CHAPTER FOUR
Dead End
It was exactly five minutes to eight o’clock in the evening, and Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer were seated on the observation platform of the Administration Building at the San Francisco Air Base. In the tower above them the Control Officer was bringing in Air Corps planes, and sending them off, with clock-like regularity. For the last half hour they had enjoyed watching ships of all types and sizes come and go, but now that the time for Colonel Welsh’s arrival was drawing near, an eerie tightness seemed to grip their bodies, and the huge minute hand on the tower clock seemed to stop dead and not budge a fraction of an inch.
“If I start screaming, don’t let them lead me away to a padded cell,” Dave broke the silence. “But this waiting is getting me down for a fare-thee-well.”
“You’re not alone in that!” Freddy echoed grimly. “I swear I’ve been watching that clock up there constantly for the last hour. It’s stopped, I’m positive. But blast it, my own wrist watch says exactly the same time. Phew, how I wish he’d come!”
“I do, and I don’t,” Dave said. “There’s a chance, you know, that we may be all wet. Maybe what we have to report to the Colonel won’t mean a thing to him.”
“But he mentioned the Colonel’s name!” Freddy protested.
“I know, and that seems to clinch it,” Dawson said with a shrug. “But this war is so absolutely cockeyed it’s sometime hard to believe anything, even your own name.”
“You’re just getting jittery, Dave,” Freddy soothed. “Relax, old man. There’s absolutely nothing we can do but relax. We’ve reported the crash to the Commandant here. And the ambulance plane left long ago. So relax, old thing. Get hold of yourself a bit.”