“So?” he muttered to himself, and fished out a bunch of keys. “Must be late. But he should have been here hours ago.”
He stuck a key into the lock, twisted it, and pushed the door open.
“Inside, you two,” he grunted. “Select a couple of chairs and sit down. Maybe a couple of messages waiting for me. No questions. I’ll answer them all later.”
Dave and Freddy stepped into a fair sized office that smelled of dust and dead air. It was as though the office hadn’t been used in weeks. But it was all in a tidy condition. There were three desks, twice that number of chairs, an entire wall lined with filing cabinets, a two-way radio, a bank of half a dozen phones, and a lot of hanging maps of San Francisco and the West Coast areas. The two youths sat down and watched Colonel Welsh go straight to the biggest of the three desks. He picked up a small pile of mail, riffled through it, and then dropped the lot disgustedly on the desk.
“That’s funny!” he muttered in a low voice. “Closed tighter than a drum. Nobody here. No messages. I don’t get the picture at all. I don’t—”
Colonel Welsh stopped short and stiffened. Dave and Freddy jerked up straight in their chairs, and all three swung quickly around and stared at the door of a closet at the rear end of the office. For a brief second or two no one dared breathe. They had all heard it: the soft thump of something against the inside of the door.
“Sit tight, you two!” Colonel Welsh suddenly said in a low voice. “I think I have an idea what that was. Sit tight, though, and be ready for action just in case.”
Dave snapped his gaze back to the Colonel, and saw a small but deadly looking automatic appear in the senior officer’s hands as though by magic. The Chief of all U.S. Intelligence Services went across the office with all the noise of a chicken feather brushing across a strip of velvet. He froze at the door, then grasped the key that was in the outside of the lock, twisted it, and jerked the door open. He had stepped back quickly, but he checked himself in mid-stride and flung out his free hand and caught the body that fell out the door opening like a fence post. It was a man wearing civilian clothes, but with Civilian Defense insignia on his sleeves. He was bound round and round by ropes, and there was a handkerchief gag jammed in his mouth.
“Strike me pink!” Freddy Farmer gasped, and came up out of his chair like a shot.
“Sweet tripe!” Dave echoed, and got up also. “This is like a murder mystery, or something.”