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Show fur lightness. "One of her dangling adorers she used to collect them the way a honeysuckle gathers bees. Just remember that, Jill, if she gets tough on you. You tell her that one of her last lovers came in fact I believe I was the last." "Before my father, of course. I'll tell her. Captain Mackey. I'll tell her that her last lover came to call. And I do thank you for concerning yourself with our family problems. I know that my mother would like to thank you, too." , "Just give me a kind thought now and then, will you, Jill? ' I'll need it, where I'm going." He heard Sandra's feet on the stairs and bent down quickly and kissed Jill on the cheek. "That's for my own. daughter," daugh-ter," he said, huskily. Jill stretched herself quickly on tiptcje and drew his head down and kissed him on the mouth. "And that,"- she whispered, "Is for my father! Good-by, Captain Mackey." Sandra came, dragging her bag down, looking small and somehow Julia McFnrlane, whose husband, ltlch-arcl, ltlch-arcl, disappeared in World War I, lr-av-Ins her to ralso two children, Ric and JUl, Is startled whrn 23 years later, during the second war, he returns and tells her he Is using the name o! Captain Mackey. Hlc marries Sandra Calvert, a divorcee whom Kichard knew to ho of bad reputation. She arrives at the farm to live and rccoKiilzcs a picture of Richard Rich-ard as that of Mackey. She nnd Jill quarrel and she demands 510,000. That nlc:ht Captain Mackey arrives, telling Jill, who docs not know who he Is, that he is taking Sandra to Ric. He tells JUl about the daughter he lost and she tells him about her father. Sandra refuses to leave with him. CHAPTER XX "All right," she snapped, harshly, "what's the payofT? There is one, I suppose? You didn't come here out of the goodness of your heart, Rod Mackey!" He looked at Jill and smiled one-sidedly. one-sidedly. "She doesn't trust me!" he drawled. "She thinks there's a catch in it." "Maybe she has had some disillusioning disil-lusioning experiences," Jill said. "It lii , w0M if; coula oe mat sne nasni always known the right sort of people." "Never mind the kind of people I've known!" Sandra cried, hoarsely. hoarse-ly. "At least no tricky heel has ever fooled me yet. Just tell me the gag, that's all. I hate blundering blunder-ing into things. I suppose the Gestapo Ges-tapo has been abroad, and right now is the dramatic moment to produce pro-duce the fatal papers? If you'd only given me one more day. Rod Mackey! One more day, and a very elaborate military reputation might have gone crashing down in some very dirty ruins! But you knew I wouldn't have had time to prove anything, didn't you? You worked fast!" "What on earth is she talking about?" Jill demanded of the captain, cap-tain, her eyes bewildered. "She's displeased with me, Jill," he said, blandly. "I happen to know a few facts about a divorce our Sandra once got in a little smelly town called Piedras Negras, in Mexico. Back in 1927, I think, wasn't it, Sandra? Or was it '29? She bought the divorce cheap, the way you buy things in Mexico, cheap stuff you wouldn't look at in this country, and she didn't look too carefully at the divorce. And of course after she married Lieutenant Colonel Calvert, and then collected considerable alimony from him, and now that she's married into the Mc-l'Vtv Mc-l'Vtv Farlane family, she'd like to forget llle"H)VWl!b and never hear anything about it again." "You mean the divorce wasn't any good?" Jill asked. "But if it wasn't " "He doesn't know a thing about It!" snapped Sandra. "He's bluffing.' bluff-ing.' Trying to force me to do what he wants me to do." "Unfortunately for you, my dear girl, I'm not bluffing. I have, to quote you, the fatal papers. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get started. start-ed. I'm still in the army, I'm still under command. And it's getting late." "All right, I'll go," she said, "but not with you. You can take me as far as a bus station.. Well, you can relax now, JilL I'm taking my obnoxious ob-noxious person out of your house. You won't be degraded any more. You you poor, blind little fooll" She whirled away and went pounding up the stairs. Jill sat down abruptly. "I wish you'd stay until Mother gets here," she said, faintly. "She'll be disappointed at not seeing you. And is it true about Sandra's divorce? di-vorce? That it wasn't legal or something?" "Her name happens not to be Sandra," the Captain said. "Her name was Hattie Schoeffle when she was married to a boy named Bor-dine, Bor-dine, in Kearney, Nebraska. Then she tired of him and eot into bur- cr before we can finish repairs. Depends De-pends on how fast they get the stuff to us. So I divided the gang up as watches for the plane, and the rest of us struck out for town, and just as I was asking that sleepy cop down there on the main corner where a place called Buzzard's Hill was, there were your mother and Mr. Patterson pulling out of a parking park-ing spot, and the cop took me over to the car. Talk about my lucky star! Here I am!" "And we have twelve hours, anyway," any-way," Jill said happily. "Come down when you're ready, Spang. Mother's getting something for you to eat." They sat around the kitchen table ta-ble while Spang devoured scrambled scram-bled eggs and warmed-over biscuit. "If the CO. could see me now," he said, "he'd swear I smashed thai oil line on purpose! He'd give me a long lecture and remind me of those fellows on the other side who bring the big babies in on two engines and one of those on fire, and all that stuff." "You didn't have the English Channel under you," Dave said. "Oh, I'd put up the routine argument. argu-ment. I was trying to save an expensive ex-pensive plane and an expensively trained crew for the air corps. They concede that you're right, usually, but they have to get you on the defensive de-fensive first, just to see if you've got the spirit to defend your decisions, deci-sions, probably. Is there one more drop of coffee in that pot, Mrs. Mc-Farlane?" Mc-Farlane?" "I'll squeeze the handle hard," Julia smiled at him. Then she looked unhappily at Jill. "We're frightfully rude," she said. "Jill, we should have asked Sandra to come down." "Sandra?" Spang repeated sharply. sharp-ly. "Sandra Calvert? She's here?" "She was married to Richard," Julia said. "She came today, or I guess it's yesterday now. Ric was shipped off somewhere and he sent her home to us." Spang was looking at Jill with a troubled face, but Jill had jumped up and stood frozen with consternation. consterna-tion. "Dooley!" she cried. "I was so excited over seeing Spang that I forgot to tell you! Sandra's gone!" "Gone?" Julia repeated incredulously. incredu-lously. "Jill, you weren't you didn't" "I didn't do anything," Jill insisted. insist-ed. "She got rather nasty after you left, and we exchanged a few acid remarks, but nothing was serious. se-rious. Then suddenly this officer came for her. He is a captain at Ridley Field, Dooley, and it seems he knew Sandra in Hawaii and other places. I met him when I went down there. He said he used to know you, Dooley. His name was Captain Roger Mackey." Julia gripped the edge of the table. ta-ble. She would not let her legs crumple under her, she would not let herself cry out. Spang said, "Old Cyanide! So he came here, did he?" "You know him, do you?" Dave asked, moving around the table to draw the younger eyes away from Julia while she got hold of herself. '.'Yes, sir, he was a personnel officer of-ficer at the field. Not very popular with the men, when I was there." "He said at first he was going to take Sandra to Ric," Jill explained, "and then when she refused to go, he sprang some Mexican divorce she'd had on her it seems Ric was her third husband, Dooley and this Captain Mackey said he was quite sure the Mexican divorce wasn't legal and that she wasn't married to Ric at all. She was pretty badly bad-ly frightened, I could see. She tried to keep Captain Mackey quiet with some vague threats or other, but he made her go. I'm so sorry you weren't here, Dooley. He said he was an old beau of yours." She said anxiously, "Aren't you pleased, Dooley? I thought you'd be relieved to find she wasn't here any more." "Yes, I'm pleased," she said, faintly, "but I'm sorry Sandra went away when I was not here at least to say good-by." "Odd that Mackey concerned himself about Ric," Spang said. "May be, of course, that he was somehow involved with the Calvert woman." Dooley Receives A Message "Oh, no!" Jill protested quickly. "He isn't that sort of person. Spang. Not that sort at all. And Sandra hated him. She told me so. She didn't really want to go with him. I got the feeling that she was somehow some-how scared. I think he knew more about her than he told me. He left a message for you, Dooley. He said to tell you that you weren't to worry about Ric, that Ric was going to be all right He talked about his daughter that he lost, and I told him about my father, and then he said I was to tell you that your 'last lover' came, Dooley. He said he was quite sure he was the last before my father, of course. Dooley, Doo-ley, you look funny. Don't you feel well?" "Too many things have happened to Dooley all at once." Dave said. (TO BE CONTINUED) "And that, she whispered, "is for my father." frightened. She said, "Well, good-by, good-by, Jill. I suppose this makes you very happy indeed." "No." Jill shook her head. "No. It doesn't. It makes me a little sick, Sandra, if you want the truth. I don't like you very much, but I hate having it end this way. Good luck, anyway. And good-by again, Captain Mackey." "I may write to you soon I may have something to tell you," Sandra said grimly. Captain Mackey picked up her bag and took her arm brusquely and hurried her out. At the door he turned and looked back at Jill, a long look. Then he flicked a little salute the same gesture that Spang made and went out. Jill sat limp and shaken when the car had roared off down the drive. She wondered what would happen to Sandra now. But women like Sandra always got along. ( They knew their way about. She stopped bothering about Sandra then, for Dave's car had turned in at the gate, and she heard voices two men's voices it couldn't be She flew to the door and across the porch. They were getting out of the car, and Dave grinned at her and said, "Here's a dirty looking tramp we found downtown, Jill. He was asking the police how to get out to Buzzard's Hill, so we just brought him along. Ever see him before?" lesque, and after that into vaudeville, vaude-ville, and a few years ago she showed up in San Antonio and attracted at-tracted a young Major Calvert, who wanted to marry her. So she got this quick divorce in Mexico and didn't bother to discover that the official who signed it hadn't taken his oath of office yet, or remember v that she'd been married as Hattie Schoeffle, and divorced as Sandra Laverne mere legal details but quite important." "I'm glad." Jill said. "It's a nasty thing to say, but I'm glad." "Will you give your mother a message from me, Jill?" "Of course. But they should be here any minute." "A soldier's time Is not his own, you know. But you can tell your mother not to worry about Richard. Rich-ard. I think he'll come through this business all right. I think he has good stuff in him, in fact I'm sure of it. He's his mother's son." An Old Beau Came to Call "I'll tell her. But what shall I tell Mother about you?" He smiled, slowly, and that same look of far places, of things long remembered, re-membered, of bewildered loss came again into his eyes. He reached for Jill's hand and held it. "Just tell her that an old beau came to call," he said, striving i . Reunion With Spang Gordon Jill gave a choking little cry and flung herself at the tall figure in the greasy flying jacket "Spang!" He caught her and held her tight. He kissed her gravely on the mouth. "Pure dumb luck!" he said. "Just a routine flight my navigator naviga-tor had to get some more hours in the air, and right over this town the doggone oil line busted! Glad to see me, Jill?" "Oh, Spang!" She shivered happily. hap-pily. "You did come back!" "How about turning the man loose so he can wash his face?" Dave teased. "You've got grease on your chin and your nose, too, Jill." "I know Spang must be tired and hungry," Julia said. "I'll see what can be found in the kitchen. Get some clean towels, Jill." Jill led Spang upstairs to the bathroom. "Sorry I'm such a mess," he said, pulling off the oil-soaked flight jacket, "but I worked an hour on that line before I gave up and decided de-cided we had to wire for some spare parts lucky they had that little landing field out there, wasn't it?" "Awfully lucky you didn't have some spare parts along, too, wasn't it, Spang? Or you'd have had to flx whatever it was and go on." "Be noon tomorrow or maybe lat- |