“Like you are?” Dave said, and grinned. “If you don’t stop yanking on those fingers of your left hand, pal, you’re going to pull them right off. And besides, you drive me bats when you do it.”
“Do I?” Freddy Farmer snapped at him. “Then let’s make a bargain. I’ll leave the fingers of my left hand alone, and you stop snapping and unsnapping that blasted wrist watch of yours, what?”
Dave stiffened and glanced down at his wrist watch dangling by the loosened metal strap. He snapped it shut for the last time, and looked at Freddy. They both laughed, and a good bit of the tension from waiting was eased off. Then they instinctively glanced up at the tower clock, and felt even better. The big hands pointed exactly to eight o’clock.
“Well, that passed the time, anyway,” Dave murmured, and got up and walked over to the railing. “Now, if he hasn’t force landed, or something!”
“What a cheerful chap to have for a pal!” Freddy growled as he joined Dawson. “Fact is, he’s right on time. A penny to a crumpet that’s him up there just starting to circle and come down.”
Dave sighted along Freddy’s pointed finger and his heart leaped. An executive cabin type of plane was sliding toward the near end of the central runway. It had no markings other than the new Air Corps insignia of a white star on a blue field, with the old red disc missing. But staring at it, Dave felt certain that Colonel Welsh was aboard.
The two youths watched it slide down to a perfect landing, and then taxi directly over to the Base Commandant’s office. That was all the proof they needed. When you taxied directly to the tarmac in front of the Base office, you were somebody important. If you weren’t, you got the hide singed off you for not going to the arrival check-booth farther along the field. A moment or two after the plane had braked to a final stop, the cabin door opened and a tall, thin-faced man in the uniform of an infantry colonel stepped out and hurried into the office.
“You win a whole bag of your English crumpets, Freddy!” Dave cried. “That’s him. Come on. I guess we’d better go down and let him know we’re here.”
“As though the Base Commandant won’t tell him!” Freddy murmured. “Bit of a testy chap, wasn’t he, telling us to come up here and wait? That we were waiting for a Colonel Welsh didn’t seem to impress him a bit.”
“Why should it?” Dave replied. “We both know that the Colonel doesn’t advertise. Besides, if you were commandant of a Base this size you’d be testy, too!”