“I say, old man, are you hit bad?” Allison’s voice came to Stan through the dizzy haze closing in around him.
“Just nicked,” Stan muttered and grinned. By some twist Allison and O’Malley had escaped. He felt much better, so much better that he laughed, or thought he did.
Stan lay on his bunk with a medic giving him treatment before the ambulance boys packed him off. He opened his eyes and found the haze had gone. He could feel the morphine working and knew he would drift away again in a few seconds. O’Malley was looking down at him, his homely face twisted into a scowl. There were two suspicious-looking beads which were not sweat on each side of his nose. When Stan looked up at him, O’Malley grinned broadly. Beside him, Allison was smiling too.
“We’ll have him fixed up as good as ever in no time,” the doctor said.
“How did you keep from getting gassed?” Stan asked.
“Aisy,” O’Malley answered. “The rat was so scared we’d rush him that he jest eased out through the door an’ tossed a glass jug into the room. It was fixed to break aisy if it hit anything hard. Allison caught it as neat as iver he caught a Rugby football.” O’Malley laughed.
“But the blighter had locked us in and that slowed us down some. Then two of his henchman came along to use the radio and when they unlocked the doors to air the gas out of the hut, we grabbed them.” Allison looked at the doctor to see if it was all right to talk. The doctor nodded.
“Your phone call came in the nick o’ time,” O’Malley put in. “We located Sim and trailed him from the mess to his hideout. It was one of our own Nissen huts the boys had been using to store bedding in. The rats had moved the piles of bedding away from the back end and made a place there.”
“Why wasn’t their radio located?” Stan asked.
The doctor turned to Allison and Stan. “Better let the rest of the plot wait,” he said.