Swinging into the
regulation thirty-inch stride, Lieutenant Warren
marched out of the hall with her recruit and along
the snow-lined path.

“That Interceptor Control sounds intriguing,”
Norma said as they marched over the crusted snow.

“Oh, it is! It really is!” Lieutenant Warren’s face
glowed. “The most interesting work in the world.
I’ll tell you a little about it. But don’t let me tell
you too much.”

“I’ll flash the red light.” Norma laughed, as she
asked, “How much is too much?”

Lieutenant Warren did not answer, instead, she
said, “We are stationed along the seacoast.”

“Just any seacoast?”

“Any coast of America. There are a number of
us in each group. We take over some small hotel.
The hotel is run just for us.”

“Must be grand!”

“Oh, it is! But we don’t have much time to think
of that. We have work to do. Plenty of it. You see,
along every coast there are thousands and thousands
of volunteer watchers. They are there day and
night.”

“Watching for enemy planes?”

“Yes, that’s it, and for possible enemy landings.”

“But none have come?”

“Not yet. But let us relax our vigil—then see what
happens! If an aircraft carrier stole in close in the
fog and sent over fifty bombing planes, hundreds—perhaps
thousands would die. That must never happen.”

“No! Never!” Norma’s hand clenched hard.

“That’s the why of the Interceptor Control.”

“Do the WACs help with the watching?”

“In a way, yes. But not out on the sandbanks and
rocky shores.”

“That’s done by volunteers?”

“Yes. The WAC works inside. There’s plenty
to be done if an enemy plane is sighted. Just
plenty.

“This,” she said, changing the subject, “is Boom
Town. Six months ago it was open country.”

Norma looked up, then stared. So interested had
she become in their talk that she had failed to note
that they were now passing before a long row of new
red brick buildings.

“This,” She Said, Changing the Subject, “Is Boom Town.”

“The two-story ones are barracks,” her companion
explained. “Some of the one-story buildings
are Company Headquarters, some are mess halls,
and some day rooms.”

“Day rooms?” Norma was puzzled.

“Day rooms that you mostly visit at night,” Lieutenant
Warren laughed. “Lights in the barracks are
out at nine-thirty. Most of the girls prefer to retire
then. When you’ve been here three days you’ll know
why.

“Some hardy souls wish to stay up another hour,
so they retire to the day room to lounge in easy
chairs, write letters, read, or play cards. Bed check
is at ten-forty-five. You’d better be in bed by then
or you’ll get a black mark.”

“Every night?” Norma asked in surprise.

“From Saturday noon to Sunday night is all your
own. You’ll learn about that later.”

For a moment they walked on in silence. It was
Norma who broke that silence.

“Can you tell me a little of what the WACs of
the Interceptor Control do?”

“A little is right,” was the quick reply. “Much of
it is a deep, deep secret. You’d love it all, I know.

“But listen. This is how it works,” she went on.
“Some high school girl is watching from a cliff.
There are many girl watchers, and how faithful
they are!”

“This girl hears a plane in the dark. It’s off shore.
She rushes to a phone and calls a number. A WAC
at the switchboard replies.”

“And then?” Norma whispered.

“Then the girl on the cliff says: ‘One single. High.
Off five miles. Going south.’

“The WAC knows from the spot on the switchboard
where the girl is. She reports the call. Another
girl locates the spot on a chart. A third WAC reports
to three men. One of these men represents
the Army, one the Navy, and one the Civil Aeronautics
Authority. These men consult their records.
Perhaps they discover that no plane belonging to
any of their organizations is supposed to be on that
spot.”

“And then they send out a fighting plane,” Norma
suggested.

“Not yet. Perhaps that girl watcher heard a vacuum
sweeper instead of a plane, so they wait.”

“And?”

“Then, perhaps two minutes later, there comes a
flash from another watcher—this time a fisherman’s
wife.

“Flash! One single. High. Going south. Very
fast.”

“‘Three hundred miles an hour,’ someone says.
Then a fighter plane goes up. And soon, if it’s really
an attack, the sky will be filled with fighter planes.”

“Lives saved—many lives saved by the WACs,”
Norma enthused.

“We shall have done our part,” Lieutenant Warren
replied modestly. “And that is all our country
expects from any of us.”

“Lieutenant,” Norma asked suddenly in a low
tone, “did you notice anything unusual about the
two girls who went into your booth just ahead of
me?”

“Why no—let me see,”—the lieutenant paused to
consider. “One was rather short and chunky—of
Italian stock. And the other—”

“Tall, strong—and, well—rather silent.”

“Yes. Now I recall her. No—nothing very unusual.
Quite different in character, but capable, I’d
say. They’ll fit in. Of course, they’re both of foreign
extraction The tall girl’s parents were German-born.
She’s an American, as we all are. She was
raised by her uncle. Something unusual, did you say?
Why did you ask that?” She fixed her dark eyes on
Norma’s puzzled face.

“Nothing, I guess. No real reason at all. I—I’m
sorry I asked. I wouldn’t hurt anyone—not for all
the world.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, my dear.” The Lieutenant
pressed her arm.

Lieutenant Warren seemed fairly bursting in her
enthusiasm for the Interceptor Control. She told
Norma more, much more, as they marched along.
Then suddenly, as if waking from a trance, she
stopped dead in her tracks to exclaim softly:

“Oh! What have I been telling you? I shouldn’t
have breathed a word of that! It’s so hard not to talk
about a thing that’s got a grip on your very soul.
Promise me you won’t breathe a word of it!”

“I promise,” Norma said quietly. “I’m sure I
know how important it is.”

“Do you know?” some sprite might have whispered.
Soon enough the girl was to learn.

“Come on in here,” the Lieutenant said a moment
later. “I must pick up a suit I’ve had pressed.”

The air in the large room they entered was
heavy with steam. “On this side,” said the Lieutenant,
pushing a door open a crack, “is the beauty parlor.
Some young reporters have made fun of it. As
if it were a crime for a soldier to look well!

“Those girls working in there,” she said as she
closed the door, “are civilians. They come over from
the city every day. Sometimes they worry me.”

“Worry you?” Norma was puzzled.

“Yes. You see, they’re not checked.”

“Checked?” Norma stared.

“Their records, you know. After all, this is an
Army camp and, as such, is just packed with secrets.
We send out a thousand freshly trained WACs a
week. One of these days we’ll be sending a trainload
all at once. Where are they going? Are they being sent
overseas? Will they be secretaries to commanding
officers? What other important tasks will they perform?
Our enemy would like to know all this and
much more. And these hairdressers just come and
go. Who are they? No one knows.”

“But have we been checked?”

“Have you been checked?” the Lieutenant
whispered. “Oh, my dear! The F.B.I. knows all
about you. Your fingerprints are in Washington.
Your life from the time you were born has been
checked and double-checked.”

“So none of us could possibly turn out to be
spies?” Norma breathed a sigh of relief.

“I wouldn’t quite say that,” her companion replied
thoughtfully. “But it would be very difficult.”

“Oh!” Norma exclaimed, fussing at her hair. “Do
you suppose I could possibly get my hair set?”

“I can’t see why not. This is a slack hour.”

“I’m going to try it!” the girl exclaimed. “Tomorrow
I’ll be getting my uniform, won’t I?”

“Yes, you will.”

“Then my cap must be fitted properly.”

“Try it, and good luck.” The Lieutenant held
out a hand. “It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.”

“Oh!” Norma exclaimed. “I want to see you
many, many times!”

“My visit here at this time is short. But in the future.
Here’s hoping.”

“In the future. Here’s hoping,” Norma whispered
to herself as she passed through the door.

CHAPTER IV
 
A LIGHT IN THE NIGHT

On entering the small, crowded beauty parlor
Norma found only one vacant chair. She looked at
the girl standing behind the chair. “Spanish,” Norma
thought. And yet her eyes were set at a slant
like those of an Oriental. For all this she was decidedly
not an Oriental.

“Oh, well.” Norma thought, “she looks capable.
It will soon be time for rattling those trays again.
And do I need to get my fingers wrapped round one
of those mugs of strong coffee! Boy! Has this been
a day!”

“Hair set,” she said, as she settled back in her
chair.

Without a word the girl went to work. She was
half finished before she spoke. Then in the most
casual manner she said:

“Lieutenant Warren is a friend of yours?”

Norma was surprised. The door had been opened
only a little way, and for a space of seconds, yet this
girl had seen. “Yes,” was her noncommittal reply.

“It is always quite fine to have an officer for a
friend. She can help you, tell you things, and guide
you,” suggested the hairdresser.

“Yes—I—I suppose so,” Norma murmured.

“She told you about the Interceptor Control?”
The girl’s whisper invited confidence.

At once Norma was on her guard. “We talked
about Boom Town,” she replied evenly. “It’s interesting.
Built so quickly, and all that. Yet it looks
warm and cozy.”

“Boom Town. Oh! Yes, it’s quite grand.” These
words were spoken without enthusiasm.

After that they talked about trivial things—clothes,
shampoos, and the weather. Twice the
strange girl led back to the Interceptor Control.
Twice Norma led her away again.

“Now why would she, a hairdresser, want to talk
about Interceptor Control?” she asked herself.

As she left the chair she was not a little surprised
to see the tall recruit, Lena, waiting to take her
place. More surprising was the fact that as Lena’s
eyes met the hairdresser’s, there appeared to pass between
them an instant flash of recognition.

“And Lena hasn’t been on the grounds a whole
day!” she thought with a start.

“Spies!” her mind registered as she left the building.
Then she threw back her head and laughed.
“Spies in the heart of America!” she whispered. “In
a woman’s camp! I’m getting a spy complex—seeing
ghosts under the bed! What’s the matter with me?”

That evening, not wishing to retire at the “lights
out” signal, she sought out the day room that is
used at night, and found it.

It was a comfortable place, that day room. Half
underground, it was not subject to draft. A large
round stove gave off a genial glow and plenty of
heat. A large cushioned lounging chair awaited her.

Only one other girl was in the room. “Lena, the
one who whispers in the night,” Norma thought.
“Guess she’s asleep.”

Lena was not asleep, for as Norma sank into her
chair, she opened one eye and drawled:

“Had a good day, didn’t you?”

“Just fine!” was the smiling reply.

“Hobnobbing with the brass hats.” Was there a
suggestion of a sneer on Lena’s face?

If it was there Norma chose to ignore it. “There
don’t seem to be any brass hats around this place,”
she replied, good-naturedly.

“Oh! Aren’t there?” the girl exclaimed. “You
just wait and—” At that the girl caught herself.
“Well,” she finished lamely, “I’ll admit I’ve been
treated fine.”

“Tomorrow we get measured for our uniforms,”
she added.

“Your uniform should need very little fitting.”
Norma could not help admiring the girl’s look of
perfect fitness and form as she stood up.

“I didn’t get it sitting ’round,” Lena laughed.
“I’m going out for some air and a look at the moon.
You’re rather a perfect thirty-six yourself,” she said
over her shoulder as she marched toward the door.

Norma wondered in a vague sort of way how
Lena had got her training. She knew about her own.
It hadn’t been easy.

After a time she began wondering about the
moon. Seeing it shine over the stables, the barracks
and mess halls would be a pleasant experience. She
wasn’t dressed for the outdoors, so she stepped to
the window and looked up. She did not see the
moon. Instead, her eyes fell upon two shadowy figures.
One was Lena. The other, too, was a girl.

“Just another raw recruit,” she thought.

But then the girl turned so the light of a distant
lamp was on her face. She was the girl who had done
Norma’s hair that afternoon.

“Should have been back in the city hours ago,”
she told herself.

It all seemed very strange to her. Where had Lena
known this girl before? Or had she? Why were they
together now? Only time could tell, and perhaps
time wouldn’t.

She was just thinking of retiring when Lena again
entered the room. Seating herself before the fire she
held out her hands to warm them. For some time
neither girl spoke. At last leaning far over and
speaking in a hoarse whisper Lena said:

“You know that little Italian girl?”

“Rosa?”

“Yes.”

“What about Rosa?”

“I think she’s a spy. I saw her flashing a light in
the night. Her cot is by the window, you know,”
came in Lena’s insinuating whisper.

“Oh! Do you really think so?” There was little
encouragement in Norma’s tone. “Who’s a spy?”
These words were on her lips. She did not say them.
Nor, having said them, could she have given the
answer.

Two days later found them all in uniform. And
did they look grand!

“Oh! Millie!” Norma exclaimed. “You look like
a million dollars!”

“Do I? Then I’m glad.” Millie beamed. “I was
afraid I’d still look like a salesgirl.”

“How does a salesgirl look?” Betty asked.

“Oh, sort of dumb.” At that they both laughed.

“It’s the grandest outfit I ever had!” Millie exclaimed.
“Such a soft, warm woolen suit. And such
tailoring! And my coat! Oh gee! I feel like Christmas
morning!”

“The shoes weren’t marked down to two dollars
and thirty-nine cents either!” said Betty. “I’ve had
a lot of fine shoes, but none better than these.”

That afternoon a corporal formed them into a
squad—Norma, Betty, Lena, Millie, Rosa and five
other girls. Then they began to drill.

“One! Two! Left! Right! Left! Right,” the
corporal called. “Squad right! Squad left! March!
March! Doublequick! March!”

Some of the girls found it difficult to keep in step
and maintain that thirty-inch stride. But not Norma.
The whole manual of drill was an old story to
her.

Soon they were joined by other squads. Then,
eager that her squad might look its best, when the
Lieutenant who had taken them over was not near,
Norma began calling in a hoarse whisper the counts
and changes. “Left! Right! Left! Right! Squad
right! March! Double quick!” They drilled until
many a girl was ready to cry “quits.”

When they broke ranks Lieutenant Drury singled
out Norma’s squad.

“Say!” she exclaimed. “You girls are wonderful!
Been practicing behind the stable or somewhere?”

“It’s her,” Millie nodded toward Norma. “She
keeps us going.”

“That’s swell. How come?” The Lieutenant
turned to Norma.

“I knew it all before I was five years old,” Norma
laughed. “My father was an officer in the last war,
and I am his only boy. He started drilling me when
I was a mere tot. I liked it, so we kept it up. That’s
all there is to it.”

“Well,” the Lieutenant laughed, “I guess there
are many of us who are our fathers’ only sons. And
by the grace of God we’ll make them mighty proud
of us before this old war is done!”

That night in a corner of the day room Norma
had a little time all by herself. Her father was home
all alone now. The chair she had occupied by the
fire for so long was empty now, and would be for a
long time.

“But I wouldn’t go back,” she told herself, biting
her lip. “Not for worlds!”

And he would not want her back. She recalled his
parting words at the train. “Norma,”—his voice had
been husky. “For a long time I wanted a son. Now
I’m proud to have a daughter to give for the defense
of my country. Get in there, girl, and fight!
Perhaps you’ll not be carrying a gun, but you’ll be
taking a fighting man’s place. And I’m sure you’ll
help show those fine boys how a girl can live like a
soldier and die like one, if need be.”

“I’ll be back,” she had whispered, “when the war
is won.”

That night Lena may have whispered in her
sleep. She may even have gone out to talk with her
hairdresser. If so, Norma knew nothing of it. She
was too weary for that. She retired early. She did,
however, remain awake long enough to twice catch
the gleam of light from Rosa’s cot. She liked the little
Italian girl, but—

Once again she recalled one question asked her
back there in Chicago. She had been given a final
examination before her induction into the service.
One of the women in that examining group, she
had been told, was a psychologist. In the back of
her mind all during the examination she had asked
herself, “Which one is she?”

When a little lady with keen dark eyes had leaned
forward to ask: “If you suspected that one of your
companions was a spy, what would you do?”—a flash
came to her. “She’s the psychologist.”

She had thought the question over, then replied
slowly, “If I saw her setting a fire or stealing papers
I’d report her at once.”

“But if not?” the little lady had insisted.

“If I merely suspected that she was a spy, I’d wait
and watch, that’s all,” had been her whole reply.

In the eyes of her examiners she had read approval.
That’s what she was doing now—watching
and waiting.

“All the same,” she told herself now, “I’m going
to ask Rosa why she flashes that light at night.”

CHAPTER V
 
SPY COMPLEX

The next day three things happened. Norma saw
her favorite Lieutenant. She asked Rosa a question
and received a surprising reply, and Millie, the shopgirl
who was in the Army now, led them all in an
amusing adventure that might not have turned out
so well.

In the afternoon they drilled as a squad, as a platoon,
and as a company. It was a hard workout, but
to Norma it was a thrilling adventure.

“All this is the real thing!” she exclaimed once.

“I’ll say it is!” Betty laughed. “These new shoes
are burning up my feet!”

“It’s the real McCoy, all the same,” Norma insisted.
“It’s what I’ve been training for all my life!
My father thought it was just for fun, for after all, I
was a girl.”

“How little he knew!” Betty replied soberly.

Marching and drilling were not hard for Norma.
She had time to think of other things. She began
studying the ancient fort, and the atmosphere that
hung about it like a cloud.

She had begun to love the place, and at times
found herself wishing that she might remain here
for a long time.

“Four weeks seem terribly short,” she told Betty.

“It may be much longer,” Betty suggested. “You
might join the motor transport school and learn to
drive a truck in a convoy.”

“Yes, and I might not,” was her reply.

“Or attend the bakers’ and cooks’ school,” Betty
suggested.

“Not that either.”

“Well then,” Betty exclaimed, “since you’re so
awfully good at this drilling stuff, perhaps they’d let
you attend the officers’ training school.”

“Hmm.” she murmured. “Now you’re talking!
Maybe. I don’t know.”

On that particular day, as a bright winter sun
shone down on the long parade ground, Norma
thought only of the old fort and what it stood for.

It was quite ancient, but just how old, she could
not tell. Always a lover of horses, she tried to picture
the parade ground in those old days when a
thousand, perhaps two thousand men, all mounted
on glorious cavalry horses, came riding down that
stretch of green.

“Dignified officers in the lead—band playing and
horses prancing! What a picture!” she murmured.

On each side of the parade ground were rows of
red brick buildings. On the right side had been the
homes of officers. Now these were occupied by the
officers of the school.

On the opposite side were barracks occupied by
officer candidates in training.

“That’s where I’d be training,” she thought with
a little thrill, “if I applied for entrance and was accepted.”

On bright, warm days, she had been told, the
whole school, six thousand strong, assembled on the
parade ground and marched down the field. “That,”
she thought, “would be glorious!” She hoped that
they would have fine weather before she went away.

It was after drill was over that a rather strange
thing happened. There was, she had discovered, an
air of grim, serious determination about this place
that was almost depressing. You seldom heard a
laugh. There was always the tramp-tramp of feet.

Even now, when her squad of ten had been put
on their own, and they were headed for the Service
Club for a bottle of coke or a cup of hot chocolate,
they were still going tramp-tramp, in regular file.

“It’s a little bit too much!” she thought.

Just at that moment a shrill voice cried out
sharply:

“Left! Right! One! Two! One! Two.” She recognized
that voice. It was Millie, the shopgirl!

For a space of seconds they kept up the steady
tramp, tramp, tramp. Then, with a burst of laughter,
they all took up the chant: “One! Two!”

They kept this up to the very door of the Club.
Then, all of a sudden, the chant ended with a low
escape of breath. There in front of the Club stood
a captain of the WACs.

As they filed past, the girls saluted, and the captain
gravely returned their salute.

“Wasn’t that terrible!” Millie whispered, gripping
Norma’s arm. “And I started it! Do—do you
suppose they’ll put me in the guardhouse?”

“I don’t know,” Norma hesitated. “No—not the
guardhouse. No WAC is ever put in there. I guess
it wasn’t so bad. We were just letting off steam, that
was all.” Truth was, she didn’t know the answer. Of
one thing she was sure—she for one felt better for
this little bit of gaiety.

The Service Club had a cheerful atmosphere
about it. Straight ahead, as they entered, they saw
at the back of a fairly large lounging room, a fire in
a large open fireplace. From the right, where chairs
stood about small tables, came the pleasant odor of
hot coffee and chocolate.

As Norma turned to the right she caught the eye
of Lieutenant Warren. She was seated alone at a
table, sipping coffee. At once she motioned to Norma
to come sit across from her. With some hesitation,
Norma joined her.

“What will you have? It’s on me,” the Lieutenant
smiled.

“That coffee smells just right,” was the reply.

“Doughnuts—a sweet roll, or cookies?”

“A—a sweet roll. But please let me get them!”

“No! No! Permit me!” Lieutenant Warren was
away.

“That training you received at college was fine,”
the Lieutenant said when they were seated. “Grand
stuff. I only wish all colleges went in for it. And they
will. Our quota now is a hundred and fifty thousand.
It will be a half million before you know it.”

“But Lieutenant Warren!” Norma’s brow puckered.
“We’re not to carry guns, are we?”

“No. That’s not contemplated.”

“Then why all this drilling?”

“We’re going in for hard things—driving trucks,
carrying messages on motorcycles, repairing radios,
cars, airplanes. We’re to take the places of soldiers
so they can carry guns and fight. We’ve got to be
hard—hard as nails.”

“I—I see.”

“That’s not all.” The Lieutenant’s eyes shone.
“Learning to drill properly is learning to obey
orders. That’s necessary. If I say to you, ‘Take this
message down that road where the bullets are flying,’
you’ve jolly well got to do it.”

“I—I see,” Norma repeated.

“You don’t mind this drilling, do you?”

“I love it!” This time Norma’s eyes shone.

“I thought so. And you know a great deal about
it—perhaps more than most of us.”

“Per—perhaps,” the girl agreed, hesitatingly.

“With your permission, I am going to suggest
that you be given a company to drill.”

“Oh! Oh, please! No!” Norma held up a hand.

“Wait.” The tone was low. “You saw me examining
recruits?”

“Yes.”

“I was the only officer doing that work.”

“I—I didn’t notice.”

“All the same it was true. Why do you think I
did it?”

“Because you wished to serve,” Norma replied in
a low voice. “But with me it would be a step up too
soon.”

“We are in a war. A step up or down does not
matter. All that matters is that we should be prepared
for that step. You are well prepared. You
won’t refuse?”

“I won’t refuse,” the girl answered solemnly.

“Lieutenant,” Norma said in a low tone a moment
later, “when I had my interview they asked
me what I’d do if I suspected someone of being a
spy. Why did they ask me that?”

“The psychologist was taking your measure. That
was a problem question. The answer would give
her a slant on your general character.”

“Then they don’t expect to find a spy among the
WACs?”

“It’s not impossible for a spy to join our ranks,
but certainly not easy. You filled out a questionnaire
that told every place you had lived and when,
every school you attended, and when.”

“And if I had been working, I would have had
to tell how long and when, why I quit, and all the
rest. All the same,” Norma spoke slowly, guardedly,—“spies
have gotten into every sort of place, so—”

“So you think we have a spy?” The Lieutenant’s
voice was low. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”

“No. Not—not yet.”

“Okay. Let’s skip it. But just one thing. We all
need to be careful about members of our organization
who are children of the foreign-born. It’s easy
to do them an injustice. Too easy. They form a large
group in our population. Take that little Italian
girl over there. She’s an attractive young lady.”

“That’s true,” Norma agreed.

“And that big girl—Lena. Her parents are foreign-born.
What a truck driver she’d make!”

“Yes—Oh yes. Sure she would.”

The Lieutenant gave Norma a short, sharp look.

Nothing more was said. A moment later Millie
stood by their table. There was a worried look on
the shopgirl’s face.

“Wasn’t that terrible?” She did not smile.

“What’s so terrible?” The Lieutenant smiled.

“What we did a little while ago,” said Millie.

“Want to tell me about it?” the Lieutenant
asked.

Millie dropped into a chair to tell the story of
their hilarious march.

“Now,” she exclaimed at the end, “It was I who
started it. What will they do to me?”

“Nothing,” was the instant response, quite as
quickly rewarded by a golden smile.

“You were on your own,” the Lieutenant explained.
“We want you to be happy. When an army loses
its sense of humor it begins losing battles.”

“I—I’m so glad,” Millie exclaimed.

“But let me tell you.” The Lieutenant held up a
warning hand. “There are other times and places.
Take Inspection as an example. When you line up
by your cots for inspection be sure there are no
wrinkles in your blanket; that your locker is in
order and open; that your shoes, towel, washcloth
and laundry bag are in place. And above all, look
straight ahead. Don’t smile. Don’t frown. Just look—and
don’t move a muscle—not even if a fly gets inside
your glasses or a bee stings you.”

“Jeepers!” Millie exclaimed. “This is some
woman’s army!”

That evening, by some strange chance, Norma
found herself in the day room with Rosa, alone.

“It’s my chance.” she told herself with a sharp intake
of breath. “Now I’ll ask her.”

“Rosa,” she said quietly, “why do you flash a
light by the window at night?”

“Oh!” Rosa exclaimed sharply. “Does it show?”
Her face was flushed.

“Yes. Just a little.” Norma was trying to make it
easy. “But why should you do it at all?”

“I don’t like to tell you.” Rosa backed away.
“You’ll laugh at me.”

“Rosa, I’ll never laugh at you about anything.”

“Honest?” Rosa’s dark eyes searched her face.

“Honest. Never! Never!”

“All right, then. I’ll tell you. My mother didn’t
want me to join up. She believes much in prayer.
She gave me a book of prayers and said: ‘Read one
prayer every night.’ I have read one prayer every
night. But it was dark, so I hid a small flashlight in
my bed. Now you can laugh.” Rosa turned away.

“Rosa,”—Norma put an arm about her—“I think
that’s wonderful! But Rosa, your mother did not
say ‘Read a prayer in bed.’”

“No, she did not say that.”

“Rosa, we are forbidden a light in the barracks
after nine-thirty, so why don’t you come down here
to read your prayer?”

“Thank you! Thank you so very much. I shall
do that.” Instantly Rosa was away after her book.

Long after Rosa had read her prayer and left the
room, Norma sat staring at the fire. In that fire she
read many questions. Would she be asked to drill a
company? Should she ask for the privilege of entering
officers’ training? Had Rosa told the truth?
And Lena? What of Lena and the strange girl in the
beauty parlor?

CHAPTER VI
 
A STARTLING ADVENTURE

At Fort Des Moines the WACs are on their own
from Saturday noon until Sunday night. Needless to
say, over at the mess hall, in the barracks, and on
the field there was much talk among the new recruits
about how these hours were to be spent.

“What do you do?” Norma asked a tall, slender
girl from Massachusetts who had been in training
for three weeks.

“Well,” the girl drawled, “the first week I went
dashing off to Des Moines, rented a room at a nice
hotel, ate oysters on the half-shell, Boston baked
beans, brown bread and all the things I wanted, and
had a grand time all by myself. But now,” she added,
“I just get some books from the library, settle
down in a big chair at the Service Club and loaf.”

“But isn’t Des Moines interesting?” Norma asked
in surprise.

“Sure it is,” a bright-eyed girl from Texas exclaimed.
“Beth is just lazy, that’s all. Des Moines is
a nice big overgrown town, all full of nice, friendly
people. It has the grandest eating spots! Yes, and
halls where you can dance—really nice places.”

“And boys to dance with! Umm!” exclaimed a
girl from Indiana. “There are soldiers and sailors
who come in from their camps and all sorts of college
boys.”

“A nice big, overgrown town, all full of nice
friendly people.” Norma recalled these words later.
Truth was, she found herself a little homesick. At
that moment she would have loved a good romp
with her dog Spark, and after that a quiet talk with
her dad.

“I know what I’ll do!” she thought. “And I won’t
tell a soul! They’d laugh at me.”

Betty, who more than any girl at camp had begun
to seem Norma’s chum, had decided to stay in
camp. When the day came, Norma too remained until
four o’clock. Part of the time she spent having
her hair washed and set. It was no accident that
she took the chair of the Spanish hairdresser who
served her before.

“I’ll bring up the subject of the Interceptor Control.
If she asks questions I’ll tell her things I read
in that little book called ‘The Battle of Britain.’
Anything that’s been published. Then perhaps I’ll
string her a little.”

The hairdresser fell for the bait. Norma loaded
her up with commonly known facts, then drew
pictures from her fertile imagination. In the end
she was hearing planes at unbelievable distances.

“But why are you so interested in all this?” she
asked at last.

The girl shot her a swift look. “Oh! Miss Kent!”
she exclaimed—there was a shrill note in her voice—“It
is all so very interesting! Everything you
WACs do is thrilling! It is a great organization!”

“Yes,” Norma agreed. “It is one of the big things
that has come out of the war.”

To herself she was recalling Lieutenant Warren’s
words:

“These girls worry me a little. Their records have
not been checked.”

Then again she remembered how her own record
had been checked to the last detail. “The examiners
do not take your word for a thing,” she had been
told. “The F.B.I. questionnaire you filled out is
checked and double-checked by men who know.
Even your fingerprints are sent to Washington.”

All this she knew was true. And yet the girls in
the beauty parlor were not checked. “That tall girl,
Lena, could tell this hairdresser anything—just anything
at all. If she became the secretary to a colonel
she could report anything to this hairdresser.”

“But Lena—” it came to her with the force of a
blow—“Lena’s record has been checked. Her fingerprints
were sent to Washington.”

“What a silly young fool you are!” she chided
herself as a short time later she took the car to Des
Moines. But she was not even sure of that.

Arrived at the heart of the city she looked up a
long street to see a tall, inviting brick hotel standing
on a hill.

And Yet the Girls in the Beauty Parlor Were Not Checked

After walking and climbing for fifteen minutes
she found herself entering a long room filled with
lounge chairs and lined on two walls by tall glass
cases. The contents of these cases surprised her, for
in them were more kinds of mounted fish than she
had ever seen.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Am I in the wrong place?
Is this a museum?”

“No, Miss.” the smiling bellboy who took her
bag replied. “This hotel was once owned by a very
rich man who collected fish. He’s dead now.”

“But his collection lives on.” She wondered
vaguely what would live on when she was gone.

The first thing she did when she had been shown
to a neat and comfortable room was strange. Opening
her bag, she took out a cardboard folder tied with
a ribbon. From this folder she selected a dozen
pictures. These she proceeded to thumbtack, one by
one, to the wall directly under a mellow light.

After that, without further unpacking, she dropped
into a chair and sat for a long time looking at
those pictures through moist eyelashes.

The house with the broad lawn and tall shade
trees about it was her home. The tall, distinguished
looking man with one empty sleeve was her dad.
The picture done in color was her college chum.
And the grinning young man in the uniform of a
private was Bill—just plain Bill.

There were other pictures but these were the
ones that counted most. They had adorned the
walls of her room at college for a long time. When
you bunk in a stable—even a glorious, glorified stable—with
a hundred other girls, you don’t thumbtack
your pictures to the wall. It isn’t allowed. Besides,
it would be silly.

Norma wanted to see her pictures in their proper
setting. Now she was seeing them.

“Norma, you’re a silly goose,” she told herself
aloud. Then she wondered whether she had spoken
the truth. Sometimes one drops into a new world
too hastily. It does one good to take a look back.

It was Bill who had started her thinking of the
WACs. She and Bill were grand good friends,
that’s all. No diamond ring—no talk of wedding
bells—just friends.

All the same, when Bill came to the school all
togged up in a new uniform, she had felt a big tug
at her heart strings.

“Oh! Bill!” she had cried. “You look like a million!”

“And I feel like a millionaire,” was Bill’s reply.
“Army life is the berries, and regarding the Japs,
all I’ve got to say is they’d better look out!”

“Getting pretty good with a Tommy gun, Bill?”
she laughed.

“And how!” was his prompt reply.

They found a log down among the willows at the
edge of the campus, and there Bill, in his big,
boisterous way, told her all about the Army.

“Oh, Bill!” she exclaimed when he had finished.
“You make it sound so wonderful! I wish they’d let
girls join.”

“They do!” Bill stopped grinning. “Ever heard
of the WACs?”

“Yes, I—” she paused. Yes, she had heard of them.
That was about all.

“Bill, I’ll really look into this.”

“You’d better. They’re a grand outfit. And boy!
Are they going places!”

“I’ll be seein’ you,” she said to Bill as their hands
clasped in farewell.

“In the Army?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Hot diggity! That’s the stuff!” He gave her hand
a big squeeze, and was gone.

“And now I’m here, Bill,” she said to the picture
on the wall. “I’m in the Army now. But, oh, Bill!
I do hope our companies will some time march in
the same parade!”

After an hour with her pictures, Norma felt
herself ready for one more week of drilling, police
duty, study, and all that went on from dawn till
dark at old Fort Des Moines.

After a hearty meal eaten in a big bright cafeteria
where all the people seemed carefree and gay,
she stepped out to see the lights of Des Moines
at night.

Thrills she had experienced more than once came
to her from exploring a strange city at night. Certainly
exploring a city of friendly people, many of
whom smiled at her in a kindly way as she marched
along in her spick-and-span uniform, could not be
dangerous.

For an hour she prowled the streets alone. Past
dark public buildings that loomed at her from the
night, down narrow dark streets where taxi drivers
and workers sat or stood before narrow lunch
counters, she wandered. And then back to the broad
street where lights were bright and the throngs
were gay.

A feeling of utter loneliness drove her once again
into the shadows. And there she met with a startling
adventure.

CHAPTER VII
 
A HAND IN THE DARK

She had rounded a corner and was walking slowly
north, admiring the sight of the moon shining
over the jagged line of rooftops, when suddenly two
figures emerged from a narrow alley to turn in
ahead of her.

“Been taking a short cut,” she thought.

The steady swinging stride of the taller of the two
girls, as they marched on before her, suggested that
she might be a WAC.

“But she’s wearing civilian clothes,” she told herself
in surprise.

The two shadowy figures seemed vaguely familiar.
Because of this she followed them. They had gone
two blocks when all of a sudden the taller of the
two turned her head half about. The moonlight
painted her features in sharp outline.

“It’s Lena!” she whispered. “Lena, in civilian
clothes!” What did it mean? Had this girl been
found out and dismissed from the service?

As if the question had been put directly to her,
the shorter of the two girls paused and looked back.
Just in time Norma dodged into the shadows.

An inaudible gasp escaped her lips. The other
girl was the one from the beauty parlor at the Fort.

As the two girls resumed their march, Norma followed
them, without thinking too much about the
reason or possible consequence.

At the next corner they turned west on a dark
street. Here, on both sides, were auto repair shops
and cheap second-hand stores.

Scarcely had Norma rounded this corner when
the two girls swung through a door to disappear into
a shop that was almost completely dark.

Acting purely on impulse. Norma caught the door
before it had completely closed. Pushing it a little
farther open she slipped inside and then allowed
it to close noiselessly.

At the same instant a thought struck her all in a
heap. Lena had a perfect right to dress in civilian
clothes on her day off. All WACs have. She, Norma,
had chosen to wear her uniform.

“In a way it is a sort of protection,” she had said
to Betty.

“Yes, like a nun’s cape and veil,” Betty had
laughed.

“Is it a protection?” Norma asked herself now. At
first the place seemed completely dark. Then she
caught a gleam of light at the far end of the room.
She began hearing low voices. The two girls were
back there. Someone was with them.

“What a goose I am,” Norma thought. “Lena has
a right to dress as she pleases. Nothing unusual has
happened. That other girl probably has a friend
who works here. They have come here to meet him.
I’ll just slip out of the door.”

But she couldn’t. Not just yet. The door was
closed and locked. Just a little frightened, she felt
for some sort of bolt or spring lock that could be
released. There was none.

For the first time in her life she was seized with a
feeling very near to panic. She wanted to dash to the
heavily shaded windows and pound on them for
help. She wanted to scream. And yet she did not
dare. Perhaps those people did not know she was
there.

“And after all, why should I be afraid?” she asked
herself. “This is some sort of a repair shop.” That
faint light from the back brought out the looming
bulks of cars and trucks. “There’s no law against
going into a repair shop, even at night.”

All of a sudden she realized that it was not fear of
those who enforce the law that inspired her with
fear, but those who hated the law.

“Spies,” she whispered softly.

But were there spies in this city? Perhaps. Who
could tell? Spies were everywhere.

Once again she tried the latch, lifting it up and
down, pulling at the door without a sound. It was
no use. Some mysterious type of lock held the door
fast shut.

In the hope of finding a smaller door, she began
gliding along the wall. All at once she bumped into
something that toppled over to fall with a loud
bang.

Like a wild bird in a cage she flew to the door to
try the latch with all her strength.

“Who’s there?” came in a hoarse voice.

She neither moved nor spoke.

A minute passed—two—three minutes—or was it
an hour? Her heart was beating painfully. She had
the sense of someone approaching, yet she neither
heard nor saw a moving thing.

Then suddenly she did see it—a groping hand.
The flash of light cutting through a spot beside a
windowshade revealed it.

A scream was on her lips. And yet she did not
scream.

And then the hand gripped her arm.

“What are you doing here?” a voice growled.

She tried to speak, but no words came.

“Oh! You are one of them.” The voice changed
suddenly. Now it was low, apologetic. “You are one
of them lady soldiers. A WAC they call them,
don’t they?”

“Yes. Yes. That’s what I am.” She formed the
words but could not say them.

There was no need, for the man went on, “You
were perhaps looking for the WAC garage. It is
not here. That is another place. You came in—the
door locked itself. Is it not so?”

“Yes! Yes! That is it,” she whispered. Lena must
not hear her voice or see her face.

“I shall unlock the door. This is all too bad,”
said the man who had gripped her arm.

By some magic the door was opened and she stepped
out into the night. The light of a car illuminated
the man’s face for a second. Then the door
slammed shut.

“I’ll know that face if I see it again,” she told
herself. She wondered if after all Lena had seen her
face—and if she had, what then?

Ten minutes later, panting a little, she entered
the hotel, called for her key, then dashed up two
flights of stairs to her room.

Having locked and bolted the door, she sank into
the chair before her array of pictures.

“Oh, Bill!” she whispered, “I wish I hadn’t
come.” She was thinking not alone of Des Moines,
but Fort Des Moines, the Army, and all the rest.
She was wishing desperately that she might be back
with her dad and her dog Spark.

After that she sat looking at her father’s picture.
From his square shoulders and his twinkling gray
eyes she drew strength. She seemed to feel again his
hand on her shoulder as he said in his slow calm
voice, “You’re the only boy I’ve got. Thank God
they’re giving you a chance. I know you’ll do your
duty as a good soldier.”

“No,” she whispered, “I’m not sorry. I’m glad.”

One thing she decided before she fell asleep in
that big comfortable bed. This was that she would
cease playing the part of an F.B.I. agent and start
being a real WAC.

“I’ll put this Lena business out of my life,” she
whispered. “This is the end of it forever and ever.”

Did some sprite whisper, “Oh, no, sister! No you
won’t!” If so, it was all lost on her, for she had
fallen fast asleep. But if there was a sprite hovering
about and he did say that, he would have spoken
the truth. There are some things that just won’t be
put out of our lives.

When she awoke the sun was shining in her
window. It was Sunday morning. But she was not
thinking of that. Instead, a question had popped
into her head. How had that man known she was a
WAC? He had not seen her. The place had been
completely dark. There could be but one answer—by
the sense of feeling. He had gripped her arm. He
had recognized the feel of her soft wool WAC uniform.
And how had he come to know the feel of
fine wool? Here too there could be but one answer—Lena.
It was strange.

On the following Monday Norma was asked to
take charge of the drilling of her company.

“I realize that this is an unusual request,” the officer
in charge said soberly. “But this is an unusual
war, and ours an unusual organization. For that
reason we must perform unusual tasks.

“We are short of officers. The Army camps are
constantly calling for more and more of our workers.
They go out in small groups. An officer goes
with each group. So now you see how it is.” She
smiled. “What do you say?”

“I—I’ll try it.” Norma agreed.

She undertook the task with fear and trembling.
It was not so much that she distrusted her own ability.
She had been well trained. But how would the
other girls take it?

“Some of them are thirty years old. One is a
grandmother,” she said to Betty, as she broke the
news. “And I am barely old enough to vote.”

“It’s not age that counts,” Betty replied in a tone
that carried conviction. “It’s ability and experience.
Go in there, old pal, and win. This is war. We all
must do our best. And you can bet I’ll be right in
there rooting for you.”

“Then—thanks! Oh, thanks!” Norma replied
huskily.

All the same, when the time came for her first
order: “Company, attention!” her throat was dry
and her heart was in her mouth.

There was a surprised look on many faces as they
turned about to line up. There was a smile or two,
but they were not unkind smiles.

Then a thing happened that broke the tension.
An officer of the old school, her father had drilled
her in an unusual way. When as a child she stood at
attention, he would call: “Hup, two, three.”

Now, in her excitement she called to her company:

“Hup, two, three!”

Then suddenly realizing what she had done, she
laughed. And they all laughed with her. The ice
was broken.

“Mark time! One! Two! One! Two! March.”

Feet came down with an even thud—thud—and
crunch—crunch on the frozen path. The march was
on.

Oddly enough, at the first rest period one of the
older members said:

“Why not ‘Hup, two, three,’ for us?”

“Sure. That’s the way the soldiers get it. And
we’re in the Army now.”

“They’ll call us the Hup company,” someone
laughed.

“That will be swell,” exclaimed another. “And
that’s what we’ll be, the ‘Hup an’ comin’ Company’.”

And so it came to be.

For two hours Norma put them through their
paces. Only once did her attention waver. That was
when Lena gave her a long, searching look. “She
knows about that night,” she told herself, and all
but lost a step.

When at last the tired marchers were once more
on their own, many of the girls came forward to
congratulate her and tell her how well she had done.

“They are won over. Just wonderful!” Tears of
gratitude stood in Norma’s eyes as she reported to
her superior.

“These came here for just one purpose,” the
Lieutenant said.

“To help win the war.”

“Yes. That’s it. To hasten the end of this terrible
affair and to help bring their brothers, sweethearts,
and friends back home again.

“So how could they fail to do their best or refuse
to respond to the orders of any leader? But you, my
child,”—she placed a hand on Norma’s shoulder—“you
have real officer’s blood coursing through
your veins.”

Norma thanked her, then marched away.

“She spoke wiser than she knew,” Norma thought
with a smile. She had not told her that her father
had been an officer in the other World War.

But did she really want to become an officer of
the WACs? She did not know.

After that the days glided by. Drill was not all
there was to their training. Far from that. The
Articles of War were read to them. They studied
long hours learning what it meant to be a soldier.
They studied military regulations. They took gas
mask drill, first aid, and a score of other activities
that were likely to fall to the lot of any WAC.

From time to time each girl was assigned to
K. P.—Kitchen Police—peeling potatoes, washing
dishes, scrubbing floors, dishing up food.

Betty, who was a real student, hated this, for on
that day they were excused from study. But Millie,
who found study difficult, wished that K. P. came
five times a week.

Though Norma had sworn that the spy complex
should not tempt her again, strange things happened,
and always her mystery-loving mind would
ask, “Why? Why?”

There was the time she went with the little Italian
girl, Rosa, to visit the airport on their day off. Then,
too, Betty more than once tempted her to start spy
hunting all over again.

“I won’t!” she told herself. “I won’t! I just won’t!”
Positive as she was at the time, Norma did not succeed
long in keeping this resolution.

It was really Rosa’s strange and mysterious adventure
at the airport that got her going all over
again.

CHAPTER VIII
 
ROSA ALMOST FLIES

On the Saturday that Norma and Rosa went to
visit the airfield they doffed their uniforms and put
on their civies.

“All the same,” Norma said, “we’ll take along our
identification cards, just in case—”

Airplanes, especially those flown by the Army Air
Forces, had always interested Norma, so she was
more than delighted when shortly after their arrival
at the field, a flight of small, sleek fighter planes
came winging in out of the blue.

“Look, Rosa!” Norma exclaimed. “Aren’t they
wonderful! Like a flock of beautiful white pigeons!”

There was no need to say “Look” to the little
Italian WAC. As if in a hypnotic trance, she stood
with eyes glued on the flight of planes.

“See how they circle!” Norma herself was entranced.
“This is like war. This is how they will
come sweeping in after escorting a bomber squadron
in Africa, or China, or who knows where. That’s
the way they’ll look when we watch them beyond
the seas.”

“Yes, this is war,” was all that Rosa said, as one
by one the fighting planes taxied across the field into
position.

Like a troop of boys the fliers came walking across
the field.

“Bill is in flight training right now,” Norma said,
all excited. “If only he were in that group!”

“Who’s Bill?” Rosa’s eyes left the planes for an
instant.

“Oh, he’s just Bill.” Norma laughed. “But he’s
not here.”

Always interested in any person in uniform, Norma
moved closer to the joking, laughing group.

“How young they seem!” she said, half aloud. It
shocked her to think that some day, perhaps not too
far away, from the blue sky, shot out of his plane,
Bill would come hurtling down, tumbling over and
over like a stick thrown into the air crashing at
last to earth.

“This is war,” she thought, with a shudder. “We
WACs must do all in our power to make it end.
And we will! Now we are a hundred and fifty
thousand. Next it will be three hundred thousand—half
a million—a million WACs marching away
to win the war.”

Looking up, she allowed her eyes to sweep the
field. It was an inspiring picture—the men, the
planes, the flag floating in the breeze.

“Oh!” she whispered. “Oh! How I wish Dad
were young again!”

And then, with a sudden start, she realized that
Rosa was gone from her side.

“She’s vanished!” she thought, with a sudden
sense of panic, as her eyes sought the girl in vain.

Just then, as if moving of its own will, one of the
fighter planes began gliding toward the center of
the field.

At once the quiet scene became one of action. A
young pilot close to the plane made a running jump
to grab the tail of the plane. He had just reached it
when, in the midst of shouting and sound of rushing
feet, the plane’s motor went silent, and the plane
itself came to a sudden stop.

Norma was thunderstruck when, from the pilot’s
seat of that plane, none other than her companion,
Rosa, the little Italian WAC, was dragged out.

“Rosa! Rosa! You little dunce! Why did you do
it?” she screamed as she raced forward.

By the time she reached the side of the plane Rosa
was on the ground. A stalwart member of the Military
Police had her by the arm, and was saying:

“Come along, sister. What’s wrong with you?
Drunk? Or just plain nuts—or nothin’ at all?”

“It’s the guardhouse for her,” a second M. P.
predicted loudly.

Realizing that for the moment nothing could be
accomplished, Norma joined three grinning young
pilots as they followed the M. P.’s and Rosa across
the field.

“What’s the matter with that girl?” one of the
pilots asked in a friendly tone.

“I don’t know,” was all Norma could say.

“She was with you, wasn’t she?” a second pilot
asked.

Norma made no reply.

“She really had that plane going,” said the first
pilot. “One minute more, and she’d have been right
up in the sky.”

“And there’s secrets in those planes that nobody
but us are supposed to know,” put in number three.
“By George! Maybe she’s a spy!”

“Hush,” said Norma. “She’s no more a spy than
you are. She’s a WAC.”

“A WAC!” the first pilot exclaimed. “Well I’ll
be jiggered! And I suppose you’re one too?”

“Sure I am,” Norma agreed.

“Well, all I got to say is you’d look swell in any
uniform,” was the final rejoinder.

Just then the flight commander, a very youthful-appearing
major who had come across the field in
long strides, caught up with the procession.

“Caught this girl trying to steal one of your
planes,” said an M. P.

“Yes,” said the other. “We’re taking her to the
guardhouse. C’mon, sister.” He gave the weeping
Rosa a gentle push.

“Wait a minute. Not so fast. Those are our planes.
I’m flight commander. Let the girl go. She won’t
run away, will you, young lady?”

Rosa tried to speak, but no words came.

“Here’s a young lady who was with her,” said a
pilot, moving Norma gently forward. “She says
they’re both WACs.”

“WACs?” said the officer. “Hmm! Where are
your uniforms?”

“We’re on leave.” Norma swallowed hard, then
threw her shoulders back. “Saturday afternoon and
Sunday we can wear what we please. And—and
Major,” she stammered, “I don’t know why Rosa
did it. I—I think the plane charmed her.”

“Charmed her! Hmm! Now let’s see.”

“She’s one of the best little WACs in our squadron,”
said Norma, half in despair.

“And are you the squadron’s leader?”

“No, but I drill the entire company. And that’s
not all!” Norma exclaimed, gathering courage from
the major’s smiling eyes. “I’m the daughter of Major
John M. Kent, who fought in the World War—”

“John M. Kent!” The major studied her face.
“You do look like him. You’ve got his eyes.”

“Then you know him?” Norma exclaimed.

“Quite well. He’s a splendid man.”

“His eyes are not all I have,” said Norma. “I have
his picture.” She fumbled in her billfold.

“Here—here it is.”

The officer studied the photograph, and, across
the bottom of it, he read:

“To my beloved daughter Norma.”

“Norma,” he smiled. “That’s a pretty name for a
pretty girl. So you’re a WAC? A chip off the old
block. Shake.” He held out his hand. She seized it
in a good, friendly grip.

“And here’s a picture of our squadron,” Norma
said half a minute later. “There’s Rosa, right there,
uniform and all. You know we wouldn’t do anything
wrong. I guess Rosa just lost her head.”

“Yes, lost my head,” Rosa sobbed.

“All right, boys,” said the major. “You may let
the young lady go. You can’t put a WAC in the
guardhouse. It just isn’t being done, especially not
here.”

To Norma he said: “If I’m here long enough I’m
coming to visit your camp. Yours is a grand outfit.
We’re going to need you all before this scrap is
over.”

“Oh! Please do come!” Norma exclaimed. “I—I’ll
get you the keys to Boom Town and to every other
place in old Fort Des Moines!”

“Well, I’m jiggered!” exclaimed one of the pilots,
as Norma and the still silently weeping Rosa hurried
off the field.

Once she was safe on the streetcar and headed for
the city, Rosa ceased her weeping, but every now
and again Norma heard her whisper:

“Why did I do it? Oh why?”

What was back of all this? Hidden away in the
little Italian girl’s mind were secrets. Norma would
never be able to doubt that from this day on.

“I’d like to go exploring in that mind of yours,”
she thought. That this type of exploring often leads
to disaster she knew all too well. So, for the time
being, she did not explore.

Arrived at the city, Norma at once sought out a
restaurant with a little nook in the wall where lights
were subdued and where delicious foods were
served.

By the time they had gone all the way from soup
to ice cream and were sipping good strong black
tea, the little Italian girl’s eyes were shining once
again.

“Was that after all so terrible?” she asked.

“Of course it was,” Norma replied instantly. The
question surprised and shocked her.

“I did no harm to the plane.”

“You might have killed someone, wrecked the
plane, or even flown away in it.”

“Oh, no, I—” For a space of seconds it seemed
that Rosa was on the verge of revealing some important
secret. “But—but I didn’t do any of those
terrible things,” she ended lamely.

“The secret must wait,” Norma told herself. To
Rosa she said: “There were secrets in that plane.”

“I didn’t want their secrets,” Rosa’s cheeks
flushed.

“How could they know that?” Norma was a little
provoked.

“You Might Have Wrecked the Plane,” Norma Replied

“I’m a WAC. When they knew that they saw it
was all right.”

“It was I who got you off.” Norma’s voice rose.
“They thought you were a spy.”

“I, a spy?” Rosa stared. “Yes, that is what they
said, but they were joking.”

“They were not joking.” Norma was in dead
earnest.

“But I’m a WAC! How can a WAC be a spy?
My record, it was checked. My fingerprints—”

“Yes, I know all that. But even in a WAC uniform
you might be a spy. My father told me once
that during the World War many spies in France
wore Y. M. C. A. uniforms. They were very hard to
catch. Believe me, the Mata Haris of this war will
be wearing WAC uniforms, too. We have to be
careful, very, very careful.” Norma settled back in
her place to study the Italian girl’s face. It was indeed
an interesting moving picture of lights and
shadows. But from it Norma learned little.

Twice Rosa seemed on the point of replying, but
in the end no words were spoken.

By this time their group, though still together,
had moved to newer and more comfortable quarters
in Boom Town. That night Norma lay staring at
the darkness for a long time before she fell asleep.

She was thinking of Rosa and Lena. Rosa’s actions
on that day had started her thinking things all over
again and her thoughts were long, long thoughts.

Once again she caught the gleam of light from
Rosa’s cot and saw Lena sit up in her place at night
as she whispered three mysterious words.

The picture of Lena and the Spanish hairdresser
standing in the moonlight again fascinated her, and
once more she felt that terrifying grip on her arm
as a man’s voice said, “Oh! You are one of them!”

A chapter or two had been added to Lena’s story.
Betty was responsible for this. One night she had
come in rather late, but had remained up long
enough to whisper to Norma:

“Who do you think I saw tonight down by the
big gate? Lena and the Spanish hairdresser!”

“Is that so strange?” Norma had tried to seem indifferent.

“But there was a man with them.” Betty’s whisper
rose. “He had a small mustache that turned up, and
sort of staring eyes.”

“Did he?” Norma’s voice betrayed her excitement.

“Yes; and he said to Lena, ‘You must!’ Only his
‘you’ sounded like ‘Du’.”

“And Lena has her hair done every other day by
the Spanish hairdresser. That costs money. Do you
think she always pays?”

So Betty too had a spy complex! Well, let her
have it. She wasn’t going to be drawn into it. For
all that, some things did seem very strange.

At that Norma turned over and fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX
 
SOMETHING SPECIAL

The period of their basic training at old Fort
Des Moines was drawing to a close. Three more days
and they would be scattered far and wide. Some, it
is true, would remain for further training in the
Motor Transport School, and Cooks’ and Bakers’
School. Some would take up officers’ training, but
out of the thousand who had been in training for
nearly four weeks, the greater number would be
scattered to the four winds.

“Just think,” Betty sighed as she and Norma
stepped out into a glorious springlike morning. “To
leave this lovely place for some Army camp!”

“But that’s why we came here!” Norma protested.
“I’m eager to start doing some real work.”

“Yes, and you’re just the one who is most likely
to be kept here to enter officers’ training.” There was
admiration in Betty’s voice, and a suggestion of
envy. “Lucky girl, to have such a grand Dad.”

Then Norma made a strange remark. “I’m not
sure that I want to be an officer—at least, not yet.”

“Don’t be silly!” Betty exploded. “Who wouldn’t
like to be an officer? When you arrive at your Army
camp you’re right up there with the rest of the officers.”

“Bill’s a buck private, and he’s good enough for
me. Besides—Oh! Come on. Let’s get our morning
coffee. This is the day of the big parade.”

Yes, this was the day. And such a glorious day!
For weeks it had been too cold for a parade. Snow
had lain on the parade ground. But now the snow
was gone. The ground was frozen, but the sun was
bright.

“Six thousand women!” Norma thought as a thrill
ran up her spine.

Then suddenly her heart skipped a beat. She was
to lead her own company. She was the only basic on
whom such an honor had been conferred. She
would do her best. Would it be good enough? Then
there was that other—that very special thing. She
shuddered afresh. And that morning for the first
time she dropped her big handleless cup with a
bang and a splash on the table.

“Nerves,” suggested Betty.

“A bad omen.” Norma frowned.

“No, a good one,” Betty countered. “Shows
you’re sweating them out right now. You’ll be cool
as a cucumber when the time comes.”

At one-thirty that afternoon they assembled on
the parade grounds. Slowly they formed into companies
and took their places in line.

Since this was to be a gala occasion, a military
band from an Army post had been imported.

Each company had its flag and its leader. Norma
thrilled to her finger tips as she stepped out before
her “Hup! Two! Three!” Company.

“If only Dad were here!” she thought. “Why?
Oh, why didn’t I ask him to come!”

By the time they were all in their places, the reviewing
stand was all aglitter with officers’ insignia
and decorations.

A hush fell over the ancient parade ground.

As the band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner
they stood at rigid attention. When this was over,
Norma glanced hastily over her company. It was
perfect. Never, she was sure, had there been such a
group of girls.

Suddenly the band struck up Sousa’s stirring
march, The Stars and Stripes Forever, and the
parade began.

To Norma it was all a glorious dream. The flags,
the music, the bright sunshine, great officers—some
young and dashing, some subdued and grave,
standing in review.

“But this is only the beginning,” she told herself.
“There is more—much more.”

This was true, for once as she drilled her own
company at dusk on the ancient grounds, having
chosen a dark corner, they had put on something
very special. It had been great fun, and gave them a
thrill as well.

They had, however, made one mistake—the red
brick officer’s home facing that corner of the parade
ground was occupied by the commanding officer.

Hearing the rattle of drums, she had slipped on
her fur coat and had stepped out on the veranda.

“Thrilled and charmed,” as she expressed it, by
their performance, she had come down off the porch
to congratulate their officer.

When she found a private at their head, she
was amazed, for Norma was putting her company
through an intricate drill.

“My dear, it is marvelous!” she enthused, when
it was over. “And this little—ah—specialty of yours
is charming. Let us keep it a secret, shall we? Until
the day of the parade?”

“You mean—” Norma stared.

“Your company shall do this as something extra
after the parade is over.”

Norma gulped as she recalled the stirring words.

Without a word she saluted the commanding
officer.

And that was why a chill sometimes ran up her
spine, as the grand little army of WACs swept
down the field. That certain “something extra” was
yet to come.

The parade, with its marches and counter
marches, in close formation and open formation,
following the band down the long field and back
again, was an inspiring sight. There were those
there that day who realized as never before what
war could do to a nation and her people.

Since it had been announced by megaphone that
an extra feature would follow the grand parade, the
WACs, once their formation was broken, joined
the onlookers at the side, all but Norma and her
company. These hastened to one of the barracks.

Marching in close formation they were soon back
on the field. However, three of their members had
undergone a speedy transformation. Or were they
members of the company at all? The spectators
were unable to tell.

Leading the trio was what appeared to be a tall,
gray haired man. In his hand he carried a drum.
Behind him marched a mannish figure carrying a
fife, and after him came a boy, also with a drum.
Hatless, the man with the fife wearing a bandage on
his head; and the other two lined up behind their
leader, Norma, and behind them marched the khaki-clad
company.

Suddenly, at a signal from Norma, the trio
snapped to attention. Instantly the roll of drums
and the shrill whistle of a fife greeted the listeners’
ears.

Then, electrified, the audience knew. The three
figures represented a picture they had known from
childhood, The Spirit of Seventy-six.

Led by these three, the khaki host marched with
perfect rhythm halfway down the field and back
again.

An awed silence followed. Then rose such a cheer
as the ancient barracks had seldom echoed back,
even in the old Indian days.

Frightened—all but overcome by her sudden triumph,
Norma tried to hide among her now broken
ranks, but all in vain.

She was searched out and led to the grandstand.
The first person she met was a distinguished-looking,
gray-haired man with one empty sleeve.

“Dad!” she cried.

Soon she was being greeted by high-ranking officers
and other honored guests.

“I shall recommend you for officers’ training,”
the commanding officer whispered in her ear.

“Oh! But I’m not sure that I want to be an officer!”
The cry escaped unbidden from Norma’s lips.

“We shall see,” was the reply.

Lieutenant Warren, her beloved Lieutenant, who
was standing near, said:

“I would like to have you and your father at my
house for dinner tonight. You know my house?”

Norma nodded.

“Will you come?”

Norma looked into her father’s eyes. Then she
said, “Yes, thank you. That will be fine.”

As she stepped from the platform, Norma felt that
she had lived a whole week in one short hour. But
her day was not half done.

CHAPTER X
 
I’M AFRAID

Oddly enough, when Norma had conceived the
idea of depicting The Spirit of Seventy-six, and had
gone about the task of selecting her fife player and
drummers, she had discovered that in all the company
there were but two drummers, Rosa and Lena.

At first she hesitated to ask Lena to play the part
for, to say the least, their relations had been none
too cordial. In the end she had swallowed her pride
and made the request.

“Oh, sure!” Lena had agreed. “I think it will be
loads of fun!”

In the end, with her long legs encased in knee-length
stockings and short breeches and with a white
wig, she had played the part of a Revolutionary
grandfather superbly. As for Rosa, she had been
every inch a boy. A girl named Mary played the fife.

And so it happened that it was in the company of
Lena, Rosa, Betty, and Millie that shortly after the
breakup of the parade Norma found herself tramping
toward the main chapel. Her father had been
taken on an inspection of the grounds.

The company in which these girls at last found
themselves was a thousand strong. These girls had
all completed their training and in two or three
more days would scatter north, south, east, and west
to take up the tasks for which they had been trained.

“It’s going to be swell!” Lena exclaimed. “We’re
headed for the coast!”

“The coast!” Norma stared. “How do you know?”

“Haven’t you been told?” Millie exclaimed.
“We’ve all been told. We’re to be part of an Interceptor
Control—catch planes that are coming to
bomb us.”

“Or spies that try to land from submarines,”
Rosa exclaimed. “It will be thrilling and dangerous,
I guess.”

“Only thing is,” Millie pouted, “I’m afraid there
won’t be many soldiers there.”

“Soldiers?” Norma stared at her.

“Well, you do like a date now and then,” Millie
drawled. “You get awfully lonesome when you
don’t.”

At that they all laughed.

“Honest, haven’t you been told?” Betty asked
when she had Norma by herself.

“Not yet,” was the slow reply.

“Oh! I know!” Betty exclaimed. “They’re going
to send you to officers’ training school! Some people
have all the luck!”

“Do they?” Norma said. Truth was, she was tired.

The thousand WACs now streaming into the
chapel were being assembled for a final word from
the top-ranking officers of the camp before they went
out to their work.

“Where do you suppose we’ll be sent?” Norma
heard one girl ask as she took her seat.

“Perhaps North Africa,” someone whispered.

“Surely not just like that!” was the surprised reply.

“A lot of WACs landed there just last Sunday.
I saw it in the paper. And did they have thrills going
over! Heard the siren telling of prowling subs,
felt the thud of depth bombs, and—”

“Shish!” the girl’s friend whispered. “You’re almost
shouting!”

“All the same they had a grand time! Danced
with soldiers on deck, and all that. Right over there
in Africa now. Girls! Tell me how I can get to go!”

Then all at once the khaki-clad throng was silent.
The ranking officers were mounting the platform.
In a silent salute, the girls all rose. When the Lieutenant
Colonel in charge of the post, the commanding
officer and two officers Norma did not at once
recognize were seated, they all sat down.

The Lieutenant Colonel rose. “Fellow soldiers of
America,” she began. Norma was thrilled. “You
have assembled here in order that we may give you
a final greeting and farewell. During your four
weeks of training you have conducted yourselves
like soldiers. You will shortly be going to your
various posts of duty. Your country looks to you for
service, faithfulness to your task, and loyalty. We
know you will not fail.”

“No—no—no. We will not fail!” came in an inaudible
whisper. Had one woman, or a hundred,
said it? No one knew. It was enough that an electric
thrill passed over the room.

“On such an occasion as this,” the Colonel went
on, “it has been customary for the commanding officer
or myself to give you a brief talk in an effort to
acquaint you with that which lies ahead. This afternoon
we have delegated that task to one who, not
so many months ago, went through her baptism of
fire in Flanders Field.

“Lieutenant Warren,”—she turned about—“will
you be so kind as to tell these young women what it
really means to be a WAC?”

As Lieutenant Warren rose, the Colonel said:

“Some of you know Lieutenant Warren. To
those of you who do not know her, may I say that
during the fall of Holland, Belgium, and France
Miss Warren drove an Ann Morgan Ambulance,
evacuating old men, women, and children from
those unfortunate lands, and that the medal pinned
upon her breast is a Croix de Guerre presented to
her by a grateful nation.”

There was a rustle in the audience. Someone
sprang to her feet. Instantly they were all on their
feet in silent tribute to a member of their own ranks
who had seen service on the bloody fields of France.

“My Lieutenant!” Norma whispered chokingly.
At that instant she knew that she would gladly follow
this leader round the world.

“Tonight,” she thought as she sank again into her
seat, “Father and I are to dine with her. What a
privilege!” She wondered what would be said at that
dinner. And then the speech began.

Lieutenant Warren spoke slowly, distinctly. Norma
caught every word and yet her voice never rose
to a high pitch. She spoke at length of what she had
seen, little of what she had done. Speaking of the
enemy planes she said:

“They swooped low over roads that were crowded
with carts drawn by horses or weary old men, and
two-wheel carts pushed by women and children.

“These people were refugees. Driven from their
homes, they were trying to save a little of that which
they had once owned, for they had always been poor.

“But those enemy pilots!” There was biting anger
in her low voice. “They came swooping down to
shower machine-gun bullets upon these defenseless
people.

“What did they want? To clog the road with
helpless and innocent women and children so their
armies might more easily destroy the defeated
soldiers.”

As the speaker paused for breath, Norma stole a
glance at her companions. Millie and Rosa were
leaning forward, lips parted, eyes wide, drinking in
every word. Betty sat well back in her seat, listening
as one listens who has heard many rare speeches,
yet there was on her face a look that said:

“This is real, though it is terrible. I shall not
forget it.”

But Lena? Norma was startled. There was on her
face a look as cold as marble.

Without knowing why, at sight of that face Norma
suddenly felt terribly afraid. This mood passed
quickly, for again Lieutenant Warren was speaking.

“We worked hour after hour, day after day, without
sleep. On our ambulances we carried white-haired
men whose legs had been shot away, mothers
whose children had perished, children who had lost
their mothers forever, and babies—tiny babies in
cribs, in blankets.” Her voice broke.

Then standing tall and straight, with the medal
gleaming on her breast, she said:

“Hate! Terrible hate did all this! It is for you
and me to take the places of brave young men who
are eager to help put down this terrible enemy and
to silence their machine guns forever. Are we going
to do it?”

Instantly there came a cry that was like the roar
of the sea. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

But Norma stole a look at Lena’s face.

Then, as if afraid she might leave a picture too
terrible for all these young minds, Lieutenant Warren
went back to the days before the defeat of
France. She painted pictures of friendly villages in
France. The grocer, the baker, the aged shoemaker,
and all the little farmers—they were all there.

“These,” she went on quietly, “are the people
we are fighting for—the good, kindly, simple common
people. In France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
in Poland—all over Europe they are starving slaves
today. We are fighting that they may be made free
and that our own people shall never be enslaved.”

Then she told of those good, brave days in unoccupied
France, when a great general had pinned the
Croix de Guerre on her blouse and all the good
people had wept.

All in all Norma thought it the grandest speech
she had ever heard.

Once again as the speaker resumed her seat the
audience rose to its feet in a silent ovation.

Then someone swept her hands softly over the
organ keys, and they sang as they had never sung it
before: “Oh say, can you see!”

As the last note died away, Norma stole a look at
Lena’s face. It was cold, gray, and hard as steel. She
had not been singing.

When, at last, dry-eyed but determined, Norma
left the room she whispered, “Betty, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid? Why?” Betty asked.

“I don’t know—just afraid, that’s all.”

CHAPTER XI
 
TWO AGAINST TWO

At seven that evening Norma found herself in a
place of great enchantment. Since her father was
with her, the fear of mid-afternoon was gone, and
joy reigned supreme.

Those ancient officers’ homes that lined one side
of the parade ground had always intrigued her. Now
she was really inside one of them, and it was indeed
charming.

The mantel above the huge living-room fireplace,
as well as the walls on all sides, were lined with
fascinating objects of art which she realized must
have been brought by her hostess from France.

“Yes, they came from France, all of them—except
these.” Lieutenant Warren indicated a small group
of photographs. “These,” there was a change in her
voice, “these are my people—my mother, my sister,
my grandfather. They are from home.”

“Yes, I know how you feel about them.” Norma
smiled. “You might be interested to know what I
did on my first weekend here.”

“That is always interesting,” replied the hostess.
“Girls are so different.”

Norma told how she had rented a hotel room and
had put up all her pictures. In her eagerness and
excitement she came very nearly going right on,
telling of her mysterious and startling experience
following Lena and being trapped in a repair shop
at night. Just in time she caught herself.

“These things are important,” the Lieutenant replied
in a quiet tone. “Don’t let those feelings escape
you. When you realize to the full what home
and loved ones mean to you and when you contrast
America and France as it is today, it makes you
want to fight!”

“I am sure of that!” Norma’s father agreed heartily.

“But all these beautiful pictures, these tiny
statues, all carved in marble, those silver candlesticks,
these etchings!” Norma exclaimed. “How
could you afford them?”

“These, my dear,” the Lieutenant beamed—“these
all were gifts from those kindly and
grateful French people. When I protested they
said: ‘But yes! You must take them! You really
must! All France will be overrun. The Boche will
get them. A thousand times better that you have
them.’

“There are names on all of them,” she added.
“See? Pierre. Jeanne. Margot. When this terrible
war is over many of them shall go back.”

“How wonderful!” Norma murmured.

“These etchings are from that last war. I saw them
in Paris,” said Mr. Kent. “They are wonderful.”

“Wonderful and terrible,” Lieutenant Warren
murmured.

One etching pictured a huge cannon belching
forth hate in the form of black smoke, and emerging
from that smoke was a beautiful woman. Her
hands had been turned into claws, and on her face
was a look of unutterable rage.

“And yet she is gorgeous,” Norma whispered.

The second etching showed a valiant French pilot
falling from his wrecked and burning plane
down to certain death. But beneath him, hands
locked, waiting, ready to catch him and bear him
away, were two beautiful angels.

“Yes,” said the Lieutenant who had been
through so much in France. “This is war. It is beautiful
and it is terrible.”

“This is war,” the gray-haired man agreed.

“And he really knows,” Norma thought.

“Come,” invited the hostess. “Dinner is about
to be served.”

There were busy and exciting times in Norma
Kent’s life when she ate a meal and enjoyed it to the
full and yet, two hours later, she could not have told
what she had eaten. This was to be just such a meal.
The food was delicious, the silver and dishes charming,
but the conversation absorbed all her attention.
Little wonder, for it seemed to her that her
whole future hung in the balance.

Somewhere between soup and roast chicken Lieutenant
Warren said all too casually:

“Did I hear them say you had been asked to enter
officers’ training?”

“You may have heard that,” Norma flushed. “It
has been suggested by a lady in high position.”

“It’s quite an honor, don’t you think so, Mr.
Kent?” The Lieutenant turned to Norma’s father.

“Yes, indeed. It’s the first step up.”

“And you deserve it,” Lieutenant Warren said,
with a bright smile. “We’re proud of you. Please accept
my congratulations, and allow me to wish you
all the luck in the world.”

“Wait a minute!” Norma exclaimed. “Put on the
brakes! I haven’t said I would accept.”

Her father gave her a quick look. The smile on
Lieutenant Warren’s face appeared to light up a
little as she said: “Do you mind telling me why you
said that?”

“Not a bit,” was the quick response. “It’s because
I want to come up the hard way, Dad,” she said.
“That’s how you climbed up in that other war.”

“Yes.” A rare smile spread over the gray-haired
man’s face. “However, I had no choice. With me it
was that way or not at all.”

“All the same,” Norma insisted, “I want to get
out and do some real work. I was in college for four
years, and now at the Fort for a month. What I want
to know is, can I really do any worthwhile work?”

“Good!” exclaimed Lieutenant Warren. “I hoped
you would say that. And now may I serve you some
of this chicken while it is hot?”

“But why are you glad?” Norma asked in a puzzled
tone, after the chicken had been served.

“Because I am leaving here in two days and I
want to take you with me.”

“Going where?” Norma asked in surprise.

“To the coast. I can’t tell you the exact spot because
I don’t happen to know, and because if I did
know, I would not be permitted to tell. It will be
somewhere on the rugged coast of New England,
rather far north, I imagine. I am to be given a station
of the Interceptor Control, and—”

“Interceptor Control!” Norma exclaimed. “Those
words charmed me from the first. They somehow
seem to suggest dark night patrols, intrigue, mystery,
and perhaps real danger.”

“Perhaps you are making too much of it. That
depends,” Lieutenant Warren drew a deep breath.
“Be that as it may. I’m in for it, and I am to select a
squad to take with me. It’s a relatively small station.
One squad will be enough at first.”

“She’s asked my squad to go,” Norma thought.
“She didn’t ask me because she thought I might
want to take a step up, join the officers’ training
school at once.” Then she asked a question on impulse:

“Are you planning to take all my squad—all ten
of them?”

“I had hoped to, if you cared to join us.”

“Bu—but—” Norma caught herself. She had been
about to betray her secret—her spy complex. What
she had wanted to say was, “But how about Lena?”

“It is for you to choose,” the Lieutenant said
quietly.

“Oh, I want to go!” Norma exclaimed. “Count
me in. Please don’t leave me out, only—” There it
was again.

“Only what?”

“Only nothing. Please forgive me,” Norma
begged.

And so it was settled. Norma was to be given a
two-day leave to be spent at home with her father.
Then she was to meet Lieutenant Warren and the
squad in Chicago. There they were to board an eastbound
train for fields of fresh toil and adventure.

Norma stirred uneasily in her place by the car
window. She was on her way—had been for some
time. Two or three hours more and she would be
looking at the place she and her fellow WACs
would call “home” for some time.

“I should be thrilled,” she told herself. “But I’m
half scared, that’s all.”

Lena and Rosa were together, five seats ahead of
her. They had been together all the way. Nothing
strange about that, really. They had shared a Pullman
compartment, just as she and Betty had. All the
same, it disturbed her.

Suddenly she made a great decision—she would
tell Betty all about it. Betty, like as not, would laugh
the whole thing off. Then she’d be rid of the spy
business for ever.

“Betty,” she said in a low tone, “There is something
I want to tell you—a whole lot of things.”

“Okay,” said Betty. “I’m listening.”

“Betty, do you remember the first night we slept
in that stable at Fort Des Moines?”

“Do I?” Betty laughed. “First time I ever slept on
a cot, and with fifty other girls! That was one nightmare!”

“Well, on that night Lena sat up in her bed and
whispered. ‘Gott in Himmel,’ and Rosa flashed a
light in her cot, where no light is supposed to show.
That got me going.”

“Going? How?” Betty stared.

“I thought they might be spies.”

“Spies? Nonsense! But then—” Betty paused for
thought. “I did see Lena down by the gate once.
She was talking to that Spanish hairdresser and a
strange man, who said, ‘Du must!’ There have been
whisperings about that hairdresser. Three days before
we left the Fort she disappeared.”

“Betty!” Norma exclaimed softly. “You’re no
help at all. You just make matters worse.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I was hoping you’d rid me of my spy complex—just
laugh it off, and here you are, taking the thing
seriously. What’s more, I haven’t told you a thing
yet.”

“Well then, tell me the rest,” Betty invited.
“Then perhaps we’ll both have us a good big laugh.”

“And perhaps we won’t,” Norma added gloomily.
“But all right. Here goes.” She leaned over close,
talking low. “I saw Rosa’s light three times. One
night I asked her why.”

“What did she say?”

“She said her mother had asked her to read a
prayer from her prayer book every night.”

“That was nice,” Betty murmured in approval.

“Yes, if it’s true.”

“How could you doubt her?”

“You have to doubt when you don’t really know.
Besides, how about this? We went out to visit the
airfield one day, and Rosa, without anyone seeing
her, climbed into a fighter plane and started across
the field with it.”

“She did?” Betty whispered in astonishment.

“Absolutely.” Norma laughed in spite of herself.
“And did that start something! She was almost arrested!
You see, they were trying out some secret
devices in those planes.”

“How did she ever explain that?” Betty was filled
with astonishment.

“She never explained it.”

Norma Leaned Over Close, Talking Low

“Just left it in the air?”

“I thought she was going to tell me later, but
then she appeared to change her mind. How would
you explain it?” Norma asked. There was an eager
note in her voice. She really wanted it explained.

“Fascinated by airplanes, perhaps,” was the slow
reply. “Some people are that way. Climb in, you
know. Touch something here, another there, and
away they go. Children often do that with a car.”

“But Rosa’s not a child!”

“We’ll keep an eye on her,” Betty said after a moment’s
thought. “We’ve got a real job to do. We
can’t have things going wrong. But Lena,” she suggested.
“She never did anything as bad as that, did
she?”

“Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. Let me tell you.
Then you be the judge.” Norma leaned close. “I
followed Lena and the Spanish hairdresser into a
place as dark as a stack of black cats.”

“You didn’t!”

“I certainly did.”

“Then what happened?”

“The door silently locked itself.”

Betty caught her breath. “What chances you
take!”

“I just sort of walked into that one.” Norma sighed.
“There were voices. Then I saw a hand. The
hand gripped my arm until it hurt. A man’s rough
voice said something. He was very angry.”

“And then?” Betty breathed.

“All of a sudden his voice changed. He was humble,
apologetic. He said, ‘You are one of the lady
soldiers. You came here by mistake perhaps.’”

“But how could he know you were a WAC?”

“Only by the feel of the material in my WAC
coat. Wasn’t that strange!”

“Perhaps he’d been a tailor. It’s wonderful the
things you can do by the sense of touch when your
hands are trained.”

“He let me out,” Norma said quietly.

“And you never went back?”

“Never!”

“We’ll watch Lena, too,” Betty said.

“If there’s a traitor in our ranks, it’s Lena.”

“You can’t be sure of that. In a murder mystery,
it’s always the one you least suspect.”

“Yes, but in a murder mystery you always have a
murder. What has Lena done that she could be arrested
for?”

“Nothing that we know about. All the same,
we’ll watch her. We’ll watch them both.”

Just then Lieutenant Warren’s voice rang out.
“Our station is next. Get your coats on. And don’t
forget your parcels.”

At Indian Harbor Betty whispered, “Lots of hard
work and some little adventure.”

“Or perhaps the other way round,” Norma
laughed low.

CHAPTER XII
 
HARBOR BELLS

The train came to a jolting stop and they all piled
off. “Indian Point!” Lena exclaimed. “So this is it!
But where’s the city?”

“It’s not quite a city,” Lieutenant Warren said.
“Two thousand people in summer, one thousand
in winter, I should say. But there are year-round
stores and shops.”

“And a beauty parlor?” Lena asked.

“Oh, yes, I should guess so. At least a hairdressing
establishment.”

At that both Norma and Betty laughed. Lena gave
them a sharp look.

Two large ancient cars appeared, together with a
truck. Their bags were piled into the truck; they
crowded into the cars and were driven away.

“Harbor Bells, that’s the name of our little hotel,”
their leader explained. “And they call the building
where we’ll be working the Sea Tower.”

“What fascinating names!” Betty exclaimed.

“You’ll find them as fascinating as their names,”
Lieutenant Warren prophesied.

“And there’s the sea!” Norma exclaimed. “How
I shall love it!”

“It comes almost to our door when there’s a
storm. And the Sea Tower really gets its feet wet.”

The road twisted and turned, first along the rocky
slope, then above the edge of a beach that Norma
thought must be grand in summer.

“There it is!” Lieutenant Warren exclaimed as
they rounded a turn. “There’s our Harbor Bells!”

Just as she said this their ears were treated to a
shock—a great booming roar shook the silent air.

“Good grief!” Millie exclaimed. “Are we being
bombed?”

“Not yet,” Lieutenant Warren laughed. “That
came from the fort up there on the cliffs, two miles
away. You can see just a little of its wall from here.”

“One gun salute for us,” Norma suggested.

“Hardly that. Probably a practice shot. They
don’t waste shots like that on a handful of WACs.”

At that they all laughed. And here they were at
the gate of Harbor Bells.

Leaving their bags to be brought in by the truck
driver and his assistants, they paired off and marched
soldierwise up the broad sloping path to the
wide veranda of the hotel.

Above the door hung five bells of different sizes.

“Oh! Harbor Bells!” Betty exclaimed.

Seizing a small wooden hammer that lay on the
ledge, she struck the bells one at a time. Then, as
they all stood by enchanted, she played in a simple
manner a tune they all loved:

“Glorious Harbor Bells!” Norma exclaimed.

Harbor Bells, as they discovered very quickly,
was no ordinary summer hotel. It had been built for
both summer and winter. In the rich days when people
had plenty of gasoline, tired business men from
far and wide drove to Harbor Bells for the weekend.

Mrs. Monahan, the proprietor, was a rare cook.
Her clam chowder, swordfish steaks, and home-fried
chicken were famous.

“And this,” said Lieutenant Warren after she had
explained all this, “is Mrs. Monahan herself. She’s
agreed to stay with us and take care of us for a while,
at least.”

“Sure, an’ if ye can stand to have me about!” Mrs.
Monahan, a round, red-faced lady, let out a cackling
laugh.

“We’ll stand you for the duration if you’ll only
stay,” the Lieutenant exclaimed.

At Harbor Bells there was both a large and a small
dining room, with a huge fireplace, and plenty of
cozy rooms upstairs. When the girls had eaten a
hearty meal of fried swordfish steak, baked potatoes,
blueberry pie, and coffee, and had settled themselves
in their rooms, they were for the most part
ready for a good long sleep.

Not so Norma and Betty. Mrs. Monahan had
kindled a fire on the open hearth. Before this they
dragged large, comfortable chairs and settled themselves
for a good chat.

“This,” said Betty, “is the real thing! But boy!
Is it going to be hard to work here! It’s too much
like Natoma Beach in Florida. Dad has a shack down
there. Oh, quite a place! And that’s where we have
our fun—or did, before the war.”

“We have a shack—a real one,” Norma said. “Nothing
fancy—not even a fireplace, just a big kitchen
stove—up on Isle Royale, in Lake Superior. It’s really
grand!” There was a pause.

“Work?” she murmured. “Oh, I guess we’ll work
right enough, and hard.”

“You’re just right you will!” It was Lieutenant
Warren who spoke.

“Oh!” Norma exclaimed. “Let me drag you up a
chair.”

“No. Sit still. I’ll get it.”

“No! No!”

In the end they all took a hand at bringing up
the chair.

“Umm! I like this!” Lieutenant Warren murmured.

“Who wouldn’t?” Betty exclaimed.

“And you’ll love the Sea Tower.”

“I’m eager to see it,” said Norma.

“You know,” Lieutenant Warren mused, “every
time I settle down in a new place I feel an urge to
tell a story of a rather strange thing that happened
to me in India. It’s a spy story, really, although it
didn’t start out that way.”

“India!” Betty exclaimed.

“A spy story!” came from Norma. She gave the
Lieutenant a searching look.

“Does it have a moral for young WACs?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then please tell it to us,” Norma urged.

“Just after I finished college,” Lieutenant Warren
began, “a friend secured a position for me as
a teacher of English in a high-class school for British
girls, in India.

“The school was located close to a fort, very much
like Fort Des Moines, only much larger. Ten thousand
British troops were stationed there.

“On my way over I had taken many pictures and
wanted to get them developed and printed. I was
told that a very good German photographer had a
shop facing the army parade ground, so I hunted
him up.

“‘Oh, no! I couldn’t do your pictures!’ he exclaimed
when I suggested it. ‘I am far too busy.
Besides, amateurs, they never take good pictures.
Never! Especially young women! Their pictures are
always horrible!’

“I didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared
at him and then at his studio. It was a remarkable
studio. Every inch of the wall was covered with
pictures—remarkable pictures, too. All the leading
British officers were there, and rich rulers of India,
too. And there were pictures of wild animals in the
jungle, elephants, tigers, and water buffalo.

“Did you do all these?” I asked.

“‘Yes, and many, many more. You see, Miss, I am
really very famous as a photographer.’

“He was a remarkable man. His hair was white,
and stood straight up. And his face was lined but
round and smooth—unnatural, as if it might have
been made up for a stage performance.

“‘And you won’t do my pictures?’ I asked him.

“‘I can’t waste my time and money on such rubbish,’
he fairly fumed.”

“I can just see him.” Betty laughed. “But did he
do the pictures?”

“Oh yes. I was young then, and usually got my
way. I told him that at least he wouldn’t be wasting
his money, for I meant to pay him. So he said:

“‘Oh, all right! Bring them in and we shall see!’

“Well.”—Lieutenant Warren leaned back in her
chair. “My father was a good amateur photographer,
he had taught me how to take pictures. My pictures
came out very well. This eccentric photographer,
who hadn’t had time for me, complimented me.”

“And after that,” Norma laughed, “Herr Photographer
was one of your best friends.”

“Not quite that. But he did make many pictures
and took an unusual interest in showing me his
treasures.”

“And that was how you discovered he was a spy?”
suggested Betty.

“Well, yes—and no. Truth is, when I left India I
had not the slightest notion that he was a spy.”

“Then how in the world—” Norma broke in.

“Now—now!” the Lieutenant exclaimed mockingly.
“No turning to the back of the book.”

“But to make a long story short,” she went on,
“this photographer had a beautiful place back up
in the hills. Once he took me there in his car. It
was a gorgeous estate. Palm trees, rare birds, a fountain
fed by springs, and a house built of teakwood.

“Back of the house were dovecotes where many
rare varieties of pigeons billed and cooed. Some
were jet black, the only black ones I’ve ever seen.

“Dogs! He had a dozen of them. Some of them
really looked ferocious. And there were monkeys
staring at you from the trees.”

“Regular menagerie.” Norma drawled.

“Yes, just that. And all for a purpose.”

“What came of it?” Norma asked.

“Well,” Miss Warren went on, “he made many
pictures for me. We became quite good friends. He
helped me and complimented me often.

“For all that he appeared to be a very strange person.
He took pictures if it suited his fancy. If not,
he refused. Some stuffy old grand dame wanted to
sit for a picture and he refused to do the work. Then
too he was away for weeks at a time. How he could
support his shop and that mansion in the hills with
so little real work I could never understand.

“In summer, when it was hot, I went to stay in
a very lovely resort high up in the mountains. The
resort keeper wrote Herr Photographer, asking him
to come up and take some pictures. His reply was:

“‘Miss Rita Warren is with you. She can take
them as well as I.’”

“And were you flattered!” Betty laughed.

“Naturally. I went to see him as soon as I returned.
He was very cordial. ‘Come,’ he said, taking
my hand as if I were a child. ‘I have a picture to
show you. It is, I think, a masterpiece.’

“He led me into a fairly large room and switched
on a light. There were three objects in the room—a
large picture in a dull gilt frame, and two very
ordinary chairs.

“‘Sit here,’ he said, ‘it is the best light.’ I sat
down.

“‘You know,’ he said, ‘that this part of India was
once ruled by the French. Far up in the mountains
is one of their ancient churches. I found this picture
in the tower of that church. I think it is a Madonna
by Godin.’

“I had studied art in college and was inclined to
agree with him.

“One thing that struck me as strange was that in
the background, on a large rock, sat three black
pigeons. Then too, in many places there were overtones
of color that did not appear to belong there.
Strangest of all, there were in places faint suggestions
of geometric figures.

“He read the look on my face. ‘I am now restoring
it,’ he explained.

“‘Well, I don’t like your part of the work!’ I had
spoken without thought.

“This appeared to offend him. Or did it? I
couldn’t quite tell.

“He let a cloth fall over the picture. Then with a
look that seemed to say: ‘You may know too much,’
he led me from the room. That look puzzled me for
a long time.”

“But it doesn’t any more,” Norma suggested.

“Bright girl!” Lieutenant Warren exclaimed.
“No, it doesn’t.”

“Why? What happened?” Betty asked.

“Well. I left India and returned to America. I
heard nothing from my photographer for a long,
long time. Then England and Germany went to
war.

“One day I had a letter from a friend in India. In
it she said, ‘You know that photographer who took
such a shine to you? Well, he’s dead. The British
jerked him up and shot him as a master spy.’”

“Oh!” Norma breathed.

“End of romance,” Betty exclaimed.

“Oh, it wasn’t quite that, but I was shocked, to
think that I could be so dumb. Those pigeons were,
of course, for carrying messages all over India to
his fellow-spies. The dogs were to ward off
strangers.”

“And the pictures?” Norma questioned.

“I never found out about that for certain.” Lieutenant
Warren rose. “However, I have been told
that pictures such as those are often shipped from
place to place to convey secret information. Each
bit of ‘restoring,’ as they call it, means something.
Properly coded, that picture could tell a whole lot.

“Well,” she sighed. “He’s dead. But he was rather
good fun while he lasted.” The three girls looked
into the fire in silence.

“Millie is our bugler,” Lieutenant Warren suddenly
said, as she started for the stairs. “When you
hear that bugle you’ll know what it means.”

“Breakfast, then work,” Norma said.

“Yes, and lots of it. You get two weeks of hard
training. Then you take over.” She was gone.

“Do you suppose she suspects we’re natural-born
spy chasers?” Norma whispered.

“Can’t tell.” Betty whispered back. “But jeepers!
If she didn’t know that man was a spy, what about
us?”

“We’ve not even got a clue.” Norma agreed.
“And, yet—” She did not finish.

Betty went at once to her room, but Norma, having
caught a gleam of light through a window,
stepped out on the porch for a look at the moon.

To one who sees it for the first time, the moon
casting shadows over the rugged cliffs and painting
a path of gold across the sea is a gorgeous sight.

Slipping silently to the top of the steps leading
to the path, she stood there in the shadows.

Then, for some reason, or perhaps none at all—she
snapped on the flashlight she held in her hand
to paint her own path of gold down the gravel walk.

Then it was that she got a shock, for there, half
hidden by the broad stone post of the street wall
stood a man. He wore no hat. White hair gleamed
over a round face. In his hand he held a black box
with a reflector at the top, the sort of camera used
most by newspaper men and other professionals.

To say that she was startled would be to put it
mildly. This mood ended quickly, for the man
snapped at her in the voice of an angry dog:

“Keep your light to yourself! This is a public
street. I’ll stand here as long as I choose.”

Turning about, the girl marched back into the
hotel. She was trembling all over.

“Right out of that story,” she whispered. “Halfway
round the world.”

As she climbed the stairs she thought. “I’ll not
tell a soul. I didn’t really see him—just imagined it.”

As if to verify this, she went to her window
and looked down. The moonlight was brighter now.
There was no one by the gate. And yet, cold reason
told her she had seen that man beside the pillar.

CHAPTER XIII
 
A WOLF IN WAC’S CLOTHING

The Sea Tower was all that could be desired. To
Norma’s romantic young mind it offered both comfort
and romance.

“It used to be a lighthouse,” the young sergeant,
who led them up the stairs next morning, explained.
“There are dangerous shoals off shore around
Black Knob Island. Fishing boats have often been
wrecked there in storms. Now there are modern
lights to the north and south of us.”

“I saw one flashing from the north,” Millie put
in.

“That’s Fisherman’s Home light. The light in
this tower was taken out long ago. It’s been empty
for a long time.”

“And now it’s been all fixed up for us, like Mrs.
Hobby’s stables.” Norma laughed.

“You going to work here?” the sergeant asked in
surprise.

“Sure enough!”

“Well, blow me down!” He stared for a moment—then
without further comment, led them to a
large circular room where three officers and six enlisted
men were working with maps, charts, and
typewriters.

“You won’t be working here,” the Major in command
explained. “We just want you to see it. I’m
Major Henry Stark. Sort of in charge here, you
might say.”

He was a big man, not at all pompous, nor soft,
either. His was a friendly smile.

“Want you to take the thing quite seriously from
the start,” he said. “Look at that map. We’re way up
here. Not close to any cities. Rather unimportant
post, you might say.

“But look at this globe.” He whirled a large globe
around, then put his finger on a spot. “That’s Norway.
Here’s Greenland. Planes coming from Norway
to bomb Boston, New York, or Pittsburg would pass
right over this post.”

“We’d be the first to spot them,” said Betty.

“That’s the truth, Miss. And no mistake. So—” he
let out a big breath—“we are important. Mighty
important.” He let that sink in.

“Lieutenant Warren tells me you’re all serious-minded
gals. Gals.”—he laughed—“That’s what she
called you. That’s fine. I take it she spoke the truth,
and if so, we can use you.”

“I—I hope so,” Norma spoke for the group.

“We can, all right! Just wait and see!” he exclaimed.

There was little of adventure or romance in the
days that followed for, as in Fort Des Moines, they
were hard at work learning the tasks that lay ahead.
Up at five forty-five each morning, they were glad
enough to creep into their fine, warm beds at nine-thirty
each night.

“Take a Look at This Globe,” the Major Said

During the first week they worked only during
the day. They were being instructed, that was all.
Eventually they would be divided into three eight-hour
shifts, and the task of watching would go on
and on round the clock. When the work really started
in earnest, Norma, Millie, and Rosa were to work
in one shift. Norma would be in charge of marking
maps and charts; Millie would manage the switchboard
and receive calls; Rosa’s job was to carry
messages and be on the alert for any task.

In the second shift Betty took Norma’s place. A
girl named Mary ran the switchboard, and Lena
took Rosa’s place.

The third shift was made up of the remaining
girls of the squad.

Saturday, with its half-holiday, arrived. Norma
and Betty rented bicycles and went for a joyous ride
into the country. Norma, who had stocked up on
films, took many interesting pictures, but on Major
Stark’s suggestion, avoided all military subjects.

It was because they were, as yet, working only in
the daytime that an exciting event occurred that
threatened disaster. One morning as the WACs
were enjoying their wheatcakes, Vermont maple
syrup, and coffee, Major Stark came walking into
the room.

“Good morning, Major Stark,” Lieutenant Warren
exclaimed. “You’re just in time. I’ll have a plate
set on for you.”

“Thanks, very much.” The Major’s smile was
slow. “I’ve had my breakfast. It’s your young ladies
I wished to talk about. Now, zeal is a commendable
virtue. But I really can’t have them coming to the
Sea Tower demanding further education near midnight.
It’s a bit demoralizing and, besides, that is the
most important hour of all.”

“But I don’t understand,” Miss Warren looked
puzzled. Turning to the girls she said:

“Which of you went to the Sea Tower after
hours?”

Not a girl spoke.

“Do you see, Major?” She smiled. “Not one was
there.”

“But are they all here now?”

“Yes, all here.”

“Then it was the ghost of a WAC, for Tom, my
most trustworthy sergeant, told me a woman in a
WAC uniform and with her identification card
all correct, was at the Tower for an hour learning
about charts and other matters last night. She
looked dark and sort of Spanish,” he said.

They all looked at Rosa, but Rosa shook her head.

“She was in bed,” Lena stated simply. “We’re
roommates.”

“And besides, she doesn’t look Spanish,” said the
Major. “Well, there’s a mystery for you. I’ll send
for Tom at once.”

Norma leaned over to whisper in Betty’s ear:

“The Spanish hairdresser!”

Betty nearly fell off her chair.

They were all in the big living room when the
Major returned with a good-looking young
sergeant.

“Now then, Sergeant,” he challenged. “Which
one was it?”

Sergeant Tom looked them over carefully, then
replied:

“None of these, sir.”

“Well now, Tom, make up your mind!” The
Major’s temper was rising. “You’ve been saying one
was up there, and now you say—”

“There was a WAC uniform with a lady in it
at the Tower last night!” Tom insisted.

“But don’t you know all these ladies, Tom?”

“No, Major. I don’t. I work at night, you know.”

“So all the soldiers don’t know all the WACs?”
the Major exclaimed. “We’ll fix that. We’ll hold a
dance.”

Then suddenly his face purpled. “By thunder!”
he exclaimed. “It’s happened! A lady spy in a
WAC uniform! It was bound to be that way. But
why must we be her first victims! Tom, how much
did you tell her?”

“To tell the truth. Major,” Tom smiled sheepishly,
“I didn’t tell her much—at least nothing of
importance. The truth is, sir, some of us boys sort
of feel that having the girls around—well, sir—that’s
fine. But when they start doing our work—”

“Then you didn’t tell her about secret devices
and all that?” the Major broke in.

“Not a thing that she couldn’t have gotten out
of a book.”

“That’s fine!” the Major exclaimed. “Glad to see
you so cautious.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Tom. “But this is my time
for sleeping. I’ll see you all at the dance.” He
grinned broadly as he went out.

“This thing must be looked into at once,” said
the Major. “I’ll have a man in for that purpose. I
shall need your help.”

“We’ll give you every assistance possible,” said
Lieutenant Warren.

At that the Major bowed himself out. Fresh coffee
was poured, and the meal resumed.

“How terrible!” Millie exclaimed.

“The Spanish hairdresser,” Norma whispered to
Betty once more.

Late that afternoon the Major returned, bringing
with him a bright-eyed little man who called himself
Mr. Sperry.

“Mr. Sperry wishes to know,” he explained, “if
any of you can give him a clue regarding the young
lady who undoubtedly is masquerading in a WAC
uniform.”

“That’s it,” the little man cackled. “Just that.
The sergeant in charge tells me she had an identification
card—forged, no doubt. Have any of you, by
chance, lost your card?”

There followed a hasty delving into purses and
pockets. Each girl held up her card.

“Ah, yes! I see! All quite in order. I suggest that
fresh photographs of these ladies be taken—each
young lady in uniform—and that they be placed on
identification cards. These should bear your signature.
Your men are acquainted with that signature?”

“Every man,” the Major agreed. “The pictures
shall be taken. There’s a good photographer—excellent
man, but eccentric—at Granite Head. Lieutenant
Warren, have your young ladies ready at
nine tomorrow. I shall send cars for them.”

“Now,” exclaimed the little man, dancing about.
“Any of you know a young lady who wears her
black hair high, and has rather slanting Spanish
eyes?”

“Here?” Norma asked.

“Anywhere.”

“There was one at Fort Des Moines,” Norma
hesitated. “But that—that’s a long way off.”

“Was she in training?”

“No. One of our hairdressers.”

“Ah!” The little man whistled between his teeth.
“Just the type! You haven’t seen her here?”

“No.”

Mr. Sperry asked the other girls about the hairdresser.
Some recalled her and some did not. Watching
out of the corner of her eye, Norma thought she
saw Lena start as her name was called.

“Oh, yes. I remember her,” she said in a low
drawl. “She did my hair many times. She was really
good. But I don’t see—”

“No, of course not.” the little man snapped.
“That’s not to be expected.”

At that he closed his notebook and indicated by
a nod that he had finished.

“The jeeps will be here at nine.” said the Major.

“The girls will be ready,” replied Lieutenant
Warren.

“Oh, I just remembered something!” Norma exclaimed
in a whisper a short time later.

“What was that?” Betty asked.

“I took a few pictures at Des Moines, but never
had the film finished.”

“Well?” Betty drawled.

“One was a picture of that Spanish hairdresser,
just as she passed through the gate. Just a snap, but
in bright sunlight. It should be good.”

“That might be something.”

“Sure, Mr. Sperry could show it to Sergeant Tom
for identification. I have three films now. I’ll take
them to that photographer tomorrow.”

CHAPTER XIV
 
PALE HANDS

Next morning at nine the girls, all but Lena, who
had obtained permission to ride ahead on a bike,
piled into two jeeps and were driven away to the
photographer’s studio.

The moment Norma stepped into the studio she
had a strange feeling that she had seen it before. Its
walls were crowded with pictures, many of them
officers in uniform—from the fort above their post,
she guessed. Then too, there were ship’s officers,
some of them from the United States and British
Navies. There were pictures from the wilds of
Maine and Canada as well, wolves prowling over
the snow, a moose charging up from the waters of
a lake, and many others. There were many wonderful
pictures in the collection and she was charmed
at the thought of having her films developed and
printed here.

If the studio had been a surprise, the proprietor,
as he came bustling into the room, was a great shock.
His hair was white and bristling. His face was lined
in spite of its round softness. It was he whom she
had seen at the gate of Harbor Bells, he who had
growled at her because she threw her light upon
him.

“Good grief!” she whispered to Betty. “I hope he
doesn’t recognize me!”

“Recognize you?” Betty murmured in surprise.

“Shish!” Norma warned. She had never told Betty
of that other encounter.

In her hand she held the films she wished developed.
“Will you do these for me?” she asked.

“Amateur work!” he exclaimed. “Bah! What do
amateurs know about pictures, especially young
women? No! I cannot waste my time and money.”

“But you’ll not be wasting your money.” Norma
felt like one speaking a piece. “I expect to pay you
for them.”

“Put them down there on this table,” he replied
rudely. “We shall see.”

“And now—” His voice took on a professional
tone. “You are soldiers, is it not so?”

There came a murmured “Yes—yes.”

“Lady soldiers! Ha—ha—ha! This is delightful!
And I am to take your pictures. No retouching. Is
it not so?”

“That’s right.” It was Betty who spoke.

“Then you will not be very beautiful in these pictures.”
He laughed again.

“They are for identification cards.” Norma said—a
suggestion of irritation creeping into her voice.
“Beauty doesn’t count. They must look like us,
that’s all. They are to keep spies from pretending
they belong to our group.”

“Spies? Ah! Is that so!” he said seriously. “Then
they shall be very real indeed, these pictures.”

He began his work at once. Since she did not particularly
like the man and wished to get her part
over with, Norma posed first. She realized at once
that he proposed to take her in an unfavorable
light and at a bad angle, yet she made no objection.
As he was about to make the shot, she managed a
derisive grin.

“No! No!” He stomped the floor. “That way you
spoil the picture!”

Norma at once put on a perfectly dumb look.
Then the picture was snapped.

“What’s wrong with you?” Betty demanded in a
whisper when they were alone.

“Nothing.” was the quiet reply.

“Lena’s not here.” said Rosa.

“She’ll be here.” Norma said.

While the other pictures were being taken Norma
wandered along the wall looking at pictures until
she was near an open door leading to another room.

As she stood there she heard a man’s voice say:

“You must!”

“I won’t!” came a woman’s reply.

Carl Langer, the photographer, must have heard,
for he said, “Excuse me, ladies,” and shut the door.

“What wonderful ears!” Norma thought. “He
should be a plane spotter.”

“No! No! That Way You Spoil the Picture.”

When the pictures had been taken and the girls
were filing out of the room, Betty said to Norma:

“Lena didn’t show up.”

“Oh! Sure she—” Norma hesitated. “Well, anyway,
her picture will be in the lot, you can depend
upon that.”

As they climbed into the jeeps, Norma heard a
pigeon cooing and, looking up to the studio roof,
she saw two pigeons. They were jet black. This
gave her a start, but she said never a word.

They were halfway back to the post when suddenly
she realized that she had left her films without
any decision having been made about them.

“I left my films,” she said to Betty. “Do you suppose
he’ll develop them?”

“My guess is that he will.”

Betty’s guess was right. And this Norma would
live to regret.

“All the while I was there I felt I had been in
that place before,” said Norma.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” was Betty’s strange reply.

There was one extra person in the squad which
meant that while the others were taking their turn
at training, three at a time, one was free to undertake
some special task. This was Norma’s day off.

“Norma,” Lieutenant Warren said to her after
she had spent the greater part of the day working
over some special type of chart, “I think you told
me once that you had ridden a motorcycle.”

“Oh, yes, many times,” was the quick reply. “My
father and I used to cover part of his territory on
a motorcycle.”

“Good! One of our tasks is to be that of keeping
in touch with the plane spotters in our territory.
They are all volunteers. They work without pay and
are, I am sure, very conscientious people.”

“They must be.” Norma agreed. “And do you
know, I really like these real New Englanders.”

“They seem more genuinely American than most
people I’ve come to know,” Miss Warren agreed.
“What I wanted to suggest was that now and then
you take a motorcycle—there are two in the basement
room of the Sea Tower—and visit these spotter
sheds. There’s one near Granite Head.”

“I think I saw it as I passed this morning.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it. You might like to take a
run out there right now,” the Lieutenant suggested.

“That would be real fun. Thank you so much.” A
quarter of an hour later, dressed in her fatigue suit
and with stout coveralls drawn over it, Norma leapt
on her motorcycle and went pop-popping away.

She was not long in reaching the place in the road
nearest the spotter shed.

As she paused to study the steep road leading up
to the shed, two girls who were undoubtedly twins
came hurrying from the opposite direction. Seeing
that they were about to start the climb, Norma said:

“Going up? Hop on behind. I think this thing
will take us all up.”

“Oh, fine!” they exclaimed. “We’re late.”

“Late for what?” Norma asked.

“We’re spotters. I’m Beth and this is Bess, my
sister,” one of the twins explained.

“We’re on from now until midnight,” the other
said.

“Whew!” Norma exclaimed. “That’s a long spot
for a spotter.”

“Oh, we don’t mind,” said Beth, laughing. “Only
one is needed to watch at a time.”

“The other one studies. We’re still in high
school,” said Bess. “Sometimes we fall asleep.”

With a final snort the motorcycle reached the
crest of the hill, then circled to a stop at the foot
of a crooked stairway leading to a crow’s-nest perch
above.

Up, then around, then up again, they climbed
thirty feet into the air to arrive at last at a broad
enclosed platform.

“All right, girls, you may take over.” A tall man
with prematurely gray hair turned toward a door
leading from the platform. “Who’s your friend?” he
asked, turning half about. Behind his thick glasses
Norma saw keen, smiling eyes.

“Why, she—” Beth hesitated.

“I’m one of those WAC’s,” Norma laughed,
holding her cap bearing the insignia in the light.

“Oh! We’ve been reading about you. Welcome to
our community.” He held out a hand for a firm and
friendly clasp. “So when we report ‘One single, flying
high,’ we’ll soon be talking to a lady soldier?”

“Guess that’s right,” Norma agreed. “My name’s
Norma Kent.”

“I’m Vincent Garson,” he said. “Here’s hoping
we meet again.”

“Oh, we shall,” Norma exclaimed.

At that a distinguished-looking man opened the
door and stepped out.

“And this is Jim Marston,” said Garson. “Used
to be a parson. Now he’s a plain American.”

“And that,” said the retired parson, “is a great
privilege.”

“They’re really very famous men,” Beth whispered
as they disappeared down the stairs. “Mr.
Garson designed the stained glass windows for half
the big churches in Boston. And Mr. Marston was a
famous Bishop. It takes all sorts, you see,” she added.

“Well, here we are,” Bess exclaimed. “This is our
spotter shed. Isn’t it neat?”

“Neat, and very comfortable.” Norma held her
hands before the glowing coal fire.

“It cost a thousand dollars. Everyone chipped in,
but it’s worth it. It must stand for the duration,”
said Beth.

“So you’ll be listening to our reports?” said Bess.
“It’s nice to know you. We—we’ll all stand together.”

“That’s right, we must.” Norma’s heart was
warmed.

“Oh!” Bess exclaimed. “We’ve forgotten we’re
late. It’s time to talk to grandfather.”

Hastily unlocking a closet door in the corner, she
wheeled out a strange-looking mechanism with a
square of glass at its front.

After connecting some heavy electric wires, she
turned on a switch and at once there came a low
buzzing sound.

Night was falling. The room was full of shadows.

“Watch,” said Bess.

The square of glass gave forth a faint glow. Then
at the center of it, something moved.

“A hand!” Norma thought, with a start.

It was true. Behind that glass appeared a pale
hand. It moved. It took on different forms. Now it
was clenched with the thumb outside. Now three
fingers were folded in while the forefinger and
thumb stuck straight out. This was repeated. Once
again the hand was clenched, this time with the
thumb folded in tight. Three fingers up, one down—all
fingers down, thumb bent in, then again three
fingers down, forefinger and thumb up, and repeat.

Then the hand vanished.

“He says ‘All is well.’” Bess said in a matter-of-fact
tone.

“Talking with the dead,” Norma thought with a
shudder.

CHAPTER XV
 
SPOTTERS IN THE NIGHT

“That’s spooky,” Norma whispered. “Your grandfather
doesn’t by any chance happen to be in
Heaven?”

“Yes, he is.” Beth laughed. “His kind of Heaven.
He’s over on Black Knob.”

“Black Knob? What’s that?”

“It’s an island ten miles off shore. Grandfather
calls it his retreat. He’s a writer on technical subjects,
and an inventor.”

“He has plenty of money,” put in Bess, “so he
just writes and invents.”

“And by and by someone gives him money for
an invention so he can invent some more,” Beth finished.

“Sounds wonderful!” said Norma. “But what
about this thing?” She pointed to the square of light
where that expressive hand was opening and closing,
pointing and writhing again.

Beth was writing down letters rapidly, so it was
Bess who replied in a whisper:

“It’s a great secret. Only Beth, grandfather, and I
know about it. Shall I tell her?” She turned to her
sister. Beth nodded.

“Cross your heart and hope to die,” Bess whispered
impressively. “You won’t tell a soul?”

“Not a soul—cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Well then—it’s television,” Bess confided. “Only
there’s no sound. Words without sound. It’s a perfectly
secret way of communication, as long as no one
knows about it.”

“But I don’t see—” The hand was still going
through its weird motions.

“It’s very simple,” said Bess. “Grandfather has
two moving picture cameras trained on his hand
over there on Black Knob.”

“I guessed that much.”

“The rest is deaf and dumb alphabet, that’s all. A
is a clenched fist with the thumb turned in, and C—”

“How stupid I am!” Norma exclaimed. “I should
have guessed it at once!”

“Oh, no!” Bess laughed. “Strange things always
stick us. We want a weird explanation, when it is
something just as simple as that.”

“It’s quite wonderful,” Norma exclaimed. “I
shouldn’t wonder if something tremendously important
would come out of it.” She was not wrong
in this prediction.

“Black Knob is an important point,” said Bess.
“It’s so far off shore.”

“It must be,” was the quick reply. “Particularly
for enemy submarines. I’m going to tell Lieutenant
Warren about it.”

“But not about television,” Bess warned. “At
least, not without grandfather’s consent.”

“Not about television,” Norma agreed.

Once again the hand had vanished from the
square of light. This time Beth pushed the apparatus
into a corner and threw a cloth over it.

“He reports once each hour until midnight,” she
explained. “If anything really startling comes up,
he gives us a buzz on a short-wave radio and we turn
on television for a special report.”

“After midnight?” Norma asked.

“Two elderly ladies take over until morning.
They use short wave entirely. During the day fishermen
who live there keep a sharp watch.”

“It’s not much of a setup for so important a spot,”
Bess said. “One old man, two women and some fishermen.
But it’s all there is there in winter.”

“It might be improved upon,” Norma agreed.

“Well,” said Bess, drawing on a heavy coat, “I’ll
get out on the listening platform. It’s all ears from
now till morning.”

“Unless they show a light,” Norma suggested.

“No enemy would show a light,” was the reply.

As Bess left her comfortable place by the fire Norma
noticed that outside the wind was picking up
and snow beginning to fall.

“Not going to be a nice night,” was her comment.

“Winter’s almost gone,” was Beth’s reply. “We’ve
had some really bad nights, I can tell you.”

“What’s the payoff?” Norma asked without thinking.

“This is our country!” Beth drew herself up
proudly. “No enemy planes have ever got past us—I
mean all of us—not just Bess and me. And they
never will! There are hundreds of watchers all along
the coast.”

“And if you hadn’t been here they would have
tried?” Norma suggested.

“Absolutely!”

“It’s grand work! We’re going to help you all we
can.”

“That’s not all there is to it.” Beth leaned forward.
“We saved two lives. Fighting men they were,
too. They gave us the credit, just Bess, grandfather,
and me. See?” She held out a medal that read FOR
VALIANT SERVICE.

“That’s wonderful!” Norma exclaimed. “I hope
I can do as much.”

“Oh! You will! And a lot more. You’re a WAC—you
are really in the Army. I wish I could be a
WAC.” There was intense longing in the younger
girl’s voice.

“Perhaps they’ll lower the age limit.”

“Here’s hoping!”

“Want to tell me about this rescue?” Norma
asked.

“Oh! Sure! It wasn’t much,” was the modest reply.
“Just our good luck, that’s all.

“It was grandfather who spotted the plane first,
just before midnight. He gave us the radio buzz,
then started talking fast with his hands—television,
you know. This plane had just passed over Black
Knob. There was a fog. He heard it, that’s all. It
was going north slowly. We thought—”

Beth stopped short. Bess thrust her head in at the
door.

“One single, going south fast, about five miles off
shore,” she announced. Instantly Beth was on the
phone saving in a clearcut voice:

“One single going south, fast. About five miles
off shore. Granite Head speaking.”

She kept a head-set over one ear, but went on
with her story.

“Bess reported that plane over Black Knob at
once. The Army, Navy, and Civil Air Patrol had
no such plane out that they knew of.

“That made it exciting, I can tell you. Might
have been an enemy plane scouting. And there were
too many lights burning in Portland that night.”

“What happened?” Norma demanded eagerly.

“Grandfather kept hearing them and reporting
for half an hour. Then a fighter plane went out,
but couldn’t find them in the fog.

“They came in quite close to Black Knob. Then
the motor went off. Grandfather was outside. He
was sure they went into the sea—thought he heard
a splash. They—”

Bess broke off suddenly to press the head-set to
her ear. She listened intently for a moment, then
murmured into her speaker:

“Okay.”

Stepping to the door she said to her sister:

“Just another Navy plane off its course. Pilot
called for directions and got them.”

“See? That’s the way it is.” she said to Norma.

“I see,” said Norma. “Disappointing?”

“Yes. Every time but one out of a hundred, or a
thousand, I guess, and then—”

“Tell the rest,” Norma urged.

“Oh, about those two fliers? That was exciting, I
can tell you. Grandfather gave us the word that the
plane was down.

“Then he got the fishermen out of bed. Three
boats went out. Grandfather’s boat spotted them,
just in time. Their plane sank ten minutes later.

“They were Army fliers—a trainer and a student.
Umm! That student was handsome!”

“And he would have drowned if it hadn’t been
for you spotters,” Norma said.

“Absolutely.”

“That,” said Norma, “was wonderful!”

As she stepped out of the comfortable room into
the night, Norma saw a white-robed figure—Bess,
covered with snow.

“Spotters,” she whispered as she went down the
stairs. “Spotters in the night.”

CHAPTER XVI
 
THE VANISHING PRINT

Norma was up bright and early next morning. As
she stepped out on the porch for a breath of air, her
eyes were greeted by a scene of marvelous beauty.
Back of a dark spot rising from the sea which must,
she thought, be Black Knob, the sun was rising.

“What a picture!” She knew just how it should
be taken.

Racing into the house she put her hand on the
mantel at the spot where she had left her camera.

“Gone,” she murmured. “It’s gone!”

Well, after all, she might be mistaken. Perhaps
she had taken it to her room. Rushing upstairs, she
began a hurried search.

“What’s up?” Betty demanded. “House on fire?”

“No, a gorgeous picture to be taken and I’ve misplaced
my camera.”

“Here. Take mine!” Betty took her camera from
the shelf.

Without a word Norma grabbed the camera and
raced down the stairs to take three exposures before
the sun was too high.

“I can’t imagine what could have happened to
my camera,” she exclaimed, after a thorough search.
“I’m sure I left it on the mantel downstairs. I took
two shots of the fishermen’s boats coming in yesterday,
then put it on the mantel and forgot it.”

“Oh! it will show up.” Betty was a cheerful soul.

At breakfast that morning, Norma sat by Lieutenant
Warren and told her all about Bess, Beth,
their grandfather, and Black Knob.

“That seems an admirable spot for a spotter shed,”
said Miss Warren.

“It must be,” Norma agreed. “Of course it has
its watching post but it seems undermanned—a
grandfather and two old ladies for the night and
fishermen keeping an eye out during the day.
Doesn’t sound very good.”

“No, it doesn’t. We may want to lend them a helping
hand. I’ve asked for six more auxiliaries for just
such emergencies.”

“I’m glad of that,” Norma said. “We may need
them more than you think before a month has
passed.”

“Why? What do you mean by that?” The Lieutenant
gave her a sharp look.

“Just a hunch, I guess,” Norma evaded. She
wasn’t going to tell of the photographer with bristly
white hair, of the voices behind scenes at the studio,
the black pigeons, or the missing camera until she
had more to tell.

Late that afternoon she picked up another shred
of evidence. When the day’s work was done, she got
out one of the motorcycles and rode back to the
photography studio. Carl Langer had promised that
the pictures for their identification cards would be
done. Then, too, she was wondering about the three
films she had left on his table.

By the time she arrived fog had driven in from the
sea, making everything look dark and gloomy. The
studio seemed darkest, most gloomy of all. Only a
faint light showed through the window. The three
black pigeons sat silently along the ridge of the roof.

As if her arrival had disturbed them, they took
off with noisy flapping of wings to soar away and
lose themselves in the fog out over the sea.

Norma tried the door. It was locked. She rang the
bell. No response. A second ring failed. A third
long one brought an angry response.

The door flew open and Langer’s white hair
seemed to give off sparks as he stormed angrily:

“Why do you ring now? You know my hours.
Everybody knows. You—”

He broke off short. At last he had taken time to
look at his caller.

“Oh, it is you.” His voice changed. “You are Miss
Kent, one of those lady soldiers.” He laughed
hoarsely. “Come in. The pictures are done. They
are not beautiful, but natural.” He laughed again.

He did not turn on more light. A small lamp on
a table gave out a feeble glow.

“See,” he said, shuffling a pack of prints as if
they were playing cards, “Here they are, all of
them.”

Yes, there they all were and Lena’s picture was
on top. “Really the best of the lot,” Norma thought.
She was not surprised.

“About my films?” She hesitated.

“Oh, yes! I have done these, too,” he exclaimed
with sudden enthusiasm. “They’re very good. You
really understand timing, light, grouping, and all
that. Some of these village pictures, they are excellent.
With your permission I shall retain three films
for a short time only, that I may make enlargements.”

“That—that’s all right,” Norma replied. She was
looking at the pictures one by one and at the same
time counting them.

In the end, she drew in a deep breath. There
should have been twenty-four. One was missing.
“And that one,” she thought with a start, “is the
one I took of the Spanish hairdresser at Fort Des
Moines.

“What a fool I was to let this man do them!” she
told herself.

“There are only twenty-three prints here,” she
suggested, trying to keep her voice on an even scale.

“Twenty-three good pictures out of twenty-four!”
he exclaimed. “This is remarkable for an amateur,
my dear. What should one expect?”

She wanted to say, “You are telling a lie. That
was a good picture. Taken in bright light, time—one
twenty-fifth of a second and shutter half open,
I couldn’t have failed.”

She said nothing of the sort. Instead she said:

“You’ll make the some enlargements of the films
you are keeping?”

“To be sure.” He rubbed his hands together.
“Very fine ones. And, my dear, they shall cost you
absolutely nothing. I shall charge you nothing for
these. You are almost a genius at light, shadows, and
grouping. Such a choice of subjects! Such placing,
to bring out the angles, and the contrasts. Please allow
me to do all your films.”

“Where have I heard all that before?” the girl
asked herself as she left the place. The answer, she
felt sure, was, “Never anywhere before.” It was
strange.

As she mounted her motorcycle and set it pop-popping,
the three black pigeons, who had returned,
once more went flapping out to sea.

“Pointing the way to Black Knob,” she told herself.
“I wonder if they ever go all the way?”

Days glided by. There was study and work, hours
on end. At last more work and less study.

They studied types of airplanes and subs until
they were fairly sure of recognizing them in daylight.
Learning them by sound would be quite
another matter. For some enemy planes they had
sound recordings. Norma, who had quite a remarkable
ear for sound variations, spent hours on end
listening first to the American fighter planes that
every day zoomed overhead, and then to the recordings
of Zeros and Messerschmitts.

The day after her camera disappeared, she found
it just where she had left it. Had someone taken it
by mistake and returned it? Did Mr. Sperry or someone
else suspect her of taking forbidden snapshots?
This seemed improbable for she had taken two pictures
and the spot still showed number three. What
was more, the shutter was just as she had left it and
the time, still set at one-twenty-fifth of a second.

“It can’t have been someone who wished to use
it for taking forbidden pictures either,” Betty assured
her. “No pictures have been taken.”

To her great surprise, when at last the film was
used up and she had it developed, she was told that
the first two pictures had turned out as blanks. Carl
Langer showed her the blanks as proof positive.

Yet, to Norma this was not absolute proof. “For,”
she told herself, “those were very ordinary snapshots.
The other pictures were taken under the same
circumstances, nothing had been done to the
camera, and yet they came out very well.”

Her curiosity was aroused. After two days had
elapsed, she again left her camera lying about. Once
again it vanished. In two days it was back. This time
she had left number four showing. Hastily using up
the film, she hurried to the studio and had the film
developed.

“Some of your pictures are quite wonderful,”
Carl Langer commented. “but the first three—”

“I know. They are blank.” Norma thought this,
but didn’t say it. She was wrong. The first three
were quite black. Very much overexposed. They
showed nothing.

“Perhaps,” said Langer, “you were a bit careless
putting in that film. It looks light-struck at the beginning.”

She had not been careless. The film was not light-struck,
yet she said never a word. She would get to
the bottom of this yet.

The next day Norma forgot her photographic
problems for at last a visit to Black Knob was on
the calendar. Norma had made two more visits to
the spotter shed at Granite Point. With ever-increasing
interest she had watched the talking hands from
the island and had listened to weird and interesting
tales told of the great rock called Black Knob by
those fascinating twins, Beth and Bess.

At first it was planned that only Norma and Betty
should accompany Lieutenant Warren on the
trip to Black Knob but at the last moment Lena
asked permission to go.

Perhaps Miss Warren knew some things about
this tall, strong girl that Norma had never learned.
Certain it is that, had it been left to her, she would
have said, “No, let’s not take her.”

Lena went along. The journey out was uneventful.
Norma and Betty took turns at the wheel. Their
experience piloting boats at summer camps stood
them in good stead.

As Black Knob loomed up larger, they made out
trees growing like bushy hair on its crest and, close
beside a small harbor formed by an outcropping of
rocks, a group of fishermen’s cottages and summer
tourist cabins.

A small, bright-eyed man with a full gray beard
took their line at the narrow dock.

“Lieutenant Warren!” he exclaimed. “I am glad
to see you. The girls have been telling me on short
wave radio about you and one of your workers. They
call her Norma.”

“This is Norma,” said Miss Warren, helping Norma
out of the boat.

“Ah,” said the little man. “I am indeed glad to
meet you. As you must have guessed, I am the
grandfather of Bess and Beth. Dudley Norton is the
name I drew when I was born.” He laughed in a
friendly, cackling way. “And here,” he added, as a
nine-year-old girl came dancing down the path, “is
my chief assistant, Patsy. Her principal task is keeping
the bad Gremlins away.”

“Gremlins,” said Norma. “What are Gremlins?”

“Oh! They are little people,” the girl, who was
the living picture of Bess and Beth, explained. “The
bad ones put ice on your airplane’s wings and stop
up your guns when you want to shoot. But the good
ones get out, hundreds and hundreds of them, and
blow on the sea to make a big storm when the enemy
subs are about.”

“Oh! That’s the way it is,” Lieutenant Warren
said. “But aren’t you afraid to live way out here
when so many Gremlins are about?”

“No!” said the girl. “I’m not afraid.” She took
her grandfather’s hand. “Besides I’m not allowed
to be afraid. Grandfather and I have a big job to do
over here on Black Knob—and we’re in for the
duration, aren’t we, Grandpa?”

“That we are!” The little, gray-haired man agreed
heartily.

“That’s the spirit!” Lieutenant Warren exclaimed.
“We’ll win now for sure!”

After Betty and Lena had been introduced, they
all took the winding path that led to Grandfather
Norton’s “House of Magic,” as Norma had named
it, long before she saw it.

CHAPTER XVII
 
THOSE BAD GREMLINS

This House of Magic she discovered was really a
home and a spotter shed combined. Originally it
had been a well-built summer home made of pine
logs that had broken from a jam and drifted to the
rocky shore of Black Knob. Since this cabin had been
built on a high point, overlooking the sea, it was
necessary to erect only a twenty-foot tower with a
winding stairway. This led up from the front
porch. Atop this tower was a room eight feet square
with windows on every side. Outside was a two foot
walk, railed in, which gave the watcher a view of
every spot on the island and, on a clear day, many
square miles of sea.

“It’s an admirable spot for a lookout,” Lieutenant
Warren exclaimed. “But what about your force?
Have you enough to do a really good job?”

“No-o,” the little old man hesitated. “The Misses
Morrison, Jane and Mildred, retired school teachers
of uncertain age, who like myself have come to love
the privacy of this rock, do their best to aid me, but
Jane, I fear, is becoming hard of hearing.”

“Not so good for night watching,” the Lieutenant
smiled.

“Oh! I have a way of—” The old man paused,
studied the circle of eyes about him, then ended
lamely, “a way, er—of using the help that is at
hand.”

“He doesn’t trust us,” Norma whispered to Betty.
“At least not all of us.” She glanced at Lena who
was all eyes and ears.

“He was going to tell us of some secret hearing
device,” Betty agreed.

“There are other and more interesting secrets,”
Norma half confided. She had never told Betty of
the talking hands.

“If there are,” Betty whispered, “we’ll have to
wait for another time to learn about them.”

At that moment the little girl came dancing up.
Pulling Norma’s head low, she whispered:

“My name’s Patsy. I’d like to take you around the
island and show you where I saw the sub.”

“Oh! A sub!” Norma whispered. “I guess you
must have imagined that!”

“No, a really, truly sub.” The girl pulled at her
hand.

“Patsy and I are going exploring,” Norma explained
to her commander.

“Quite all right,” was the smiling reply. “If you
sight an enemy plane, let us know.”

Norma and Patsy were away.

“It’s an awful little island,” Patsy said as they
marched along. “I can walk clear to the end of it in
ten minutes.”

“Then it won’t take us long,” Norma said. “But
don’t you get lonesome here?” she asked.

“Oh, no! There are three fishermen and two
Miss Morrisons without any husbands, and Grandfather,
and all the good Gremlins. Oh! there are a
lot of us—

“Besides,” she added a moment later, “I’d have
to stay here anyway. Daddy’s an officer in the Navy.
And Momsie’s helping make machine guns in a big
factory. She makes good machine guns, good, good
ones. No bad Gremlin can keep the bullets from
coming out of her machine guns.”

“I’ll bet they can’t,” Norma said seriously.

“Grandfather says we couldn’t beat our enemies
at all if it wasn’t for the women of America.”

“I’m sure of that,” Norma agreed again.

They were passing through a grove of pines that
whispered over their heads.

“That’s the bad Gremlins whispering.” A note of
mystery crept into Patsy’s voice. “They’re fixing up
a storm, a really bad storm. They always whisper
like that before a storm.”

“Oh! then we had better hurry,” Norma exclaimed.
“My chum, Betty, and I piloted the boat. It’s
neither fast nor large. We don’t know much about
boats so we wouldn’t like to get caught in a storm.”

“Oh, we’ll get back before they are through talking,”
was the quick reply. “We’ll hurry. You just
must see Black Head, Gray Head, and Bald Head.”

“Oh, We’ll Get Back Before They Are Through Talking.”

“Who are they? People?”

“No, they’re huge rocks that slant away into the
sea. When there’s a bad storm it’s just terrible to
see the way the waves come roaring in.

“When that sub came up out of the water,” the
child’s voice dropped to a whisper, “I laid right
down on Black Head and—and hid my face behind
a little bush.”

“That was a wise thing to do.” Had this child
really seen a German submarine rise close to this
island? Norma wondered. “It makes it all seem so
close and so real,” she whispered to herself.

“There they are!” the child cried as they emerged
from the pines. “That’s Black Head.” She pointed.
“That’s Gray Head—”

“And the other must be Bald Head,” Norma
laughed.

“Yes, and right out there was where the sub came
up.” Again the girl pointed. “Come on!” Seizing
her companion’s hand, she dragged her along at a
furious pace.

“Right here,” she said, vastly excited. “I was just
sitting here watching for planes, when I looked
down—”

Suddenly she broke off. There came the whir of
wings and then, just before them in the water at the
foot of Black Head, two beautiful eider ducks came
to rest.

“Going north,” Patsy whispered. “The first ones
I’ve seen this year.”

In her excitement she allowed her voice to rise
and suddenly the ducks were gone.

“Did you see that?” Patsy exclaimed. “They crash
dived, just the way the sub did, only it didn’t crash
dive right away. Oh, no! You can’t think how scared
I was. Three men came up from the conning tower.
They had a rubber boat and were blowing it up.”

“Coming ashore,” Norma whispered.

“Yes, that’s what I thought. And was I scared! If
they had seen me they would have shot me. Grandfather
would have heard and there would have been
a battle.”

“A battle?”

“Oh, sure! We can fight a battle, a real battle.
Grandfather has two tommy-guns. You ought to see
him shoot them. Even Miss Jane Morrison can shoot
them, and so can I.”

How strange all this seemed to Norma as she sat
there in the glorious sunshine watching the eider
ducks who had come up again some distance away.

“Why did they crash dive?” she asked at last.

“Because they heard a plane. I heard it, too. It
was coming from the land, an American fighter
plane. I can tell them when I hear them, yes, and
when I see them, too.

“You should have heard those men on the sub,”
Patsy laughed. “How they jabbered! They went
down below, then they crash dived.”

“What did you do?”

“I jumped up and told Grandfather, and he told
Beth and Bess and they told the fort. Pretty soon
there were just lots and lots of planes, but just no
sub at all.”

“Too bad,” said Norma, “but how did your
grandfather tell Beth and Bess?”

“Shish!” Patsy put a finger to her lips. “That’s a
military secret.”

“Not bad for a nine-year-old,” Norma thought.
“She’ll be a lady soldier some day.”

Of a sudden the calm sea appeared to have been
lashed by ten thousand tiny whips. Then there came
a race of a million tiny waves.

“That’s the bad Gremlins,” Patsy sprang to her
feet. “They are whipping the sea. Soon the sea will
be very, very angry and then—”

“Yes—yes, let’s go. I’ll race you back!” Norma exclaimed.
“Now get set. One! Two! Three! Go!”

They were away like a flash.

Because she knew a short cut, Patsy was first in.

“Oh, good! Here you are!” Lieutenant Warren
exclaimed. “We’ve been thinking of starting back.”

“Yes, yes!” Norma panted. “We must go at once.
The Gremlins are whipping the water and—” she
broke off short. “What nonsense!” she thought.

“So she’s got you believing in the Gremlins!” the
gray-haired man of magic chuckled. “She’s got all
of us here on the island converted to belief in those
little people.”

There was little enough to make anyone believe
in the bad Gremlins as they took off from the small
dock. Now and then little flurries of wind rose and
raced across the sea. That was all. Betty was at the
wheel.

“I’m going to send three of you over there to help
out, at least for a while,” Miss Warren confided to
Norma.

“Oh! I’m glad!” Norma exclaimed. “It’s really
not safe for them there, three old fishermen, an aged
inventor, two spinsters, and a child.”

“And if you were there, you would protect them!”
the Lieutenant laughed. “However, I wasn’t thinking
of safety, but of the rare opportunity they have
for airplane spotting.

“Of course,” she added after a moment, “it will,
at best, be only an outpost. Our main station will
always be at Indian Harbor.”

If her superior was not, at that moment, thinking
of the possible dangers of life on Black Knob,
Norma most surely was. After recalling Patsy’s
words, she thought, “Spies have been landed on
American shores from submarines and may try
again. Black Knob would make a marvelous hideout
if only—”

At that moment she was seeing a picture of herself
and the aged inventor standing at the log cabin’s
windows that were like loop-holes, and firing tommy-guns
while Patsy dragged up fresh belts of ammunition.

Real danger replaced her dreams and that in a
very short time for, as if by magic, the sea began
rolling in a most alarming manner and the wind
began to tear at them like mad.

“I—I can’t hold her on her course,” Betty panted.
“It’s a quar—quartering wind and every wave thro—throws—”

At that a wave, larger than the rest, came splashing
across the deck.

Half drowned Norma sprung to her feet, but Lena
was before her. Crowding Betty aside, she seized
the wheel and, bracing herself like a veteran, she
brought the boat about to head it squarely into the
storm.

She held it to this course until there came a brief
lull. Then again she took up a direct course toward
the shore.

The lull was short-lived. Soon the wind was once
again cracking about their ears and the boat was
bouncing like a cork.

With lips set in a straight line and every muscle
drawn tight as a bow string, Lena braced herself for
the task that lay before her.

Dark clouds engulfed them like a shroud. Waves,
reaching for the boat and missing, gave forth serpent-like
hisses as they broke into foam.

Suddenly Norma’s lips parted for a scream of
warning. The scream failed. A fierce gust of wind
drove it down her throat. Before them, so close it
seemed they could not miss, were two jagged piles of
gray rock.

“Like the jaws of a giant sea serpent,” she told
herself with a shudder.

She stole a look at Lena. She was like a statue. Her
strong arms were rigid. One moment they raced toward
one reef, the next they had whirled half about
and were racing for the other. Then, as a great wave,
white with foam, hit them, they were lifted high to
be shot forward in a mass of foam.

“Made it,” Norma heard the astonishing Lena
murmur.

It became apparent at once that this reef formed
a barrier that held the water back for, once across
it, they found themselves in calmer waters.

Lena’s answer to this was full speed ahead and
not one of them dared cry:

“Lena! You are wrong!”

All too well Lieutenant Warren, who had spent
many months on the New England coast, knew that
they had been caught in one of those brief but terrific
storms that from time to time ravage the coast.

A quarter hour passed, then again they were in
the midst of the storm.

For a full hour after that, never flinching, nor
asking for quarter, the stout Lena held to her post
until with a deep breath that was half groan and
half a sigh of relief she slid the small boat into the
narrow slip by the dock. Here, behind the breakwater,
they were safe.

Sergeant Tom, who had been anxiously awaiting
word from them, caught the line. Lena leaped to
the dock, then, drenched as she was by cold salt
water spray, went racing for Harbor Bells.

At that moment words were running through
Norma’s mind, the words of a child:

“The bad Gremlins do that.”

As she trudged up the hill toward the spot where
dry clothes, a roaring, open fire, and steaming coffee
awaited them, Norma said to her Lieutenant:

“Lena was magnificent!”

“Yes,” was the quiet reply. “We all have our big
moments. Your big moment too will arrive, perhaps
sooner than you think.”

“Will it?” Norma asked herself. There was no
answer.

CHAPTER XVIII
 
SUDDEN PANIC

When Norma awoke, a half hour before her regular
time, next morning, it was with the feeling of
one who has had her little world of thought turned
topsy-turvy.

“It is Lena who has done it,” she told herself.

Yet she could not hate Lena for that. It is not easy
to hate any person who in the past twenty-four hours
has saved your life. Lena, she was sure, had done
just that. Neither she nor Betty could have brought
the boat safely home through that storm.

And yet, when she had seen Lena in the big living
room the night before, after dinner, and had
tried to thank her, Lena had shrugged, mumbling
something about, “All in a day’s work,” and “Handled
a boat before,” then had walked away.

“You’d think she was a man,” Norma had said to
Betty later. “That’s the way men talk.”

“We’ve given her rather a cold shoulder,” was
Betty’s quiet comment. “It wouldn’t be surprising
if she paid us back in cold shoulders.”

“Well,” Norma had started to reply, “perhaps
we had reasons. We—” She had gone no farther and,
appearing to understand, Betty had not encouraged
her to continue.

“But life with Lena has been strange,” she told
herself now.

Yes, there had been the whispered words on that
first night at Fort Des Moines, Lena’s apparent
friendship with the Spanish hairdresser and that
startling affair of the self-locking door at night in a
Des Moines repair shop.

Then, too, she had quite recently heard a man
at the back of the photographer’s studio say, “You
must!” and had heard a voice, which she was sure
must be Lena’s say, “I will not!” That Lena was
there at the photographer’s studio at one time or
another was certain, for a picture had been taken
there for her identification card.

“But why not?” Norma whispered now, almost
fiercely. What did she, Norma, have against that
photographer. He was undoubtedly a German, yet
there were hundreds of thousands of loyal German-Americans.
He looked like her mental picture of a
spy she had heard Lieutenant Warren tell about, yet
her mental picture of that spy of India might be all
wrong. She had never seen him. Both these men
were photographers, yet there were many like them
in the world. Both kept black pigeons. She didn’t
know a great deal about pigeons so, for all she knew,
there might be a million black ones in America.

Even the Spanish hairdresser had not been convicted
of espionage. She had disappeared from Fort
Des Moines, that was all. Some woman, with a Spanish
look, had showed up at night at the Sea Tower
with a faked identification card and dressed in a
WAC uniform. But was this the Spanish hairdresser?
Who could answer that question?

This brought her around to the missing picture
from her film developed by Carl Langer.

“That was a picture of the Spanish hairdresser,”
she assured herself. “The film for it is still in his
studio and I am going to have it even if I have to
break in and steal it.” At that she sprang out of bed
and raced for the showers.

This, she recalled with sudden thrill, was their
last day of training and probation. Today for the
last time she would sit for eight hours with Sergeant
Tom McCarthy at her elbow making sure that she
marked on her chart the exact spot where an airplane
had been spotted and seeing to it that she
checked correctly with the representative of the
Army, Navy, and Civil Aeronautics Authority to
make sure that the plane really belonged where it
had been spotted.

“Tomorrow,” she told herself, “I’ll be there all
alone, doing my bit.”

Ah, yes, and that was not all. Rosa, Betty, Millie,
Lena, and all the rest would be there at their appointed
hours. And ten sturdy young men would
oil up their guns and go marching off.

Did these boys like it? Some, she knew, were raring
to go and some would have been glad to stay for
they were, after all, very human.

“What they want doesn’t matter now,” she
thought grimly.

At the Major’s dance held in the big dining hall
at Harbor Bells, she had enjoyed their lively fun.
Working shoulder to shoulder with them in the Sea
Tower, she had come to know them better than she
knew her fellow WACs.

Yes, she would miss them. One consolation was
that Sergeant Tom McCarthy was not leaving. He
had serious work to do here for, in the narrow harbor,
between docks, was a seaplane called “Seagull.”
In this plane Sergeant Tom did patrol duty, and, if
occasion demanded, could do his bit at hunting out
an enemy plane, to shower its pilot with machine-gun
fire, or drop a bomb on a prowling sub.

Today, however, since it was Saturday and she
had an afternoon off, she was planning a land adventure,
none other than obtaining by hook, crook,
or downright house-breaking, the film showing the
Spanish hairdresser. Little wonder then that, try
as she might, she missed the exact spot in her chart
for a reported plane and got her ears not too playfully
boxed by Sergeant Tom.

In the end, however, Tom gave her an A rating
and she was all ready for the big step forward, a
WAC in the active service of her country.

It was a bright, brisk day. An inch of snow had
fallen the day before. Cars had swept the snow from
the roads. The night before it had frozen hard. In
the bright sunlight the valleys, hills, trees, and forests
were all aglitter.

“A grand day for taking pictures,” Norma exclaimed
as she and Betty hurried home for lunch.
“I’m going for a long, long bike ride.”

“Wish I could go with you,” Betty sighed, “but
I just must catch up with my letter writing. I have
a hunch that I’m going to be sent over to Black Knob
for a while. There, getting off letters won’t be so
easy.”

“I’d be glad to have just such a hunch myself. I
like that little girl and her grandfather,” was Norma’s
reply. “And the bad Gremlins!”

“I have an idea that Lieutenant Warren has other
plans for you,” Betty said slowly. “Something like
making you second in command, a sergeant perhaps.
Then there’ll be two sergeants,” she laughed.
“Tom and Norma! That will be grand!”

“And will we tell you where to get off!” Norma’s
eyes shone. “But just you wait a while for that!”

“It won’t be long now,” Betty chanted.

“Look!” Norma’s voice dropped. “That photographer
over at Granite Head held out one of my
pictures.”

“He did!”

“He certainly did! The one of that Spanish hairdresser
at Fort Des Moines.”

“You don’t think—” Betty stared.

“No, I don’t think anything, but I’m going to
have that picture if I have to lose an arm getting
it.”

“Don’t be rash,” Betty warned. “It’s not worth
it.”

“Who knows?” Norma murmured thoughtfully.

She was still weighing this question when she arrived
at the studio at Granite Head.

As she entered the studio she found Carl Langer
talking excitedly to an elderly fisherman’s wife. The
woman’s face, bronzed by many winds and seamed
by many a care, was, she thought, most attractive.

Carl Langer was saying in a harsh tone, “No,
madam! I can not take your picture. I am too busy,
and besides—just one print. Bah! That is not
enough! I would lose money.”

“It is for my son.” The woman’s voice was low,
pleading. “It is for my only son. He is a soldier fighting
in Africa.”

“Soldier! Bah!” The photographer’s eyes bulged.
“There are many million soldiers and most times
they are drunk.”

This last Norma knew was not true. Her face
flushed but she said never a word until the woman
was gone. Then she said:

“You don’t know a picture when you see one!”

“How is that?” Carl Langer scowled.

“If you had seated that woman on a log, put a sea
scene behind her, and given her a net to mend, you
might have had a masterpiece.”

Carl Langer shot her a look but said never a word.

“Mr. Langer,” she said, after a moment, “a while
back you kept some of my films.”

“To make some prints? They were very fine pictures.
I gave you some enlargements.”

“Yes, that was generous of you.”

“That was nothing! Nothing!” The photographer’s
chest swelled.

“You forgot to give me my films,” she suggested.

“That is true. Wait. I shall bring them.” He hurried
to the back room.

“It’s no use trying to get the Spanish hairdresser’s
picture today,” she told herself. “He’s in an explosive
mood.”

The films she had asked for showed scenes—a cozy
white, New England village, a boy bringing in wood,
and a rare shot of a deer deep in the forest drinking
from a pool at the foot of a tiny waterfall.

“Here they are.” He handed her an envelope.

“That’s fine. Now sell me three films and I’ll be
off for another afternoon of shooting.”

“You lady soldiers,” he laughed, “you are the
dead-sure shots.”

“Who knows?” she murmured. She was seeing a
little gray-haired man and a girl standing at the
window of a log cabin on Black Knob Island with
tommy-guns on their knees.

“Here are the films. And good shooting to you,”
he laughed.

“He wouldn’t say that if he could read my
thoughts,” she told herself.

Having paid for her films, she stepped once more
into the crisp air.

After wrapping her camera and new films in her
utility coat and placing them in the bike basket, she
paused to examine the old films he had given her.

“There are four instead of three,” she thought
with a start. Then, without knowing why, she pocketed
the films and rode rapidly away.

Did she hear a distant shout while only a quarter
of a mile down the road? She did not look back. She
peddled for a mile or more along the shore road
and entered a small fishing village. She was just in
time to see the fisherwoman turn up the path leading
to her own door.

“Wait a minute,” she called. The woman waited.

“Will you allow me to take your picture?” she
asked as she came close.

The woman looked at the girl’s uniform for a
moment. Then, as a smile spread over her wrinkled
face, she said:

“You are one of them WACs, a lady soldier. Yes,
miss. Take as many as you like fer my son. He is a
soldier, too.”

“I’ll take two for you and one for me,” Norma
replied cheerily. “You must send one to your son
in Africa.”

“He shall have them both,” said the woman tidying
up her faded dress.

Norma posed her before her cottage, then down by
the seashore.

“We’ll say a prayer tonight asking that your son
may come back safely,” she said in a low, quiet tone.

“And may the good Lord bless you,” said the
woman.

“See!” said Norma, taking the envelope of films
from her pocket. “I can take as good pictures as Carl
Langer ever made and they won’t cost you a cent.”

She very nearly dropped the first film she held to
the light. It was a good, clear picture of the Spanish
hairdresser standing by the gate at Fort Des Moines.

“Did Carl Langer mean to give me that film?”
she asked herself as she left the fishing village. She
doubted it. He probably had put the film in the
envelope by mistake, or had forgotten it was there.

She took a long, long ride that day. She seemed to
hear more than once, when she thought of turning
back, the good Gremlins urging her to go on.

At last, having circled a row of hills, she turned
once more toward the sea and there, just before her,
nestling on a sloping hillside and half hidden by
pines that stood out black against the snow, was the
most charming colonial home she had ever seen.

It was a large house. Shapely white pillars adorned
its broad porch. There were three great chimneys.

“A fireplace in every room,” she thought. “How
old and perfectly charming it must be.”

Back of the house was a red barn with three white
cupolas. On the roofs of the cupolas were many
pigeons.

“All black pigeons,” she thought with a start.

Just then the bark of a dog startled her. The
broad door to the house had opened. Three large
dogs had come dashing out.

Their master called them back. She was glad. For
a moment she had been terribly frightened.

She took one more look at the house, the barn,
the dogs, and their master. Then, in sudden panic,
she turned squarely about, leaped on her bicycle,
and peddled back over the way she had come.

The man with the three dogs by the door of that
lovely house was Carl Langer, the photographer.
She still had that film he had tried to hide from her.
But there were other causes for her sudden panic.
Pictures were playing back and forth in her mind
and she was hearing Lieutenant Warren telling of
the man in India who had been shot as a spy.

“First it is Carl Langer who looks like that spy.
Then he acts like that spy. He steals my film. He
refuses to take honest people’s pictures. He keeps
black pigeons. And now I find him at his own rich
estate back in the hills. It’s too much, far too much.”

CHAPTER XIX
 
A BATTLE IN THE NIGHT

Norma did not slacken her speed until she reached
the shore road. When she passed through Granite
Head lamps were being lighted. On coming to the
narrow road leading to the spotter shed she caught
a gleam of light up there. Feeling in need of friendship
and good cheer, she sprang from her bike to go
trudging up the hill.

She was given a joyous welcome by Bess and Beth.

“Come on in,” Bess exclaimed. “We’re just brewing
a cup of tea.”

“Just what I need.” Nonna sank into a chair.
“Tea, a kind word, and a smile.”

“You shall have all three,” Beth declared. “And
you surely deserve it. Patsy told me all about your
wild ride on the sea. Those bad Gremlins nearly
got you that time.”

“Patsy? Is she over here?” Norma asked.

“No, not here,” was the reply. “She, too, can talk
with her hands. Just as soon as she told me with
those expressive hands of hers that you were out in
the storm, I got on the wire and stayed there until
I knew you were safe.”

“That was kind of you.” Norma felt that she surely
was making warm friends. “Probably I shall need
them,” she told herself.

Bess went outside to take up her spotter’s post.
When tea was served, they passed her a big, steaming
cup.

After eating delicious homemade cakes and thin
nut-bread sandwiches with her tea, Norma felt ready
once more for journey and battle.

“I’ll be going now,” she stood up, “and thank you
a lot.”

“Don’t go yet,” Beth begged. “We’ll have a little
chat with Patsy and perhaps with Grandfather,
though he’s often prowling about the island at this
hour, looking for subs,” she laughed.

After dragging both a television camera and receiving
set from cabinets. Beth watched the clock
for a short time, then set things humming.

Half a minute later a pair of tiny hands appeared
in the square of light and began to talk.

“Patsy is here,” Norma whispered.

Beth nodded, “Here and ten miles away. Isn’t it
strange?” She watched those hands and at the same
time wrote down letters one by one. “She says
Grandfather has been gone for an hour and she’s
a little bit afraid.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Norma with a shake
of the head.

“He takes too many chances,” Beth said soberly.

“Can you talk to her?” Norma asked.

“Tea Is Just What I Need,” Said Norma

“Oh, sure. Watch me.” Soon, with the television
camera trained upon them, Beth’s hands were twisting
themselves in all manners of strange forms.

“Tell her I’m here,” said Norma.

Again Beth’s hands talked across ten miles of
black waters.

Then it was little Patsy’s time to talk. The words
fairly flew from her nimble fingers.

“She says she loves you,” Beth laughs. “She hopes
you’ll come often. But, oh, is she glad the bad Gremlins
didn’t get you that other night!”

“She’s a dear child.” said Norma. “I only wish I
were going there to live for a time. But I’m a little
afraid that is out.”

“Too bad, I’m sure. Patsy’d love it. You’d have
experiences you’d not forget.”

“Looks as if I might have unforgettable experiences
anyway,” Norma laughed nervously. She was thinking
of the Spanish hairdresser, of Carl Langer, and
all the strange surprises that had come to her. “I’ll
tell Lieutenant Warren all about it very soon,” she
told herself.

Again Patsy was talking. It was an animated and
joyous conversation they held with Patsy while Bess
stood watch outside.

Then, of a sudden, all was changed. Patsy broke
off short in the middle of a sentence. Her tiny hands
disappeared and in their stead were larger, older
hands.

“Grandfather,” Beth whispered as if afraid he
might hear. “And is he excited!”

Soon enough they knew there was reason for excitement.
The trembling hands spelled out the
words rapidly, one by one:

“Submarine—half mile off shore—Send help!”

Norma sprang for the telephone. Taking down
the receiver she tried to speak calmly, distinctly:

“N-K speaking at G-P.” Her words seemed to
tremble. “Black Knob reports submarine, half mile
off shore. Send planes.”

At that instant Bess thrust her head in at the door
to report:

“One single off Black Knob coming this way,
moderate speed.”

At that same instant Millie, who was standing
watch on the top of the Sea Tower, took a frosty
telephone from its hiding place and called down to
Betty:

“One single. About six miles off shore, looks like
coming from Black Knob, coming west, moderate
speed.”

At once Betty got in touch with the men below.
In ten seconds she had her answer. “No plane due
to be at that point. Wait for second report.”

The second report came, not from Norma at
Granite Point spotter shed, but from a fisherman’s
wife at the village which Norma had visited a few
hours before.

On receiving the report, Sergeant Tom sprang up
the stairs to stand at Millie’s side and add his keen
listening ears to hers.

“Circling as if for a landing,” was his first comment.
“Mighty strange, a small plane way out there
at this hour of the night. It’s not any American
plane I’ve ever heard. I’m going out there. Tell Betty
to notify the Rock Point airfield. Tell her to give
the details.”

Going down the stairs he all but fell over Rosa
who was just going off duty.

“Oh, Tom!” she exclaimed. “Are you going after
that plane?”

“Looks like I am.” Tom bounded out into the uncertain
light of night. There was no moon.

Rosa, who was right at his heels, called in a low,
eager voice: “Tom, take me with you!”

“What, a lady? It can’t be done!”

“I’m a soldier. I’ll handle the spotlight.”

“And the machine gun, too, I suppose,” he
grumbled.

“Yes, and that, too. Tom, please take me,” she
pleaded.

When the Seagull rose from the dark sea, Rosa
rode in the second seat. Tom had extracted from
her a promise of absolute secrecy, that was all.

There was reason enough why Norma’s report of
the plane and the sub had not come in. The phone
at the Granite Head spotter shed was dead. Beyond
a doubt the wires had been cut.

While they were finding this out, Beth had received
a more complete report from her grandfather.
He had been hearing sounds from the sea
for a full half hour. Someone was working on a motor
or some other thing. At first he thought some fisherman’s
boat was stalled.

As the craft was carried in by the tide, he caught
words spoken in German. Then he made out the
long, low bulk of the sub. Now he was telling of a
mysterious plane that had appeared from just nowhere
and was soaring out over the sea.

“I’ve got my bike!” Norma exclaimed excitedly.
“I’ll ride like mad. Be at the Sea Tower in no time
at all!” She was away at once.

As Norma sped down those winding stairs she was
thinking of the old man and the child out there on
Black Knob and their great peril. “Those men were
rigging out a boat,” she told herself. “They were
going ashore on the island. And then—”

She coasted down the hill at a terrific speed. Only
a miracle saved her from a crash at the bottom.

She got her crash all the same. Having covered a
quarter of the distance to the Sea Tower, she rounded
a curve when to her consternation she saw a
ghost-like figure, all in white, standing in the middle
of the road.

Swinging as far as she could to the right, she attempted
to pass when, with an astonishing leap, the
figure landed upon the back of her bicycle and
wrapped long arms about her. Instantly they went
down in a heap.

“It’s a spy,” she thought. “He cut the wire. Now
he means to stop me. But he won’t.”

Summoning all her courage and drawing heavily
on her feeling of sudden desperation, she threw all
her strength into tearing away those arms.

The ease with which this was done astonished her.
Those were not strong arms. They seemed to be the
arms of a woman.

Norma’s escape was, she discovered, not to be so
easy. Her opponent was surprisingly fast. No sooner
were her arms free than she was gripped by both
ankles and thrown with a crash to the ground.

At last, struggling to a sitting position, she pushed
the creature away and sprang up.

Leaping like a panther, her enemy landed on
her back to send her crashing once again.

“I’ve got to be cool,” the girl told herself. “This
may be a fight to the death.”

When once again she found herself on her feet
she began sparring like a boxer.

Then, seeing an opening, she seized her opponent
by one arm. Hanging on desperately with both
hands, she started whirling. Finding her assailant surprisingly
light, she at last swung her off her feet.
Three more dizzy turns, then she let go.

The white figure crashed into the bank ten feet
away. Without looking back, Norma seized her bike,
mounted, and rode away at terrific speed.

In the meantime Tom and Rosa were out over the
sea. First they headed for the spot where the plane
had last been heard. They circled in an ever growing
spiral but discovered nothing.

Switching on a light, Tom looked back at Rosa.
The look on her round face betrayed no sign of fear.
Instead there was a look of grim determination.

“We’ll climb,” he spoke into his phone. “It may
be cold.”

“Okay by me,” Rosa called back cheerfully.

“We’ll get up high. Then I’ll shut off my motor
and glide. Then you listen with both your ears.”

“With both my ears,” came echoing back.

They climbed. Then they began a silent glide.

“Out to sea.” Rosa’s ears had caught the sound of
a motor. “Near the island I think. Black Knob, you
know?”

Tom had heard, too. They were away.

Over Black Knob they circled again “No soap,”
Tom grumbled. “You much scared?” he asked.

“Not scared at all.”

“Want to turn on the searchlight and sweep the
sky as we circle?” he asked. “They may see us and
shoot. That may mean curtains for us.”

“But if it’s an enemy scout plane from an aircraft
carrier,” this was the girl’s answer, “then it is curtains
for many people—women and children.” Rosa
snapped on the light. After that, as they circled low
over the water, a pencil of light searched the sky.

Now and then the girl played the light on dark
waters.

“Looking for the aircraft carrier,” Tom thought.
“She’s sure got what it takes.”

Suddenly Rosa exclaimed, “Look! What’s that?”

“What? Where?”

“It was on the water. Not big, but long and low.”

“A fishing boat, perhaps,” said Tom. “They’re
coming in from the Banks these days.”

“Mebby, yes, mebby no,” was the odd reply.

Truth was, they had sighted the sub, but, since
Norma’s report had failed, they knew nothing of
that sub. So they circled on.

“Norma! You’re a sight!” Betty cried as her pal
at last stumbled into their Sea Tower watchroom.
“Did you have a crash?”

“Yes—yes—a crash,” Norma murmured half in a
daze. “But, Betty, quick! Notify the airfield! There’s
an enemy submarine clo-close to Black Knob. They—they’re
trying to land, I think. That—that will be
terrible!”

“A squadron of planes is on the way now!” Betty
said.

“Who—who told them about the sub?” Norma
stared.

“Not the sub,” Betty corrected. “There is an unidentified
airplane.”

“Oh, oh, yes. Then, tell them to send out planes
to look for the sub.”

Betty got off the message while Norma collapsed
into a chair.

“Here, drink this,” Betty offered her a cup of
steaming coffee.

“Oh, Betty!” Norma exclaimed. “It was terrible!
I tried to call from the spotter shed but the wires
were cut. I started coming here like mad on my bike.
Someone attacked me—”

“Attacked you!”

“Threw me off my bike! We—we had a terrible
fight. It was a woman or a boy in a white snow suit.
Woman, I think. The Spanish hairdresser, I
shouldn’t wonder!”

“The Spanish hairdresser!” Betty’s eyes opened
wide.

“Yes—I have her picture.” Norma dug into the
pocket of her coat.

“It—it’s gone!” she gasped. “It was the Spanish
hairdresser. The picture was what she wanted. I—I
lost the fight after all.”

“Not by a long way,” Betty declared stoutly. “If
she’s around here, we’ll get her yet. I—

“Wait,” she held up a hand, then listened.

“Five more planes going out. We’ll get that sub.”

CHAPTER XX
 
PATSY WATCHES THREE SHADOWS

Once again Tom McCarthy and Rosa climbed to
the upper sky where the stars seemed to reach down
for them and the air was bitter cold.

“Now,” Tom muttered hoarsely, as he shut off
the motor and they started on a spiral glide, “listen!”

“Listening,” came in a hoarse whisper.

At first no sound reached their listening ears.
Then they caught a low, indistinct roar, like the approach
of an on-rushing storm.

“A terrible storm coming.” Rosa seemed a little
frightened.

“That’s no storm,” Tom’s voice was husky. “It’s
the roar of lots of planes.”

“Lots of planes,” Rosa repeated. “They come
from an airplane carrier. They will fly to Portland,
Boston, perhaps New York!”

“Who knows?” Tom’s eyes were on his instruments.
They were still spiraling rapidly.

“Darn!” he murmured, scowling fiercely. Where
was the sea? To strike it head-on meant death. At
night sky and sea look alike. And yet he wanted to
listen to get the direction of that on-rushing squadron.
At that moment he saw himself at the controls
with Rosa manning the machine gun, surrounded
by ghost-like enemy fighters shooting by them in the
night. It was a fantastic, but not impossible, scene.

Suddenly a single flash of light appeared beneath
them. One instant it was there, the next it was gone.

“Rosa! Quick! The spotlight!” He pulled the
plane up so short that blood rushed to Rosa’s head
and it was with the greatest difficulty that she set the
light playing on the water.

One frightened look down and she gasped. They
were all but upon the water and going like the wind.

One more short pull and their ship leveled off.
It was then that their spot of light, gliding swiftly
across the water, revealed a secret. Their light
crossed a long, low craft with a tower at its center.

“Sub,” Tom shouted. But already it was too late
to drop a bomb. They were over it and gone.

Instantly he began to climb. Not very high this
time, perhaps ten thousand feet, then again silence.

The roar of distant motors was louder now, but
even louder and closer at hand sounded a single
motor.

“That’s the enemy plane,” Tom muttered. After
listening with all his senses, he changed the direction
of his plane and they went shooting away at
full speed. Tom was flying by sense of direction
alone, a dangerous business in the night.

Ten long minutes he stuck to his course, then,
after climbing once more, he shut off the motor and
began to glide.

“Huh!” he grunted. “We had that plane’s course
to a ‘T’, but they’re fast. They’ve gone straight out
to sea.”

“Then we can’t catch up with them?” Rosa asked.

“Never!”

“They go back to Europe?”

“That’s impossible. Plane’s too small to carry
enough gas.”

“Then the ocean will get them.”

“No chance,” Tom grumbled. “They’ll keep a
secret meeting with that sub!”

Realizing that his supply of gas would not carry
him much further and allow them to fly back, Tom
put his motor in motion and very reluctantly
turned back.

At that moment, hidden by the night and the
shadow of a great rock, Patsy and her grandfather
sat huddled in the cold at the foot of Bald Head,
listening and straining their eyes for some sight or
sound from the sea.

“That was Tom McCarthy in the seaplane,” the
grandfather whispered.

“Yes, and that other plane, that was an enemy
plane,” said Patsy. “I hope the good Gremlins will
pack its wings with ice until it falls into the sea!”

“But for us,” said the grandfather, “the sub is
more important!”

“Yes, they might land,” the child answered and
crowded close.

“Let them come,” came in a low, even tone.
“We’ll take care of that.” He patted the tommy-gun
on his knee. “We—”

“Sh—” Patsy placed a finger on his lips. Her young
ears were sharper than his. Had she caught the low
murmur of voices? She could not be quite sure.

“People talking,” she whispered, after a moment
of intent listening.

Another moment of breathless silence and then:
“Sounds like water splashing.”

“Paddles.” The old man gripped his gun tight.

Old for her years, Patsy knew this meant a boat of
one sort or another. Without saying a word, she glided
down the slope of Bald Head until her face was
a scant two yards from the water that gently lapped
the shore. Then, dropping flat on her stomach, she
looked straight out across the dark surface of the
sea. If a boat was out there it would show against
the dull gray of the night sky.

A full five minutes passed without a sound. Then
she whispered back:

“Not a boat, but three men sitting on the sea.”

“A rubber boat!” Without a sound the grandfather
slid down the dock to her side. Then, bidding
her lie quite still, he put his gun across her
slender body. She did not flinch.

He could see the men. There were three or four
of them. They came slowly shoreward, pausing now
and then to rest.

“Afraid?” the girl said.

“Yes, of a trap,” was the all but inaudible answer.

Grandfather was thinking slowly, carefully,
weighing the wisdom of laying a volley across the
spot in the sea.

“They could be friends,” he whispered. “We’ll
wait. Perhaps they will speak. Then we’ll know.”

So they waited and while they waited the low roar
of many planes began beating on their eardrums.

“Oh!” Patsy squirmed in fear. “If these are enemy
planes from a carrier—”

“They’ll not bomb Black Knob,” was the cheering
assurance. “They only drop bombs where there
are many people.”

“Listen,” he ended. “See if you can get their direction.”

Once again, save for the occasional dip-dip of a
paddle, silence hung over Black Knob.

Suddenly, after gripping the old man’s arm with
intense eagerness, the girl whispered:

“Grandfather! Those planes are coming from the
south!”

“From Rocky Point airfield! They should have
started sooner. Something must have gone wrong.
But now—”

“Now will there be a battle?” The child was
trembling all over.

“I don’t know, child.”

“Shall you shoot out there?”

“We must wait and see,” was the calm reply, always
in a slow whisper. “We cannot afford a horrible
mistake.”

And so, with the roar beating ever louder in their
ears, they lay there, not daring to move, the man
and the child.

As for the shadowy figures “sitting on the water,”
they too must have heard, for there came no longer
the dip-dip of their paddles.

Tom and Rosa, too, were being cheered by the
ever increasing roar.

“We’ll leave that sub to them,” Tom said through
the speaker. “We can’t have much more than
enough gas to take us in.”

At last they circled low, dropped to the surface
inside the breakwater at Indian Point, then taxied
in.

The instant the motor stopped and Tom had secured
a tie line, he said in a low tone:

“This is our secret, Rosa. To anyone else, you
just didn’t go with me.”

“Okay,” was the frank agreement.

“Grab that skiff and row as fast as you can to the
dock!”

“But you will come, too?” the girl demurred.

“Not yet!” He lifted her into the skiff. “Don’t
you see, you little goose? If you come back for me,
then it will all be quite regular. You just happened
along and gave me a lift.”

“I see.” The girl rowed swiftly away.

When, a quarter of an hour later, Rosa, still fairly
shaking with cold, but managing a casual stride for
all that, walked into the big living room, Norma exclaimed,
“Rosa! Where have you been? They have
looked for you everywhere!”

“I went out for a little fresh air, that’s all.”

Norma, studying Rosa’s face, whispered: “Little
Rosa has one more secret.” And little Rosa had—just
that!

Still the old man and the child lay in the darkness
on the great rock, feeling the sound of motors
growing louder, ever louder in their ears. Still the
old man’s fingers trembled as they gripped the gun
that might have spelled death to those shadowy
forms on the black waters.

At last the girl whispered, “They’re paddling
again! I can hear them, dip-dip-dip. Will they
come ashore now? Will you shoot, Grandfather?”

“If they come ashore I will shoot.”

Still, quite breathless, the child lay quiet, tensing
as she lost the sound of the paddles. The roar of
motors drowned it out. As her eyes searched the
waters, it seemed to her that the shadowy forms were
fading.

Then she lost interest in the sea, for coming
like the wind, were airplanes, good American planes.

“They’re coming to drive the horrible sub and
all the bad Gremlins away!” she whispered.

She wanted to leap to her feet and scream, “Hurrah!
Hurrah for our planes!” but she dared not.

The planes were not looking for the sub. They
had been sent out to find an enemy plane. As if by
magic a gray mist came sweeping in from the sea.

“It’s the bad Gremlins.” She spoke aloud at last.
“They have hidden those men!”

“The men on the sub have made a fog to hide
them,” was the grandfather’s reply. “Even the airplanes
will not find the sub now.”

“Come,” he lifted her up, “we must go back to
the cabin. You are freezing. We will listen there.
You may talk with your hands.”

“Grandfather,” she said, as she trotted beside
him, “will the sub come back?”

“Perhaps another day.”

“And then will you shoot at those shadows on the
water?”

“Yes, if I know they are our enemies, I will!”

Little Patsy did not talk with her hands that
night, for, after drinking a big cup of hot chocolate
and being wrapped in two warm blankets, she curled
up on the broad couch and fell fast asleep.

It was the grandfather who, with his hands,
spelled out their story to Beth and Bess, the faithful
watchers at the Granite Head spotter tower. And
all the while the searching planes roared on in the
night.

CHAPTER XXI
 
NIGHT FOR A SPY STORY

And Norma too was on the watch—

It was one of those nights when one does not wish
to sleep. The air was full of sounds, of airplanes roaring
in close ashore, then speeding away to sea.

There were wild tales going the rounds of the
village as Norma went there for a walk. There
would be an invasion of America. Spies were being
landed all along the coast from subs.

“I heard,” said a fisherman, “that one of them
lady soldiers, a WAAC do they call them, was beat
to death on the road from Granite Head.” As Norma
listened in on this bit of conversation, she smiled.
She, beyond doubt, was that “lady soldier.” It
all went to show how stories grew as they traveled.

“Or does it?” she asked with a start. “Perhaps
someone is starting these wild tales to frighten us.
If that’s it,” she squared her shoulders, “they’ve
got a long way to go.”

As she returned to Harbor Bells, she found herself
in a mood for talking, telling tales, confiding
in someone.

And there, sitting alone by the half-burned fire,
as if she had been waiting for her, sat Lieutenant
Warren.

“It’s a wild night,” she said, as Norma dropped
into a seat beside her.

“Yes, a strange night. It seems to bring the war
close.”

“So very close to America,” the Lieutenant
agreed. “It’s a night for a ghost story.”

“Yes, or a spy story,” Norma replied quickly.
“Lieutenant Warren, I’ve discovered your German
spy from India right here in America.”

“What? Why, that’s impossible!” The officer sat
straight up to stare at her. “He was shot as a spy,
two years ago in India!”

“Are you sure? Did your friend really say your
photographer friend was shot?”

“Well, now,” Lieutenant Warren went into a
brown study, “perhaps not just that. She did say
that a photographer who had a studio facing the
parade ground—I supposed he was the one I knew—was
shot.”

“It might not be. Let me tell you all about it.”
Norma’s voice dropped as she moved her chair
close. From outside came the roar of a motor that
slowly faded away.

“He calls himself Carl Langer,” Norma said.

“That wasn’t the name. But it’s easy to take a new
name. Most spies do, I guess,” Lieutenant Warren
said.

“I saw him the very first night we were here,”
Norma went on. “I went out for a look at the moon
and the sea and there he stood by the gate with a
camera in his hand.”

“Oh, is he a photographer here, too?” Lieutenant
Warren’s voice rose a bit.

“Yes, of course, and a very good one. His hair
stands up the way it does on a pig’s back, only it’s
scrubbed and shines white. His face is lined but is
round and soft-looking.”

“What a remarkable resemblance!” Rita Warren
murmured. “But why didn’t you tell me any of this
before?”

“I wanted to be sure,” Norma said. “I could not
accuse people….”

“Of course,” Lieutenant Warren said.

“But listen! You haven’t heard anything,” Norma
warmed to her subject. “He has a grand pose, didn’t
want to do my snapshots for me, said he couldn’t
waste his time and money.”

“And you said—”

“I said, ‘You wouldn’t be wasting your money because
I mean to pay you!’” At that they both laughed.

“Oh, it’s been like doing a part in a play,” Norma
exclaimed. “Just as if I had been drilled in advance
for every act!”

“And did he do your pictures for you?”

“Of course, but Miss Warren—” Suddenly Norma’s
face grew tense. “He held out on me. He kept
the one I took of the Spanish hairdresser at Fort
Des Moines.”

“I Had to Be Sure Before Accusing People.”

“The Spanish hairdresser?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember her? She and Lena
seemed to be great friends. She did Lena’s hair for
her every other day and I doubt if she always was
paid for it … I followed her and Lena.” Unthinkingly,
Norma raced on.

“Followed them?”

“Yes, in Des Moines.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why, I just did, that’s all. They
went into a dark repair shop on a spooky side street.
I followed them in and the door closed behind me.
It locked itself. I couldn’t get out.”

“Girl alive!” Rita Warren exclaimed sharply.
“You might have been murdered!”

“Yes,” Norma drew in a deep breath. “Yes, but I
wasn’t.”

“What happened?”

“Some man gripped my arm. He seemed very
angry. Then, suddenly, he changed and was very
polite.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew I was a WAC.”

“But you said it was dark!”

“It was—I guess he knew me by the fine wool in
my coat. That’s one time when it really paid to wear
my uniform.”

“It may have saved your life,” was the Lieutenant’s
slow comment. “He wouldn’t have dared harm
a WAC. Not in Des Moines. That would have
brought the town down on his head.

“But, wait!” Rita Warren’s voice rose as she continued.
“How does Lena fit into the picture? Why
did this Carl Langer hold out your picture of this
Spanish hairdresser? Or did he? Perhaps the shot
was no good. That often happens—”

“It didn’t happen this time.” Norma’s voice dropped
to a whisper. “He gave the film to me by mistake
this very day. I got a look at it, that’s all.”

“Let’s have another look.”

“We can’t,” Norma whispered. “Someone in a
white snow suit waylaid me on the coast road and
took it from me, after a fight!”

“A fight!”

“And how!” Norma’s voice carried conviction.

“This sounds interesting and rather dangerous.”
Rita Warren was impressed. “Tell me the rest. Tell
me more of Fritz Kurnsen, no—no, I mean your Carl
Langer. Fritz was my spy in India. It would be really
ridiculous to think they were the same. He was
shot, I’m sure!”

“Yes, that’s what you think.” The words were on
Norma’s lips, but she did not say them. Instead she
said: “Let me see—oh, yes, Carl Langer is very selfish
and doesn’t work any more than he has to. He
refused to take a picture of a poor fisherwoman. And
she wanted to send the picture to her son in the service
over in Africa.”

“He would!” Rita Warren agreed. “That is, if he
were Fritz Kurnsen. But tell me about this fight with
the white-robed figure.”

Norma told her. In a dramatic manner she described
the entire battle.

“That’s bad!” the Lieutenant exclaimed. “So
they cut the wires to the spotter’s shed!”

“They must have.”

“The war comes closer to us every day. I must
put Mr. Sperry, the FBI agent, on the tracks of these
people at once—”

“But Lena?” The words slipped out unbidden.

“Lena must look out for herself.” Rita Warren’s
words were spoken in tones cold as ice. “We are in
a war. If Lena has been associating with spies, if
she’s been doing wrong things she must suffer for
them.”

“But it’s not been proven yet.”

“Not yet.”

“Then there’s Rosa,” Norma said quietly.

“Rosa? Is she in on this, too?”

“I—I don’t know. Just tonight she came in after
she had been away a long time, with a strange, secretive
look on her face. And back at Fort Des
Moines, there was her flashing of light at night and
the crazy thing she did at the airport.”

“Tell me.”

Norma told of the flashing lights and Rosa’s book
of prayers.

“That sounds innocent enough,” said Rita Warren.

“I hoped you’d say that, but the airplane story is,
well, sort of different.”

Norma told of the time Rosa had come very close
to running away with a secret fighter plane.

“What in the world made her do that?” Rita
Warren exclaimed, when the story was finished.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Norma seemed troubled.
Then she exclaimed, “Oh, I’m sorry I told
you! I never wanted to suspect anyone of doing anything
wrong!”

“It’s all right, your telling me,” was the reply.

“About Carl Langer, yes!” Norma exclaimed in
a low, tense voice. “He’s a pig and in spite of the fact
that he flatters me, I hate him. But Lena and Rosa—that’s
different.” Her voice dropped. “Rosa’s been
a good sport and a regular pal. And Lena—well, she
practically saved our lives in that storm.”

“You forget that she was, at the same time, saving
her own life.”

“Yes—oh—yes, of course, but, Lieutenant Warren!”
Norma’s voice rose. “There is still more to be
told about Carl Langer!”

“Let’s hear it!”

“He keeps black pigeons. They roost on his studio
roof. And today,” she caught her breath. “Today
I went for a long ride up into the hills. And what do
you suppose I saw?”

“An estate all surrounded with palms, with your
Carl Langer standing at the door,” Rita Warren
laughed.

“The picture is perfect.” Norma did not laugh.
“Only instead of palms there were huge pine trees
standing out against the snow. Even the dogs were
there, three of them—fierce-looking beasts. And the
pigeons were on the barn roof, lots of them.”

“And you went up to the door and said: ‘Carl
Langer, please show me your ancient masterpiece.’”

“I jumped on my bicycle and peddled away as fast
as ever I could. I was scared. Scared to the tips of
my toes.”

“The picture will come later no doubt. What a
remarkable coincidence! I must see your Carl
Langer!”

“I—I’ll take you there. I’d love to.”

“I’ll go with you. Let me see,” Rita Warren considered.
“Not tomorrow. I am going to Black Knob,
taking three girls out to assist with the spotting.
That’s just temporary, of course. Later we’ll either
make it a real center, such as we have here, or enlist
more volunteers for the work.”

“You—you’re not sending me?” Norma asked.

“No, I think not. I need you here as my right-hand
man. Then there’s this spy business. We must
look into that. You won’t mind, will you?”

“Of course not. We’re all soldiers and must serve
where we can do the most good. Of course,” Norma
added with a touch of longing, “it would be nice to
live there a while with that fine, old grandfather,
the imp of a child, and all the good Gremlins.”

“I’m planning to send Betty,” said Lieutenant
Warren. “She has a good head for things.”

“She certainly has!”

“I’ll send Millie and Mary. There’ll be other girls
arriving tomorrow. You’ll have to help train them.”

“Looks like a busy time ahead,” Norma laughed.

“You don’t know the half of it!” Lieutenant Warren
agreed.

As they parted for the night, the clock on the
mantel struck slowly twelve times.

“Midnight,” Norma whispered, slipping out on
the porch.

The stars were shining bright. The moon was
just rising back of Black Knob. All the planes had
gone home. The night seemed very still.

Had she been able to look in at windows at Black
Knob, as the good Gremlins do, she might have seen
the grandfather and child fast asleep while on the
spotter tower a gray-haired woman walked slowly
back and forth. And in a warm corner, downstairs,
two rough fishermen, guns at hand, nodded sleepily,
keeping watch, just in case—

As Norma turned to go in she whispered, “Lieutenant
Warren said she would go with me to Langer’s
place, but not tomorrow. I hope she makes it soon.”

CHAPTER XXII
 
FLIGHT OF THE BLACK PIGEON

“I’m going to miss you terribly,” Norma said to
Betty, as they all gathered at the fisherman’s wharf
next day.

“Wish you were going along to Black Knob,” said
Betty. “I know it’s going to be loads of fun, and
there might be a thrill or two. Who knows?”

“Thrills,” Norma shuddered. She had not fully
recovered from the shock of being sat upon by a
white-robed figure in the dark. Every muscle in her
body ached and there were three long scratches on
her cheek.

“Tell me all about it, when you get to work,” she
whispered, drawing Betty to one side.

“Tell you!” Betty exclaimed. “Why, my voice
doesn’t carry that far!”

“No, but your hands will.” There was a note of
secrecy in Norma’s voice. “They have a wonderful
way of talking to the folks on shore, from over
there—”

“Ah! A mystery!” Betty exclaimed in a whisper.

“Just that!” Norma agreed. “Sorry I can’t tell you
more, but they’ll tell you more, when they learn to
trust you and that will be very soon, I’m sure.

“Goodbye and good luck.” She gripped Betty’s
hand hard. “Watch out for the bad Gremlins and
give my love to Patsy.”

“Okay, I will.” Betty sprung into the motorboat
and they were away.

Norma returned to Harbor Bells to sit by the fire
for a long time thinking and dreaming, then to eat
her dinner and retire for a few hours of sleep. Her
shift at the Sea Tower for the present was to be the
wee, small hours of the morning. “The most important
of all,” had been Lieutenant Warren’s
words for it. “It is during these hours that thieves,
housebreakers, and safe-crackers prowl a city’s
streets, that ghosts walk, and spies fly the skies or
creep beneath the sea.”

“And that the bad Gremlins get in their dirty
work,” Norma laughed.

In spite of their fun Norma knew that the task
she was undertaking was a serious one. Rosa and a
girl named Marie were to work with her but she was
to be in charge.

When at last Norma took her place at the chart
table with Rosa at the switchboard and Marie ready
for any task that might come her way, there was a
sober look on her face such as had seldom been there
before.

Two hours passed. Norma’s eyelids were growing
heavy; the first night was going to be hard. Then
the switchboard rattled and Norma repeated after
some voice:

“Two heavy twin-motors going south, fast!”

“That’s from Kittywake,” said Rosa. Norma
searched her chart, then marked a spot while Marie
was droning through a phone:

“Two heavy twin-motors going south, fast. That’s
from Kittywake.”

“Okay, stand by!” came back in a man’s voice.

A moment later the switchboard again rattled
and once more Rosa repeated:

“Two heavy twin-motors going south.

“That’s from Brink’s Point,” she said this time.

Norma marked the spot and marveled at the distance
that had been covered. “If they’re enemy
planes!” She chilled and thrilled at the thought of
a sky battle.

Before Marie got in her second report, there
came a buzz and the man’s voice from below reported:

“Those are Army planes of the Ferry Command.
A little off their course, but they’ll take care of that.
As you were.”

They all settled back to await the night’s next
little adventure.

At 3:16 a small plane was reported off Crow
Point. It turned out to be a Navy patrol plane that
had lost its way in an early morning mist.

A few moments later a wavering light was reported
off Preston Beach. The watcher said it was
six miles off shore. It was really only one mile and
was a lantern atop the mast of a fishing schooner.

And that was the total bag of missing, misled,
and enemy planes.

“Not so exciting,” was Marie’s sleepy comment
as they went off duty.

“No,” Norma agreed, “but standing guard at the
edge of no man’s land when nothing happens for
months on end over there on the other side isn’t
exciting either. But let the patrol relax—”

“And then comes trouble.” Rosa finished.

“Yes, and if we relax it will come here,” said
Norma. “Look at last night!”

“Okay,” Marie agreed good-naturedly. “When it
comes you’ll find me right here with you, and I’ll
hope to do my bit.”

“I know you will,” said Norma with a friendly
grip on the arm.

That first night might have served for the whole
week’s pattern, and for another half week after that.
A plane lost and found, three planes off their course,
a fast speed boat taken for a plane, these were the
simple little stories recorded in Norma’s book. But,
for all that, they were learning their tasks, going
through their work with greater skill every day, preparing
themselves for any world-rocking and nerve-wracking
events that lay ahead.

That is not to say that in this week and a half
nothing exciting happened. Many things did happen,
but these came during off-duty hours.

One day, with Tom McCarthy as her escort, Norma
peddled back to Carl Langer’s studio. Her excuse
for coming was to leave an unimportant film
to be developed, her real reason to talk to Carl
Langer about his estate up in the hills.

“Mr. Langer,” she said, after the film had been
listed and stored away, “that’s a fine farm you have
back in the hills.”

The photographer started and stared.

“So you have seen it.” He regained his composure
instantly.

“He didn’t see me on my bike,” she thought.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I rode up that far on my
bike.”

“That farm,” he said, swelling a little with pride,
“occupies all my spare time. I am particularly fond
of it because it belonged to my father before me.

“You see,” his voice took on a conversational
tone, “I was born in Portland. My father was a man
of business. This farm was for him, you might say,
a sideline. He kept a man to farm it. He spent
week-ends there. I, too, enjoyed it when I was a boy.
So now, you see—” he smiled, “it brings me great
pleasure.”

“That’s quite wonderful,” said Norma. “And did
your father also raise black pigeons?”

“Black pigeons?” It seemed to Norma that Carl
Langer started again, but once more he made a
quick recovery. “Pigeons? Oh! No—this is something
I have done. These pigeons, they are quite
rare.”

“I thought they were,” said Norma.

“Oh, yes—very rare indeed. I only wish you had
come in, when you were by my house. Gladly would
I have shown you the choicest ones of the lot. And
besides, I have something I should wish to show
you. It is in the house, a picture. It is a masterpiece,
I think.”

“A—a picture,” Norma’s voice cracked. “There
it is,” she thought, “but I must not betray myself.”

“Oh! A picture,” she exclaimed. “A masterpiece—how
fine! I’d love to see it. And I have a friend
who is very much interested in pictures. But then,
she’s a very important and busy person.”

“Surely she must not be too busy to look at a
masterpiece. I truly think it is by Millet, the man
who painted the Angelus.”

“Oh! Then I’m sure she would come,” said Norma.
“She’s a lover of Millet’s work. His characters
are so simple, so human and real.”

“Ah! I see you also know pictures.”

“A little,” Norma admitted.

“Bring your friend out any time, just any time.”
The photographer’s face fairly beamed.

“I’ll bring her some time,” Norma agreed.

“What’s all this about a masterpiece?” Tom
asked on the way home. “I don’t get it.”

“Oh, that!” Norma laughed low. “That’s a sort of
military secret between my big, high chief and myself.
When it—well, when the story breaks, you
might say, I’ll try to let you in on it. But for the
present mum’s the word.”

“Have it your own way,” Tom grinned, “but, see
here, sister, if you go out to that old geezer’s house,
don’t go alone. Take that from me. I don’t like his
looks!”

“I won’t,” Norma agreed.

That night, on lonely Black Knob Island, Betty
had a rather weird experience.

To make life safer for the plane spotters on the
island, six enlisted men had been sent there. These
had taken up their quarters in a small summer hotel
that had been closed for the winter. Betty, Millie,
and Mary were given rooms at the Norton cabin,
but took their meals at the hotel which was presided
over by Mrs. Pearl Tratt, a busy, friendly
fisherman’s wife.

In no time at all, Betty had won her way into the
hearts of Patsy and her grandfather.

On this particular night. Betty was sharing the
first spotter watch with Grandfather Norton and
Patsy, who had not yet retired for the night.

Since the moon was not up, it was quite dark on
the spotter stand. Grandfather Norton, who had
already begun teaching Betty the deaf and dumb alphabet
so she could talk to Norma “by hand,” was
now introducing her to a device which he had been
working on for a long time.

“It’s not yet perfect,” he explained, “but I think
it has great possibilities. With the unaided ear, one
seldom spots a plane, by sound, more than six miles
away. Even with my imperfect hearing, aided by
my listening device, I have been able, more than
once, to spot a plane coming from the sea … American
planes, of course … at a distance of ten miles.
Want to try it?” he asked.

“Of course,” was Betty’s instant reply. “Anything
that helps us do our job well is just swell!”

“Well, now,” said Grandfather Norton, “this
listening device of mine appears to work best on
sounds rather close at hand, so we’ll just try it out
on Joe Tratt. Just you put on these earphones, then
I’ll turn on the electricity. Got a small electric plant
in the furnace room, you know.”

“Joe Tratt—” Betty repeated. “What’s he going to
do, stand off somewhere and shout?”

“No—No!” The old inventor’s voice cracked.
“Joe always comes in from setting his nets out on
the reef about this time. He’s coming in now, probably,
only his boat’s motor doesn’t make a great
deal of noise, so you don’t hear him with the unaided
ear.

“Now—you ready?”

“Ready.”

He touched a button. A faint light appeared. He
put his hand on a large metal horn and began turning
it slowly.

“When you pick up the sound of a motor say,
‘Now’,” he shouted.

For ten seconds she listened intently. Then suddenly
she said:

“Now!”

“I’ll test it.” He swung it back and forth. As the
sound of the boat’s motor rose and fell with the
turning, Betty told him, by lifting and lowering a
hand, how the sound rose and fell. When at last
the spot was found where the sound was strongest,
she held both hands straight out.

“It’s like tuning in on a radio program,” she
laughed as she continued to listen. “This should be
great. I only wish there were an airplane coming
in.”

“Oh! They’ll come!” the old man crackled. “Perhaps
sooner than you want them.”

As she listened the sound of the motor grew
steadily louder. “Coming in,” she thought. Then
she wondered what it would be like, setting nets
off the shores of the British Isles where many subs
lurked and planes, like birds of prey, haunted the
skies, ready to pounce down upon you.

“Brave people,” she thought. “They deserve all
that we can do for them.”

Tiring of the constant pounding on her eardrums,
she nodded to Patsy, at the same time executing
a circle with her hand.

Understanding instantly, Patsy began turning
the big horn slowly. Gradually the sound of the
motor faded into nothing. For a time, Betty caught
only the slow wash, wash of waves on the shore.
Then, little by little, she began to make out a different
sound.

At first only a low snap-snap, like clothes cracking
on a distant clothesline, the sound at last became
a steady flap-flap that increased in volume
with each second.

“I hear wings.” She made a motion to Patsy, and
the girl stopped turning.

“It’s a bad flying Gremlin.” Patsy danced up and
down in her excitement.

“A seagull,” said the more practical grandfather.

The speaker picked up their voices. Betty heard
them.

“It’s not like a gull’s flight,” she said. “I’ve heard
them too often. This is something else.”

“See!” Patsy danced again. “I told you. It’s a
Gremlin! A bad, bad Gremlin.” Then, “Oh!” She
covered her eyes. “I don’t want to see him. He may
come real close.”

“We’ll put the spotlight on him,” said Grandfather,
taking up a portable spotlight and adjusting
a switch.

“He’s coming right this way,” said Betty. “He
should pass over us.”

“I’ll be ready with the light,” said Grandfather.
“You tell me when.”

In the dim light Patsy’s face was a strange study,
alternating curiosity and fear. Curiosity at last won
the day. When at last the searchlight cut across the
sky, she was watching, big-eyed and eager.

For ten seconds the light played across an empty
sky and then:

“It is a Gremlin!” Patsy cried. “A big, black
Gremlin!”

“No!” said Betty. “I’m sorry. It’s a black pigeon.
I didn’t know you kept pigeons.”

“We don’t,” said Grandfather. “What’s more, he
doesn’t belong on this island. He’s going straight
on. Turn the horn about, Patsy—”

Patsy obeyed and once again Betty heard that
steady flap flap of wings.

When the horn had been properly adjusted, she
listened until the sound of the pigeon’s flight faded
into nothing.

For a moment Grandfather Norton studied the
pointing horn, then he said:

“That’s a homing carrier pigeon. The rookery
he is seeking is somewhere near Granite Head. You
may have made a very important discovery.”

“I—I don’t understand,” said Betty.

“That pigeon never came all this way from shore
by himself. That’s not the way of pigeons.”

“Then you think he came from a boat?” Betty
was beginning to understand.

“Yes, or from an airplane.”

“Or a sub.” Patsy put in.

“Any of these or even an airplane carrier. Which
means,” Grandfather went on, “that somewhere on
the mainland we have a nest of spies.”

“Spies-spies! Oh, yes, spies,” Betty murmured.
She was thinking of her talks with Norma about
many strange doings. There might be something to
it after all, she concluded.

“They’re up to something,” said Grandfather.
“Sending messages back and forth like that. Perhaps
it’s something really big. Just now they’re just feeling
us out, trying to see how well prepared we are.”

“They got a sample the other night,” said Betty.

“A very fine sample,” the aged inventor agreed.
“A very fine sample, indeed. What I fear most is
that they may make this island a stepping stone.”

“We have some soldiers now,” Betty suggested.

“Yes, a few men. We’ll have more men later.”

CHAPTER XXIII
 
ROSA FLIES THE SEAGULL

The next day, on the mainland, Norma visited a
place of many wonders, perfected some plans, was
treated to a great surprise and made an interesting
discovery, all in one afternoon.

Norma and Rosa retired as soon as their late night
vigil was ended. By mid-afternoon they were up and
ready for a prowl.

They struck off on foot over the road leading to
the fort on the ridge that overlooked their village,
Harbor Bells, and the Sea Tower.

They had gone but a little way when Tom McCarthy
overtook them in a jeep. “Hop in,” he invited
after stopping his car. “I’ll give you a lift.
Where you bound for?”

“Nowhere in particular,” was Norma’s reply as
they all crowded into the front seat. “We’re out for
fresh air.”

“I’m going up to the fort,” Tom said. “There’s
going to be a little target practice by the big guns. I
want to see how good they are.”

“Think we’ll need their help some of these days?”
Norma asked half jokingly.

“Well, now, you never can tell.” Tom did not
laugh. “There seems to be a difference of opinion.
Some think America may be invaded, at least by the
air.”

“And others think it won’t,” said Norma.

“That’s right,” Tom agreed. “Me? I’m keeping
my fingers crossed.”

“Oh, Tom!” Rosa broke in. “Take us to the fort.
I’d just love to see it.”

“You’re on your way right now,” Tom assured
her. “At least you’ll see the target practice at a distance.
And that’s really something! But the fort,
that’s different. Too many secrets in there. It takes
a terrific pull to get in.”

“I’ll bet it’s a spooky place!” Rosa exclaimed.

“Oh, absolutely,” was the quick reply. “Built
right out of solid rock. It would take some bomb to
smash into it.”

A half hour later they found themselves standing
on a sloping hillside, gazing out to sea. And at Norma’s
side was a handsome young Artillery Major.
For the first time in her life, Norma found herself
wishing she had remained behind at Fort Des
Moines for officer’s training. An officer may not
date a private in the WACs, no matter how bright
and attractive she may be.

For all that even a major can show just any attractive
young lady who happens to visit his camp
the proper degree of interest and respect due her.
And Major Fairchild was not one to neglect this
duty.

He explained that the large square far out on the
water was not a sail but a target, that it was being
towed on a long cable by a small motorboat some
distance from it.

He also assured her that those huge guns poking
their black barrels from the hillside would soon
speak and that, when they did speak, she would do
well to plug up her ears.

Some ten minutes later he said, “Now the target
is in position.”

“Such a long way off,” Norma murmured.

“It’s as far as Black Knob Island,” Rosa exclaimed.

“Just about the same,” Tom McCarthy agreed.

“We can blow the top off Black Knob any time
we care to,” said Major Fairchild.

“Please don’t try it,” Norma begged, half laughing.
“I’ve got a good pal over there, a very good-looking
WAC.”

“Are all WACs good-looking?” the Major
teased.

“My pal, Betty, is,” was the prompt reply. “That’s
not all, her folks are rich. Her father owns a war
plant. They have a Florida estate, a yacht, and all
that!”

“And she’s a WAC!” The Major whistled.

Even a Major Can Show Interest in an Attractive Lady

“Why not?” Norma’s voice rose. “It’s our war.
We’re all in it. One woman gave up a $20,000 a year
job to join the WACs. We have several girls who
won the Croix de Guerre driving ambulances before
France fell. Yes, and some of the girls joined us
because their young husbands died at Pearl Harbor,
or North Africa. Don’t you think that’s really
wonderful?”

“I salute the WACs.” Major Fairchild saluted
the girl and she returned it in proper form. And
he was not joking either. She could read that in his
eyes.

And then Tom McCarthy said, “Get ready.
There’s the signal. They are about to fire.”

“Here.” The Major pressed balls of cotton into
Norma’s hand. “Put these in your ears. Then take
these—” He held out a pair of powerful field glasses.
“Watch the target. See if they miss. Your eyes are as
good as mine.”

The terrific flash and the roar of the big gun, together,
made the rocks shudder! Norma felt her
knees tremble but she held her glasses on the target
and was rewarded by a black spot that appeared almost
as if by magic on the white square.

“Good! Almost perfect!” she exclaimed. “A little
to the right, that’s all!”

“And how far from the surface of the sea?” the
Major asked.

“Almost on the sea,” was the quick response.

“This is important,” said the young Major.

“It meant that this shot would have destroyed a
submarine if it had been in the place of the target,”
Norma suggested.

“Good girl! Go to the head of the class,” he exclaimed.

“Give the credit to my father,” she replied modestly.
“He was a major in the last war. He knows a
great deal and since I was his only son, he taught me
about them.”

“Oh! Then we belong to the same tribe,” exclaimed
the Major. “My father was an officer, too.
Very often officers are born and not made. You too
will be an officer in time.”

“When I’m made an officer,” she said with a
proud smile, “I’ll bring my bars to you and you
shall pin them on my shoulders.”

“That,” he said, “will be a privilege and an
honor.”

“They invited me to stay in Des Moines and train
in the officer’s school,” she stated in a matter-of-fact
tone.

“And why not?” he asked.

“I wanted some actual service first.”

“Well, you’re getting it.” He smiled. “And unless
I read the signs wrong, you are going to get your
experience in overdoses from now on.”

“Oh! Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of it. There are things I can’t tell you.
Keep your eyes and ears wide open and don’t miss
any bets. You’ll get your bars sooner than you think.

“And now,” he handed her the glasses again,
“plug up your ears. Here they go.”

This time she took things more calmly. But the
hit was hard to spot.

“Right at the water’s edge,” she exclaimed at last.

“Getting better. That’s real sub shooting.”

“But if the sub comes in the night?” she suggested.

“Then you’ll have to get out there in a plane and
spot the sub for us with a spotlight.”

“That,” said Tom, with a good-natured grin, “is
my job.”

“And I’ll fly the plane for you,” Rosa volunteered.

“You fly my plane?” Tom gave vent to a roaring
laugh.

Rosa’s face crimsoned. For a time she did not
speak. Then in a slow, even tone, she said: “Try
me!”

“All right, I will.” This time Tom did not laugh.

“All right, Rosa,” Tom said, when their jeep
drew up to the fisherman’s dock, off which the Seagull
lay at anchor, “the plane is yours, if you can fly
her.”

“You don’t mean that!” Norma said in a low
tone, as Tom bent over to untie his skiff.

“Sure I do!” he replied promptly. “Give everyone
a chance to show what he can do, that’s my motto.
Climb in. The back seat is wide enough for you
and me. We’ll have Rosa for our sky pilot.”

Norma hung back. “Come on,” he urged. “I’ll
guarantee that no harm will come of it.”

Ten minutes later Norma found herself beside
Tom in the rear seat. Lines had been cast off and
Rosa was warming up the motor. Norma, uneasy,
heaved a sigh of relief when she noticed that Tom
too could work the controls from where he sat.

As they taxied out from behind the dock, Norma
noted that the water was a bit rough but she
clenched her hands and said never a word.

The motor began to roar in earnest. Behind them
raced the white foam. The plane appeared to skip
from wave to wave. Then Tom said:

“Up!”

And up they rose.

Climbing steadily, they rose a thousand feet, two,
three, four, five, six thousand. There above the
bumpy clouds the plane leveled off and they headed
straight for Black Knob.

Tom looked first at Rosa, then at Norma. Then
he grinned as he formed the words with his lips,
“Great stuff!”

Before they knew it they were over Black Knob
and soaring down for a landing.

Near the tiny dock and harbor the water was
calm. With real skill Rosa taxied the ship right to
the dock where they were greeted with joyous
shouts by Betty, Millie, Mary, Grandfather, Patsy,
and all the rest.

“Norma,” Betty exclaimed when the two were
alone, “Rosa wasn’t really flying the plane, was
she?”

“She certainly was!” Norma’s tone was impressive.
“She took off, climbed high, spiraled down,
and all the rest!”

“Then that explains—”

“What?” Norma asked.

“Oh! A lot of things.”

Norma’s mind was too busy to carry this thought
through for, as they wandered over the island, she
felt like a general looking over a battlefield where
the enemy might attack on the morrow. She noted
low spots among the rocks where men might land
from a plane or a rubber boat, tried to find the
marks of high tide and studied with great care the
narrow beach beside the harbor.

Why was she doing all this? Perhaps she could
not have told herself. She just did, that was all.

After a delicious lunch served at the small hotel
that had been made a barracks, they prepared for
the return trip.

Again Rosa took the controls and once more she
made a perfect take-off.

It was growing dusk now and, as they circled
above the island, Norma turned on the spotlight
allowing it to play upon the dark clusters of pines,
the gray rocks and the cottage roofs. She was astonished
to see how clearly everything stood out.

“An enemy plane could bomb it to bits,” she said.

“Sure, but why?” Tom asked.

“It’s an outpost and so dangerous to approaching
enemy ships or planes.”

“You mean it could be,” Tom corrected. “Just
now the few who are here could perhaps protect the
island itself. That’s about all. But, I say!” he exclaimed.
“You’re really good with that light!”

“Oh! Sure!” she laughed. “Rosa and I, we’re a
great team!”

Oddly enough, at that moment she had the feeling
of one who acts a part in a drama, a part she is
sure to act again. It was strange.

“Rosa,” Norma said when at last they were back
at Indian Point, headed for Harbor Bells and a good
dinner, “I never dreamed you could fly a plane.”

“Fly a plane,” Rosa threw back her plump
shoulders and laughed. “My father is a flier; he is
also a guide. In summer he takes hunting and fishing
parties deep into the wilds of Canada. Ah! That
is the life, to come dropping from the skies like a
wild duck and to light on a perfect spot of blue
water where almost no one has ever been.

“And,” she paused to look into her companion’s
eyes, “will you believe me? I have done that, too,
since I was seventeen years old. Fly!” she exclaimed.
“I know you thought I was crazy in Des Moines.
And, yes, I was crazy. Crazy to feel the stick in my
hands, to hear the motor and feel a plane move.

“Yes, I was crazy. But those boys who made fun
of me, those young fliers—I could have flown circles
around every one of them. But you, you were very
kind to get me out of it so very well. I have you to
thank for that. And we’ll fly again some time maybe,
huh? What do you think?”

“Rosa,” said Norma, “you are a dear. And if we
do fly again, I shall not be afraid.”

After dinner Norma made a call. In her own village
she had discovered a bearded veteran of the
photographic world, who still did a little work in
his own home. He was a picturesque character who,
only two years before, had moved from Portland to
Indian Harbor.

To this man she had entrusted the pictures she
had taken of the poor fisherman’s wife.

“How did they come out?” she asked as she entered
his small, crowded room.

“Excellently, my dear.”

He held up some fairly large prints he had made.

“Oh! You’ve done them so well!” she exclaimed.
“Won’t she be pleased!”

“She will,” he agreed. “I have a son who works
on a Portland paper. With your consent I should
like to send him some prints of these studies. They
should show up well in the roto.”

“So little Norma makes the roto,” she laughed.
“That would be something. Wouldn’t Carl Langer
open his eyes!”

“What’s that pig got to do with it?” the old man
demanded.

“He refused to take her picture. Said he couldn’t
waste his time.”

“My dear,” said the old man, “time spent in
bringing happiness to those who have very little of
this world’s goods is never wasted.”

“That’s right,” Norma agreed, “but have you
seen Carl Langer’s estate? It is truly beautiful.”

“Yes, I have seen it. It is attractive. However,
Carl Langer did nothing to it. He only bought it.”

“Bought it? He told me he inherited it from his
father who lived in Portland.”

“Neither Carl Langer nor his father lived in Portland.
I was there for fifty years. I know. He purchased
his estate from the heirs of old Judge Clark.
Where he got the money I don’t know. But I could
make a good guess.”

“Ah!” Norma thought as she walked slowly back
to Harbor Bells. “So someone else is suspicious! I
wonder why Carl Langer lied to me about his estate.”

She found herself hoping that Lieutenant Warren
would go with her to visit that estate and to look
at the picture, the masterpiece, very soon. Yet she
found herself dreading it and shuddering a little.

CHAPTER XXIV
 
THE DECOY BEACON

Once again the following night the trio, Norma,
Rosa, and Marie, were on duty in the upper room
of the Sea Tower, Rosa at the switchboard, Norma
before her charts, and Marie at attention for any
emergency.

For more than an hour, save for the clock on the
wall that ticked loudly, there was silence in the
room.

Then came a buzz at the switchboard.

“That’s Beth calling from the Granite Head
spotter tower.” Norma knew the number. “What
does she want?”

“She’s relaying a report from Betty at Black
Knob,” Rosa explained. “They have discovered a
light against the sky well out to sea.”

“Tell her to ask Betty if it’s an airplane light,”
Norma suggested.

Rosa relayed the message. For a time after that
there was silence, and then came a second buzz.
Rosa pressed the headphone to her ear and listened
intently.

“She says that Betty does not think it is a plane
light. It does not move across the sky and doesn’t
grow brighter as it would if it was coming in. It
just sort of sways.”

“Light on the mast of some ship,” Norma suggested.

“Beth says she suggested that,” Rosa explained.
“Betty told her it seemed too high.”

“Oh! Sublime sweet evening star,” Norma sang
softly. “How I wonder what you are.”

Then came a third buzz. “She says Bess has heard
a large plane, a long way off the shore, heading
south.”

“Might be an enemy bomber,” Norma said, and
sat straight up.

Marie got the men below on the phone.

Before they could report, the WAC watcher on
the water tower roof popped her head through a
hole to report the same plane.

Ten seconds later Beth relayed one more message
for Black Knob. They, too, had heard the powerful
motors of a large plane. It was some distance north
of the mysterious light and apparently flying straight
toward it. Here surely was a mix-up.

Then the report from the men below came up.
No large plane was due anywhere in this region except
some new transport planes being flown overland.

“But what would one of these planes be doing
fifteen miles out to sea?” was the question that came
from the puzzled representatives of the Army.

In the meantime, out on the Black Knob spotter
tower, Betty and Grandfather Norton were wracking
their brains for answers to all these problems.

“That big plane certainly is going straight for
that strange light,” Betty insisted.

“There’s no denying that,” Grandfather Norton
agreed, moving his listening horn first this way,
then that, to get its exact location.

It was strange, standing there, watching that light
and at the same time hearing but not seeing the big
plane.

Just then someone stepped out on the platform.
It was Lena. Having a day off, she had, strangely
enough, chosen to spend it on the island. A fisherman
would take her ashore next morning.

“Lena!” Betty exclaimed. “I thought you were
fast asleep!”

“I was.” Lena shuddered from the chill of the
night. “But something woke me up—so I came out
here.”

“It doesn’t take much to waken you,” said Betty.
“The motor of a distant plane.”

“What’s up? Why are you so excited?” Lena
studied their faces.

“See that light over there against the sky?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“What is it?”

“Why that—” Lena broke off suddenly. She
seemed greatly disturbed. “I—hear a plane!” she exclaimed
suddenly.

“Yes, we’ve been hearing it for some time,” said
Grandfather Norton.

“What’s it doing out there?” Lena asked. There
was a strange quality in her voice. “As if she herself
knew the answer,” Betty told herself.

“Well,” Grandfather Norton spoke slowly, “if I
wasn’t dead sure that there was nothing but water
out there, miles and miles of water, I should say
that the light was a beacon to a landing field and
that the plane was heading toward it for a landing.”

“Oh! But that’s impossible!” Betty exclaimed.

“Certainly it is,” Norton agreed.

Like a caged animal Lena began pacing the narrow
platform. Once Betty thought she heard her
murmur tensely, “It’s terrible. Just terrible.”

What was terrible and how did this big girl know
it was terrible?

In the meantime the big plane was coming closer,
ever closer to the swaying light. Those on shore,
Beth, Bess, Norma, Rosa, and the rest, could hear
the plane but could find no answer to the question,
“Why is it there?”

Lena continued to pace the platform. Watching
her, Betty realized that within the big girl’s mind
a terrific battle was raging. “What battle?” she asked
herself. “And why?”

For a time she found no answer. Then suddenly
the answer came. Or was it the answer?

“See here!” Lena exclaimed, suddenly gripping
Betty’s arm until it hurt. “I can’t stand it! That
plane is going to come down, close to that light.
It will crash. The pilot will be drowned and—and
all on the plane—unless—”

“Unless what?” Betty’s throat was dry.

“Unless we go to the rescue!” Lena pulled at her
arm. “There’s not a moment to lose.”

“But we have no plane.” Betty stared first at
Lena, then at Norton. It was a tense moment of indecision.

“There’s a motorboat, a pretty fast one. I can run
it, you know that!” Lena’s voice was tense with emotion.

“Yes, I know. Norma told me how you saved
them.”

“Then come on. Come on, now! We—” Lena’s
voice broke; she did not finish.

Betty looked at Grandfather. He did not speak,
merely nodded his head.

“All—” Betty gulped, “all right, I’ll go!”

Instantly the two girls were down from the tower
and racing like mad for the dock.

Once at the dock Lena unscrewed the gas tank
cap, flashed a light down into the tank, then, after a
few twists at the cap said, with astonishing calmness:

“Get in. We are off.”

“There’s Not a Moment to Lose!” Lena Exclaimed

Strange questions and wild emotion came and
went over Betty’s active mind as they headed
straight for that light and at full speed.

“Has this girl lost her mind?” she asked herself.
“Or does she know some terrible secret? Will the
plane really come down?” For the moment she
found no answer. But the answer must come soon.
Even as she thought this Lena exclaimed:

“There! What did I tell you? The plane is beginning
to circle. It will come down. It is flying high,
but it will come down.”

This Betty knew was true. The sounds that came
from the plane told the whole story.

As she watched, frightened, yet fascinated, she
tried to measure the time it would take for the plane
to come down. Now it must, she thought, be a
quarter of the way down, now a half, and now
three-quarters of the way. Her heart skipped a beat.
What plane was this? Would it really crash? Was it
friend or foe? Should she hope for a crash or an upward
swing just in time? Her brain was in a whirl.

“The light has vanished!” Lena exclaimed suddenly.

It was true. The light had blinked out.

Still the plane came down, rapidly. There seemed
no stopping it now. After breathing a prayer,
Betty began to count. One, two, three, four—she had
reached twelve when there came the sound of a
muffled crash.

“Now, if only we can save them,” she thought
with a tightening of her throat. And yet, after all,
who were they?

While Lena kept the boat at its utmost speed,
Betty stood in the prow and strained her eyes for
some sign of the wreck.

At last her vigil was rewarded.

“There’s a tiny light. But perhaps that’s the one
that disappeared.”

“It is not that one!” Lena headed straight for it.

The light grew brighter. A dark bulk loomed
ahead. Betty heard a voice calling. A woman’s voice.
That, she thought, was strange.

They came closer. “Are you hurt?” she called.

“No, we’re not hurt,” a woman’s voice answered.

“But please hurry,” came in a different voice.
“The plane may sink.”

“We’ve been hurrying, quite a while,” Betty
called.

“How did you know we’d crash?” came back.

“I didn’t. We—we just came,” said Betty.

“That light was a decoy,” came from the plane.

“You thought there was a field here?” Betty suggested.

“We were off our course and our gas was low,”
one voice explained. “We came down to see.”

“And I took the plane too far,” the other explained.

“Well, now you’re safe enough,” Betty said a
minute later as Lena eased the boat in close to the
plane’s wing where the two women sat. At the same
time she threw her light upon them. They were, she
discovered, surprisingly young and, beyond a
shadow of doubt, Americans. At that moment
words from a very old book came to her. ‘An enemy
hath done this.’

“But what about our plane?” one of the girls on
the plane asked. “We are of the Ferry Command.
It’s worth a lot of money.”

“And it’s hardly damaged at all,” said the other.

“It’s equipped with sort of water-wings that can
be filled with gas in just no time,” said the first one.

“Why don’t you fill them?” Betty asked. “We’ll
stand by.”

“We will!” They both sprang up. “We’ll be
right back. Right back.”

A moment later there came a hissing sound and
the plane began to lift slowly.

“The water is smooth. I’m sure we can save the
plane,” said Lena.

“Listen!” Betty said. “There’s a boat coming.”

Before the two girls returned, their arms loaded
with personal belongings, two fishing boats pulled
alongside. One was quite long, the other small.

“What happened?” Joe Tratt asked.

“They crashed,” Betty explained. No mention of
the decoy light. That would come later.

“We’re going to try towing it in,” said Lena.

“I’ll help you,” said Joe. “My boat draws a lot
of water. Bill can take you all in. His boat is small.”

So it was agreed. Betty and the two strange girls
piled into Bill’s boat. Betty called, “So long and
good luck!” Then they were away.

“Lena is the strangest girl I ever knew,” Betty
told herself as she settled in her place. She wanted
terribly to talk, but if she did, she might say the
wrong thing. So she said never a word—not, at least,
until she sat across a table from Grandfather Norton
in his secret den. Then she really opened up.

They talked for an hour. The old man’s voice
was mellow. His words came slowly, thoughtfully,
from a well-stored mind. Betty was not a child and
still at times she sprang to her feet to exclaim,
“Lena knew it was going to happen. She really
knew!”

“Perhaps,” was the slow reply. “Then again, perhaps
not. Some people are gifted with intuition, particularly
women.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Even I suggested first that the plane might try
to make a landing,” he added. “There was the whole
set-up, night, a plane seeking a landing place, and a
light that seemed a beacon.

“And at the most, we must admit,” he added
thoughtfully, “that this big friend of yours, Lena,
might well have been the means of saving lives. It
was a mere chance that saved the plane.”

For a time after that there was silence. Then he
spoke again.

“It would seem that, after all, we are discussing a
minor problem. The real problem is, who put out
that decoy light, if it was a decoy, and how did they
take it down?”

“Decoy?” Betty exploded. “Of course it was a decoy
to lure our airplanes into the sea.”

“Perhaps. Let’s pass that up for the moment and
ask ourselves how the light got there. Did you see
or hear any surface craft leave the spot?”

Betty shook her head. “Not a sign, nor an airplane
either.”

“Then, only a sub could have put up that light.
With a long telescoped steel pole, like a giant fishing
rod, guyed by wires, they could hang out a very
high light.”

“It might have been an electric light on a wire,”
Betty suggested. “Then they could have blinked it
out on the instant.”

“Certainly. And when the plane came close, that’s
what they did. Has it not occurred to you that they
might have been afraid of the plane?”

“I think they were afraid of us.”

“With the plane thundering overhead, they could
not have heard your motor. I fancy they thought the
plane was out to bomb them. More than likely they
crash-dived.”

“Then why the light?” Betty was more puzzled
than ever.

“That is a big sub. These large subs carry small
seaplanes that can be catapulted from their deck.
If their plane was out landing spies on our shores
or spying out the land itself, they may have had a
beacon out to guide it back.”

“That,” Betty laughed, “is good enough for a
night cap. I’m going to retire. Goodnight!” She was
gone.

When, at dawn, Lena and Joe Tratt arrived at the
harbor the big girl appeared ready to drop. And
yet, as soon as the plane was safely grounded on the
sandy beach, she hired a fisherman to take her
ashore.

Once there, she drank three cups of black coffee
and then, still teetering on her toes, she climbed the
stairs, entered her room, threw off her coat and
shoes, and crept under the blankets to fall fast
asleep.

CHAPTER XXV
 
THE MASTERPIECE

Early that afternoon, Norma, who had cut her
sleeping hours short, joined Lieutenant Warren in
one of those toy-like cars, known as peeps, and went
spinning down the shore road.

Their first stop was the cottage occupied by Bess
and Beth. School, Norma had learned, was out because
of a teacher’s convention so the twins were
free to go with them to the spotter shed.

There they were able, with Beth’s help, to hold
a long, hand-to-hand conversation with Betty.

It was evident at once from the nervous movements
of Betty’s hands before the television camera
that the affair of the night before had left her greatly
excited.

They discussed the situation very thoroughly.

As they left the spotter shed Lieutenant Warren
said, “It looks very much as if we were heading
straight into a crisis of one sort or another. Such
things as these can’t go on. Big planes don’t always
crash-land safely in the sea.”

“They seldom do,” Norma added.

“That black pigeon of Betty’s was taken from the
shore by some traitor to our cause, and put aboard
some craft.”

“Probably the sub,” Norma suggested.

“Yes, and in this way every secret of our defense
will in time leak out.”

“And any number of spies may land on our
shores. Which leads us—

“To Carl Langer, his black pigeons, his rich estate,
his masterpiece, and, just perhaps, to the Spanish
hairdresser.” Norma found herself rather breathless
at the end of this speech.

“You hope for too much,” was the Lieutenant’s
quiet comment. “However, we will present Carl
Langer with our calling card.”

The photographer was not at his studio but the
girl who kept the shop in his absence offered to call
him at the big house.

“Tell him that Norma Kent and Lieutenant Warren
would like to see his masterpiece,” said Norma.

Word came over the wire at once that the great,
little man would be delighted to see them.

“Now,” said Norma, as they drove through the
gate, “if his three huge dogs don’t eat us up, peep
and all, we’ll get on fine.”

Black pigeons, looking like dwarfed nuns, sat in
rows on the barn roof, but no dogs appeared to announce
their coming.

For all the world as if he had been watching at
the keyhole, the photographer, whose hair seemed
whiter and more bristling than ever, threw open the
door the instant they rang the bell.

“Come in! Come in!” he welcomed.

“Mr. Langer, this is Lieutenant Warren,” said
Norma.

For a brief space of time he studied the newcomer’s
face intently. But Rita Warren was older than
when she was in India. Then, too, she had made
her face up rather well for the occasion and was
wearing tinted glasses. Add to this fact that a
woman’s olive-drab uniform is in itself something of
a disguise, and it may not seem strange that at first,
at least, he did not recognize her.

“But then,” Norma chided herself, “more than
likely he is not the man at all. Spies who are shot
seldom show up somewhere else!”

If Lieutenant Warren recognized the man, neither
Norma nor Carl Langer could have detected it
from her action. She thanked him for his interest
and repeated her desire to see his masterpiece.

“You shall see it at once,” he assured them.
“After that we will have some tea—tea brought
straight from India. You don’t often get that. But
first—”

He stepped to a table to press a hidden buzzer
that sounded in a distant room.

“Is that for a servant or a couple of murderers?”
Norma asked herself with a shudder. To Lieutenant
Warren she whispered, “India!”

Lieutenant Warren lifted her eyebrows—that was
all.

“Now if you will come this way,” said their
strange host, leading the way.

As they passed down a long corridor, Norma stole
a glance or two into other rooms. In one, whose
door stood ajar, she saw an open traveling bag, half
packed.

“What is that for?” she asked herself.

At the far end of the hall they entered a room
where but one light shone. This came from a long
slender tube close to the ceiling. This light fell upon
a large canvas.

Striking a pose, Carl Langer said, “Well, what do
you think?”

For a full sixty seconds he received no answer.
They all stood there looking at the picture. One of
those simple things that can, if well done, be magnificent,
it showed a peasant youth and a maid in
her middle teens seated among the stubble of a
partly mown field. Beside them were their scythes
and rake and a rustic lunch basket. Back of them
was a shock of wheat and behind that the waving
grain. On their faces were smiles and over their
faces played the sunlight.

“It’s lovely,” was Norma’s comment.

“It may be a Millet,” Lieutenant Warren said
slowly. “Surely it is like his work, but some of the
colors are a little strange. There are overtones—”

“To be sure,” Carl Langer laughed hoarsely.
“The picture has been neglected. I found it in an
old church in a French-Canadian village. I am restoring
it.”

Norma saw Lieutenant Warren start and stare.
But she said never a word as they left the room.

As they prepared to take tea in the sunny living-room,
a small brown man entered with a tray.

“You need not be afraid of Hanada,” said Langer
with a forced laugh. “It is true that he is of Japanese
blood, but his home is in India. He has never
seen Japan.”

At that the little brown man showed all his teeth
in a grin.

“I brought him with me from India,” was the
hasty reply.

“So you have lived in India? How grand!” Norma
exclaimed.

“Yes, I practiced my art there for several years.
Only four years ago, I sold out and came to America.”

“Ah-ha,” Norma breathed.

“Has your successor been successful?” Lieutenant
Warren asked in an even tone.

“Oh, yes, indeed. In fact, he has become a permanent
resident,” was the odd reply.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Lieutenant Warren.

Norma barely suppressed a laugh. So it was the
man who followed Carl Langer in India who had
been shot as a spy!

All during the tea Carl Langer seemed ill at ease.
His eyes often sought the room in which an open
traveling bag awaited his return.

“Wonder if he is going on a journey?” Norma
thought. The answer was—yes, a long, long journey.

“We’ll have to be going back,” Lieutenant Warren
said at last. “Our watch changes very soon, and
I must be there.”

Their host expressed polite, but uneasy regrets.
They bade him a polite farewell and were away.

As their car started they were greeted by a loud
roar as three huge dogs came leaping at their peep.
They were, however, quite safe in the car; so, avoiding
running over one of the beasts, they glided out
of the gate and were away.

“Well?” Norma breathed deeply.

“Believe it or not,” said Lieutenant Warren, “he
is my spy of India. I shall get Mr. Sperry on his trail
first thing in the morning.”

CHAPTER XXVI
 
A SUB—ON THE SPOT

Shortly after noon of that same day rain squalls
came sweeping in upon Black Knob. It whipped the
waters into foam and hid the island from all the
world.

Riding the crest of this storm, three small craft
approached the island from the east. One, boasting
a small and ragged sail, towed a second. The third
was being rowed by six rugged seamen who swung
their long oars as men sometimes seem to do in their
sleep.

It was Betty who first discovered them. She had
wandered down to the dock when she saw them
looming out of the fog.

At first she was frightened, but a second look told
her that no invading force would be so poorly
equipped so she raced away to the fishing village to
tell the news.

At once two fishing boats took off. In due time
they came in, with the boats in tow.

By that time everyone on the island was down by
the dock.

There were men, women, and children in that
boat, seventy-six of them in all, and they were a sorry
sight.

“Ours was the Mary Sachs,” one seaman explained.
“She were a coastwise steamer bound for
Baltimore. We had these ladies an’ children with us
as passengers.”

“It were a sub to be sure,” another took up the
story. “They torpedoed us without warning.”

“Yes,” a woman broke in shrilly, “and they had
an airplane with them. The plane swooped down
and machine-gunned our lifeboats. Look at Sally
here.” She held up a child whose face was white
as a sheet. “Both her legs are broken.”

“We had a doctor with us. Thank God for that,”
said another woman. “He fixed her up good as he
could.”

Betty swallowed hard as she put out her hands for
the child. Then, with sturdy tread she led the battered
and half frozen band to the hotel where a
great fire of driftwood roared up the chimney.

All that afternoon the WACs and, in truth,
every other person on the island, worked with the
ship’s doctor making their new-found friends comfortable.

Cots and beds were improvised. Every available
blanket or quilt was pressed into service. Great kettles
of beef, beans, and soup boiled constantly on the
hotel’s range. It was only toward night that Betty
felt free to creep away to the log cabin for an hour
of rest.

Little Patsy went with her, but did not remain
long. Soon she was out wandering among the rocks,
keeping an eye out for bad Gremlins.

Just before dark Mr. Sperry, the FBI agent, made
a surprise visit to the cabin. Grandfather Norton
was there. Betty was wakened by Sperry’s knock on
the door, so these three shut themselves in the Norton
den.

“I came over here looking for a spy,” Sperry announced.

“A spy!” Grandfather Norton exclaimed. “We
are all loyal people out here.”

“You don’t understand,” said Sperry. “He was
last seen heading this way in a small motorboat.

“It’s that photographer over at Granite Head,”
he explained to Betty. “You may know him.”

“Oh—oh, yes!” Betty was startled. “He did all
our work. I never dreamed—well, yes, there were
some queer things about him.”

“Queer!” the secret agent exploded. “I’d say so.
He’s one of the most dangerous men on foot. We’ve
been looking for him. He was a spy in India. Got
out just in time to save his neck. He’ll do the same
thing here if he can. You haven’t seen a small motorboat?”

“No motorboat,” was Mr. Norton’s reply. “Three
lifeboats came ashore shortly after noon. They were
in a sorry plight. Their ship had been torpedoed by
a sub.”

“Ah! Those subs,” Sperry clenched his fists.
“There are rumors of a sub being seen off shore
here this very afternoon. Fisherman coming in from
the Banks claims he saw it. All our small boats are
out scouting for it. But me, I’m after just one man;
and his name’s Carl Langer!”

“Well, we haven’t got him,” said the gray-haired
inventor. “But if we see him, we’ll hold him for you.
Never doubt that.”

“I’ll have a look about the island.” Sperry was up
and away.

A half hour later, just as Betty was thinking, “I
should be out on the spotter platform right now,”
Patsy came crashing through the door. Her face was
white, her eyes bulging.

“The sub!” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s so close!
I saw it! And there was a small boat, yes, and an
airplane. There were men, many big men. I think
they have come to carry us away.”

“This,” Betty thought, as she stood up, with shaking
knees, “this is not one of Patsy’s dreams about
Gremlins. It’s the real thing.”

Thirty seconds later she was racing with Norton
and Patsy for the hotel.

“They’re invading the island,” Betty exclaimed
as they burst into the lounge room of the hotel.
“There’s a sub, a boat, an airplane, and many men.”

“Where? Where? Where?” came in a chorus.

“Where?” Betty turned to Patsy.

“By Bald Head,” was the prompt answer.

“The other end of the island,” Grandfather Norton
explained in a steady voice.

Instantly there was a rush for the door. But
Grandfather Norton was there before them.

“Steady, boys,” he held up a hand, “you’re not going
to a picnic. I don’t know why those men are
there, but I do know they are armed. We must organize
our party.”

“That’s right, sir!” an Army sergeant agreed. He
gave an order to his men. They disappeared.

Next instant the door opened, silently, and in
stepped Sperry. His eyes were wide, his tongue fairly
hanging out. “I ran into a hornet’s nest,” he
whispered. “I got away just in time!”

What he had to say left no room for doubt. A
fight was in the making.

When the Army squad returned it was with arms
loaded. There were rifles, tommy-guns, pistols, and
stacks of ammunition.

Then after one weapon had been selected for each
Black Knob man, the sergeant said, “Take your
pick.”

Instantly, from every corner, came the men whose
boat had been struck.

“We’ll kill the rats,” the burly seaman snarled.
His right arm was in a sling, but with his left he
gripped an automatic.

“Somebody find me a cane,” one seaman begged.
His leg was bandaged and splinted. “I’m the best
darn shot in the crew. That’s what I am!” From
somewhere a crutch was produced.

One man half rose from his cot, whirled about,
then fell on the floor. “No! Not you, Tom!” The
doctor’s voice was gentle. “You’re too badly broken
up.”

It was a motley and dangerous crew that at last
marched silently out into the night.

In the meantime things were happening fast at
Harbor Bells.

While preparations were being made for the battle
Patsy had slipped back to the cabin. There she
wakened Millie and Mary, who were to take the
midnight watch. With their help she set up the television
camera and began telling the exciting news
to Beth and Bess.

As fast as the words were told off by Patsy’s talking
hands, Bess phoned them to Norma at the Sea
Tower.

Norma got Tom on the phone.

“Tom! Oh! Tom!” she stammered with excitement.
“The sub is out by Black Knob, and the
plane, too. If you could just go out and spot it, the
big guns would blow the sub from the sea!”

“We’ll go!” said Tom. “You and I!”

“Oh, Tom!”

“You’ll have to go!” Tom’s voice insisted.
“There’s not a man in the harbor who knows the
tricks. They’re all out in boats looking for that sub.”

“All right, Tom. I’ll meet you at the dock.” She
hung up.

“Marie!” she commanded. “You keep the switchboard.
Rosa, get your coat and come with me.”

One minute more and they were joined by Lieutenant
Warren, who somehow had learned the news.
Then all three raced for the dock.

Norma was faster than the others. She arrived in
sight of the dock just in time to see a ghostly figure
emerge from the shadows, leap at Tom, who was
just coming to the dock, and deal a heavy blow with
some blunt instrument square on his head. Without
a sound, Tom dropped like an empty sack.

Norma had seen that white-robed figure before.
She had battled with it and won. Not the least
afraid, without warning, she landed upon it with a
head-on blow that sent it crashing against a wall.
It crumpled into a white heap and lay there like a
pile of snow.

“Wha—what happened?” Lieutenant Warren
panted, as she came racing up.

In a few, well-chosen words, Norma told her. “It’s
terrible!” she groaned. “Tom is out for keeps. Per-perhaps
he’s dead. We can’t go!”

“We can go!” Rosa insisted stoutly. “I can pilot
the plane as well as Tom could!”

“What do you think?” Norma turned to the Lieutenant.

A Ghostly Figure Leaped at Tom and Dealt a Heavy Blow

“I’ll not command you,” was the slow and steady
answer. “But if you two wish to volunteer for the
task, I shall not stop you.

“I’ll take care of Tom,” she added. “There are
fishermen near who will help me.”

One minute more and the two girls were rowing
rapidly toward the Seagull that was to fly them into
new perils.

On Black Knob the battle lines were forming.
Never had a band of Indians, in the days long since
gone, moved more swiftly or silently than the island’s
defenders. And they were bent on swift
vengeance.

Driven on by an irresistible impulse, Betty followed
the last man, the one with a crutch.

As she glided through the night, one question was
uppermost in her mind. Why were those men with
sub, motorboat, and plane there? The sub had come
from the sea, the plane from the sub, and the motorboat
from the land. One thing was plain. They had
chosen this island as a place of meeting. But why?
And how—how had they dared?

“They haven’t scouted the island recently,” was her
conclusion. “They thought it was occupied only by
old men and women. Well, they’ll soon know better.
Just one more ridge and we are there!” Her
pulse quickened.

Just as they left the grove of pines, the moon
came out. A shadowy figure rose above the crest of
the ridge. There was something vaguely familiar
about that figure. One second it was there, the next
it was gone, for rifles had cracked. The fight was on.
There came shouts from beyond. They raced up the
ridge. Their fire was returned, but feebly. There
was the sound of scrambling feet. A motor roared,
then another.

It was all over in a minute, and over forever for
three huddled figures that would never move again.

“Enemies,” Betty thought. “Perhaps they helped
machine-gun women and children.” Yet, in a way,
she was sorry.

She flashed her light on the nearest figure. Then
she gasped. It was Carl Langer. This time the spy
had really been shot.

When the men reached the shore the moon was
under a cloud again, the sub had vanished, the
motorboat heading out to sea, and the airplane
thundering somewhere in the sky.

Or was it the Seagull they heard out there over
the black waters? One thing was sure—it was there.
At the controls sat Rosa. Norma was casting her
light about in search of the sub.

“We’ll find the sub if we can,” she had phoned
to the major over at the fort. “When I hold the light
on one spot, you’ll know we’ve found it.”

“We’ll be waiting and watching,” had been his
answer. “Ready to blow them into Kingdom
Come!”

And so now they circled slowly back and forth.

Only one question troubled her, and that was, “Is
that enemy plane still in the air?”

“If that plane is armed and they attack us?” she
said to Rosa.

“We will climb too fast for them,” was the calm
reply.

And then Norma’s light fell upon something, a
white spot. Not the sub. She was disappointed. Then
her heart leaped. Off to the right was a long, dark
bulk.

“The sub,” she said aloud. “And that’s the motorboat.
They are coming together.”

With all the skill she possessed she held her wide
spot of light on the sub. Slowly, surely, the sub and
the motorboat moved closer together. Breathlessly
she awaited the roar from the shore.

“The major can’t fail us,” she clenched her teeth.
“He must not!”

They were losing altitude and coming closer to
the sub. Suddenly they were surrounded by balls of
smoke and flame.

“Pom-poms!” she screamed to Rosa. “The sub is
firing at us!”

The plane gave a sudden lift and shuddered.

“We are hit.” But still they glided on.

Then came the distant roar.

“Thank God!” Norma screamed. “Climb, Rosa!
Climb!” But they did not climb. They could not.
The Seagull had been hit.

The first shot from the fort was quickly followed
by another. Both shells burst almost beneath them,
giving them a lift they would not soon forget. The
shells, Norma saw, must have found their mark for,
when she played her light on the water she found
only tiny bits of something. The sub and motorboat
had vanished.

“Quick, Rosa!” she cried. “Head for the shore.”

“We will go to shore,” was the slow reply. “Perhaps
we shall go, but not quick. The Seagull, she is
hit. She may die.”

Norma came to realize this more and more as the
gallant plane sank slowly toward the sea.

They were in close to land when, with a suddenness
that was startling, the seaplane’s motor
stopped and then they plunged into the sea.

Norma hit the water hard. She sank. She rose. She
sank again and then, as she rose, she began to swim.

“I’m not hurt,” she told herself. “The water is
terribly cold, but I can keep up for a time.”

Her time was about up. Her body was numb with
cold, her breath was coming in gasps when she became
conscious of someone near her.

Then a voice said, “Put your hand on my
shoulder. I’ll take you in.”

“Rosa?” she panted. “I can’t do that, you’ll
drown!”

“Not Rosa,” said the voice. “I am Lena. Believe
me, I am fresh and strong. Put your hand on my
shoulder.”

“Lena!” she thought. “Why is she here? She is always
where danger is.”

At that she surrendered herself to the other’s superb
strength.

They had gone so for some time, when a skiff
pulled in close to them. One man held a lantern.
Another put out two hands to pull her in. It was
the major from the fort.

Several hours later she awoke from a long sleep
to find Lieutenant Warren sitting by her side.

“Everything is all right,” the Lieutenant smiled.
“More than all right. You got the sub and the motorboat,
everyone on it. The sub was bringing spies to
America. In their haste they left their traveling
bags on the island. They were packed with American
clothes, faked passports, everything. Then they
had plans, maps, all they needed for destroying factories
and shipyards.

“I think,” she added, “that they meant to take
Carl Langer back with them on the sub.”

“But they didn’t,” Norma whispered.

“Lena has confessed,” Lieutenant Warren added.

“Con-confessed? Lena?” Norma’s heart sank.

“She was part of the spy ring, a very small part,
and against her will. Her uncle drove her to it by
terrible threats. She is a loyal American at heart.
She has turned state’s witness. That will trap the
real culprits and she, I think, will go free.”

“I’m glad,” Norma murmured. “And Rosa?” she
asked after a moment’s reflection.

“Oh! Rosa? She’s a dear. Loyal all the way
through.”

“I know. But she was in the plane with me!”

“Oh—yes, of course! She wasn’t thrown from the
plane.

“We found her paddling about on a rubber raft,
still searching for you.”

“Good old Rosa,” Norma murmured. “So I was
partly right and partly wrong about all this spy
business?”

“Yes. It is often like that.”

“How’s Tom?” Norma sat up suddenly.

“Tom’s all right,” was the reply. “He came round
almost at once. And was he mad when he knew you
were gone!”

“Then he wasn’t really injured?”

“She couldn’t hit him very hard.”

“She?”

“Yes, the Spanish hairdresser. You guessed right
there again. She turned out to be a professional spy,
the lowest creature on earth. Sperry knew her the
moment his eyes fell on her. She’s through spying
for good and all.”

“Someone took my camera twice,” said Norma.
“Perhaps she did that.”

“No. I’m sorry to tell you, but that was Lena. The
pictures she took, however, were of no consequence.”

“And the enemy plane from the sub?” Norma
suggested as she settled back on her pillow.

“It was shot from the air by one of our fighter
planes.”

“Looks as if we have been in on something really
big and carried it off,” Norma murmured sleepily.

“There will be promotions all round,” was the
happy reply. “Very soon you will be wearing bars
on your shoulders.”

“Oh! And Major Fairchild is to pin them on,”
Norma exclaimed. “That will be one big day!”

“They’re sending WACs to Africa now,” Rita
Warren said after a time.

“Shall we be sent there?”

“I don’t know. Would you like to go?”

“I’m too tired to think about it.” At that Norma
turned over and was soon fast asleep.

Punctuation has been normalized. Variations
in hyphenation have been retained as they were in the
original publication. The following changes have been made:

Her {principle –> principal} task is keeping the bad Gremlins away. {p. 144}

POLLY {AT –> OF} PEBBLY PIT {dust jacket advertisement}

The following discrepancy exists in the original:

The index lists the title for Chapter I as
“Mrs. Hobby’s Horses” while in the text, the title
is “GIRLS IN UNIFORM.”