Tam O' The Scoots, Edgar Wallace [highly recommended books TXT] 📗

forgotten his passport and railway ticket and must go home quickly to get them. And before anybody realized what was happening, he would be diving straight down at the straining gas-bags, his tracer bullets would be ranging the line, and from every car would jump tiny black figures. You saw them falling straight as plummets till their parachutes took the air and opened. And there would be a great blazing and burning of balloons, frantic work at the winches which pulled them to earth, and the ballooning section would send messages to the aerodrome whose duty it was to protect them, apologizing for awakening the squadron from its beauty sleep, but begging to report that hostile aircraft had arrived, had performed its dirty work and had departed with apparent immunity.

The "Sausage-Killer" was due at 11.20, and at 11.18 Tam saw one solitary airplane sweep wide of the balloon park, and turn on a course which would bring him along the line of the O. B.'s. Apparently, the "Sausage-Killer" was not so blessed in the matter of sight as Tam, for the scout was on his tail and was pumping nickel through his tractor's screw before the destroyer of innocent gas-bags realized what had happened.

"It was a noble end," said Tam after he had landed, "and A'm no' so sure that he would have cared to be coonted oot in any other saircumstances; for the shepherd likes to die amongst his sheep and the captain on his bridge, and this puir feller was verra content, A've no doot, to crash under the een of his wee--"

"Did you kill him, Tam?" asked Blackie.

"A'm no' so sure he's deid in the corporeal sense," said Tam cautiously, "but he is removed from the roll of effectives."

So far from being dead, the "Sausage-Killer," who, appropriately enough, was ludicrously like a young butcher, with his red fat face and his cold blue eye, was very much alive and had a grievance.

"Where did that man drop from?" he demanded truculently, "I didn't see him."

"I'm sorry," said Blackie; "if we had known that, we would have got him to ring a bell or wave a flag."

"That is frivolous," said the German officer severely.

"It is the best we can do, dear lad," said Blackie, and didn't trouble to invite him to lunch.

"Tam, you've done so well," said the squadron leader at that meal, "that I can see you being appointed official guardian angel to the O. B.'s. They are going to bring you some flowers."

"And a testimonial with a purse of gold," suggested Croucher, the youngest of the flyers.

"A'm no' desirin' popularity," said Tam modestly, "'tis against ma principles to accept any other presents than seegairs, and even these A'm loath to accept unless they're good ones."

He looked at his wrist watch, folded his serviette and rose from the mess-table with a little nod to the president.

It was a gratifying fact, which Blackie had remarked, that Second Lieutenant, late Sergeant, Tam, had taken to the mess as naturally as a duck to water. He showed neither awkwardness nor shyness, but this was consonant with his habit of thought. Once attune your mind to the reception of the unexpected, so that even the great and vital facts of life and death leave you unshaken and unamazed, and the lesser quantities are adjusted with ease.

Tam had new quarters, his batman had become his servant, certain little comforts which were absent from the bunk were discoverable in the cozy little room he now occupied.

* * * * *

His day's work was finished and he was bound on an expedition which was one part business and nine parts joy-ride, frank and undisguised, for the squadron-car had been placed at his disposal. The road to Amiens was dry, the sun was up, and the sky was blue, and behind him was the satisfactory sense of good work well done, for the "Sausage-Killer" was at that moment on his way back to the base, sitting vis-a-vis with a grimy young military gentleman who cuddled a rifle and a fixed bayonet with one hand and played scales on a mouth-organ with the other, softly, since he was a mere learner, and this was an opportunity for making joyful noises without incurring the opprobrium of his superiors.

Tam enjoyed the beauty and freshness of the early afternoon, every minute of it. He drove slowly, his eyes wandering occasionally from the road to make a professional scrutiny of the skies. He spotted the lonely watches of 89 Squadron and smiled, for 89 had vowed many oaths that they would catch the "Sausage-Killer," and had even initiated a sweepstakes for the lucky man who crashed him.

At a certain quiet restaurant on the Grand' Place he found a girl waiting for him, a girl in soiled khaki, critically examining the menu.

She looked up with a smile as the young man came in, hung his cap upon a peg and drew out the chair opposite.

"I have ordered the tea, though it is awfully early," she said; "now tell me what you have been doing all the morning."

She spoke with an air of proprietorship, a tone which marked the progress of this strange friendship, which had indeed gone very far since Tam's violent introduction to Vera Laramore on the Amiens road.

"Weel," said Tam, and hesitated.

"Please don't give me a dry report," she warned him. "I want the real story, with all its proper fixings."

"Hoo shall A' start?" asked Tam.

"You start with the beginning of the day. Now, properly, Tam."

Her slim finger threatened him.

"Is it literature ye'd be wanting?" asked Tam shyly.

She nodded, and Tam shut his eyes and began after the style of an amateur elocutionist:

"The dawn broke fair and bonny an' the fairest rays of the rising sun fell upon the sleeping 'Sausage-Killer'--"

"Who is the 'Sausage-Killer'?" asked the girl, startled.

"He'll be the villain of the piece, A'm thinkin'," said Tam, "but if ye interrupt--"

"I am sorry," murmured the girl, apologetically.

She sat with her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her clasped hands and her eyes fixed on Tam, eyes that danced with amusement, with admiration, and with just that hint of tenderness that you might expect in the proud mother showing off the accomplishments of her first-born.

"--fell aboot the heid of the Sausage-Killer,'" Tam went on, "bathin' his shaven croon wi' saft radiance. There was a discreet tap at the door, and Wilhelm MacBethmann, his faithful retainer, staggered in, bearin' his cup of acorn coffee.

"'Rise, _mein Herr_,' says he, 'get oot o' bed, ma bonnie laird.'

"'What o'clock is it, Angus?' says the 'Sausage-Killer,' sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"'It's seven, your Majesty,' says MacBethmann, 'shall I lay out yeer synthetic sausage or shall I fry up yesterday's sauerkraut?'

"But the 'Sausage-Killer' shakes his head.

"'_Mon_ Angus,' he says, 'A've had a heedious dream. A' dreamt,' says he, 'that A' went for to kill a wee sausage and A' dived for him and missed him and before A' could recover, the sausage bit me. 'Tis a warning,' says he.

"'Sir,' says MacBethmann, trembling in every limb and even in his neck, 'ye'd be wise no' to go out the day.'

"But the prood 'Sausage-Killer' rises himself to his full length.

"'Unhand ma pants, Angus,' says he, 'ma duty calls,' and away goes the puir wee feller to meet his doom at the hands of the Terror of the Skies."

"That's you," said the girl.

"Ye're a good guesser," said Tam, pouring out the tea the waiter had brought. "Do ye take sugar or are ye a victim of the cocktail habit?"

"Did you kill him?" asked the girl.

"Poleetically and in a military sense the 'Sausage-Killer' is dead," said Tam; "as a human being he is still alive, being detained during his Majesty's displeasure."

"You will tell me the rest, won't you?" she pleaded. With her, Tam invariably ended his romances at the point where they could only be continued by the relation of his own prowess, "and I'm glad you brought him down--it makes me shudder to see the balloons burning. Oh, and do you know they bombed Number One-Three-One last night?"

"Ye don't say!"

There was amazement in his look, but there was pain, too. The traditions of the air service had become his traditions. A breach of the unwritten code by the enemy was almost as painful a matter to him as though it was committed by one of his own comrades. For his spiritual growth had dated from the hour of his enlistment, and that period of life wherein youth absorbs its most vivid and most eradicable impressions, had coincided with the two years he had spent in his new environment.

He understood nothing of the army and its intimate life, of its fierce and wholesome code. He could only wonder at the courage and the endurance of those men on the ground who were cheerful in all circumstances. They amazed and in a sense depressed him. He had been horrified to see snipers bayoneted without mercy, without being given a chance to surrender, not realizing that the sniper is outside all concession and can not claim any of the rough courtesies of war.

He had placed his enemy on a pedestal, and it hurt almost as much to know that the German fell short of his conception as it would have, had one of his own comrades been guilty of an unpermissible act.

Hospitals had been bombed before, but there was a chance that the wandering night-bird had dropped his pills in ignorance of what lay beneath him. Of late, however, hospitals and clearing stations had been attacked with such persistence that there was very little doubt that the enemy was deliberately carrying out a hideous plan.

"Ye don't say?" he repeated, and the girl noticed that his voice was a little husky. "Were ye--" he hesitated.

"I was on convoy duty, fortunately," said the girl, "but that doesn't save you in the daytime, and I have been bombed lots of times, although the red cross on the top of the ambulance is quite clear--isn't it?"

Tam nodded.

"There was no damage?" he asked anxiously.

"Not very much in one way," she said, "he missed the hospital but got the surgery and poor Hector--" She stopped, and he saw tears in her eyes.

"Ye don't tell me?" he asked, startled.

She nodded.

"Puir Hector; well, that's too bad, puir wee little feller!"

"Everybody is awfully upset about it, he was such a cheery little chap. He was killed quite--nastily." She hesitated to give the grisly details, but Tam, who had seen the effect of high explosive bombs, had no difficulty in reconstructing the scene where Hector laid down his life for his adopted country.

When he got back to the aerodrome that night he found that the bombing of hospitals was the subject which was exciting the mess to the exclusion of all others.

"It's positively ghastly that a decent lot of fellows like German airmen can do such diabolical things," said Blackie; "we are so helpless. We can't go along and bomb his collecting stations."

"Fritz's material is deteriorating," said a wing commander; "there's not enough gentlemen to go round. Everybody