"You just tell me instead," Dave said. "What's up? An armistice been signed?"
"That was an Air Ministry number, Dave!" Freddy breathed. "As soon as the All-Clear sounds you and I are to report to Room Five Hundred, Fifth Floor, Air Ministry!"
"No kidding?" Dave echoed as the familiar tingling sensation came to the back of his neck. An eerie tingling that had always proved in the past to be an advance warning of action and danger just ahead. "Who has Room Five Hundred?"
"The chap who talked to me on the phone just now," Freddy said. "None other than Air Marshal Manners!"
"Manners?" Dave gasped. "The man who led the R.A.F. at Dunkirk? Hey, wait a minute! Before we went out for service with the Fleet Air Arm in the Middle East I heard some kind of a rumor that he was going to be put in charge of something very big, and very hush-hush. Boy, oh boy! Do you think, Freddy?"
"I'm not thinking," Freddy said and fished in his pocket for money to pay for his meal. "I'm heading for Adastral House right now."
"You mean you're following me!" Dave cried and bolted from the dining room.
[CHAPTER TWO]
Daredevil Wings
As Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer stepped through the door of Room Five Hundred on the Fifth Floor of the Air Ministry their first impression was that they were stepping into a concert hall, and that the place was almost filled up. The room was huge, tremendous in size, and at least thirty or forty men in R.A.F. uniform were seated in chairs. At the far end Air Marshal Manners, the R.A.F. hero of Dunkirk, sat at a table on a small raised platform.