Things were getting hazy in his mind. He gave up trying to move his limbs. The blood was congealing in his veins. He had a strange feeling that his flesh was becoming brittle with cold, that he would break into pieces if he tried to move an arm or leg.
A delightful sensation of helpless lethargy crept over him. This was the sort of thing he had read happened to people when death was very close and inevitable. It was Nature’s kind way of drugging the perceptions against the impact of death.
He began to hear a buzzing in his ears, and he decided that was the beginning of the end. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Not even the war.
The buzzing grew louder and became a distinct annoyance. He tried to shut it away from his consciousness, but it persisted. He felt himself being dragged back from the coma into which he had sunk. The buzzing became a loud drone, then smashed at his ear drums with a shattering roar.
He came to life again, and fought to blink his salt-encrusted eyelids open. He recognized that roar of a Spitfire motor. It was zooming over him, flattening out in a crazy reckless pancake dangerously close to the surface of the water.
He got one eye open and caught a flashing glimpse of a grinning Irish face leaning over the side of the plane and shouting something to him. The plane lifted swiftly and swept away and Stan found himself waving a numbed hand after it.
The ice in his veins was transformed into tongues of flame that licked through his body. O’Malley had come, just as he had known the Irishman would. He would bring a rescue ship back. All Stan had to do was stay alive a little longer.
He grinned happily as he watched the Spitfire become a dim speck in the sky and then disappear. He began beating the water with his arms and legs, and he jeered good-naturedly at the sea that had sought to engulf him.
The plane was coming back, circling high overhead to spot the floating pilot for a fishing boat that was putting out from shore. As the small craft drew near Stan saw two men in oilskins waving to him. He waved back, and then a strange thing happened. It was as though someone had struck him on the head with a sledge hammer. He was unconscious when the boat reached him, and he stayed unconscious for a full twenty-four hours.
He woke up in a strange new world that was utterly different from anything he had known before. A clean, white, antiseptic world with narrow beds and pretty girls in white uniforms. He was tucked in one of those beds, and one of the pretty girls in a white uniform was bending over him solicitously.
“Where am I?” he demanded.
“This is a hospital. You are very sick,” the nurse said soothingly.
“Hospital!” Stan sputtered. “I’m not staying in any hospital. I was never in a hospital in my life!” He got to his feet as orderlies and a head nurse came running.
“Lie down or I will report you,” the head nurse said severely. “You are sick.”
“How long do you think it takes me to get over a bath?” Stan shot at the nurse.
“You’ll be here two weeks,” the head nurse informed him.
Stan had visions of Allison sending out for another man to fill the trio on Red Flight. He wrapped the blanket tighter around him.
“Get my clothes,” he ordered.
“Get an officer,” the head nurse snapped to an orderly.
Stan knew it was time for action. He swept the blanket ends off the floor and dived down the hall with the nurses running after him. A doctor came out of a room, looked at Stan, then ducked back quickly. Stan bounded down a wide stairway and out through a pair of open doors. People stared at him as he rushed up the street in his bare feet looking for a cab.
On a corner he bumped into two bobbies. They closed in on both sides of him.
“Easy, my man,” one of them said. “Easy, now. We’ll see you safe back to your bed.”
“Fine,” Stan answered. “Get me over to Merry Flying Field as quick as you can.”
The bobbies looked at Stan then exchanged glances. He looked perfectly healthy and very powerful, though he was a bit pale and had a wild look in his eye. They nodded their heads.
“I’m from Red Flight over at Merry Field. Get me there and the Flight Lieutenant will vouch for me,” Stan urged as he looked down the street and saw an ambulance rocking around a corner.
The bobbies were satisfied that this young giant was crazy and they had better humor him. They shoved him through the curious crowd that had formed on the corner. Within a few minutes he was seated in a cab bowling across the city.
Allison was lounging at a table drinking tea with O’Malley when two bobbies and a disheveled man wrapped in a wool blanket marched into the mess. They both leaped to their feet and rushed across the room.
“Stan, old chap!” Allison shouted.
“By the scalp of St. Patrick!” O’Malley boomed. “An’ I thought you would drown sure before the boat got to you.”
The bobbies nodded their heads and grinned broadly. They lifted their sticks and moved out, well satisfied with their work. Stan called after them:
“If you meet an ambulance wandering about tell the driver to go back to the hospital and give my regards to the head nurse.” He sank into a chair and grinned up at his friends. “How about some clothes?”
“Coming right up. You can borrow my dress uniform,” Allison said. “O’Malley insisted we hold off replacements for another day. The hospital said you’d be laid up for weeks, but O’Malley had a hunch you wouldn’t let them keep you.”
Stan told what had happened. When he had finished O’Malley beat a bony fist on the table.
“Faith, an’ I think the gas business is a trick of that rotter, Garret. What he’s after needin’ is a good taste of me fist,” he bellowed.
“We have no proof. If one of you fellows beat him up we’d all be grounded, you know,” Allison cut in.
“If Garret was on the crew that handled the fueling that’s enough for me,” Stan said grimly.
“He was put in charge of our hangar by the O.C. But you can bet he covered his dirty work carefully. We’ll just have to trap him.” Allison spoke grimly.
“And in the meantime we better check our ships before we go out each time,” Stan said. “If I’d done that this time I’d have brought my Spitfire back whole and wouldn’t have had to take a bath in the channel.”
“I’ll bet the spalpeen will get a scare when you walk into that hangar,” O’Malley said with a grin.
Stan got to his feet. “I’m going out there just as soon as I get some clothes. I warn you, O’Malley, this is my fight. You stay out of it.”
O’Malley’s eyes glittered. “I niver could stay out of a good scrap, but if you wade into him I’m thinkin’ there won’t be anything left for me to do but pick up the pieces.”
“You better keep a tight hand on your temper, old chap,” Allison warned.
“I will. I’ll have the low-down before I sock him,” Stan promised.
A half-hour later, dressed in one of Allison’s uniforms, and looking little worse for his ducking, Stan strolled into the hangar. Garret was not about so he went to the crew that had handled his ship. They were really glad to see him, he was sure of that. He looked them over and had a feeling none of them had had any part in the plot.
“Who gassed my Spitfire before she went out on the last raid?” His eyes moved from man to man.
A corporal stepped forward. “I did, sir.”
“Was the tank full when you rolled her out?”
“Yes, sir. I rechecked. She was full up.” The corporal was positive.
“Did you gas her up immediately before the flight?”
“No, we always gas up as soon as the Spits come in, so they’ll be ready without delay. Sometimes they go right back up.”
Stan nodded. He had known that. “Was the squad out for breakfast?”
A sergeant spoke up. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Garret sent us all out together. Squad Four was on duty down the line and could keep an eye on things and shove out for us if a call came.”
“He went with you?”
“Yes, he walked as far as his mess with us.”
