Norma Kent of the WACS

  CHAPTER XVIII

  SUDDEN PANIC

  When Norma awoke, a half hour before her regular time, next morning, itwas with the feeling of one who has had her little world of thoughtturned 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 personwho in the past twenty-four hours has saved your life. Lena, she wassure, had done just that. Neither she nor Betty could have brought theboat safely home through that storm.

  And yet, when she had seen Lena in the big living room the nightbefore, after dinner, and had tried to thank her, Lena had shrugged,mumbling something about, “All in a day’s work,” and “Handled a boatbefore,” then had walked away.

  “You’d think she was a man,” Norma had said to Betty later. “That’s theway 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—” Shehad gone no farther and, appearing to understand, Betty had notencouraged 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 DesMoines, Lena’s apparent friendship with the Spanish hairdresser andthat startling affair of the self-locking door at night in a Des Moinesrepair shop.

  Then, too, she had quite recently heard a man at the back of thephotographer’s studio say, “You must!” and had heard a voice, which shewas sure must be Lena’s say, “I will not!” That Lena was there at thephotographer’s studio at one time or another was certain, for a picturehad 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, yetthere were hundreds of thousands of loyal German-Americans. He lookedlike her mental picture of a spy she had heard Lieutenant Warren tellabout, yet her mental picture of that spy of India might be all wrong.She had never seen him. Both these men were photographers, yet therewere many like them in the world. Both kept black pigeons. She didn’tknow a great deal about pigeons so, for all she knew, there might be amillion black ones in America.

  Even the Spanish hairdresser had not been convicted of espionage. Shehad disappeared from Fort Des Moines, that was all. Some woman, with aSpanish look, had showed up at night at the Sea Tower with a fakedidentification card and dressed in a WAC uniform. But was this theSpanish hairdresser? Who could answer that question?

  This brought her around to the missing picture from her film developedby 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 evenif I have to break in and steal it.” At that she sprang out of bed andraced for the showers.

  This, she recalled with sudden thrill, was their last day of trainingand probation. Today for the last time she would sit for eight hourswith Sergeant Tom McCarthy at her elbow making sure that she marked onher chart the exact spot where an airplane had been spotted and seeingto it that she checked correctly with the representative of the Army,Navy, and Civil Aeronautics Authority to make sure that the planereally 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 therest would be there at their appointed hours. And ten sturdy young menwould oil up their guns and go marching off.

  Did these boys like it? Some, she knew, were raring to go and somewould 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, shehad enjoyed their lively fun. Working shoulder to shoulder with them inthe Sea Tower, she had come to know them better than she knew herfellow WACs.

  Yes, she would miss them. One consolation was that Sergeant TomMcCarthy was not leaving. He had serious work to do here for, in thenarrow harbor, between docks, was a seaplane called “Seagull.” In thisplane Sergeant Tom did patrol duty, and, if occasion demanded, could dohis bit at hunting out an enemy plane, to shower its pilot withmachine-gun fire, or drop a bomb on a prowling sub.

  Today, however, since it was Saturday and she had an afternoon off, shewas planning a land adventure, none other than obtaining by hook,crook, or downright house-breaking, the film showing the Spanishhairdresser. Little wonder then that, try as she might, she missed theexact spot in her chart for a reported plane and got her ears not tooplayfully boxed by Sergeant Tom.

  In the end, however, Tom gave her an A rating and she was all ready forthe 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 frozenhard. In the bright sunlight the valleys, hills, trees, and forestswere all aglitter.

  “A grand day for taking pictures,” Norma exclaimed as she and Bettyhurried 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 upwith my letter writing. I have a hunch that I’m going to be sent overto 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 girland her grandfather,” was Norma’s reply. “And the bad Gremlins!”

  “I have an idea that Lieutenant Warren has other plans for you,” Bettysaid slowly. “Something like making you second in command, a sergeantperhaps. 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 justyou wait a while for that!”

  “It won’t be long now,” Betty chanted.

  “Look!” Norma’s voice dropped. “That photographer over at Granite Headheld out one of my pictures.”

  “He did!”

  “He certainly did! The one of that Spanish hairdresser at Fort DesMoines.”

  “You don’t think—” Betty stared.

  “No, I don’t think anything, but I’m going to have that picture if Ihave 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 atGranite Head.

  As she entered the studio she found Carl Langer talking excitedly to anelderly fisherman’s wife. The woman’s face, bronzed by many winds andseamed by many a care, was, she thought, most attractive.

  Carl Langer was saying in a harsh tone, “No, madam! I can not take yourpicture. I am too busy, and besides—just one print. Bah! That is notenough! I would lose money.”

  “It is for my son.” The woman’s voice was low, pleading. “It is for myonly son. He is a soldier fighting in Africa.”

  “Soldier! Bah!” The photographer’s eyes bulged. “There are many millionsoldiers and most times they are drunk.”

  This last Norma knew was not true. Her face flushed but she said nevera 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, andgiven 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 ofmy films.”

  “To make some prints? They were very fine pictures. I gave you someenlargements.”

  “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 Englandvillage, a boy bringing in wood, and a rare shot of a deer deep in theforest 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 anotherafternoon 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 anda girl standing at the window of a log cabin on Black Knob Island withtommy-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 placingthem in the bike basket, she paused to examine the old films he hadgiven 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 theroad? She did not look back. She peddled for a mile or more along theshore road and entered a small fishing village. She was just in time tosee 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 smilespread over her wrinkled face, she said:

  “You are one of them WACs, a lady soldier. Yes, miss. Take as many asyou like fer my son. He is a soldier, too.”

  “I’ll take two for you and one for me,” Norma replied cheerily. “Youmust 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 cantake as good pictures as Carl Langer ever made and they won’t cost youa cent.”

  She very nearly dropped the first film she held to the light. It was agood, clear picture of the Spanish hairdresser standing by the gate atFort Des Moines.

  “Did Carl Langer mean to give me that film?” she asked herself as sheleft the fishing village. She doubted it. He probably had put the filmin 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 thesea and there, just before her, nestling on a sloping hillside and halfhidden by pines that stood out black against the snow, was the mostcharming 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 perfectlycharming it must be.”

  Back of the house was a red barn with three white cupolas. On the roofsof 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 househad opened. Three large dogs had come dashing out.

  Their master called them back. She was glad. For a moment she had beenterribly frightened.

  She took one more look at the house, the barn, the dogs, and theirmaster. Then, in sudden panic, she turned squarely about, leaped on herbicycle, and peddled back over the way she had come.

  The man with the three dogs by the door of that lovely house was CarlLanger, the photographer. She still had that film he had tried to hidefrom her. But there were other causes for her sudden panic. Pictureswere playing back and forth in her mind and she was hearing LieutenantWarren 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 likethat spy. He steals my film. He refuses to take honest people’spictures. He keeps black pigeons. And now I find him at his own richestate back in the hills. It’s too much, far too much.”

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