OME unnamed person in a newspaper office, not considering consequences, threw down the gage thus:
“The only chance for this man lies in the revival of the will to take the extreme risk without regard to self which distinguished our war-pilots a year and a half ago. We have several brave and skilful flyers in this city. If one of them volunteers, we do not doubt that a surgeon will offer himself for this hazardous adventure.”
This paragraph of challenge appeared first in the home edition of the evening paper which reached the lake-shore suburban villages, north of Chicago, shortly before five o'clock and which were soon distributed in spite of the blizzard blowing.
Corrina Stokely read it just after she had put her baby to bed after his five-o'clock feeding. She had been very happy only the moment before, as the scales had just proved that the baby was continuing the gain of last week; he was two pounds now above his birth weight, which, the doctor said, was a proper reflection of her own complete return to health and strength. Corrina was a rather slight little thing, even with her strength regained; her clear, soft skin never showed much color, except when she flushed, which she did easily—a habit that distressed her. She was twenty-three now and her wifehood and her very recent maternity endowed her blue, gentle eyes with a happy seriousness and a sense of deep responsibility which amused, at the same time that it more wholly enslaved, her husband, Gregg.
HE had met him in 1917 and they had fallen instantly and hopelessly in love with each other; she would have married, but Gregg had been one of those flyers who would not marry in war time. Thus, only as his betrothed, she had watched from the grounds of the Texas hotel (whither she had moved with her mother) the maneuvers and combat-drill of the biplanes seven thousand feet overhead, one of which was Gregg's. Sometimes with a glass she had been able to make out his number; and upon one of these days she had seen him fall, not to regain himself till just above the ground. Then he had gone overseas, continued there the tactics which in Texas had won him notoriety for his disregard of self and had brought Corrina, simultaneously, utter despair and utter adoration of him.
In 1919 he married her and settled down; he was as hard at business now as ever he had been at flying; he had promised her to give up flying altogether, except for the two weeks careful training in summer which the government urged to keep its pilots prepared. So far, he had kept his word.
Yet, when it was given, neither had thought of any situation such as the present arising; neither had dreamed that such a demand would be made.
“They shouldn't print a thing like that!” Corrina cried, thrusting the paper from her. “They've no right to. No one can fly and live to find any one on the lake to night!” And she went to the east window where the storm beat. Her trouble was that she knew that Gregg—if he saw this—would want to try it. “He couldn't do it. He'd just kill himself!” And in the grate she burned the paper which had come; but she knew that hundreds of thousands more were in the city; they were on every news-stand.
She went to the telephone and called the Stokely Company offices. A few minutes ago she had meant to do this to tell Gregg about the baby's gain in weight; now she did not even ask for Gregg, but for her brother, who also worked there.
“Winston? Have you seen the paper about the Andana?—I mean the part about the man Maloney. Win, I don't want Gregg to get thinking about that. He'd have to try to do something; and he can't—keep with him, as he's staying in town for dinner; I'm coming in at nine for the Ransoms' dance. I'll come as early as I can. He'll dress at the club. I want you to keep with him for me.”
In the office, Winston Leigh—a tall, sensitive man of thirty, dark like his sister, but not otherwise suggesting her—looked through a glass partition to Gregg's brown head bent intently over some important figures. At last Gregg got up, whistling, and put on his coat; he opened the door beyond and said his pleasant good night to the draftsman and came out. “Ready to call it a day, Win?”
EIGH got into his coat and they went down in the elevator. “I see they've found the Andana, sir!” the elevator man said to Gregg; every one liked to talk to Gregg and get a word from him.
“Have they?” said Gregg. “That's good. I hadn't heard since noon. Everybody all right on board?”
“All but one man, they say, sir. Good-night, Mr. Stokely.”
“What happened to him?” Gregg was asking; but the people poured out of the car and swept him aside. “Good night, Fred.”