“Mmmmmm,” said Talley, amiably. “You’d learn something if you could talk to the Resistance fighters and saboteurs in Europe. The Poles were wonderful at it! They had one chap who could get at the tank cars that took aviation gasoline from the refinery to the various Nazi airfields. He used to dump some chemical compound—just a tiny bit—into each carload of gas. It looked all right, smelled all right, and worked all right. But at odd moments Hitler’s planes would crash. The valves would stick and the engine’d conk out.”
Joe stared at him. And it was just as simple as that. He saw.
“The Nazis lost a lot of planes that way,” said Talley. “Those that didn’t crash from stuck valves in flight—they had to have their valves reground. Lost flying time. Wonderful! And when the Nazis did uncover the trick, they had to re-refine every drop of aviation gas they had!”
Joe said: “That’s it!”
“That’s it? And it is what?”
Then Joe said disgustedly: “Surely! It’s the trick of loading CO2 bottles with explosive gas, too! Excuse me!”
He got up from the table and hurried out. He found a phone booth and got the Shed, and then the security office, and at long last Major Holt. The Major’s tone was curt.
“Yes?... Joe?... The three men from the affair of the lake were tracked this morning. When they were cornered they tried to fight. I am afraid we’ll get no information from them, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
The Major’s manner seemed to disapprove of Joe as expressing curiosity. His words meant, of course, that the three would-be murderers had been fatally shot.
Joe said carefully: “That wasn’t what I called about, sir. I think I’ve found out something about the pushpots. How they’re made to crash. But my hunch needs to be checked.”