Part 2

“I don’t know what to do about this, Lieutenant,” he said, holding out a letter. “I sent it to the adjutant three times and he always sends it back marked ‘Incorrect.’ You see, they have held up Corporal Letar’s pay on account of a tailors’ bill against him for twenty-five cents for repairing his breeches at Shenannigan Field, Texas. Now here is his service record, and it shows a deduction of a quarter made there in July for fixing his breeches, and he says that’s the only time he ever had it done, but they’ve been holding up his pay for three months.”

“Holding up his pay, have they?” said Tommy angrily. “Sent the letter back three times? We’ll see about that. I’ll take it up to the adjutant myself.”

He entered the adjutant’s office and spoke loudly:

“Say, what’s all this, about Corporal Letar’s pants? Here’s the letter all O. K.--just as his service record shows. ‘Twenty-five cents was deducted from Corporal Letar’s pay in July at Shenannigan Field, Texas, for repairing his pants.’”

“Ah, that’s what’s wrong,” replied the adjutant smoothly. “Where’s your grammar? Haven’t you ever been to school? What you should say is: ‘Twenty-five cents were deducted from Corporal Letar’s pay at Shenannigan Field, Texas--’”

“What’s this?” burst an angry roar from an inner office, as Major Krause rushed out. “What’s all this about pants? Who’s this talking about pants? Don’t you know there’s no such thing in the United States Army as pants? Who are you, young man?”

Tommy stood speechless at the outburst. Why, oh why, hadn’t he kept on following Long John’s advice about keeping out of sight?

“This is Lieutenant Lang, sir,” said the adjutant silkily, “the commanding officer of the 946th Aero Squadron on this Post. We were discussing a very serious error in one of his reports.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” said Major Krause angrily. “I was going to send for you. I issued orders that all commanding officers of organizations on this post should personally give their units an hour’s close order drill every morning. Yesterday morning I saw a sergeant drilling your squadron. Where were you, sir? Why weren’t you drilling them yourself?”

“Why,” blurted Tommy, “I don’t know how to drill ’em. I never drilled anybody in my life!”

“What? You, a commissioned officer in the United States Army, stand there and admit that you are not capable of drilling the men under your command? Well, sir, you are hereby relieved from that command. Remove yourself and your belongings from the 946th Squadron’s barrack at once, to make room for your successor. And, young man, remember this: Never give ‘You don’t know how’ as an excuse in the United States Army. If you don’t know how, learn how! If you get an order, do it, and if you can’t do it, do as near it as you can. That will do. You may go.”

* * * * *

Tommy dragged himself away disconsolately, and had a couple of men of his late command carry his stuff back to the barrack with the open end. It was colder than ever now, after the warm quarters from which he had been ousted. But on the other hand, perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. He had been flying lately, and had graduated from the penguins whose wings were too short to fly, and from the gawky twenty-three meter Nieuports, and now he was on the eighteens.

He ought to be finished with them soon, and then he would be due to move away from the main field to Field 5 for the smaller, faster fifteen meter machines. Perhaps there would have been some hitch about going if he’d been hooked up with the squadron, but now he could leave as soon as he was ready.

And he was ready to go somewhere, too. He’d now been quarantined at Issy-la-Boue for over a month and hadn’t been able to leave the post for a bath. If it wasn’t the measles or the mumps it was the chicken pox, or somebody had a sore toe. There was a spreading line of red blotches around his waist, and he knew only too well what it was. The scabies! And from his experience with the French he knew there was only one cure--hot sulphur baths with a scrubbing brush, and plenty of them. They had them at the bath-house in town, but he couldn’t get away. However, perhaps something would turn up; it always did, sooner or later.

It did the next day. He finished flying early, and returned to the barrack. As he came in, the telephone rang and he answered. An excited voiced called:

“Hello, is this the Main Field? This is Field 5. Tommy Lang just crashed here in an eighteen.”

“Hah?” said Tommy.

“Yeah, deader’n a doornail, too. The whole top of his head’s gone above the eyes. An awful mess. The only way we knew who it was by his mustache.”

The spreader of bad news hung up, leaving Tommy dazed. He pinched himself to make sure that he was alive. It must be Phil who had crashed. He had a mustache like Tommy’s own, but he was about six feet tall, while Tommy was nearer five. However, no doubt he had been crumpled up like an accordion in the fall. Then Tommy had another thought. He seized the telephone receiver and called the adjutant.

* * * * *

Later that evening when the orderly came to the operations office with notices for the bulletin board Tommy was waiting for him. An hour later found him luxuriating in a hot sulphur bath in the town of Issy-la-Boue. He had caught a ride on a French truck from the field, and there had been no M.P.’s on duty when he went in. When he came out there were two near the door, but the night was pitch dark, and they were wrangling about something--a girl, apparently--and he passed unnoticed. Then he sought a hotel.

The madame in charge was cordial and voluble.

But yes, she had plenty of room. That _sale guerre_! There were hardly any commercial travelers nowadays. And then that _salaud_ of a chief American gendarme who spent nothing himself, and forbade her hotel to other brave Americans who would! Indeed, he had closed all the cafés and hotels in town to his countrymen, and opened a café of his own, importing two _petites femmes_ from Paris to run it for him. But there was another American officer--a man very distinguished--at her hotel who appeared lonesome. Perhaps this worthy monsieur would like to join him.

She led Tommy to a small office of some sort, wherein a man in American uniform was sitting gloomily alone before a bottle of wine. The little pilot recoiled at sight of the gold leaves on his shoulders, but it wasn’t Major Krause who sat there. On this major’s blouse were the _Legion of Honor_, the _Medaille Militaire_, and the _Croix de Guerre_ with many palms, instead of the jingling hardware Krause carried to show that he was a marksman or something; and this man’s face lit up with a welcoming smile, instead of the congested dignity habitual with the commanding officer of the flying field of Issy-la-Boue. Tommy gasped as he realized that he was in the presence of the great ace himself!

He sat down at the other’s invitation and had a glass of wine. They joined in lamenting the fact that they couldn’t hang all M.P.’s on the meat-hooks in front of butcher shops as the _poilus_ did the gendarmes at Verdun, and agreed that the French are a great people.

“Look at me,” said the ace gloomily. “When I took this commission I had no idea that they were going to order me away from the front, but now all the others are killing more Boches and getting ahead of me while I rot in this hole. They sent me back here to help train you fellows, but Major Krause wouldn’t pay any attention to what I said, so I left. I heard some guy who had never flown over the front give you a lecture on how to do it, and when he said that if you got lost over Germany the way to find out where you were was to fly down and read the name on some railway station, I couldn’t bear it any more. I don’t know what the devil to do--I’m not doing any good around here.”

His gloom was justified. A few months later he was shot down in flames in a machine condemned by the French.

They heard the voice of the madame raised in loud objurgations outside, but there was a knock at the door, and immediately a man entered. He wore the uniform of a first lieutenant, and on his arm the brassard of an M.P. But his truculence subsided into oiliness at the sight of the major’s leaves.

“Excuse me, Major,” he said, “but orders are very strict, you know. Major Krause is very particular that no flying officer should leave the post under any conditions. I beg your pardon, Lieutenant, but have you got a pass?”

“He’s with me,” said the ace shortly.

“Oh,” said the M.P. uncertainly, and went out. He wasn’t sure exactly what the ace’s status was, but his rank was plain enough, and the M.P. was afraid of burning his fingers.

“Wait till that guy catches me alone,” said Tommy.

“Stick around with me,” said the ace. “Krause doesn’t quite know what to do about me yet, for I’ve got a pull in Paris, and he’s let me alone since I left the field.”

* * * * *

For three days Tommy did stick, and lived the life of Riley, sleeping in a good bed, eating good meals, drinking good wine and taking sulphur baths twice a day. At the end of that time his scabies was gone.

“I guess I’d better be getting back to the field,” he told the ace. “I want to get through there and get to the front. I took an awful chance going A. W. O. L, but maybe my little scheme will work on Krause. If it doesn’t, and he takes me off flying I’ll be sunk. Think I might as well go out and let that M.P. pick me up and give me a ride back to camp.”

He shook hands with the ace, and walked out and down the street alone.

He hadn’t gone far when a Ford drew up beside him and stopped. In the front seat was the M.P. lieutenant, and behind a hard-boiled sergeant with a .45.

“Hey,” said the lieutenant in rough tones, “let’s see your pass.”

“I ain’t got a pass,” the little man returned.

“All right, then, you’re under arrest. Get in here, and I’ll take you out to the field.”

Tommy obeyed meekly, and they rode along without conversation. Presently he was ushered into the presence of Major Krause.

“What?” growled the major. “In town without a pass, eh? What have you got to say for yourself, young man?”

“Well,” Tommy replied, “the other day you told me never to question an order in the Army, and if I couldn’t obey an order to come as near it as I could.”

“What rigamarole is this?” asked Major Krause angrily. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me I ordered you to go A. W. O. L?”

“Not exactly, sir,” answered Tommy respectfully, “but you see this order here. I couldn’t see my way clear to carry it out, so I thought I’d better leave here so as not to embarrass you.”

Major Krause looked at the paper Tommy extended and his eyes goggled. His face became more congested than ever, and wrinkles corrugated his brow. What could he do? If he court-martialed this young idiot this order would undoubtedly be his defense, and Krause’s dignity, a carefully tended hothouse plant of uncertain virility, could hardly survive. So he waved his arms in a furious gesture of dismissal and gurgled like an active volcano, and Tommy saluted and left discreetly.

The paper he had given Krause read:

1st. Lieut. Thomas Lang, A. S. S. O. R. C. Transferred from Section 13 to Death in Line of Duty. by order of --HERMAN KRAUSE, MAJOR, SIGNAL CORPS.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1, 1928 issue of Adventure magazine.]