"Just tell it to me, Dave," young Farmer said quietly, and fixed his eyes on Dawson's face.
"That maybe this is it, Freddy," Dawson finally said, and gave a jerk of his head to include the room in which they were bound prisoners. "Maybe they didn't want to leave any signs, such as a couple of bodies, and so forth. Maybe they decided that it was best for you and me just to disappear, and ... and here we are. But I tell you, pal, it's really a screwy thought. Absolutely absurd. You shouldn't have forced me, kid."
Freddy Farmer didn't say anything when Dawson finished speaking. He closed his eyes for a moment, licked his lips, and then opened his eyes and appeared to stare thoughtfully into space. Dawson started to speak again, but Freddy smiled a little and shook his head.
"That's all right, Dave," he said quietly. "Perhaps you are right, and then again, perhaps you are wrong. And I do think you're wrong. As I look at it they simply wouldn't take the chance."
"Take what chance?" Dawson demanded.
"That we'd escape from this place, wherever it is," the English-born air ace replied. "They'd kill us and leave us here, never to be found perhaps. They wouldn't let us go out the slow way, knowing that we might possibly escape by some miracle. They'd make sure, don't you see?"
"Yeah, I get your point, Freddy," Dave said with a nod. Then, grinning broadly, he added, "Well, didn't I just get through saying that it was probably a cockeyed thought?"
"But I wonder why they want to keep us alive?" Freddy Farmer murmured as though he were too busy with his own thoughts to hear Dawson's question.
In the next moment, though, all conversation between them ceased abruptly. A door opened and two shadowy figures came into the room. At the sound of the latch and the soft footsteps that followed immediately, Dawson screwed his head around, fully expecting to see the leering, buck-toothed face of some son of Nippon. Neither of the two figures who came into the room were Japanese. At any rate they certainly didn't look like Japanese. They looked more like a couple of ragged Hawaiians, although their cheek bones were unusually high. And when Dawson took a second look at their faces he was instantly struck with the impression that both were a trifle scared. One of them carried a tray of food, while the other carried a snub-nosed automatic, and acted as though he expected the thing to blow up almost any second. The one with the tray of food placed it on the floor, and then, while the other stood guard with his "nervous" gun, he moved around by Dawson's head, and motioned for the Yank air ace to roll over on his stomach. Dawson hesitated an instant and then did as signalled. Hands fumbled with the rope about his wrists, and presently his half numbed wrists were free. He pulled them down by his sides, and with his head turned that way he watched the man free Freddy Farmer's wrists, also. That done, the brown-skinned man leaped quickly backward and pushed the tray of food between them with one bare foot.
"Food," he said in a strange husky voice. "You eat. You eat food."