“Maybe,” Dave murmured softly. “Maybe. But I made a kind of promise to Tracey. More of a hope, it was. A hope that Freddy and I might have the chance to carry on where he left off.”
CHAPTER SIX
Battle Plans
A long silence settled on the office after Dave’s words had died away in the echo. The room was as quiet as a church, yet there seemed to be a sort of tingling vibration in the air. Dave felt it, and so did Freddy Farmer. And so did Colonel Welsh, from the intent and set look on his face. Presently he nervously cleared his throat and pressed his two palms flat on the desk.
“And we’ve got to carry on where Tracey left off!” he bit off, tight-lipped. “We owe that much to his gallant memory. We owe it to Uncle Sam. We owe it to ourselves. But—but there’s nothing to get our hands on, nothing to get our teeth into. Tracey died without telling you two a thing that we can use, or work on. It’s a cold trail, a dead end street!”
Dave Dawson leaned back his head, and stared unseeing at the office ceiling.
“Let’s draw a few word pictures,” he said more to himself than to the others. “Let’s put it like this. While serving with the Ninety-Sixth Attack Squadron, Tracey came on something hot. He couldn’t do anything about it because of his Squadron duties. His actions would look funny, and—his Intelligence identity wasn’t known to his C.O., was it, sir?”
“No, it wasn’t,” the senior officer replied quickly. “It—Hold everything! Good Heavens, the death of Tracey must have done something to my mind. There is one of his under-agents in Ninety-Six, a young Second Lieutenant Marble. It was Tracey who got Marble into the service about a year ago. Tracey trained him, and worked with him on a few unimportant jobs. But I don’t believe Marble was in on the Seven-Eleven business. That was strictly a confidential thing among handpicked agents, all of them picked by myself.”
“Well, maybe it worked a little differently in this emergency,” Dave murmured, and stared at the office ceiling again. “Let’s see. After stumbling across something, Tracey requested you to see that he got a bit of recall-leave. He left this Marble in charge—or at least with some kind of instructions—and started north for the States. He got into Mexico. Maybe the trail led him that way, or maybe it worked out quicker that way. We may never know the reason. All we know is that he entered the States through Texas, went on to Albuquerque, and—Just a minute! Colonel, there’s an Air Corps Base at Albuquerque. Can you call them and find out how he arrived? I mean, was it in a Curtiss P-Forty such as we found? Or did he arrive in some other kind of plane? Can you get Albuquerque on the wire, and find out?”