"Don't mind Barker, Dawson," the O.C. said. "He's an awful one for juggling the truth. Frankly, I've never so much as spoken a harsh word to him since he's been in the squadron."
"But, what you've thought, sir!" Barker said and laughed. "Just the same, Dawson, this is your show. And in my opinion you certainly deserve to have command."
"Well, I still don't know about that," Dave said with a shrug. "But.... Hold everything! That's a ship coming down to land, isn't it?"
All eyes were turned on the star studded sky overhead whence had come the sudden sound of airplane engines. An instant later the sound died down to a purr. And a brief moment after that the darkness was cut by the twin beams of the incoming plane's landing lights.
"Can't see for those darn lights," Dave grunted. "But she sounds to me like a Blenheim."
"It is!" Freddy Farmer echoed. "I can see her, now. I say! That's the same bus Group Captain Ball, and Colonel Trevor, came down in from London. I wonder if they're coming back."
"I wonder, too!" Squadron Leader Markham echoed. And Dave thought he caught just a faint trace of hopefulness in the O.C.'s voice. "Maybe they've decided to wash-out the patrol. Maybe something else has popped up."
As Dave watched the shadowy blur slide down toward the surface of the field, then level off and settle gently, a conglomeration of mixed emotions surged through him. One instant he experienced the familiar eerie tingling at the back of his neck that was always an advance warning of danger just ahead. Then in the next instant a sense of disappointment would flood through him. As though that plane was bringing word that the flight over occupied France had been called off. Then again he was filled with the strange excited feeling of more mystery being added to what already existed. A jumble of emotions and crazy thoughts that plagued him as he waited for the pilot of the Air Ministry Blenheim to taxi up to the line.
When the plane stopped, and the door was popped open, only one man jumped down onto the ground. That man was Colonel Trevor, and he hurried over to the group with a look of marked relief quite visible on his face in the pale glow shed by the two or three flare lights set about on the tarmac.
"Thank heavens, you haven't taken off yet!" the Intelligence officer cried. "Didn't want to waste time trying to get you on the phone. Raid on in London, anyway, and the phone service isn't so good at such times. No, not a hot raid. Just a few Jerry ships up there. And our lads are handling them very nicely. Anyway, I dashed out to Croydon in the blasted black-out and commandeered Ball's plane. I've got a bit more information for you, Dawson. By the way, do you know that terrain between Boulogne and Lille?"