“Yes,” Norma agreed. “It is one of the big things that has come out of the war.”
To herself she was recalling Lieutenant Warren’s words:
“These girls worry me a little. Their records have not been checked.”
Then again she remembered how her own record had been checked to the last detail. “The examiners do not take your word for a thing,” she had been told. “The F.B.I. questionnaire you filled out is checked and double-checked by men who know. Even your fingerprints are sent to Washington.”
All this she knew was true. And yet the girls in the beauty parlor were not checked. “That tall girl, Lena, could tell this hairdresser anything—just anything at all. If she became the secretary to a colonel she could report anything to this hairdresser.”
“But Lena—” it came to her with the force of a blow—“Lena’s record has been checked. Her fingerprints were sent to Washington.”
“What a silly young fool you are!” she chided herself as a short time later she took the car to Des Moines. But she was not even sure of that.
Arrived at the heart of the city she looked up a long street to see a tall, inviting brick hotel standing on a hill.
