  Mac found three of his weary comrades waiting patiently for his return to the parking space. Like Mac, they had their billets in the city and hoped for a ride in. They got it, too, for Jimmie volunteered to ride with Gale in her jeep. Since a jeep is one of those vest pocket sized imitations of a real car, whose front seat is comfortably and delightfully crowded by two people, this was no great sacrifice on Jimmie’s part. “Chums for a night,” he murmured as he slipped into his place and the jeep went gliding away. “That’s war for you!” he mused. “You are here today, and away tomorrow, and tomorrow may be your last day on earth.” “So you live that day as if it were your last, with all the excitement and happiness you can pick into it,” was Gale’s comment on war and life. “Happiness, yes. Loads of it!” he agreed. “Excitement? Well, I don’t know. At least, if you still hope to stretch that day into several more—and who doesn’t?—you don’t go out and make a fool of yourself, get drunk, and all that.” “I should hope not!” she exclaimed. “Not if you are a flyer. I’ve heard that high octane gas and alcohol don’t mix.” “You’re darn tootin’, they don’t,” he exclaimed. “I’ve seen it tried, but the fellow who tried it didn’t come back to tell us how it worked. He saw two zeroes and thought they were only one. “But say!” his voice dropped. “I’ve just got one more day in the city,—a day and a night, and then I’m off on a dangerous mission—big four-motored job, loaded to the top with bombs, little gifts for the little brown devils. How about you and me having a night off together?” “This night is spent,” she laughed softly. “But not tomorrow night? How about it?” His tone voiced his eagerness. “That—I think that will be swell, if I can get the night off—and I suppose I can,” she agreed. “Sure you can! What chance is there of locating Jap planes with one secret of radar missing?” “Not a chance. But, O dear! I’ll have to be out there at break of dawn looking for the third secret.” “You needn’t let that bother you. It may be blown to bits.” “Something seems to tell me it’s not. Anyway I must do my best to find it.” “If you do find it you’ll want to celebrate,” he insisted. “And if I don’t find it I’ll need consolation.” “Nice, either way,” he laughed. “So I’ll be around to—” “My club.” “Oh! You live in a club house?” “Wait till you see it!” “I’ll be there at 8 P. X. and we’ll make a night of it. Nothing rough. Just the swellest dinner you ever ate, a little dancing, and confessions. There must always be confessions before a parting that may be forever.” Gale did not know exactly what he meant by “confessions”, but let it go at that. * * * * * * * * She did not find the “third secret of radar” next day, and that in spite of four hours of searching in the hot sun. “It’s not here,” she told herself at last, “But I’m still sure it’s somewhere around here.” That evening Jimmie Nightingale called at the appointed hour. As he stepped into the big, cool lounge of the Club his eyes wandered from corner to corner. He took in all the big easy chairs where girls in slacks, shorts and robes lounged in comfort. He saw the white-clad attendants and the gleaming glasses at the bar, listened to the low murmur of voices and the whir of electric fans, then exclaimed under his breath: “Boy! Oh boy! This is something!” A strange smile played around his lips as she joined him. “And you’d give all this up for a tent on some mountainside by a dusty road,” was his quiet comment. “Or at the edge of a desert? You’d stand in the mud for an hour with a mess kit in your hand waiting for a service of ‘gold fish’—meaning canned salmon—or ‘corned Willie’—which is soldier for corned beef? You’d sleep on a canvas cot, or on the ground, with all sorts of insects crawling round you? You want to really be in the war? Why?” “Just to be a soldier, Jimmie.” Her voice was husky. “To be a real soldier like my Dad. Just to do my part.” “Come on,” her voice rose, “This is our night. There may never be another. Let’s not talk about war. Let’s just have us a time.” It was their night, just that. He took her to a place she had never so much as heard of, a gorgeous place to dine and dance. Behind living palm trees slow fans wafted breezes from the distant sea. From farther back, quite out of sight, a strange Oriental band played bewitching music. Gale could name neither the instruments nor the tunes, but together they invited one to dance. They did dance for a full hour until the aroma of strange, appetizing food drew them to a table. A waiter with gleaming black eyes set their table, then placed the menu before them. Without looking up Jimmie ordered for them both. “It’s no use asking you what you’d like,” he stated without apology. “You won’t know what you’ve eaten when you’ve finished. I know that. I’m that way myself tonight. It’s nice to be sort of delirious, half crazy, once or twice a year. It sort of clears one’s brain.” “That’s right,” she smiled at him in a strange way. “This is our night. There may never be another.” “Something seems to tell me we are to meet again.” He did not smile. “Over ‘Hell’s Half Hour’ perhaps,” she suggested. “Stranger things than that have happened in this crazy war of ours. But if this is our last meeting,” he was serious again, “I’m not afraid. In war, after quite a time, you stop being afraid. To die is not so tough. I died once, as hard as anyone can die.” “How, Jimmie?” she whispered huskily. “A Jap shot my plane from under me. There were four of them. I got three, but the other one got me,” he explained. “I had to bail out. In getting away I hit my head on something and went out like a match. When I came out of it—two hours later—my watch was still running—I was lying on a bed of flowers beside a stream on the only flat, treeless bit of land for miles.” “Flow—flowers for a funeral,” she murmured. “Perhaps,” he agreed, “but not for mine. But I ask you. Didn’t I die? If I’d gotten a little harder crack it would have split my skull and that would have been the end. What’s the difference?” “But if you’d gone into another world?” she spoke. “I don’t know much about that,” he replied soberly. “I hope there’s a future life. Here’s hoping. That’s all I can say.” “Here’s hoping.” She held up two fingers, crossed. “But Jimmie!” she exclaimed, bringing him back to his story. “We left you lying on a bed of flowers with a cracked head.” “Oh, it wasn’t so badly cracked,” he laughed. “I washed off the blood, tied my handkerchief about my bean and stumbled along until a native in a canoe caught up with me. The native liked the looks of my knife, so I traded it with him for a lift back to civilization. And, so, here we are.” “That,” she said, “was a happy ending.” “Jimmie,”—she leaned forward—“You’d be interested in what Dad said to me when I went away.” “I’m sure I would,” Jimmie grinned. “He said, ‘Gale, you’re going to war. You’re not the sort to choose the soft and easy way. Sooner or later you’ll find yourself in a foxhole. They say there’s a lot of religion in foxholes. Maybe so but I never saw much of it in France during the first World War, and I was in lots of foxholes,—Chateau Thierry, Belleau Woods, the Argonne’. “He said that, Jimmie.” Her eyes were shining. “Then he said, ‘I’ve never been so strong for the kind of religion you get in big buildings with steeples and towers. It’s all right, I guess, but for my part I stand alone with God. “‘Yes, I believe in God’. He said that, Jimmie. ‘That’s not all,’ he said, ‘I trust God, just as I have trusted my fellow men. They’ve treated me fairly well. I expect God to be as good to them, or even better. When my work’s done here, if I discover there’s another world after this one, I expect God to give me a square deal and a real interesting job over there, and that’s all I ask.’ “Jimmie,”—there was a glint of tears in her eyes, “Wasn’t that a strange speech for a father to make when his only daughter was going to war?” “Pretty swell, I’d say!” Jimmie brushed his forehead. “Makes me think I’d like to meet him.” “Perhaps you will meet him, Jimmie,” she whispered. “Could be,” he agreed. “You will, Jimmie, if—” “If we both come out of this thing alive. Here’s hoping.” Lifting a glass, he was joined by the girl in a silent toast to the future. And then, there was the waiter with a big tray of food. Jimmie had been mistaken. Gale did know what she was eating, and was delighted. She could not have named one of the dishes, but she did know that this one was a strange new soup with a wild tang to it like the glorious breath of a tropical wilderness; that that one was a rare combination of fruits some of which she had never before tasted, and that this was chicken cooked in a new and delectable manner. “Jimmie!” she exclaimed. “How did you ever discover this place!” “I was taken to it by a very high ranking British officer,” he replied. “Not that his rank mattered. Men are all alike to me. I neither honor nor trust them too much until I know them well.” “But how did it happen that he brought you here?” she asked. “I hate to tell you.” He was plainly embarrassed. “But it seems I shot down quite a lot of Jap Zeroes just at a time when they needed shooting down, so this brass hat who turned out to be quite a fine fellow, got some of his friends together and gave a party in my honor. “I was bored,” he admitted frankly. “All I wanted to do was to go out and shoot down more Zeroes. I wasn’t doing it for glory but for China. I had seen what the Zeroes had done to defenseless little people—men, women and children—in China, and I wanted to pay them back for it.” “And I suppose that’s how you feel right now.” Gale gave him a teasing smile. “A little bored.” Jimmie grinned back at her, then exclaimed—“Not on your life!” Then suddenly Gale forgot all this. “Jimmie!” she exclaimed, nodding toward a table in the corner. “See that woman in purple?” “Yes,” he whispered back. “Rather striking, isn’t she? An Indian woman of very high class. Perhaps a little European blood in her veins. But what about her?” “She’s the woman I saw out at the field last night. She was searching the field just as I was until I made her go away. Jimmie!” she gripped his arm. “I suspect her of having the third secret of radar.” “What? Impossible!” “But why impossible?” she demanded. “She is of very high rank. No others are allowed here except a few like myself who have been introduced by regular—ah—members, you might say.” “There have been high class spies,” she insisted. “Not many,” he argued. “She may be one of the few.” “Well, you’ll have to prove it,” he replied, unconvinced. “And that will be both difficult and dangerous. Let’s drop it for now. This is our night. Besides, the ice cream here is most unusual.” The ice cream was unusual. However it is to be doubted whether Gale really tasted its goodness, for all the time her eyes were on the woman in purple. She was consciously memorizing her features, the color of her hair and eyes, her high forehead that might have been European, her thin nose, her small red mouth, and her thin chin. She memorized too the shape of her long fingers and the rings set with two diamonds and a ruby. “Now,” she whispered to herself, “If I see you again I shall know you, whether you are dressed in royal purple or in rags.” As if the woman had heard, she turned and looked right at Gale. Did she give a sudden start? Gale thought so. If this was true, she made a quick recovery, for turning squarely about, the woman began talking with animation to the man at her side. “My destination is Tokio,” Jimmie murmured, as if talking to himself. “What? What did you say?” Gale exclaimed. Jimmie’s reply was in a voice lower than her own. “It is agreed, a sort of unwritten law, that when Tokio is bombed by planes flying from China, all the remaining Flying Tigers still fit for service shall have a place in that flight. I hope to be one of these. That is my confession to my goddess for tonight.” “And my confession,” she replied instantly, “Is that I hope to be the radar man in the bomber you fly over Tokio!” “That—” “Wait! Don’t say it is impossible.” She put two fingers over his lips. “It is not impossible. I am as good as any radar man, and quite as unafraid. It is not impossible that I should go.” “Everything you have said is true,” he replied soberly. “Only time will tell. If it can be arranged I shall be proud to have you as one of my comrades at arms.” “That,” she replied, “Is the grandest speech anyone ever made to me.” An hour later as they said goodbye at the door of the Club, Jimmie gave her a little something to remember. She found herself blushing as she hurried up the stairs to her room. She did not fall asleep at once. There were too many thoughts and emotions to be filed away in her well ordered mind. When at last she did fall asleep she had a most horrible dream. In the dream she and Jimmie stood before a statue in a park. It was a simple and unusual statue at first, but suddenly it began to grow, to stretch up and up toward the sky. It was a purple statue. “The lady in purple,” she seemed to whisper. Just then, in the dream the tall statue began to lean toward them. It leaned more and more. “Jimmie! Jimmie!” she tried to call. “She is falling on us,—the lady in purple!” Her vain effort to call wakened her. She found herself in a cold sweat. Did this dream have a meaning? She could not tell. So at last she dropped off into peaceful slumber. |
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