“What did he say,” Gale asked anxiously.
“He seemed interested. He’s seen the woman—met her at some big dinner. It seems that in India she is still quite a person. It’s only in China and Burma that she’s in bad.”
“That’s the way it is,” Gale exclaimed. “A woman in a glorious gown can get around men. I shouldn’t wonder if a lot of those English secret agents were really stupid.”
“Oh! They are!” Than Shwe agreed. “Some of them are very, very stupid.
“I meant to tell you,” she added as an afterthought, “that Chinese nurse, Mai-da, is coming to visit us tonight. Believe me, she will tell you about this Madam Stark, the woman in purple, as you call her. She will tell you plenty.”
“The colonel wasn’t taken in by this woman.” Isabelle defended her boss. “He just never has seen much of her—really doesn’t know much about her. He sent me over to the Army Intelligence Headquarters to report on her. The head man there was out. Nearly everyone is these days. Big things just around the corner, you know. A very nice boy with pink cheeks, blue eyes and a smile, wrote down all I told him.”
“And said he’d report on it,” Gale exploded. “Oh! Sure! That’s army life for you! My Dad said I’d have to be a good waiter. And if I get my head blown off by a bomb while I wait, what then? I saw the tall thin man who is lame in both legs again today.”
“You did?” Isabelle exclaimed. “Way up here?”
“Sure. On the ridge only half a mile from our hideout. What do you expect? He and that woman in purple are anti-British spies, I tell you! And they’re out to wreck us—have been ever since I put my radar fingers on those Jap planes up there in the clouds above the city and helped bring them down. They’ll get us if they can—yes—and the Three Secrets of Radar as well.”
At that moment a small round face appeared at the opening of the tent flap and a voice said: “May I come in?” It was Mai-da, the Chinese nurse.