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.”