Peter Pettigrew's prisoner

The room was warm, but a cold perspiration moistened Peter Pettigrew's brow. His eyes roved, his collar strangled him. His tongue was a wad of cotton.

"Why--er--" he muttered feverishly.

"_Wrong!_" Sergeant McCurdle seized the word, worried it as a terrier worries a rubber bone. "_Never_ wire! Wire is the last thing you should touch, Pettigrew. Under conditions such as those described, wire would be melting-hot. It would burn the flesh off your bones!

"No--" He stared at the smaller man disdainfully--"No, Mr. Pettigrew, I fear you would be of no use in an emergency of this nature. As a matter of fact, I don't think you belong in this group. Some men, Pettigrew, simply don't fit. You seem to be one of them. Why don't you drop out? Turn in your uniform and enter some other branch of civilian service? Canteen work, for instance, or knitting sweaters--?"

Someone behind Peter Pettigrew tittered, and someone else muttered, "That's right! If a man can't do a man's work he ought to--" Peter's lower lip trembled, and the stalwart figure of Sergeant McCurdle danced before his eyes. He shook his head doggedly.

"But--but I like this work, Sergeant. I want to be an Air Raid Warden."

McCurdle's shrug was eloquent.

"Well, it's Uncle Sam's headache. If you persist in wasting the government's time and money, I can't prevent it." To the others he said, "That's all for tonight, folks. We're having a practice blackout at midnight, remember. City-wide. Every Warden must be at his post by then. You all know where your locations are? All right--hop to 'em! Eh? What? Oh, you again, Pettigrew? Well, what do you want now?"

"Excuse me, sir," said Peter meekly, "but--what was my mistake? What was the first thing I should have done?"

"Done?" thundered Sergeant McCurdle. "Why, any fool knows you should have--er--er--" His brows furrowed, then cleared miraculously. "Don't try to make me do your thinking for you, Pettigrew! That's your assignment, not mine. Think it out. And see that you've arrived at the correct answer by our next meeting. All right--class dismissed!"

"No hose," said Peter Pettigrew to himself, "no sand or siren or telephone. Fire spreading rapidly. Warehouse is filled with inflammable supplies--Oh, it's no use! McCurdle was right. I guess I'm just a--a misfit!"

The last word came out "mzzglmmp," punctuated, as it was, by something suspiciously akin to a sigh ... or a sob.

There is an estimated total of two hundred and sixty thousand volunteer Air Raid Wardens now training for civilian defense duty in the United States. Of this number, about two hundred and fifty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine had greater aptitude for their jobs than did Peter Pettigrew.

Two strikes had been called on this unhappy child of misfortune, and the Celestial Umpire's arm was already rising on the third, when Peter wailed entrance into this mad world. To begin with, as a specimen of manhood Peter Pettigrew was a washout. Padded shoulders helped conceal his spindling frame and built-up heels added a futile inch to his diminutive stature, but no aids, mechanical or sartorial, could ever remove the anemic pallor from his complexion, lend distinction to an unruly fuzz of taffy-colored hair, or cleanse his eyes of the pathetic wistfulness which mirrored his personality. Peter's physical counterpart was the photo labelled Before in the "BE STRONG LIKE ME!" ads.

Moreover, Peter was shy. Terribly, horribly, inconceivably shy of everything and anything that walked, swam, or flew on, under, or above the surface of the earth. He gulped when he talked, and never raised his voice to a degree louder than a timid bleat. Strangers frightened him ... acquaintances embarrassed him ... and he had no friends. He turned every hue of the rainbow when so much as noticed by members of the fair sex, and ate always in cafeterias in order to avoid the dread task of ordering from a waitress.

His position in life was just what you might expect; he was the smallest imaginable cog in an organization so huge that to all save his immediate clerical companions he was but another name on the payroll.

He earned enough to live and eat and visit a theatre once a week and support a second cousin in Oregon whom he had never seen in his life, but whose demanding letters threw him into a perfect frenzy of obligation. He dressed soberly, let subway guards shove him around without protest, and permitted himself nothing more highly intoxicant than an occasional Dr. Zipper.

Thus Peter Pettigrew. Or thus, to be more accurate, the Peter Pettigrew who slipped his brief and unobtrusive way before the public eye.

But--there was another Peter Pettigrew! An unknown and unsuspected Peter Pettigrew in whose veins raced the fire of heroes, behind whose mild and tawny eyes burned slumbering volcanoes. This was the man--the laughing, taunting, daring champion of derring-do--whom Peter dreamed himself to be. A questing knight with thews of steel and agile mind and tongue of rapier wit. This was the man whom Peter was when, in dead of night, his meagre body tossing restlessly on bunchy kapok, his untrammeled soul rode the magic highways of Dream-world in search of dark adventure. This man was Peter when, blackness engulfing a lean, tense figure straining forward in his movie seat, Peter's hungry heart followed a shaft of silver brilliance to identify itself with whatever solitary soul was worst beset by the encroaching forces of evil.

This was the strange, new Peter Pettigrew who now, a sliver of darkness in the shadow of a doorway, now smiled and hurled defiance at the hordes of foes arraigned against him.

"_So!_" hissed Peter mockingly. "_So! You think you'd like to blow up the Armory, would you? Well, we'll see about that, you dirty, sneaky old Japs, you! Brrrp-brrrp-brrrp_--" His small frame trembled with excitement as he swept the gray street with imaginary Tommy-gun fire--"_there's no use crying for mercy now!_" laughed Peter triumphantly. "_You should have thought of that before you attacked us! Oh, it's_ knives _now? No, you don't! Remember Pearl Harbor! Brrrrrrp_--"

"Cut out that damned racket! Stop it!" The roaring voice sheared a path through Peter's concentration, dealing a sudden end to his tiny, private drama. "What the hell do you think you're doing, anyhow? Who--Oh! I might have known!"

Only gloom masked the sick mantle of Peter's crimson embarrassment. His heart within him shriveled to the size of a raisin, and leaden butterflies fluttered in his stomach.