Forty-eight hours after Phineas Pinkham had returned from his momentous bat patrol adventure, a new flyer reported for duty at the drome of the Ninth Pursuit Squadron. He announced to Major Rufus Garrity that Lieutenant Clarence Devine was reporting for duty. A few moments after that formality was dispensed with, the C.O. brought the newcomer to the mess to introduce him around. When he shoved out his hand toward Phineas his overly handsome pan lighted up like that of a cat that spots a mouse slowed up by arthritis. But the smile did not fool Phineas one iota. He held out his own hand and Devine gripped it. The next second the newcomer started to yowl and began to imitate a man who has pulled on a pair of pants filled with angry hornets.
“Haw-w-w-w-w!” Phineas erupted. “It’s only a buzzer, Clarence. Sit down an’ manjay. That’s Frog language for puttin’ on the nose bag.”
“I don’t like your face, Pinkham!” Clarence Devine snorted. “I don’t like anything about you.”
“Well, I ain’t exactly been standin’ here plannin’ to kiss you, either,” the scion of the Pinkhams retorted. “Huh, you ain’t got no sense of humor, Clarence.”
“That’s enough out of you!” Garrity roared at him. “Lieutenant, pay no attention to Pinkham. You’re here to fly—”
“If you can make a pilot out of that nasturtium,” Phineas sneered elaborately, “then you could knit a doily with barbed-wire an’ a couple of crowbars. Haw-w-w-w!”
Thereupon, Clarence and Phineas reached for each other, and it took the combined efforts of Captain Howell, Lieutenant Gillis, and a few other pilots, to keep the two from a fist fest. Finally, the wonder man from Iowa stepped toward the door, “Won’t let us fight, huh? It’s gittin’ to be a sissy squadron, if you ask me. I’ll see you around, though, won’t I, Clarence?” he called back over his shoulder. “You’re simpully gor-r-rge-eous. Adoo for now.”
Lieutenant Pinkham then went to his Nisson hut to think things over. He knew as well as he knew his mother’s first name that Clarence Devine had been sent to Bar-le-Duc by the Intelligence Corps. Clarence would keep his eyes on Lieutenant Pinkham on the ground and in the air. This was a pretty pickle, Phineas decided, what with an old Frog citizen near Souilly ready to pay plenty of francs for a bundle of marks.
The Boonetown magician taxed his mental equipment to the limit and finally gleaned an idea from its whirring mechanism. Inside of half an hour he was on a motorcycle en route to Bar-leDuc. When he arrived in the Frog metropolis, he parked the machine in an areaway and waited in the dark. Ten minutes later the squadron car pulled up in front of an estaminet that was well patronized by members of the Ninth. Out of the car tumbled three pilots, one of them Clarence Devine. Phineas strolled out into the light and, whistling a popular air, minced toward the domicile of his light of love, Babette.
Once closeted with his fair lady, Phineas asked if rats had been prevalent in her cellar of late. Babette admitted that they had.
“Oui, Pheenyas, beegair an’ beegair zey get lak les chats. Zey chase ze what you call tommychat out from ze maison. I have eet ze very beeg strong traps, aussi.”
“That is all I want to know, cherry,” Phineas grinned, giving her a bunny hug. “I want to borrow one of ze rat traps, comprenny? That is trez good, Babette,” he said as she handed him the spring steel device. “And now if voose avez ze grub, I weel manjay. See swar at the mess I lost ze appetite, oui.”
An hour later Phineas emerged from Babette’s house. Twenty minutes after that Clarence and a couple of M.P.’s searched the place. Lieutenant Devine burst forth with a scratched prop boss and a lump on his noggin as big as a croquet ball. But he had no other marks. Meanwhile Phineas Pinkham was out beyond Bar-le-Duc in a sheep pasture that he had often used as an emergency landing field. He was busily occupied near a hollow tree for fully fifteen minutes.
Then on the way back to the drome he passed the squadron car which was standing beside the road with a flat tire.
“Bong sour, boys!” Phineas tossed out cheerily in passing. “How was Babette’s throwing arm, huh, Clarence? Two flat tires!”
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror Stories and Radio Dramas