"I'll join you in a throat-cutting act, pal!" Dawson said, and sighed heavily. "If this isn't the most mixed-up business we ever got into, then I don't know what! The colonel's been here half an hour, and we don't even know why he came down here in the first place. We can thank the gods for one thing, anyway."
"What's that?"
"That Colonel Welsh was relieved and not burnt up when I told him we had destroyed those envelopes," Dawson replied. "Envelopes! Phew! I'll be seeing those darn things in my dreams for the rest of my life. Gosh! One would think they contained the complete plans of Allied High Command for the invasion of the European Continent, or something!"
"Maybe they did," Freddy Farmer said with a shrug and a sigh. "Maybe they did."
With that the pair lapsed into brooding silence. Each was perfectly content to remain silent, because words were just a waste of breath now. They had talked themselves black and blue in the face as to the what and the why of this crazy business. For all their talking, they were right back where they had started in regard to anything concrete and definite. Why talk about it any more? It was far, far better to go quietly nuts waiting for Colonel Welsh to return and throw a little light on the subject.
They sat and waited for a good fifteen minutes, mulling over their own thoughts and listening absently to the even murmur of the idling Wright-Cyclone engines that powered the North American B-25.
At the end of that fifteen minutes, however, the colonel returned. To Dawson's relief and pleasure, he saw that a lot of the worry had left the Intelligence officer's face. In fact, there was an almost happy look in his eyes. He came straight into the bomb compartment, seated himself at his little table, and took the inter-com phone mike off the wall hook at his side.
"Take off, Captain," he spoke into it. "Fly north for twenty minutes and then take up the course I gave you. Eh? Right!"
The colonel put the inter-com mike back on the hook, looked at Dawson, and smiled faintly.
"Thank heaven for your hunch," he said. "You were absolutely right. He was a German."