Air Stories, April 1936 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BRING ’EM BACK ALIVE! old boy, being a Field Marshal or some- thing by trade, has never seen one before, *cause he’s always left the management of details to someone else, but he blinks a bit, turns over the pages, and gathers that somebody has just shoved the old lady’s rent up two and sixpence. Half the street has gathered round by now and they all have the same grouse. ‘It’s since the new agent came’ they tell him. ‘‘ The old earl pricks up his ears at this. ‘I ordered no rents to be raised !’ he says. He gets back into his fine motor car and orders the chauffeur to drive straight to the agent’s office. ‘ Whad you-mean P ’ he says sternly to the agent, waving in his face as many rent-books as he can conveniently handle. ‘ You are dismissed from my _ service, sir—for ever!’ And he drops all the rent-books and points to the door. ‘* And that was the end of a lucrative career for a certain old twister named Mulford. Now this fellow Mulford had a son es es who rose to the rank of under- officer at the School of Combat at Flod- den,’’ I finished for him. ‘‘I see. And Mulford’s son would have no cause to love the offspring of the old boy who had sacked his father. Yes, I see. But are you sure the name was Mulford, Teddy ? ”’ ‘* Mulford, or Metford, or Mitford, or something.’’ ‘Do you think, Teddy, it might have been ‘Moldred’?’’ ‘‘Moldred? Moldred? Yes, so it was, now I come to think of it. Why? D’you know him yourself ? ”’ ‘* He’s a fellow I’ve met somewhere,”’ I said casually. I left Teddy soon after that, and, walk- ing through the streets to the place where the Crossley tender would be waiting, I thought a lot about Charles Edward, and in going over in my mind that astounding victory of his that morning, I had a sudden brilliant idea. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared up at the new moon. ‘*Jove! I’ve got it!’’ I exclaimed to the night at large, ‘‘ Charles Edward ! Your patent method of Hun destruction is no longer a secret ; I’ve guessed it | ”’ CHAPTER IV : A Saxon is Surprised EXT morning, meeting Westring- ham outside the Armoury, I told him so. ‘¢ Oh,’’ said Charles Edward, grinning. . ‘* And what is it e ”’ Other pilots were calling at the Armoury for this thing or that for their Vickers, so I lowered my voice and said what I had in mind in a whisper. ‘‘ That’s the right idea, anyway,’’ he agreed. ‘‘Care to come and see the system work? I’ve got a photography job assigned to me. Bound to flush some Huns on the way back. Come along.’’ ‘« There’s only one thing,’’ he added as we made our way over to the hangars. ‘* And I want you to promise me.”’ ‘* What’s that ? ’”’ ‘* If you see me apparently a goner, spinning down out of a fight with my gun jammed, don’t shoot the Hun off my tail.’’ ‘¢ Why the deuce not ? ”’ ‘¢ Cause that’s where I want him. See? ”’ HAT expedition of ours over the line proved to be the very devil of a show. I soon forgot all about Charles Edward’s patent ideas. So did he, probably. The difficulty was to bring ourselves back alive. The point is that in returning after carrying out the photography job we ran into a dog-fight, four Camels defending an R.E.8 ‘‘art-obs.’’ machine against the murderous intentions of seven Fokkers and a Pfalz scout. In the air-war no fight is a private fight, and we had straightaway changed our course. From a distance the affair looked like a cloud of mosquitoes doing their summer evening exercises beneath the trees. Only the continuous crackle of machine-gun fire indicated that Death was stalking the skies. Streaking forward at full throttle we saw a green-striped Fokker thread itself on to a punishing stream of fire from the gun of the sportsman in the back seat of the R.E.8 and go down streaming a dark 299 LA@OO SJ (C(C)