“Why not?” asked Stacey coolly, lighting a cigarette.
“Well,” stammered the other, “I—of course we’ll take you in with a rush. You’re in uniform, too. How come?”
Stacey looked at him thoughtfully. “You needn’t be embarrassed, Traile,” he said. “You’re quite right. I don’t like army stuff and I don’t care a fig about helping maintain law and order in this pleasant world. But if,” he said, his eyes and voice hard, “I can do any fighting against a thousand beasts that tortured one lone individual, and especially that mauled and half killed the one man who stood up to them”—his teeth snapped together—“why, then, I’d like to; that’s all,” he concluded in his normal voice.
Traile stared at him for a moment in silence. “Come home with me,” he said, and rose.
“Sure!” remarked Stacey calmly. “Just give me time to sign my check.”
Traile’s car was outside. They entered it and drove swiftly off.
“Just to show you the way some of us feel about this,” the lieutenant remarked presently, “I’ll tell you that I’ve been ’phoning steadily ever since six-thirty this morning. That’s why you got me so promptly when you called up.”
“To our boys?”
Traile nodded.
“What results?”