“Unless,” said Don thoughtfully, “the guard inside Cho-San’s iron gate smelled something phony. You see, Lotus wanted to believe I was Borg, but that other guy may have been leery.”
“A guard, huh?” snorted Hammond. “I don’t like that, Commander! As you say, he just might have smelled a mouse. Those Scorpion agents are suspecting each other half the time, and.... Hmmmm! You were close enough to see him plainly?”
“Only the glow of his cigarette tip,” answered Don. “But why worry over that? Looks as if we’d arrived at your office already; and I’m hungry enough to eat the letters off a stone monument!”
“And those letters are sunk in, too!” laughed the Intelligence man, reaching for the door handle. “Well, Commander, there’s a hot meal waiting for you right upstairs. I ordered it brought in, because you’re not visiting any restaurant until your make-up is absolutely perfect.”
XX
THE TEST
It was well past ten o’clock that morning before Don and Red were roused from a four-hour nap in the local Intelligence Office. After breakfast, they were fitted out with clothes quickly tailored to fit, in preparation for their new roles. Then, for several more hours they were drilled, each man in his part, so as to make the disguise as perfect as possible.
Don Winslow had already memorized all the real Count Borg could teach him. Now, working from photographs, and from a mass of information collected by the office, other Intelligence operatives expertly polished his likeness to the captured Scorpion aviator.
Poor Red was made to study much harder for his role of valet, since he had to start from scratch. At the end of six hours’ unremitting work, he was pronounced a “passable fake” and sent out to take rooms for his master at the Hotel Empire.
Somewhat later Don Winslow joined him. True to the dressy habits of Count André Borg, he had to change from the natty homespun business suit he was wearing into formal “soup-and-fish.”
While he was adjusting his black bow tie, there came a rap on the door. Red Pennington, now transformed into the valet “Penny,” opened it with a flourish.