Captain Evans saluted stiffly and went out.
“I think these two men fit your description best, Graves. I’ll admit I’m curious to know just what you want with them. Broughton is an old first-sergeant out of the artillery. Got his commission in the artillery and transferred to the Air Service. A ⸺ good big-ship pilot, too. Hinkley is a long, lean, sardonic bird who has the coldest nerve I ever saw and gives not three hoots in hallelujah for anything or anybody. Both of them flew on Border patrol for two years—Broughton out of Nogales and Hinkley—an observer until recently—at Marfa. Broughton is a nut about guns, and one of the best pistol shots I ever saw. Can draw and throw a gun and fan it and all that. I’m a fair shot myself, but he is wonderful. How good Hinkley is on that stuff I don’t know, but I do know he’s been a captain in the army of Brazil, and a sailor from the Horn to Bering Sea. Both of them around thirty, I think.”
“They sound available,” granted Graves.
He relapsed into silence. After a moment or two he took out another cigar, offered it to the general, who refused, and finally lit it himself. His gaze rested for a moment on the line of great bombers which he could partially see through the open window.
“Bombing today?” he inquired.
“Just practise. Those ships out there are all loaded with thousand-pounders—we practise tomorrow on the hulk of an old battleship out in Chesapeake Bay. The first test is only two weeks away.”
“Going to make the grade?” inquired Graves easily.
He seemed to have suddenly shed his former terse directness. And that he was talking to the famous General O’Malley, chief of Air Service, did not seem to cut any figure with him at all.
“Are we going to make the grade?” repeated the general, his eyes flashing. He hit the desk a resounding blow with his fist. “We’ll sink anything they put up in ten minutes. Fellows like these two you’re going to meet now and the rest of the men who fly those ships out there are going up and show the world⸺”
A knock on the door interrupted him.