"Maybe he broke them bailing out," Dave grunted and stuck the nose of his Spitfire down. "If so, he's going to land with an awful jolt. And that ground wind's liable to drag him half way across this little island of England. Yeah! Maybe you should have stayed put, my little Jerry."
Dave kept his eyes on the seemingly lifeless figure floating earthward with his parachute, and held the Spitfire in its dive until he was down close. There he pulled out, leveled off, and began to circle about the parachutist as a strange sense of weird curiosity got hold of him. And as he cut in closer and closer to the dangling figure his curiosity gradually changed to a sense of utter astonishment. The man in civilian clothes kept his chin sunk down on his chest all the time. He didn't once raise his head to look at Dave's circling plane. And it was absolutely certain that he must be hearing the roar of the Rolls-Royce engine.
As far as that went, however, the man didn't do anything. Any and all movement was caused by the wind whipping at the parachute. The man could well be a sack of wet meal being lowered to earth.
"Maybe he took sleeping tablets before he jumped out," Dave grunted aloud. "Or maybe.... Hey! What gives?"
He shouted the question and sent the Spitfire ripping in so close to the dangling figure that he came within a foot of brushing the man with his wingtip. He veered off just in time but not before he saw that there was a sheet of paper pinned to the front of the man's jacket. Whether or not there was writing on the paper, Dave couldn't see. But that the sheet of paper was pinned there was enough to make up his mind.
"This gets screwier!" he shouted and hauled back his throttle. "Screwy as can be. Maybe I'm all wet, but that lad looks stone dead to me. And somebody has pinned a note on his jacket. Me, I'm going down and find out what in heck this is all about."
Checking the general direction in which the parachute was drifting, Dave then took a look at the ground below. As luck would have it he spotted a field with plenty of room for a Spitfire to sit down. Having spotted the field he slid down, let down his wing flaps, and presently settled light as a feather on an expanse of slightly uneven ground. As he wiggled out of his safety harness, and parachute straps, he heard the sound of another plane tearing down. One look upward showed him a diving Spitfire with a big figure "8" painted on either side of the fuselage. He chuckled and vaulted from the pit to the ground.
"Good old Freddy, the watch dog," he said. "Betcha think the guy slugged me down. Nope, pal. Not yet, anyway."
Not bothering with a second glance at Farmer's plane coming down to a fast landing, Dave broke into a run and raced toward a smaller field in back of a line of trees. The parachutist was just disappearing from sight down behind the trees. By the time Dave reached the field the man was on the ground. All of him on it! He was crumpled flat and the ground wind was starting to fill out the parachute silk like a boat sail and drag it across the ground. Speeding up, Dave tore over and practically threw himself at the shroud lines. He caught them and jerked hard on the underside ones ... the lines extending to the part of the silk envelop that was nearest the ground. The action "tripped" the parachute envelop, spilled the air from it, and caused it to collapse to the ground. As an added precaution Dave darted forward and gathered up the limp folds of silk in his arms.
Then he walked back to the crumpled figure on the ground. The man had his face turned toward the sky. His eyes were closed, and he was dead. A bullet hole square in the middle of his forehead was all the confirmation Dave needed. The Yank took his gaze off the death chilled face, and looked at the sheet of paper pinned to the front of the dead man's jacket. The paper had been torn by the wind, and the landing, but the words written with blue crayon stood out clear and readable. Dave's heart turned cold and his head pounded as he read the words.