Dave didn't speak the words aloud. He spoke them only in his brain, but as he glanced at Colonel Welsh and met the man's eyes he knew that the senior officer understood what was in his mind, just as though he had heard the words spoken. Even as Dave met his eyes, Colonel Welsh bit his lower lip and gave a sharp little puzzled shake of his head. A hundred and one answers to the question leaped into Dave's brain, but every one of them seemed too fantastic even to bother considering.
However, fantastic or not, one thought kept hammering away until he was forced to admit that it at least must be true. It was that somebody close to Colonel Welsh—very close—was unquestionably in the pay of Berlin, or Tokio. Somebody in the drab, unpretentious building where Colonel Welsh maintained his real head-quarters was a traitor to the American flag, a paid rat of the lowest form who gnawed at the very heart of America.
But who? Dave thought of Captain Lamb, and Captain Stacey, and Lieutenant Caldwell—and shook his head vigorously. He thought of the man who had taken them up in the elevator—and wondered. He thought of the man reading the book in that room with the mops and pails—and wondered some more. In fact, he wondered until his head ached and his brain rang. It just didn't seem possible that any spy could get close enough to learn all that somebody had learned. That, however, was one of the many cockeyed things about war. The impossible was constantly popping up to prove to be a cinch. There were over two years of proof of that. Poland for one. The Maginot Line for another. And Crete, and Malaya, and Singapore—and Pearl Harbor, too, for that matter. All that had happened at those various places just couldn't happen. Only it had!
"So maybe Lamb, or Stacey, or—"
Dave cut short the unspoken thought. The pilot up forward had throttled his engine and was nosing the Stinson downward. Leaning over close to the window, Dave peered down and ahead. He saw a stretch of wild wasteland that seemed to extend to the four horizons. Scrub growth, a few patches of towering trees, and all the rocks in the world, it seemed, met his scrutiny. The plane seemed to be nosing down toward an area of tableland. And as Dave squinted his eyes he suddenly was able to make out a couple of weatherbeaten shacks built close to a patch of woods. He thought he saw something glistening just under the branches of the trees, but he was too high and too far away to tell what it was.
"Okay!" the redhead suddenly called out. "We're getting near the end of the line. Remember what I told you, you three. Be nice and nothing will happen. Get funny and I'll drill you and think nothing of it, so help me. I ain't a killer often, but when I am, I'm good. So watch your step."
[CHAPTER ELEVEN]
A Little Bit Of England!
Dave didn't bother looking at the redhead as the man pushed words off the tip of his tongue. He kept his nose pressed against the cabin window and watched with beating heart as the area of tableland came sweeping up closer and closer to the plane. The nearer the plane got to the ground, the more weatherbeaten and deserted the two shacks looked. In fact, Dave knew that if he should be flying over them at even a thousand feet or so, he would instantly take them for a couple of prospectors' shacks abandoned to the wind and the rain years and years before.
Another couple of minutes and the Stinson went up on wing, cut around in a dime turn, and then leveled off and settled to earth between two rows of sun-bleached rocks. Hardly had the plane braked to a halt than the redhead was at the cabin door, pushing it open with one hand behind him, and backing out. Every second of the time, though, he kept his blue green eyes fastened on his prisoners.