Dave Dawson with the Pacific Fleet

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Dave hesitated, clenched his fists, and groaned inwardly.

"Am I getting tired of doors!" he grated. "What in thunder gives around here, anyway?"

The man reading the book looked up and pointed again.

"Through there," he said, and went back to his book.

Dave and Freddy walked over to the door, but when he reached it, Dave stepped to one side.

"Your turn," he said, and stabbed a thumb at the knob. "Maybe you'll have better luck."

Freddy shrugged, cast a quick apprehensive look back over his shoulder at the man reading the book, and then turned the knob and pushed open the door. And he did have better luck. The room they entered was huge in size, and it contained so much stuff, and so many things, that it was impossible for either Dave or Freddy to concentrate on anything for several seconds. But by that time a tall, thin-faced man in shirt sleeves had risen from a desk and come over.

"Glad to meet you, Dawson and Farmer," he said in a quiet but warm voice. "I'm Colonel Welsh. Come in. We've been waiting for you."

If the man had introduced himself as Santa Claus Dave couldn't have been more dumbfounded. Colonel Welsh was the man who made U. S. Army and Navy Intelligence click. He was in charge of the intelligence work of both services, and—in a vastly different way, of course—he had as much power in the United States as Himmler had in Nazi Germany. Perhaps no more than a dozen people knew what he was, for he acted as a colonel of infantry as well. But that job was simply a cover for his real work. He was seen and known as Colonel Welsh, of infantry, but few people knew that he was the same mysterious Colonel Welsh who was in charge of all U. S. Intelligence.

But it wasn't so much meeting the man that caused Dave to gasp and stare hard as it was the man's looks. His thin face had a nice smile, but beyond that you somehow didn't expect him even to know the time of day. The eyes had a dreamy, almost vacant look in their depths, the lips of the mouth had a dopey downward droop, and the chin was too pointed, and sort of too country parson looking.