"For the same reason other passengers aboard the train were arrested," the Air Vice-Marshal replied. "Simply for no good reason at all, other than the fact that the Nazis figured they weren't functioning according to plan unless they made some arrest. Anyway, Jones was presently arrested along with the others, perhaps because he was seen talking to the injured man. At any rate, they arrested him and herded him into one of the several police vans that had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Just picture what must have been going on in his mind! Stuffed down in one of his pockets were two halves of sheet paper containing data on Hitler's war plans for ultimate world conquest. And there he was in a Nazi prison van under guard, and being driven back into Germany."
"Not so good!" Dawson grunted impulsively. "Right behind the old eight ball, and how!"
"Eh?" the R.A.F. Intelligence chief echoed with arched eyebrows.
"An American expression, sir," Colonel Welsh spoke up with a chuckle. "Dawson means that Jones was certainly between the devil and the deep blue sea. Right out on the end of the limb, so to speak."
The Air Vice-Marshal blinked just a little at that string of descriptive adjectives, but decided to let them ride without further explanation.
"Yes, Jones was very much in a bit of a spot," he said with a nod. "He had the two halves of paper, but of course he'd had had no time to examine them yet. Fact is, he had no way of knowing whether what he'd heard was true or not. Perhaps those torn halves of paper in his pocket with all the minute writing didn't mean a thing to anybody. In short, it might be best to wad them into a ball and toss them unseen over the side of the police van, and forget the whole thing. Whether they contained things of importance or not would certainly make no difference to the Nazis should those blighters find them on him. The Nazi beggars are thorough, if nothing else. As you say in America, they don't overlook a single bet. They do things automatically, and take care of the questioning part of it later."
"And lots of times they don't even bother with the questioning part!" Dawson spoke up, with a knowing nod. "They may be butchers and murderers, but they aren't anybody's fools."
"Far from it," the Air Vice-Marshal agreed instantly. "So it was very touch and go with Jones. Should he get rid of the stuff and pay attention to saving his own skin? Or should he risk everything until he had a chance to make what he could from the writing on his two torn halves of paper? Well—well, permit me to say that he was a British Intelligence officer, so the decision he made is obvious. He took the chance on keeping the two halves. And for once luck was with him. Unseen by the guard on the van, he managed to wad the two halves of paper—they were very thin sheets—into a ball and hide them in his left armpit under a patch of gummed skin tissue that all agents carry—as you two chaps well know."
The senior officer stopped talking as though waiting for the two air aces to nod. And then he continued on.
"Well, Jones, and those with him, were taken to the town of Opelln inside Germany, and thrown into jail. For thirty hours they had neither food nor water, and four unfortunates died. Or perhaps they were fortunate in being able to die, considering what the others suffered later. Anyway, Jones was unmolested for thirty hours. And you can be sure he made full use of them. He borrowed a pair of thick lens glasses from one of the other prisoners, and using a lens as a magnifying glass, he read what his two halves of paper contained. And I will say right here that it was the most exciting bit of reading that Jones or any other man ever perused. Before his eyes was revealed a good part of what Hitler intended to do. And, mind you, exactly what he has done since the start of the war! Of course, with only half of it there, Jones was unable to learn definite details. He could only read what he could read, and guess at what the other half contained. But had Jones been able to turn his newly gained knowledge over to us, the—well, I can tell you that the history of this war thus far would have been completely different from what it has been."