Of course the war had to go on despite the quest of the missing Jerry marks. All the next day the Ninth Pursuit went about its chores in the ozone over Europe and were elated with results. Up to four in the afternoon Garrity’s outfit had knocked off three Drachen hot air weenies, a Rumpler, two Fokkers, and an Albatros. Flight leaders reported to Garrity that Hauptmann von Katzenjammer’s circus was still among the missing and that fact had made the going easy.
Still the Old Man could not believe that the Jerry Wing had been cockeyed enough to withdraw the Hauptmann from the sector just when he had been demoralizing Allied winged stock. However, rumors that the Kaiser’s bankroll was getting flatter than a Scotch pancake had been whispered along the front for days. Perhaps the Hauptmann and his outfit had gone on strike.
Phineas Pinkham waited impatiently for the dusk patrol. And Lieutenant Clarence Devine had been gnawing his nails to the quick, although he was not scheduled for the sweep-up hop of the day. He stood near the ammo shack idly smoking a cigarette as Captain Howell, Phineas, and Bump climbed into their respective battle wagons. When the Pinkham Spad with its galloping dominoes insignia kissed the tarmac good-bye, Clarence hopped away in search of the Equipment Officer. Astride a mechanical bug, he rode toward Bar-leDuc muttering: “Smart guy, huh? I’ll show that speckled baboon I can read his mind. Got a landing field, has he? Engine trouble when he wants it, huh? I’ll have him booked for Leavenworth in ten days!”
Now Howell and his flyers spotted scant few of enemy aircraft on their last jaunt of the day. The one two-seater that they did spot was hightailing it toward Potsdam. Phineas thanked the Boche in the rear pit for shooting at them with his Spandaus although a half mile separated the Rumpler from the Spads. Near Bar-le-Duc he threw the Spad into a sort of fit as if a bullet had nudged its vitals. He dropped out of formation and slid down toward the carpet.
“That wise guy!” Howell roared. “If that Boche lead hit him, then traffic whistles in London scare the kangaroos in Australia. He’s faking. Wait until I tell the Major. I’m still boss of this flight. That’s twenty times he’s ducked out on me since— I’ll burn his pants!’1
Lieutenant Pinkham rolled to a neat landing in the pasture outside of Bar-le-Duc, got out of the Spad, and looked about cautiously. Satisfied, he taxied over to the hollow tree and plunged a hand inside.
But suddenly a triumphant, gloating voice rang out.
“Got you, Pinkham! You’re covered ! Ha! Thought you could fool me, did you? I’m
Lieutenant Devine—of the Intelligence Corps. Step back and keep your hands up.”
“Why if it ain’t Clarence,” Phineas said, feigning frustration. “You sure are some detective. Well, you’re the better man an’—well, a Pinkham will admit when he’s licked, haw-w-w-w!”
Lieutenant Devine shoved a hand into the hollow tree—and there came a sound like a sabre tooth tiger’s teeth banging together. Clarence leaped off the ground and hollered like a wolf with a toothache.
“Ha-a-a-alp! Somethin’—bit—me! Ha-a-alp! It won’t let go! Ow-w-w-w-w-w! Halp!”
Phineas saluted jauntily. “Good evenin’. I bet you will get awful tired of that tree durin’ the night, Clarence, ol’ thing. But don’t feel too bad; lots of bums have tried to match wits with a Pinkham—to their sorrow, haw-w-w-w! If you are Sherlock Holmes, I can milk turtles!”
Having rid himself of a nuisance, Phineas climbed into his sky wagon and pointed its prop boss toward Souilly as soon as he had lifted it out of the clutches of the law of gravity. The job of picking out a landmark near the old chateau taxed the navigating acumen of the miracle man of the Ninth. But he finally sighted an adjacent cow pasture. Then after landing Phineas walked cautiously to the location of his cache and plunged a hand into the hole in the sycamore tree where he had deposited the Heinie legal tender. He pulled out something that certainly was not a trench coat. The fabric was much too smooth to the touch and it seemed to have no end—like colored handkerchiefs being hauled out of a magician’s sleeve. There were ropes tied to it and when the Boonetown sleight of hand performer had finally brought all of it to light, he knew that he was looking at a parachute.
“Huh,” he grunted, “a Boche has dropped in an’ I ain’t got a cake baked. What is he after, huh? What was it I heard about Heinie Staffels not getting paid and threatening to quit the guerre? Hm-m-m—let’s see now. Haw-w-w-w, that is what the spy-droppin’ was for. To get some marks as they have heard about old Bouillon, too. Now if Clarence was watchin’ me, I am sure McWhinney is not blindfolded, either. It is a tough game bein’ a financier. I bet I’ll be jumped on before I get close to that old Frog.”
The errant flyer bundled up the chute, crammed it back into the tree, and moved away. Intuition hit him and he saw a way out. A parachute had come down—but nobody had made one that could take off, he ruminated. A Boche was looking for a chance to get off Allied soil and he must be somewhere about. It was now quite dark and Yankee bat flyers were up doing their stuff. As Phineas retired to a thicket nearby, a searchlight from the front began to sweep the nocturnal ozone with a spear of artificial light. And the sound of bursting shrapnel reached the Pinkham ears while he was hacking at shrubbery with a big jack-knife.
In ambush near the chateau Colonel McWhinney and two M.P.’s were licking their chops. “That was Pinkham, I’ll bet my pants,” the brass hat clipped. “We’ll let him get into the chateau—and then hop him! We’ll get him so cold he’ll have chilblains! Fool with me, will he?”
BETWEEN the chateau and the spot where
Phineas was exercising skulduggery a Kraut was lurking. He, too, had heard the Spad and had poked his bullet-like head out from under cover to watch its fiery exhaust settle closer and closer to the ground. Near his elbow rested a big bundle of Jerry marks. And back in the chateau an ancient Frog was bound and gagged, his beard tied to a chair leg.
“Gott sie danke,” the Kraut gutturaled. “Oudt mit der Spadt I vill go.” He began to crawl forward cautiously.
Phineas was standing on the Spad stirrup placing something in the pit. Once he yelped and put his thumb into his mouth and bit down hard. Then he jumped down and walked away from the battle wagon. Its prop idled lazily as Lieutenant Pinkham sauntered aimlessly toward the road where a U.S. boiler still lay in a ditch quite defunct. No sooner had he climbed the fence when K-4, Potsdam snooper, reached the Yankee bus and hurriedly tied a package to a strut. Then the Junker scrambled aboard and settled heavily into the pit.
“Ow-w-w-w-w-w! Gott! Himmel!
Donnervetter!”
Phineas ran back toward the Spad as the howls assailed the air. “Haw-w-w-w-w-w!” he guffawed. “Blackthorn is the spikiest stuff that grows. I bet he’s stuck up worse than an Astorbilt. Boys, have I got intuition like dames!”
Colonel McWhinney yipped: “Come on! Somebody beat us to it. They’ve nabbed Pinkham. Come on, men. Maybe Devine followed him. Hurry up and get into that car, you dumb—!”
K-4, jabbed in a dozen spots on his empennage, tumbled out of the Spad and hopped around in circles. His painful ululations could be heard halfway to Chaumont.
“Wee gates!” Phineas chortled. “How ist der tail assembly, eh? Don’t make a move, Heinie, or idt giffs der—” He brandished a fence stake and since K-4 could not stop moving, Phineas caressed his noggin. The Prussian folded up like a campstool and the Boonetown conniver promptly sat on him. He was nonchalantly smoking a cigarette when McWhinney and his A.E.F. cops came over the rise from the sunken road puffing like wheezy engines.
“What kept you?” Phineas inquired with a grin. “Where have all you big policemen been while this Kraut was stealing the old Frog’s marks? They are right on the wing there. It looks like it always takes a Pinkham to get Chaumont out of a mess.”
“Well—why—you’ve got a spy there!” McWhinney whinnied.
“It ain’t no boy scout,” Phineas countered. “Load him into that car an’ take the marks, Colonel. You can see that them doughs who escaped that night must’ve come back when we was gone an’ got the marks to the Frog. An’ then the Heinie come along an’ lifted ‘em along with a lot more. I bet there’s a hundred thousand marks in that package. Well, let’s get goin’. We got to see what happpened to Bouillon, monsoors.”
Crash on Delivery Chapter 9
Three hours later a mud-bespattered machine lurched into the drome of the Ninth Pursuit Squadron and pulled up in front of headquarters. Old Man Garrity and Captain Howell were standing on the tarmac looking up at a Spad that had been circling overhead for fully fifteen minutes. Sergeant Casey kept ackemmas burning petrol flares on the ground while he jumped up and down and waved his fist at what they were sure was the Pinkham Spad.
“Why don’t the big lug land, huh? Come down, you bat-eared bum, or we’ll let you feel your way in from memory. What ails that fathead?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out for years!” the Old Man snorted. Turning, he legged it to where five men were unloading themselves from the khaki-hued jilopi. They were Colonel McWhinney, a gesticulating old Frog with a white beard, a Boche spy, and two M.P.’s. The Spad now nosed in for a landing, nearly sideswiped two trees, then rolled the length of a snaky rope of flare fire.
“One of my ailerons was jammed,” he yipped, covering up the fact that he wanted to be sure McWhinney had arrived before he landed. “An’ I’ll bet you wanted to hog all the credit for capturing that Boche, huh, Colonel? Haw-w-w-w! Well, here I am with the marks.” And he tossed the bundle of Boche legal tender at Garrity’s feet and struck a defiant pose.
“Uh—er—yes, Major, he caught the Boche,” the brass hat gulped. “I—er—can’t seem to figure it out—how he knew the man was there—er—put thorns in the Spad and—er let’s go inside and think things out.”
“Oh, it’s simple,” Phineas said airily. “Even to the Intelligence Corps. But they nearly messed up everything. Clarence Devine chasin’ me like that, huh! I had to—er—I was on the spy’s trail ever since that night—er—I got the cow—the cow got in front of the Colonel’s buggy. I says to myself, what would I do if I was a spy an’ nobody could get to me to pick me up? So I did what I thought I would do if I was K-4. Why, I would look for an Allied crate. That’s what the Boche spy did, and I left the Spad where he could take it— even left the prop turnin’ over for him. K-4 made a mistake, though, haw-w-w-w! He should have looked the gift horse in the mouth, as it was lined with them spiky—”
Colonel McWhinney shook his head and muttered: “Somebody get me a drink.”
“Yeah,” Phineas went on, chuckling, “Clarence was an awful nuisance and I had to put him where he would be hors de combat. Babette has rats in her cellar.”
“Now whatinell has that got to do with gettin’ this Boche?” Garrity hollered, jumping up and down with exasperation. “Rats—”
“They catch ‘em with traps big enough to hold a woodchuck,” Phineas replied blandly. “I put one in a hollow tree where Clarence thought I’d hid the marks I—the marks they said I stole. Huh, accusin’ me of—Colonel, you did not do so good, either. You lost those doughs an’ the swag, an’ you was hidin’ out in the woods near the chateau while a Kraut was assaultin’ an’ robbin’ a Frog taxpayer. Say, what is it you have to know to be in the Intelligence? Haw-w-w-w!”
“I will not stay here to be insulted!” the brass hat spouted indignantly. “No, I won’t.”
“Well, who’s holdin’ you down?” the professor of skulduggery, ledgerdemain, prestidigitation, and just plain practical joking, inquired, quite sure of his ground. “And you’d better send somebody out to get Clarence toot sweet, as he must be cramped where he is, Major. I bet you want to know why I knew he was in the A.E.F. police force, too, huh? Well, it was because he looked so dumb. Also when he got into a Spad he wiped off the bucket seat first. And once I saw him try to spin it like it was a swivel chair. Haw-ww! What a guerre!”
“I weel see ze preseedant of all ze Franch!” old Jacques Bouillon sputtered. “I know ze rights. Remembair Lafayette et Jean d’Arc. Ze satees-facse-on from Robespierre!”
“He forgot Madame DuBarry,” Phineas grinned. “He’s got cuckoos in his belfry. I would let him go, if I was you bums—er, officers—as if he takes things to court, Chaumont will find out the things that I am willing to overlook if I am not persecuted any longer, haw-w-w! Cheer up, Colonel, as you will maybe make your mark some day. Boys, I am full of ‘em, see swar, huh?”
“Let me out of here!” Colonel McWhinney snorted. “Let me through there, gentlemen!”
“But don’t forget Clarence,” Phineas trilled.