"It's an all night practice," snapped Peter, "as you ought to know. But never mind that now. That stranger—who was he? Where did he go?"
"Huh?" The soldier stared at him curiously. "Is it a gag, buddy? What stranger?"
"The one," rasped Peter, "you just admitted. He refused to answer my challenge—"
"Are you crazy?" The soldier sniggered drowsily and leaned his rifle against the wall. "Nobody came through this doorway, bud, except you."
Quick suspicion fanned to a fiercer blaze in Peter's bosom. Then his hunch had been right! The sinister stranger was an enemy agent, and this soldier in Uncle Sam's khaki was a dupe, a hireling, a Fifth Columnist! With a swift movement he grasped the guard's rifle, levelled it at its owner.
"So!" hissed Peter Pettigrew, patriot. "You thought you could get away with it, eh? Well, the jig's up! Over my dead body you'll pull one of your dastardly Nazi tricks! Not a move, now! Move a muscle and I—I'll shoot—"
And his finger tensed on the trigger. But the other man's face did not draw into the lines of hatred and violence Peter half expected. Instead, the soldier grinned amiably at him.
"Okay, buddy," he chuckled. "Enjoy yourself. Quite a card, ain't you? Well—" He yawned prodigiously—"'at's okay by me. I'm gettin' ... kinda ... sleepy. Think I'll snatch ... forty winks. Wake me up ... when the alert's over ... over...."
He slumped onto a bench, and fell fast asleep!