Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

CHAPTER VI

1

SOMEWHERE ALONG the coast of California twelve great bombing planes sat white and impressive, lined up in a geometrical row. Far down the flat cleared surface of the landing field a group of men in khaki stood watching. One of the men placed a pair of binoculars to his eyes, adjusted the focus, then stepped from the group and signaled. A flight commander leaned from one of the flying fortresses and waved his hand.

The dozen giant planes came to life with a roar. Moving with the slow stateliness of imaginative birds from the Arabian Nights, they wheeled across the field, seemed to pause even as they gathered speed, and suddenly left the ground for the air.

There they were more at home. Traveling with the dizzy speed of a hurricane, they fell into the arrow formation of herons in flight. Looking down, the flight commander saw ten acres of parked automobiles blur white with upturned faces watching the bombers grow small against the sky.

On the edge of the parked cars bordering the landing field a man and a girl sat in a sixteen-cylinder convertible Cadillac coupé. The top was down, although the afternoon was unseasonably cool. Perched on the back of the seat, the girl watched the vanishing planes through a pair of dark sun glasses.

“What do they do now, Francis? You know all about such things.” The girl spoke with the delectable trill of an enthusiastic debutante.

The man behind the wheel of the car sat silent, using his hand to shield his eyes from the glare. His lack of attention displeased his companion. She drew her fur coat closer about her in a gesture which raised her silken skirt a few inches higher, and repeated her question. “What do they do now, Francis?”

The man lowered his hand and turned toward her when she pressed against his shoulder with the round smoothness of her knee.

“Why don’t you watch them, Tina darling?”

“They’re getting so far away that I can’t see.”

“They’ll come back again.” He pointed to the left. “That’s their target over there. They’re going to bomb that house on the top of the hill.” His eyes caught the warmth of flesh above the tops of her stockings. “You’re lovely, Tina,” he said, and turned away.

From the west the bombers zoomed in like fleeting black spots out of the setting sun. A sigh went up from the crowd as the arrow formation broke and straightened into a single line. Silence followed, gripping the earth. The wings of the leader had turned at an angle. Tons of man-made metal were plummeting earthward. When it seemed that nothing could save it, the great mass flattened out and became an airship again, raining death from the sky.

Noise beat in from the hills as one by one the twelve planes played their game of follow-the-leader. The ground erupted beneath them, shattering the day with the burst of high explosives, the rending of wood which had been a dwelling, the tossing of timbers on high. When the last of the bombs had found its mark the quiet was so great that the noise of whirring propellers seemed lost in the turbid air. Slowly the smoke on the hilltop drifted away, but the eyes of the people kept watching, searching for a house forever gone.

“I’m glad those planes are ours,” said the man in the Cadillac coupé. “Every hit a direct one! I’d hate like the devil to have them flying over me in a war—unless they were on my side.”

Beside him, the girl shivered slightly. “How do they do it, Francis—hit such a small mark every time from way up in the air?”

“Bombing sights,” he told her, patronizingly proud of his knowledge. “They’re the best in the world—and going to be even better, I’m told. Gilbert Tredwill, the Hartford engineer who invented them, is working on a new one now. We have to watch our step with everybody else in the world at war.”

“Don’t talk about it.” She took off her sun glasses and her dark eyes looked troubled. “I just can’t bear to think that if we get dragged in you’ll be one of the first to go.”

He laughed and patted her ankle affectionately, “You’re sweet, Tina. Going to war is a chance that all of us take in the Flying Corps.” He raised himself half up in the seat, and for an instant buried his nose in the large bunch of violets pinned to her breast. “You know,” he continued seriously, “if I ever do have to go to war, whenever I smell violets I’ll think of you.”

The twelve bombers were wheeling down to earth in the light of the setting sun. The whiteness of their wings suddenly turned scarlet with a strange unearthly glow.

“Look, Francis.” Tina’s voice was husky. “Look at those planes. They’re covered with blood right now!”

2

Somewhere off the coast of New England seventeen men were bravely awaiting death on the bottom of the sea.

“How long now, Skipper?” asked the second in command. His question reverberated from the metal shell which formed their prison, but his voice was calm and devoid of fear.

A streak of light showed ghostlike through blackness as the commanding officer moved his luminous wrist watch and turned up the back of his hand.

“It’s now quarter past four in the morning.” His laugh boomed out startlingly. “You asked me that same question, Lieutenant, exactly six minutes ago.”

“Why not?” said the Lieutenant. “There isn’t anything else to do.”

Voices began to fill the darkness with hollow raillery: —

“Whatchu kickin’ about, Lieutenant? Submarine woik’s the nuts. Nuttin’ to do but set on our bottoms ‘n’ draw extra pay!”

“Join the Navy and see the world! Jeses!”

“Yeah. Me old lady got me in this because she said them airyplanes was fallin’ all th’ time. She’s sure got me down about as far as I can go.”

“Pipe down, you guys! You’re using up the air!”

“That’s a laugh. What air?”

“You tell ’em, Sandy. It smells like the