Chapter VI

August dragged along its procession of heat-smitten ’teens and twenties. Billy Cobb grew thinner and more miserable. A ray of hope appeared to him, however. There was the “609.”

The 609, in the parlance of the air service, is the rigid physical test that every army flyer must survive twice yearly. A man who can triumph over the 609 is verging on bodily perfection. There is no other examination so searching.

And Billy judged that he was a long way from physical impeccability. He prayed that he might not pass the test. It was the only honorable avenue of escape from the incubus of fear that was slowly breaking Jennie and, through Jennie, breaking him, too.

Of course he could have failed to qualify by deliberate deceit. It would be the easiest matter in the world to claim that his eyes were weakening and to prove his claim by false readings of the testing charts. And there were other possibilities. But deceit was a world away from Billy’s code. He had to keep faith and a clean conscience for Jennie. He would do his honest best to qualify--and hope to fail honestly.

Late in the month he reported to the flight surgeon. He was feeling particularly rocky that morning. Which--paradoxically--made him almost cheerful.

“I’ll flunk it sure,” he told himself.

He watched the face of the orderly who took his pulse, blood pressure and temperature anxiously. But the man was an automaton. He was not interested in anything he might discover about Billy’s condition. His face betrayed nothing but boredom.

The junior surgeon who put Billy through the nauseating gates of the revolving chair was professionally discreet.

On the eye charts Billy read a perfect “twenty-twenty” with either eye and then essayed a discouragingly successful “twenty-fifteen.” But he had expected this.

“Not so bad--not so bad,” commented the junior surgeon. “I’ll hand you over to Captain Weyman. He wants to look at you before we turn you loose.”

Billy undressed in the examining room. The dismal conviction was growing on him that he would qualify after all. Nobody had batted an eye or shaken a head. Still, hope was not entirely dead. Weyman might find something. Weyman was thorough.

The surgeon came in and set to work. He waived the minor preliminaries.

“You’re thin,” he said, “but that’s nothing this kind of weather. I hear you’ve been overdoing the flying a bit. I’ll look into that.”

He went over Billy with a stethoscope. Billy could not believe that the excited pounding of his heart would escape comment. Finally Weyman put the stethoscope away. He misread the anxious light in Billy’s eyes.

“Oh,” he said, “you needn’t worry this time. You’ll do. But you’ve got to ease up. I’ve been looking over the reports on the other tests. Blood pressure pretty high. And your heart doesn’t sound as good as the last time. But you’ll do. Get more sleep. Cut down the flying by half. A rest will fix you up like new. You’re taking a spell off in October. You’ll be a new man after that. Well, come back here in February. See you at the club tonight.”

He clattered out and Billy sat down suddenly. He felt very faint.

Then he remembered that he was to lunch with Jennie. He struggled into his clothes. He had been picturing to himself how he would break the good news of his disqualification. He had visioned the little play of dismay she would make when he told her. He had painted on his mind’s eye the flush of happiness that would relieve the pallor of her cheeks, betraying her gladness in spite of pretended concern.

Now it would not happen. There would be the same mummery of pretense that had been going on for the past month between them, the same transparent mask of unconcern that covered up but did not hide. By tacit consent they would talk of casual things casually. They would smile brightly for each other’s benefit. They would discuss some new phase of the plans for October with the colonel. But neither would be deceived. In the depths of Jennie’s wistful eyes Billy would see the lurking specter of fear. In the deepening lines of Billy’s haggard face Jennie would read the story of his yearning to ease her trouble. And in the back of their minds, while they mouthed inconsequentialities, would be the relentless query of their common obsession: “The last crash--when?”

Billy decided that he couldn’t face Jennie now. It would be turning the knife. He would beg off, have a bite at the club, and bury himself in work. In the evening he would call. By then the edge of his disappointment would have worn off. He could dissemble better then. In the evening----

But would there be any evening?

There it was again! The obsession! He hurled the thought from him. But it would come back! In a moment it would be there dogging him again!

He thought bleakly of the years ahead that he must live with that leering, tantalizing demon mocking him from the back of his brain.

And then it was back, confronting him again! Years ahead? Perhaps only hours! He was scheduled to fly at five o’clock! He decided he would lunch with Jennie after all. It might be the last----

“God!” he choked, tugging at a boot.

She was waiting for him behind the screens on the veranda. She sat listlessly, staring off at distant things. She wondered if Billy suspected a tithe of the whole truth--that she had not slept seven hours in the past week; that she could no longer eat excepting under the compulsion of her father’s watchful eye, or Billy’s; that it was increasingly difficult for her to muster the strength to rise from a chair; that the sound of an engine made her faint and giddy.

She wondered how long it would be before she must give up, must go to bed, must stay there. It wouldn’t be until the sheer impossibility of physical resistance forced it--but that might be any day. She dreaded the revelation the day would bring. She was afraid of its effect on Billy. But she held to her resolution. It was the air or nothing for them.

The crunching of Billy’s boots on the path roused her.

She was standing at the door, holding it ajar, as he came up the two short steps. She was smiling--a pathetic, lying smile.

He led her back to her chair. It occurred to her that if he hadn’t done that she must have sunk to the floor and been carried. She thought she would have liked that. Yet she had the courage to sit erect and smile at him.

“Did you pass all right, dear?” she questioned.

“Yes,” he said dully; “I passed.”

“Oh, Billy, that’s good. I was afraid you might have been overdoing. I wondered. I’m awfully glad, dear.” It was a supreme show of pathetic courage.

He revolted.

“Jennie,” he exclaimed, “I wish to Heaven I’d failed! You’re going out on your feet. I can see it. I confess, I never in my life hoped for anything as I hoped today that Weyman would turn me down! I’ve told Norris about this--he’s the only one that knows. And he said one night that something always turned up. I thought it might be true. I thought the 609 would be the thing. It only proves that Norris----”

“No, Billy dear. It only proves what I have told you--the air needs you, even more than I.”

“It isn’t so Jennie! I know it isn’t so. I’m going to quit. You come first!”

“You are not, Billy Cobb!! That was settled a month ago. You know you’re not. I understand, dear--how you feel. But it can’t be. I won’t permit it. Now come in to lunch and don’t let’s discuss anything gloomier than October. You promise?”

There was nothing else he could do. They went in silently. The colonel was already at table.

* * * * *

The red rim of the sun was just dipping out of sight behind the western hills that evening when Jennie, dressed in white of a crispness that belied the drooping state of her spirits, slipped away from the screened veranda and made painfully off toward the hangars. All afternoon the sultry air had screamed and reverberated with the voices of engines. But now only one ship remained aloft, doggedly circling the field in the falling twilight with throttled motor droning sullenly. The ship was Billy’s. Soon he would make the field and taxi in to the hangar. Jennie meant to be there to meet him. She wanted to let him know in this fashion that she approved and that her strength was equal to the ordeal even of watching him fly.

It was hard going. She stumbled innumerable times. Once she all but fell. But she reached the hangar at length and pulled herself together for the benefit of Hansen, who was waiting with his crew.

Billy’s ship was still circling. Hansen brought Jennie a folding camp stool to sit on while she watched. He never suspected how grateful she was for that small piece of hesitant courtesy.

The mechanic dug a heavy watch from the breast pocket of his oil-stained coveralls and consulted it.

“Been up twenty-five minutes on this hop, Miss Brent,” he said. “He’ll be coming in any minute now.”

As he spoke Billy commenced a sedate spiral at the northern extremity of the field. He was coming in. Not a breath of air stirred. He might have landed equally well from the east, the west, or the south. But the “T” in the white circle clearly pointed the only right way. Billy never disregarded flying regulations. He would have landed the way the T pointed if there hadn’t been another plane to cut his right of way within a million miles.

As a matter of fact there was another plane, but Billy didn’t know it. A strange, battered affair it was, with patched and tattered wings, that came coughing along, low down, out of the west; a disreputable gypsy of the air, a mangy sky pariah, seeking lodging for the night. Just above the treetops it scuttled, driving heedlessly for shelter, its pilot intent only on reaching a safe field before his gas was spent. Without a thought for other traffic or regulations it cleared the last obstacle by a scant yard and shot for the landing dead across the monitory T, coming fast from west to east.

It was then that Billy first saw it. And he saw it as soon as anybody else, for it had slunk into port wholly unobserved under cover of the landscape, the sound of its puny engine muffled in the full-voiced note of Billy’s Liberty.

“Hell and all!”

Hansen’s fervid exclamation drew Jennie’s eyes from their anxious vigil over Billy’s landing. She saw the furtive gypsy shooting in at dead right angles to the course of the oncoming DH. And a rapid glance from ship to ship told her that the thing she had spent the last month dreading was at hand. There was going to be a crash. The gypsy and the DH had leveled off together. Both were losing flying speed. Neither could open out and pick up fast enough to gain the air and clear the other. They were going to meet--going to meet hard! And Billy was in the DH!

What Jennie saw, Billy saw in the same instant. And the next instant he acted. He could not possibly get over or around the stranger. He must stop or collide. And he stopped. The maneuver was simple and instantly effective. Billy did nothing more than snap the stick back and to the left the full length of its course.

Have you ever seen a curveting stallion rear wildly, slip, and fall heavily on his side? The DH did just that. Its nose lifted ponderously, its wheels pawed the air, its left wing dropped sharply, it faltered and hung, and just as it swayed and slipped groundward Billy cut the switch. It struck with an indescribably sickening sound, a combination of thud, crackle and crash all rolled together in a terrifying, explosive snarl.

But there was no danger to speak of. Billy’s cunning had provided against that. All the speed had been absorbed by the lift as the ship reared. She had stopped before she struck the ground. And Billy and his passenger were scrambling out when the gypsy slipped with a guilty swish across the shattered bow of the quivering wreck and ran out its momentum--safe with twenty feet to spare.

Jennie stood in frozen anguish until it was over. She saw the rearing ship. She heard the hideous outburst as it crashed. But she did not see Billy emerge from the heap of rumpled fabric, kindling wood, and junk. For by the time that happened she lay a pathetic heap of white on the oil-soaked ground beside the camp stool.

Billy made straight for the gypsy ship with murder in each knotted fist. But he never reached it. He was intercepted by a breathless crew man.

“Sir,” panted the mechanic, “Miss Brent--is at--the hangar. She fainted!”