Dave heard the man’s words as though they came from a thousand miles away. His head was spinning. Guns were pounding in his brain, and great bells were clanging furiously. For a crazy instant he tried to tell himself that this was all just a weird nightmare, and that he would wake up in a nice safe bed 'most any minute. A nightmare it was, indeed. But it was reality, nevertheless—cold, stark, heart-chilling reality. On what they had believed was an errand of mercy, Freddy and he had flown right straight into the jaws of death.
Stunned beyond movement, he remained perfectly still while the man with the Luger slid around behind and removed his service automatic, and Freddy’s, too. Through eyes that seemed to ache with his own misery, he glanced down the beach at what he had thought was a crashed Vultee. It wasn’t a Vultee at all, only a make-believe one fashioned out of strips of wood with war painted cloth stretched over them to give the desired effect from the air. Then the man circled around back front and was facing them again. Dave stared at the almost peaches and cream skin of the face and hands, and at the flaxen hair.
“The Cub’s pilot!” he heard his own voice gasp out. “You were flying that Taylor Cub and tried to get us in under those two armed Wacos!”
“Quite true,” the man said, and beamed. “And congratulations on your gunnery, Captains Dawson and Farmer. Those two fools deserved what they received. They flew their aircraft like two children. But we mustn’t waste time here.”
The man gestured with his gun for Dave and Freddy to walk in front of him. But Dave was still gripped by his trance. He couldn’t move. He could only stare at the man he had seen across the air space thousands of miles from this spot, and only a week ago. Less than a week, in fact!
“Walk!” the man with the Luger barked, though the smile remained on his lips. “Colonel Welsh sent you down here to find out things, didn’t he? Well, then, let’s find them out. But of course, there’ll be no report made to the dear Colonel. You American Intelligence men! Such stupid fools. Every bit as stupid as the British!”
The man leered at Freddy Farmer as he spoke the last. The English youth regarded him coldly, face expressionless.
“A matter of opinion, Seven-Eleven,” he said quietly. “And that’s who you are, isn’t it?”
The man with the Luger looked pleased. He lost his sneer for a moment while he beamed all over the place.
“I like the name the Americans give me,” he said, as though he were tasting something good. “It is very nice. But in Germany—there, and to all my agents, I am Captain Karl von Stutgardt. You have heard of that name, no?”