New Britain herald., 1918-10-16

l +h't
 
 | helped to quiet my overWrought
 nerves. But I found to my dismay,
 remembering the injunction of the
 messa ge, "one to five" that she
 couldn't take me to the flying field for 1 another hour, her duties keeping her
 at her post until that time. However, ] there was nothing for me to do but 1 to control my impatience, for l could
 not go without her, so I sat quietly
 upon the chair in corner of the | crowded little room which she had
 given me, fighting the impulse to cry 1 aloud my nervous dread.
 It lacked several minutes of the
 hour Mrs. Durkee had named as her
 release when I felt unable to sit quiet 1 ly longer, and with murmured word | to Mrs. Durkee I went outside the 1 little building and stood watching the l panorama of the activity before me. Far down the main street of the camp there came a rushing taxi at 1 greater speed than the others I had i seen, on the seat beside the chauffeur the inevitable M. P, without whom , no vehicle traVerses a military camp, and seated in it I recognized with a thrill of terrified astonishment the
 faces of Edith Fairfax and Harry Underwood.
 A Strange Happening. Both recognized me at the same moment, but while on Harry Under woods face there was written startled ! amazement I saw in the momentary flashing past of Edith FairfaX's visage that she had expected to see me. She 1 leaned out of the taxi, calling some 1 ~1a A Azl- and then--they had turned the corner and had gone.
 I set it down to my infamed 1 imagination, but it seemed to me that
 the advent of their taxi was the signal for the staging of some unusual hap pening Men on motorcycles, evidently
 messengers were rushing here and 1 there, and soon, from the direction the taxi had gone an officers car with a uniformed officer evidently of high rank, two other uniformed men and Harry Underwood, sitting erect, | with his usually ruddy face pallid as death, came at terrific speed. Other cars followed, each with stern-faced
 men inside, and then there was the clang of a bell, and an ambulance dashed past with it's white uniformed
 surgeons ready for their work.
 "Oh, there must be an accident"
 little Mrs. Durkee exclaimed at my elbow, "or perhaps somebody has gone up without permission--the
 younger cadets do that sometimes,
 and then they get the ambulances
 right near the observing officers so
 they can be sent to any direction in stantly. I'm free now. Let's walk over. I'm sorry I couldn't have been free to see the first of them go up.
 But we may be in time for some of
 them yet.'
 In the Ccntre-Underwood gave an anxious thought to Edith Fairfax wondering what she
 could wish with me, but l dared not delay another moment. Something told me that the answer to my prob lem lay in the field to which we were walking. I hurried Mrs. Durkee until
 the plump little woman was breath less.
 "Oh, look, Madger she panted as we came close to the hangars, "Oh, how terrible! What can have hap pened?" The officers machine we had seen had stopped in front of the hangar nearest to us, and two soldiers were
 dragging into it a stocky man who
 
 his strength. But as they finally 1 overpowered him and bundled him in
 to the car he evidently saw Harry ! Underwood for the first time. His re-
 sistancc ceased, he went limp in the l hands of the men holding him. Then l
 with an unexpected spring he leaped i straight for MT. UnderWood's face and |
 throat, and it took the combined
 efforts of three men to drag him off. |
 The officer in charge gave a num- !
 Der of hurried commands to several 1 subordinates and then the car moved l
 past us. Harry Underwood was calm i ly wipng the blood from his face and | throat, but I could see that only his | iron will kept him erect in his place. | And then he caught sight of me, | and into his face there came Q look 1 which I shall never forget until I | have no longer memory, a look that | will haunt my dreams. It was the 1 expression of a man, who, mounting | the scaffold, sees before him the vic- | tim of his crime.