“Where’s Bill tonight?” he asked.
He heard the surgeon’s chair scrape suddenly. Then he saw that Crawley was eying him with consternation written all over his smooth face.
“Hell!” exclaimed Norris, sitting bolt upright. “What’s the matter with you two?”
Weyman cleared his throat.
“Haven’t you heard, John?” he said huskily.
“Heard? Heard what? What should I hear?”
“Billy crashed, late this afternoon. He’s dead, John.”
“Good God! How—-”
“Nobody knows,” put in Crawley. “It was pretty late. There was only that old crew chief of Bill’s, Halliday, who saw it. Everybody else had gone home or was back in the hangars or somewhere. He just floated in, Halliday said, and made a regular landing. Then a tire blew and a wheel buckled and it was all over. His head got the gun butts. Belt broke, they say.”
“But that isn’t all,” Weyman took up the thread. “I think Halliday’s brain is softening. He tells a yarn about Billy climbing out of the wreck and babbling to somebody who wasn’t there and making weird gestures⸺”