of the sun,
sits the debonair scoot, cool, resolute, and death-defyin'."

That night the wires between the squadron headquarters and G. H. Q.
hummed with information and inquiry. A hundred aerodromes, from the
North Sea to the Vosges, reported laconically that Annie, the vicious
sister of Archie, was unknown.

* * * * *

Tam lay in his bunk that night devouring the latest of his literary
acquisitions.

Tam's "bunk" was a ten-by-eight structure lined with varnished pine. The
furniture consisted of a plain canvas bed, a large black box, a
home-made cupboard and three book-shelves which ran the width of the
wall facing the door. These were filled with thin, paper-covered
"volumes" luridly colored. Each of these issues consisted of thirty-two
pages of indifferent print, and since the authors aimed at a maximum
effect with an economy of effort, there were whole pages devoted to
dialogue of a staccato character.

He lay fully dressed upon the bed. A thick curtain retained the light
which came from an electric bulb above his head and his mind was
absorbed with the breathless adventures of his cowboy hero.

Now and again he would drop the book to his chest and gaze reflectively
at the ceiling, for, all the time he had been reading, one-half of his
brain had been steadily pursuing a separate course of inquiry of its
own; and while the other half had wandered pleasantly through deep and
sunless gulches or had clambered on the back of a surefooted bronco up
precipitous mountain-slopes, the mental picture he conjured was in the
nature of a double exposure, for ever there loomed a dim figure of a
mysterious anti-aircraft gun. He took up the book for about the tenth
time and read two lines, when a bell in the corner of the room rang
three times. Three short thrills of sound and then silence.

Tam slipped from the bed, lifted down his leather jacket from the wall
and struggled into it. He took up his padded helmet, switched off the
light and, opening the door, stepped out into the darkness. Buttoning
his jacket as he went, he made his way across by a short cut to the
hangars and found Blackie surrounded by half a dozen officers already on
the spot.

"Is that you, Tam? I want you to go up--there she goes!"

They listened.

_"Whoom!"_

"Fritz has sneaked across in the dark and is industriously bombing
billets," he said; "he dodged the Creeper's Patrol. Go and see if you
can find him."

_"