"Fairly well, sir," the Yank R.A.F. ace replied. "I've done quite a bit of flying over that section, now and again. Why, sir?"
The Intelligence officer didn't answer at once. He fished a hand into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Smoothing it out he held it to the light so that all could see. A map had been roughly drawn in pencil on the paper.
"A map of a three square mile spot of ground exactly seven miles west of Lille," Colonel Trevor said, and started pointing things out with his finger. "See this? A hill range. Here is the Lille River that flows into the Somme farther south. See this sharp bend in the river? Well, the ground there is thickly wooded, and to the east ... the southeast, rather ... is quite an expanse of swamp ground. Now, just a shade east of the edge of that swamp land is a tiny French village. You can't even find it on a map, but its name is Fleurville. Somewhere in that area, Dawson, is the secret weapon that Hitler plans to use against us. The weapon, I am sure, that destroyed those Lockheed Hudson bombers last Tuesday night."
Dave didn't say anything as the Intelligence officer stopped speaking. He stared hard at the pencil drawn map in an effort to stamp every little detail on his mind. Squadron Leader Markham, however, was not so interested in the map as he was in what Colonel Trevor had said.
"Why do you say that, Colonel?" he asked. "And where did you get this map?"
"I traced that map from one you could only see under a microscope," the other said. "From a map originally drawn almost pin head size by my brother."
Dave jerked his head up, eyes wide.
"Your brother, sir?" he gasped. "But your brother's dead! You mean another communication came through just the same? That he'd sent it on its way before he was captured?"
"No," Colonel Trevor said quietly. "My brother brought it with him. Remember my not wanting anybody to touch the body? Remember my saying something about an autopsy? Well, naturally, I did not plan for any autopsy to be made on my brother. The cause of his death was clear enough. However, in Intelligence every agent has a special way of hiding secret messages in the event he is captured. Some use false fingernails with the message printed underneath too small for the human eye to read. Others conceal the message under a false patch of hair glued to their scalp. And so on. There are a hundred and one different ways of hiding information you've gathered. However, each man's method is a secret between himself and the Chief of Intelligence. Therefore I didn't allow your medico to touch my brother. I wanted to communicate with my Chief first."
Colonel Trevor paused for a moment, squared his jaw a bit, and then continued.