Hornet Flight

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A man with a wooden leg walked along a hospital corridor.

He was a short, vigorous type with an athletic build, thirty years old, dressed in a plain charcoal gray suit and black toe-capped shoes. He walked briskly, but you could tell he was lame by the slight irregularity in his step:

tap-tap, tap-tap. His face was fixed in a grim expression, as if he were suppressing some profound emotion.

He reached the end of the corridor and stopped at the nurse’s desk.

“Flight Lieutenant Hoare?” he said.

The nurse looked up from a register. She was a pretty girl with black hair, and she spoke with the soft accent of County Cork. “You’ll be a relation, I’m thinking,” she said with a friendly smile.

Her charm had no effect. “Brother,” said the visitor. “Which bed?”

“Last on the left.”

He turned on his heel and strode along the aisle to the end of the ward.

In a chair beside the bed, a figure in a brown dressing gown sat with his back to the room, looking out of the window, smoking.

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