Tam O' The Scoots - Edgar Wallace (best ereader for pdf and epub txt) 📗

staff of One-Three-One Hector O'Brien's understudy.


CHAPTER X

THE LAST LOAD


Along a muddy road came an ambulance. It was moving slowly, zigzagging from side to side to avoid the shell holes and the subsidences which the collapse of ancient trenches on each side of the road had caused. It was a secondary or even a tertiary road, represented on the map by a spidery line, and was taken by driver Vera Laramore because there was no better.

From the rear end of the ambulance showed eight muddy soles, three pairs with toes upturned, the fourth at such an angle, one foot with the other, as to suggest a pain beyond any but this mute expression.

On the tail-board of the ambulance an orderly of the R. A. M. C. balanced himself, gaunt-eyed, unshaven, caked from head to foot in yellow mud, the red cross on his untidy brassard looming faintly from its grimy background. Beyond the soles with their worn and glaring nails, a disorderly rumple of brown army blankets, and between the stretchers a confusion of entangled haversacks, water-bottles and equipment, there was nothing to be seen of the patients, though a thin blue haze which curled along the tilt showed that one at least was well enough to smoke.

The ambulance made its slow way through the featureless country, past rubble heaps which had once been the habitations of men and women, splintered trunks of poplar avenues, great excavations where shells of an immense caliber had fallen long ago and the funnel shapes of which were now overgrown with winter weeds.

Presently the ambulance turned on to the main road and five people heaved a sigh of thankfulness, the sixth, he of the eloquent soles, being without interest in anything.

The car with its sad burden passed smoothly along the broad level road, such a road as had never been seen in France or in any other country before the war, increasing its speed as it went. Red-capped policemen at the crossroads held up the traffic--guns and mechanical transport, mud-splashed staff cars and tramping infantry edged closer to the side to let it pass.

Presently the car turned again, swept past a big aerodrome--the girl who drove threw one quick glance, had a glimpse of the parade-ground but did not recognize the man she hoped to see--and a few minutes later she was slowing the ambulance before the reception room of General Hospital One-Three-One.

The R. A. M. C. man dismounted, nodded to other R. A. M. C. men more tidy, more shaven, and a little envious it seemed of their comrade's dishabille and the four cases were lifted smoothly and swiftly and carried into the big hut.

"All right, driver," said the R. A. M. C. sergeant when four stretchers and eight neatly folded blankets had been put into the ambulance to replace those she had surrendered, and Vera, with a little jerk of her head, sent the car forward to the park.

She brought her machine in line with one of the four rows, checked her arrival and walked wearily over to her quarters. She had been out that morning since four, she had seen sights and heard sounds which a delicately nurtured young woman, who three years before had shuddered at the sight of a spider, could never in her wildest nightmare imagine would be brought to her sight or hearing. She was weary, body and soul, sick with the nausea which is incomparable to any other. And now she was at the end of it. Her application for long leave had followed the smashing up of her airman brother and his compulsory retirement in England.

And yet she could not bear the thought of leaving all this; the horror and the wonder of it were alike fascinating. She felt the same pangs of remorse she had experienced on the one occasion she had run away from school. She branded herself as a deserter and looked upon those who had the nerve and will to stay on with something of envy.

Her plain-spoken friend was sitting on her bed in a kimono as the girl came in.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, what?" asked Vera irritably.

"Are you sorry you are leaving us?"

"I haven't left yet," said the girl, sitting down and unstrapping her leather leggings slowly.

"You don't go till to-morrow, that's true," said the other girl calmly, "and how have you rounded off all your little--friendships?" There was just the slightest of pauses between the two last words.

"You mean Lieutenant MacTavish?" asked Vera distraitly.

"I mean Tam," said the girl with a nod.

"Exactly what do you mean by 'rounded off'?"

The other girl laughed. "Well, there are many ways of a friendship," she smiled; "there's the 'If-you-come-to-my-town-look-me-up' way. There's the 'You'll-write-every-day' way--and--" She hesitated again.

"Go on," said Vera calmly.

"And there's--well, the conventional way."

Vera smiled. "I can't imagine Tam doing anything conventional," she said.

Elizabeth jumped up with a laugh, walked to the little bare dressing-table and began brushing her hair.

"Why do you laugh?" asked Vera.

"The whole thing's so curious," replied the girl. "Here's a man who is head-over-heels in love with you--"

"In love with me!"

Vera Laramore went red and white by turns and lost, for a moment, her grasp of the situation, then grew virtuously indignant, which was a tactical error for if she were innocent of such a thought as that which her friend expressed she should have been either amused or curious.

"How can you talk such rubbish? Tam and I are jolly good friends. He is a real fine man, as straight as a die and as plucky as he's straight. He has more sense, more judgment--" She was breathless.

"Spare me the catalogue of his virtues," said Elizabeth drily. "I grant he is perfection and therefore unlovable. All that I asked you out of sheer idle curiosity was: How is your friendship to be rounded off?"

Vera was silent. "I shall see him to-night, of course," she said with a fine air of unconcern, "and I hope we shall part the best of friends; but as to his being in love with me, that is nonsense!"

"Of course it is," said Elizabeth soothingly.

"What makes you think he is in love with me?" Vera asked suddenly.

"Symptoms."

"But what symptoms?"

"Well, you are always together. He drops bunches of flowers for you on your birthday."

"Pshaw!" said Vera scornfully. "I thought you had more knowledge of men and women. That is friendship."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Elizabeth politely.

"But honestly," asked Vera, "what makes you think so?"

"I won't tell you any more," said the girl, turning around and tying her hair, "but I will put a straight question to you, my dear; do you love Tam?"

"Of course not," Vera was red; "you are making me very uncomfortable. I tell you he is a good friend of mine and I respect him enormously."

"And you don't love him?"

"Of course I don't love him. What a stupid thing to imagine!"

"Such things have happened," said the girl.

"I have never thought of such a thing," said Vera; "but suppose I did, of course it's an absurd idea, but suppose I did?"

"If I were you and I did," said the girl, "I should tell him so."

"Elizabeth!"

"It sounds bold, doesn't it? But I will tell you why I make that suggestion, because if you don't tell him he won't tell you. You see, my dear, you are a very rich young woman, a very well-educated young woman, you have a social position and a large number of friends. Tam is a self-educated man, with no money and very few prospects and no social position, and, as you say, he is straight and honest--"

"He is the straightest and most honest man in the world," said Vera warmly.

"Well, in those circumstances can't you see, he would no more think of asking for you than he would of calling at Buckingham Palace and demanding the Kohinoor!"

"In America," said Vera, "we haven't those absurd ideas."

"Oh, shucks!" said Elizabeth contemptuously. "You seem to forget I was born in Pennsylvania."

And there the conversation ended, and for the rest of the day Vera was silent and thoughtful, excusing her taciturnity by the fact that she had a lot of packing to do and needed to concentrate her mind upon its performance.

The mortal foe to instinct is reason. They are the negative and positive of mental volition. The man who retains the animal gift of unreasoning divination, preserving that clear power against the handicaps which mind training and education impose, is necessarily psychic, or, as they say in certain Celtic countries, "fey."

Tam went up on patrol flying a new "pup"--a tiny machine powerfully engined, which climbed at an angle of fifty degrees and at a surprising speed. He pushed up through a fog bank at three thousand feet and reached blue skies. His engine was running sweetly, there was just the "give" in his little chaser, the indefinable resilience which a good machine should possess, his guns were in excellent order, his controls worked smoothly, but--

Tam was at a loss how to proceed from that "but."

He turned the nose of the "pup" to earth and planed down to the aerodrome.

Blackie left the machine he was about to take and walked across to Tam.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"Weel," replied Tam cautiously, "I'd no' go so far as to say that there's verra much wrong wi' the young fellow."

Blackie looked at him keenly.

"Engines--?"

Tam shook his head.

"No, they were wairking bonnily--there's nothing to complain aboot only I just felt that 'pup' an' Tam was no thinkin' the same way."

"Oh!" said Blackie.

He examined the machine, a new one, with the greatest care, tested the controls, examined and sounded stays and struts and shook his head.

"Take up Bartholomew's machine--he went sick this morning," he said.

Tam superintended the preparation of Lieutenant Bartholomew's "pup" and climbing in gave the signal.

"What's the matter with Tam?"

Thornycroft, a flight commander of 89 A, had strolled across and stood with Blackie watching Tam's tiny machine humming cloudward.

"Tam has what is called on the other side a 'hunch,'" said Blackie; "come and look at this machine and see if you can find anything wrong with it. She's new from the maker," he went on, "in fact, the young gentleman who represents the firm is at this moment in the mess laying down the law on aviation, its past, present and illimitable future--there he is!"

Thornycroft paused in his inspection to watch the newcomer. He was a young man of singular confidence, who talked so very loudly to the officer who accompanied him that the two men by the machine felt themselves included in the conversation long before they could make themselves audible in reply.

"Hello--hello," said Mr. Theodore Mann, "what's wrong--eh?"

"One of my best pilots took her up and didn't like her," said Blackie.

"Didn't like her? What's wrong with her--cold feet, eh? Bless you, they all get it sooner or later--'the pitcher goes often to the well,' et cetera. That's a proverb that every flying man should unlearn, eh?"

He leapt lightly into the machine and jiggled the joy-stick.

"I'll take her up if you don't mind--hi, you!" he called a mechanic, "start her up--ready--contact! Z-r-r-r--!"

The little bird skimmed the