The voice seemed to speak almost in Dawson's face, and as he peered through the crack he saw a black-uniformed and booted figure advance upon a door directly across the hall. A second black-uniformed and booted figure was right at his heels. The man in front turned the doorknob, then shoved the door open, and jumped back a step as he played the beam of the flashlight in his hand through the door opening.
"Ah, swine dog! So there you are!"
As though from a thousand miles away Dawson heard the German snarl those words, and they hardly registered on his brain. He was looking past the two Germans and into the room beyond. There stretched out on a bed that boasted of only one dirty blanket was the figure of a man who at first glance looked stone dead. His face was like wax under the dirt and half dried blood. And his fingers that clutched the single blanket looked almost toothpick thin. But he was not dead. As the light hit him in the face he opened eyes that seemed to be sunk two inches in his head. They glowed for a brief instant in fierce defiance. And the thin lips twitched as though the man were about to speak.
At that moment, though, Dawson saw one of the Germans raise the wicked-looking Luger that he held clutched in his right hand. And Dawson didn't wait to see what would happen next. He jerked back one hand to give Freddy Farmer the signal for lightning-like action, and then he went out of that hallway closet like a shell from a naval gun. In one great leaping stride he crossed the hallway. He kicked up with his right foot and connected with the German's gun hand. The gun went spinning from lifeless fingers, but Dawson wasn't watching its flight. He brought his own gun over and down in a vicious chopping motion. The barrel practically buried itself in the German's skull, and the man folded up silent as a mouse and sank to the floor.
Spinning around and ducking down at the same time, Dawson started to rip his gun upward, but he instantly checked the movement. There wasn't any second German there to receive that gun under the chin in more or less brass knuckle style. Not a bit of it. Freddy Farmer had not been simply an interested spectator. He had "taken care" of the other German. And in very definite style, too. Dawson hadn't heard so much as a single sound, but when he looked down he saw Freddy's victim stretched out cold as an iced mackerel across the threshold!
Without a word both air aces grabbed their respective victim and hauled him inside the room, and closed the door. Then, shielding his flashlight so that the beam wouldn't strike the man on the bed in the eyes, Dawson moved over to him. A great lump was in his throat, and it was difficult for him to speak.
"Hello, Dartmouth," he said. "I'm right, aren't I?"
The deep sunken eyes stared at him; then the man moved his head from side to side.
"I do not know what you are talking about," he whispered in German.
Dawson smiled and kneeled down beside the bed. For some unknown reason he was positive now. The man in the bed was well over six feet tall, but his hair was not straw-colored. It was almost snow white. But his eyes were blue, and it was perhaps the eyes that made Dawson so certain. They were defiant as they stared at him, but in their depths there seemed to burn a tiny spark of faint hope.