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Show he remarked, "over here in Asia we have a different attitude. It's not who's chivvying the lorries over the Burma Road but how many of them get there. Cheerio!" Gail Farwood's device to make the self-centered Joe's acquaintance and quickly establish him as the protector of beauty in distress was a simple one. She merely screamed in the corridor outside the open door of her room, not far removed from his. The man who was apparently ap-parently trying to make off with her handbag was probably well paid even for the sock on the jaw Joe gave him before he could get away. And Joe, too, was well paid, not so much by the thanks she showered upon him as by her gushing praises of his courage back in New York. Miss Farwood had read her magazine carefully; she knew every detail of the Spin-aldi Spin-aldi brothers story. "What daring, what courage, what initiative!" she exclaimed. "No wonder thev chose vou to Tiilnt the . s " - v n . 1 i - , - -t .-. '-:') : t ; A I . ' A beautiful girl, moonlight on the romantic Burma Read- but the girl said "No!" 'at the peak of a wave of personal 4 publicity incident to his Spinaldi brothers exploit, in the dangerous nine-thousand-mile trek from his native city to Chungking, this New York taxi driver had seen nothing beyond continued opportunity to keep himself in the limelight. He knew little of the plight of sick and dying Chinese in need of hospital hos-pital supplies. Even as Rangoon faded in the distance and actual "rolling" on the Burma Road became be-came an imminent actuality, Joe Tracey would probably have said that this was "just another job." There was more of that sweet publicity pub-licity to be won and a little money to be earned. For reasons of his own, the minute Gail Farwood had announced an-nounced Chungking as her destina tion, Joe had wanted this pretty girl as his passenger. He began his attentions before the railway journey jour-ney to Lashio was fairly begun. His rough advances were adroitly evaded. Before they left the railhead, rail-head, he stormed Gail's room at the guest house. He'd brought a bottle of very special Chinese wine. "They drink it at all their weddings," wed-dings," he explained. "... a romance ro-mance in every bottle and never a hangover!" Gail remained polite, aloof. Jo was angry. A loud crash outsida saved the situation. "I'll be back," he shouted as he rushed out the door. In the c'ompound Joe found one of his trucks careening crazily around with scores of natives screaming frantically as they ran for cover. At the wheel was Wing, a little weazened member of Joe's crew, employed as a driver, who was trying to make up his de-ficiences de-ficiences before they could be discovered dis-covered by his boss. Wing had offended of-fended before but there was something about him, perhaps the loyalty and devotion which seemed fairly to bubble from his eyes, that always called for forgiveness. "Hey! Stop that truck! Turn the ignition switch!" Joe shouted, but Wing just didn't know and the truck stopped only when it crashed into a thick stone wall. Joe worked far into the night to repair the damaged machine; tlK' caravan was leaving in the morning. morn-ing. Always he kept thinking or Gail, but it wasn't until dawn was almost breaking that he got bacX to her room. Then his fatigue was stronger than his earlier anger and determination. He couldn't resist re-sist this strange girl's attentions when she placed a pillow from her own bed behind his head in the low rattan into which he had collapsed. col-lapsed. He still talked about the Chinese wine of romance but Gail countered coun-tered with praise of his extraordinary extraordin-ary abilities. She left him asleep as she slipped out into the dawn to carry some instructions Joe had told her he had forgotten to relay. Something new and strangely tender seemed to creep into their relationship as Joe and Gail rolled on in silence, over the narrow, twisting Burma Road, when they had left Lashio behind. "What's givin' you the droops?" A YANK oh the Adapted from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture by RANDALL M. WHITE CAST OF CHARACTERS Gail Farwood . . . . . Laraine Day Joe Tracey ...... Barry Nelson Tom Farwood, . . , , Stuart Crawford Kim How ...... Keye Luke Wing ....... Sen Yung Dr. Franklin Ling . . . Phillin-Ahn Radio Announcer . . . Knox Manning Rangoon Aide de Camp . . Matthew Boulton Guerilla Leader ... James Leong Old Woman Mrs. Poo Sai Chapter On "For Mistaire Tracey the best!" The clerk at the Mandarin Hotel in Rangoon, capital of ancient Burma through which sadly be-leagured be-leagured China's heart beats pitifully piti-fully for the outside world to see, was no more obsequious than the retinue of Orientals who stood by in awe as "Mistaire" Joe Tracey signed the register . . . and no more obsequious than scores of others had been at the swaggering, cock-sure manner of this amazing young man all the way from the East Side of New York to this East Side of the World as he barged along a "Yank" headed for the Burma Road and new lands to conquer. The arriving guest in tropical and the traditional pith helmet of the story books looked "very much the world traveler but he was a traveler- whose culture had been broadened but little. His hundreds in, boys," he called out breezily in answer an-swer to a knock on his door. The tall, gaunt, rather seedy -looking Englishman who entered en-tered introduced himself him-self with just about enough fervor to lift the limp, tired mustache mus-tache which quivered on his drooping lip. "Bedlington, of the Burma Blade Tribune," Tri-bune," he announced. "Where's the rest of you?" Joe blurted out i n disappointment. "They told me 'the press' was coming up." " am the press," Bedlington replied. "What kind of shuffle shuf-fle is this?" Joe exclaimed ex-claimed in disbelief. "Don't tell me they didn't know I was caravan." Then she cast the bait. "Perhaps I'll see you in Chungking," she remarked. re-marked. "Yeah? What makes a girl like you go kiting off to a burg like Chungking?" was the kind of response re-sponse she had hoped for. It allowed al-lowed her to tell "her story." That she was going to Chungking Chung-king to join a Chinese girl friend she had met in school, and who was doing war relief work there, was pure invention. The truth she didn't- declare was that that very afternoon a visa to travel in China had been denied her, her passport privileges in Rangoon had been cancelled, and she had been ordered or-dered to sail from the port within forty-eight hours ! of thousands of miles had been done in a taxi in the teeming streets of Greater New York a taxi which he himself had tooled with that skill, dexterity, and daring dar-ing which are a never-ending source of amazement to those from any place else on earth who observe ob-serve them for the first time. "When the reporters get here, send them right up," the newcomer new-comer said importantly as he turned turn-ed from the desk. "Yes," Mr. Tracey," the middle-aged middle-aged woman clerk replied and made bold to add: "You are much more handsome than your pictures, pic-tures, Mr. Tracey!" She had touched the mainspring of his motivating mechanism. "Oh, you think so?" he said with evident pleasure, ". . . you've read about me?" "But, most certainly, Mr. Tracey ... I get all the American mag-'azines," mag-'azines," was the gushing reply. Nothing in Joe Tracey's life had taught him to be gentle . . . quiet. Not his childhood in the tenement district of New York, the city of his birth which hangs up a prize for each of her sons, be he rich . or poor but a prize to be won only through striving and battle. And certainly not his later vocation of New York taxi driver in which twenty-five thousand scheming, resourceful re-sourceful street-hawks fight each other for a meagre existence. So Joe Tracey was excusably loud in manner and in voice. "Who's that Stanley or Living-' Living-' stone?" a pretty, athletic girl T asked of the clerk when Tracey, his luggage and his retinue had ceased to clutter up the lobby. The query Was bitter and at that particular par-ticular moment Gail Farwood had ample cause to be bitter. "A countryman of yours," the clerk replied. "You have not read .about him?" "I haven't read anything but ': steamship folders all day," the girl answered and the magazine Mme. Vacheron obligingly spread open ' before her proved of dramatic in terest. "So he's going to Chungking?" she said half-aloud and then, to herself: "I wonder if I might be lucky?" The press Mr. Tracey expected proved very disappointing. "Come Icomin' why, the papers in the States . . ." "If you don't mind, Stacey," Bedlington iterrupted. "Tracey with an 'E,' " Joe corrected cor-rected sharply. "Quite so, then," Bedlington continued con-tinued calmly. ". . . what about your caravan twelve goods-vans, isn't it?" "Look, Bedlington," Joe returned with a lack of understanding born of his limited educational background, "I don't want-to tell you your business . . . but what the people want to read about is the personal angle the old 'human interest' in-terest' stuff so I'll just sketch in the background for you: There were seventeen thousand police, sleepless and alert, waiting for the dragnet to haul in the Spinaldi brothers ..." This Yank had come to the Burma Bur-ma Road to save thousands of sick and dying Chinese. What he wanted the world to know, once again there in far-off Rangoon, was what a "big shot" he had proved himself on the sidewalks of New York! The story he wanted to tell was the one Gail Farwood had just finished reading in the magazine downstairs. It was true, single handed and alone, with amazing personal courage, cour-age, Joe Tracey had done something some-thing seventeen thousand New York City policemen had been unable un-able to do. He had caught the dangerous gangsters Spinaldi brothers, bro-thers, their fingers dripping with the blood of three murder victims, trussed them up with tire chains, thrown them into his taxi, and delivered them to justice! What Bedlington, of the Burma Blade Tribune, thought was of greater importance was that this Tracey, of dauntless personal courage, had been engaged by an outstanding Chinese War Relief Society in the United States to battle twelve truckloads of hospital supplies over the Burma Road to Chungking. Kim How, young Chinese graduate gradu-ate of an American university, who had been sent along to help, proved a better source for the information then Rangoon newsmen wanted. As he left the hotel suite, something Bedlington said started Joe Spell-it-with-an-E Tracey thinking along brand new lines. "You see. Tracev." It was Kim How's ob to engage native drivers for eleven of the twelve trucks of the caravan. He did it quickly. They were the best obtainable but some of them performed per-formed as though they had never before seen a motor truck. "We're ready to roll," announced Joe but Kim had to tell him that gasoline ordered into Rangoon had been commandeered by the military. mili-tary. It was then the New York truck driver's initiative, the "guts" that had enabled him to take the gangster gang-ster Spinaldi brothers single-handed, paid its first dividend. Lashio, railroad point beyond Rangoon, was on their route. "Hustle "Hus-tle that load off those flat cars," the brassy New Yorker bellowed to his crew in the dead of night down at the yards and he asked no one's permission. When the train pulled out twelve loaded mercy trucks on flat cars headed for Chungking via the Burma Road, were weirdly silhouetted silhouet-ted against the dreary night sky as it rolled along. And Gail Farwood was concealed in the monster truck Joe personally personal-ly had elected to drive. She had allowed herself to be "persuaded" that this means of travel was better than the airplane flight she had told her protector she had arranged ar-ranged to make. Pennies, nickels, and dimes contributed con-tributed by Chinese school children, waiters, laundrymen, and house-boys house-boys all over the United States had financed the caravan Joe had been chosen to tiilot- Yet. caueht ' asiveu jue une morning wnen a calm, peaceful sun, bouncing through magnificent mountain scenery, scen-ery, seemed to call for other feelings. feel-ings. "I'm going to tell you . . . later,'-' was Gail's evasive answer. "It takes courage . . . and just now I haven't got it!" ... "Well, then, maybe I'll talk--this takes courage too," her cor panion replied haltingly, in a toe, which, perhaps, he had never usel before in all his life. "Back in Nev. York every night I'm hackin' lato I get at least one couple that want to be driven slow around Central Park. Then they forget I'm in the cab. They're all alone. They don't know I'm alive . . . ridin', thinkin', too. Yeah, mostly I think it would be a lot easier for me piloting them lovey-doves if I could figure on a girl of my own being there every night when I check in my fares to, sort of . . . put a pillow back of my head. If I could see that ahead of me . . . I'd turn this heap right around and head for City Hall ... by way of Central Park!" He stopped breathlessly and looked at the lovely girl beside him. Her eyes were filled with tears! "What is Gail's heart-breaking secret read the next installment. in-stallment. Printed In V. 8. A. CoDVTleht 1942 bv T.now'. Tnft. |