“That’s the plague of it,” he grumbled. “If you could see them you could blast them from the sky even at night.”
Backing away, he studied the mass of masonry above him. More a fort than a castle, it had stood there for hundreds of years. Bombs had shattered it more than twenty years before. But the tower, with stairway leading to the top, still stood. He was considering climbing those stairs for a better view of the sky, when, a sudden discovery left him standing there quite motionless. From the very top of that tower had come a flash of light.
“The dog had found the Fugitive”
“Spy!” His mind registered like a recording machine. “Flashing signals!”
That was enough. Two steps at a time, with the collie at his heels, he went up those stairs. What was he to do? There were times when he believed in revelations straight from the Divine Will. He would know what was to be done when the time came.
Approaching the top, he went on tiptoe. Unfortunately Flash could not know the need for breathless silence. He uttered a low growl.
Instantly there came a crash. Something had fallen. There was the sound of shuffling footsteps.
The tower, a mass of standing pillars and tumbled stone, offered a splendid hiding place. One might hide from a man, not from a dog. Dave had, for the instant, forgotten the dog. Springing forward, he all but fell over some large, dark object. Bending over, he picked the thing up. “Some instrument, perhaps a—”
His thoughts broke off. The dog had found the fugitive. There came a muttered guttural curse, a sound of a solid impact, the howl of the dog, and after that scurrying footsteps.