He was awakened in mid-afternoon by a newsboy calling his papers. As he listened, still half asleep, he thought he caught words that sounded like “Air Mail.”
He was out of his bunk at once. Had it appeared in the papers—his story?
He threw up his window and sent a coin rattling to the pavement below.
“Bring one up,” he shouted. The boy pocketed the coin, waved and disappeared.
He reappeared almost at once by the bunkroom door, with a cheerful:
“Here y’are, mister. All about the Air Mail robbery.”
Curlie dropped down on his bunk and stared in amazement. There it was, on the front page of the afternoon scream-sheet. Two planes in mid-air; this drawn by a staff artist. His own plane on the ground; a real photograph. And his picture in the oval inset.
He read the story breathlessly. There was much there that he did not know. His plane, so the story ran, had been rescued and brought into port. No damage had been done. The number of mailsacks taken was not yet known.
The story made him out quite a hero. He flushed when he thought how he had bungled matters in the end.
“No clue as to the assailants,” he read on. “An unlicensed radio station, surprised and overhauled in the vicinity of the attack, offered no real clue.