“I was right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Come on, Jing, we’ve got work to do.”
“Go ahead,” Nastee said grouchily, “but it won’t do you any good.”
Tink took Jing by the hand and they skipped across the camp ground to the Captain’s tent. Jing was red-cheeked with excitement.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded breathlessly. “Can I help?”
“You certainly can,” Tink answered. “We’ve got’ to work on the Captain and this Eileen McCarthy, whoever she is. I’ll take the Captain, but you’ll have to handle the girl. You can find her in the Village easy enough.”
Jing clapped her hands excitedly.
“That will be wonderful,” she cried. “But what will I do?”
“Just use your feminine intuition and trust to luck,” Tink replied. “I’ll go to work on the Captain and then I’ll meet you about dusk at the camp gate and we can compare notes.”
“Oh, this will be fun!” Jing cried. With a bright smile she flashed away in a series of brilliant pirouettes...
Tink watched Jing until she was out of sight, then he hurried to Captain Donavon’s tent. He found the young officer seated at his desk, head buried in his hands.
Tink’s sympathetic nature was touched by the spectacle of the young man’s unhappiness. He felt more anxious than ever to undo the misery Nastee had, somehow, caused.
But until he found out the facts of the case there was little he could do. With this in mind he scaled the telephone cord to the top of the Captain’s desk and seated himself comfortably on top of a marble paper weight.
He put his chin in his hands and studied the Captain carefully. The young officer had lifted his head from the desk and was staring miserably at a small framed snapshot next to the ink-well.
Tink noticed the lines of pain and worry that interlaced around the young man’s eyes, and he noticed the sorrowful expression in his clear blue eyes, but he also saw the hard determined angle of the officer’s square jaw.
Tink then turned his attention to the snapshot. And the girl pictured in the snapshot was well worth anyone’s attention. She was young and fair, with an impish sparkle in her lovely blue eyes. Her lips were curved in a smile that illumined her features with a breath-taking radiance. Hair the color and sheen of ripe blackberries fell to her shoulders in two silken smooth braids, lending an old-fashioned dignity to her charming vivacity.
Tink sighed. She was lovely, that’s all there was to it.
The Captain picked up the snapshot of the dark-haired girl, studied it for a moment, then crumpled it in his fist and dropped it to the floor.
His lips were twisted and bitter.
“And I loved her so,” he muttered savagely.
Tink found his sympathies allied with the young Captain. He was obviously a clean-cut, personable young man, and the girl in the snapshot — Eileen McCarthy, probably — had apparently thrown him over because of Nastee’s machinations.
Her actions, he was sure, were completely unjustified. For the remainder of the afternoon Tink stayed close to Captain Donavon and his liking for the young officer grew with each passing hour.
When the slanting rays of the sun were fading to a dull crimson glow, he left the tent and hurried to the camp gate to meet Jing. Maybe she had learned something from her visit to the village that would be helpful in unsnarling this problem.
She was waiting for him, tapping her foot impatiently against the ground. He noticed that her customary smile was not in evidence.
“What did you find out?” he asked. “Men!” she said. She wrinkled her nose in faint distaste. “I guess they’re all alike. That poor girl!”
Tink stared at her, puzzled.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“Plenty,” Jing answered cryptically. “But perhaps you’d better tell me what you learned first.”
For no good reason Tink began to feel faintly uneasy.
“I didn’t find out much,” he said. “The Captain is a swell fellow, clean, upright, honorable, and this McCarthy girl is a fool if she let anything Nastee did change her mind about him. That’s all I found out.”
“Oh,” Jing said, “that’s your opinion of him, is it? Well. I think you should know that your precious Captain is nothing but a — a beast, that’s what he is.”
“You can’t be serious,” Tink said, dazed by her vehemence.
“I was never more serious in my life,” Jing said firmly. “Your Captain Donavon is an unscrupulous, dishonorable ogre.”
Tink shook his head unbelievingly. “You’re just being silly,” he said. “You’re acting just like a woman. I don’t care what you think the Captain’s done, I still think he’s all right.” Jing’s eyes were as frosty as the points of icicles.
“So you don’t care what he’s done?”
“No,” Tink said stubbornly, “I don’t.”
“Well,” Jing said frostily, “I’m certainly glad I found out this side of your character.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s he done?” Tink said in sudden alarm.
“Oh, nothing much, according to your standards,” Jing said coldly. “He merely happens to be a married man with a wife and five children in the United States, that’s all.”
Tink felt suddenly weak.
“But in spite of that,” Jing went on, “he wanted this sweet girl to marry him. I suppose, though, you think that’s all right.”
Tink swallowed with an effort. He felt dizzy.
“How do you know?” he managed to ask.
“I saw a letter written to him by his wife. Full of ‘dears’ and ‘darlings’ and information about his five children. And,” Jing added darkly, “a hint about his sixth.”
“Sixth!” Tink echoed hollowly.
“Yes,” Jing snapped, “and all the while he was leading this poor girl on with sweet talk and proposals. It’s a good thing she discovered the letter on top of his bureau. He was billeted at her father’s home, and while she was cleaning up his room she found this letter. It almost broke her heart, poor thing. When he came back that night she sent him packing. And good riddance. Her father wanted to take after him with a gun, and most of the villagers feel the same way. And you think he’s wonderful!”
After his first shock, Tink’s nimble mind began to function rapidly. Something was wrong!
“I’ll bet Nastee had something to do with that letter,” he said excitedly.
“Maybe he did,” said Jing. “And more power to him. He’s prevented a terrible injustice and I think he deserves a vote of thanks.”
“But,” Tink said, “if the letter hadn’t been discovered everything would have been all right.”
The words had hardly passed his lips before he realized his mistake.
“I didn’t mean,” he began a desperate explanation but Jing cut him short.
“Oh, everything would have been all right, would it?” she blazed. “Just as long as he wasn’t found out, everything would have been ducky. Married, with five, maybe six children by this time, and you think it’s all right for him to make love to every girl he meets — as long as he doesn’t get caught.”
“I didn’t mean that exactly,” Tink said desperately. “I only meant—”
“I know precisely what you meant,” Jing said, and her voice was as frigid as an Arctic storm: She turned on her heel and marched away, her chin high in the air.
Tink stared after her erect, departing back, stunned and miserable. This was something he had never expected...
With a heavy sigh he slouched moodily back to the camp, his thoughts dark and unhappy. Jing had deserted him and the Captain had five children, maybe six, and everything was in a magnificent muddle.
And Tink didn’t give a damn!
His bitterness was a result of his realization that he had reached the nadir of his existence; things couldn’t be blacker; his cup of woe was slopping over and the situation couldn’t get worse.