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.”
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[Illustration: _Norma Leaned Over Close, Talking Low_]
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“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.
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