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.”
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