"Make them comfortable, Hans," said the thick-set man with a little hoarse chuckle. "I will telephone the good news to Herr Baron."
The man called Hans echoed his friend's chuckle and waved Dawson and Farmer to a couple of straight-backed chairs placed side by side. Dawson hesitated a brief instant, saw the man's fingers on his gun tighten, and walked over and sat down in one of the chairs. Freddy Farmer seated himself in the other chair. And as the thick-set man went through a door leading off into another room, Hans took up a position about ten feet in front of the two youths and leered at them invitingly.
"If you would like to try to escape, go ahead!" he suddenly spat at them in German, and made a little gesture with his gun. "No doubt Herr Baron would be just as pleased to see you dead as alive."
"That is perhaps so!" Dawson shot right back at him in the man's native tongue. "But he will not be pleased with you whether he sees us dead or alive. And who is Herr Baron? Herr Baron what?"
A brief flash of doubt showed in the German's eyes. Then he laughed harshly.
"So you are not Herr Karl Stoltz?" he said with a smirk. "Is that what you are trying to make me believe, eh?"
"I'm not trying to get anything through your thick head!" Dawson said evenly. "I'm just wondering who Herr Baron is, because he's in for one big surprise. And, numbskull, I'm not kidding you!"
As the other's eyes lighted up with a murderous gleam, Dawson instantly regretted that he had let his tongue run away with him. However, when the light suddenly died and was replaced by a look of bafflement and not a little worry, a tingling sense of grim satisfaction rippled through him.
But not for long. It was now definitely a case of mistaken identity by the two thick-headed Nazis. But that did not in the slightest alter the fact that Freddy and he were perched right on the edge of a volcano, and that at almost any moment they could be toppled off and down into the middle of complete oblivion as far as living out the rest of their lives was concerned. They both knew only too well what the Nazis do with their victims, whether they are the intended victims or just a couple of other guys.