Colonel Fraser looked at him in frowning bewilderment.
"A crack at what, Dawson?" he demanded.
Dave hesitated, and his face was fiery red when he spoke.
"Getting to Duisburg, sir," he said slowly, "and trying to find out just what's to happen on the seventeenth of this month."
The colonel blinked, looked just a trifle annoyed, and opened his mouth to speak. However, he changed his mind and smiled faintly.
"I admire your courage, and your splendid offer, Dawson," he said. "But it would be impossible, old man. You just couldn't bring it off, though not through any fault of yours, mind you. But the whole place is double guarded, as Major Crandall explained. And, not to take away one bit from the splendid services you have rendered Intelligence in the past, both the major's men and mine were the very best in the game. They have been there on the spot for weeks, and have obviously failed, and paid with their lives. Heaven knows I'd grab at your offer if I so much as thought there was the ghost of a chance, but—Well, you see, old man?"
The colonel smiled kindly, and gestured with his two hands, palms upward. Then he blinked as Dawson smiled back at him, and shook his head.
"No, sir," he said, "I don't see it your way. I don't mean that Farmer and I would walk right into Number Sixteen Kholerstrasse and find out what was what. Chances are that we might neither of us get to within a mile of the place. However, if those mysterious factories are linked up with Number Sixteen, then maybe we could do something about it. Learn a little something, anyway."
"Eh?" the colonel murmured. "I—I don't quite think I follow you. Do you mean, get a look at what's in those factories? But, good heavens, my dear chap! How on earth—?"
"Something like that, sir," Dawson interrupted quietly. "But not, perhaps, the way your agents, and Major Crandall's agents, tried it. I wouldn't be so conceited as even to begin to think that I could walk in their footsteps and accomplish something they failed at. And I know Farmer isn't that conceited either."