“Hello, Garret,” Stan said and grinned.
Garret stared at him for a minute, then his dark face flushed and his eyes gleamed with smouldering anger. He stepped closer to Stan.
“You think you can railroad me clean out of this man’s army, but you’ll get yours, and I’ll be back in the air again.”
“If any other funny things happen to my ship I’m going to take a poke at that pretty face of yours,” Stan said.
Garret quickly backed away and hurried into the hangar. Stan walked across the square to his mess. Garret was a dangerous fellow, there was no mistake about that, and he hated Stan Wilson. Stan had a feeling, too, that Garret was going to make good on his threat.
He wasn’t sure how Garret intended to do it, or how much the fellow knew, but there was no doubt he was a dangerous antagonist. And Stan had an uncomfortable feeling that Garret knew or at least suspected the truth about a certain phase of Stan Wilson’s past that Stan had hoped he could leave behind him when he came across the sea to fight the Nazi war machine.
But that, he grimly told himself, was too much to hope for. No man can ever wholly escape his past. Fate has a way of stepping in and smashing the best-laid plans of humans. And Stan had a premonition that Fate had selected Arch Garret as its instrument to ruin his careful plans.
CHAPTER IV
NEW QUARTERS
O’Malley sat at a table with a whole pie before him. He sliced it neatly across, then turned it half around and sliced it across again. Allison snorted his contempt while Stan watched, a grin on his face.