"Yes, sure!" Dave said excitedly. "And by the way, was the real Sergeant Kinney's body found? I mean, you're sure von Khole actually did murder him, and he isn't the real Sergeant Kinney, himself?"
"Whether von Khole murdered Kinney, or one of his bunch did it, we don't know," Manners replied. "But the real Sergeant Kinney was no dirty Nazi spy. Early this morning some of my men dug up the cellar of the place. They found a body nobody could recognize, but the old World War identification tag they found on the wrist belonged to Kinney. No, there've definitely been two Kinneys serving in the R.A.F. One, the real chap. The other, Baron von Khole."
"And you learned something from the code books and stuff you found, eh, sir?" Freddy questioned eagerly.
"Enough to worry the Nazis sick!" Manners replied with a curt nod. "The code books alone are the greatest prize of the war, as far as I'm concerned. I now know the code signal for every U-boat and surface raider the Nazis have in the North Atlantic."
"Hot dog!" Dave cried in a burst of exuberant enthusiasm. "It's practically in the bag! We can knock them off like clay pigeons, and make the Atlantic clear sailing for British convoys."
"No, it isn't going to be as easy as that," Air Marshal Manners said with a shake of his head. "They'll change those codes as soon as they can. But with so many of their craft at sea it will take a certain amount of time. A couple of days, at least. Having failed to trap that devilish raider and her wolf pack of U-boats this morning, our only hope is to trap her through the code signals before she can receive a new set."
"But couldn't that be done in the matter of a few hours?" Freddy objected. "A Nazi plane fly out to her with the new code?"
"No," Manners said bluntly. "A new code that can't be broken down by the enemy in short order isn't something that you think up over night. True, every country has emergency codes, but even they need constant rearranging in order to fool the enemy. And the point is, I feel pretty sure that I've got hold of the Nazi's emergency code as well as all of their regular codes. As head of Nazi Intelligence in England it's only natural that von Khole would have a copy of every existing code."
"And leave them around for somebody to pick up?" Dave gasped. "Boy, that's just about tops for being dumb, I'd say!"
"It is," Air Marshal Manners agreed. "Incredibly stupid, but that kind of stupidity is a part of the German make-up that amazes one. Especially when you consider how thorough and clever they are about so many other things. You two lads are too young to have been in this world at the time, but it is a matter of confirmed history that before the entry of America into the last war, von Papen, the German ambassador to Washington, left a briefcase on a New York subway train containing a world of information regarding German sabotage and espionage activities in the United States!"