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Show ftfBQHti BURST ONCE "51 lillr i G RAN VI LLE CHURCH kthM $-iJ W.M.U. SERVICE ViXyrV T f ricxi 80 FAR: lttt Cartil nd !NKt,l' 0B their ' ajtr? when he receive! note tit KrtrheU warning! them not to tiea fhey arrive In Tlerra Libre IkoH Zora and her husband jtrWtcbell'i Job at chiel engl-, engl-, 1 Irnit company that Jeff hai ' tf t. ail. Later Jeff's friend Ofto it killed, and Jeff snipecti Mr, $eaor Montaya, of murder-d murder-d MItchelli becauie they T (lue to the strange things tat e plantation. Other sln-)$ sln-)$ ire the company chemist, !W nd the flyers, Ryden and V A man named Collins ar- 'tbi Canal Zone to see Mitch-)fslklwtB Mitch-)fslklwtB Jerry clnnls has ' Aatt Montaya Is part German 4ur with the Nazis. Jeff has Sid Cbllins. Jkjbiue with the story In running without lights at high speed over an uneven roadbed, even snake unseen on the track might derail them. Under way, Collins turned to Curt In the seat. beside him. "I've followed fol-lowed blind so far. Where are we headed?" Curt chuckled mirthlessly. "The one spot you want above all to visit." vis-it." After a moment, "We better have it out, Collins. Suppose we begin with you. How did you get in on this? I reckon I know, but I'd rather you told me." "I had a note from Bill Henderson. Hender-son. He enclosed a letter from Mr. Mitchell" "One thing. Did you know of Mitchell's murder before you left the Zone?" , "Yes. That's the reason I was sent Mitchell hinted in his letter at a Nazi movement here which would endanger the Canal, and he wanted someone sent to confirm some serious discoveries he'd made and take action. "But the letter was so Involved and guarded and vague that we thought it crank stuff. We get more of that than you'd suppose. Nevertheless, Never-theless, we put out some feelers. No matter how wild the yarn that comes in, we can't ditch it In the waste basket. "Naturally we have some pretty good sources of information here and Here a wide stand of manzanltai made a black blob on the land scape. They dared not continue us of the motor, for sound rises and San Alejo was not more than i kilometer ahead and above them. Pushing the car up the brand line, and backing out by the third leg of the "Y" onto the main lini again, they had the car headed foi TempuJo once more. They left it ii the blackness of the low trees. Curt fumbled in the tool box, stuck a chisel into a hip pocket, and thi two men struck off down the airfield branch. Stars there were aplenty and they gave some light, but then was no moon and the going wai rough. They followed the tracks to the spur that led to the bodega at the lower end of the field, then up this spur to the fence. This lower gate .was locked, but Curt expected that. He led the way along the fence until un-til they'd turned the corner at the end of the field, then on to the copse of trees that sheltered the big buildings. build-ings. The blackness here was so thick it felt solid as they pushed into it "I doubt if we need to worry about a guard inside," Curt muttered. "The fence is ordinary protection and they couldn't keep a watchman at this end of the field without his showing a light at times. Lights down here would cause speculation if seen from San Alejo." He seized hold of the fence and pulled and pushed experimentally. "I don't know," he confessed, "but I suspect it's strung along the top for alarm. In any case, it'd be darn near impossible for us to get over that barbed stuff in the dark. We'll burrow under." They used the flashlight, playing it close to the ground. Putting the chisel to work to loosen the earth, Curt scraped away with his hands until they had a hole through which they could crawL He had a sudden thought. "Hey, take off your clothes! I've got fresh ones at Tempujo for myself, my-self, but if I give you any others it might be noticed." "Right" . Collins stripped to his shorts for the forage, and, minus a gun belt, had to carry his automatic in his hand. They circled the three buildings build-ings cautiously, the two hangars, the adjoining shed-roof between, duplicate du-plicate of the hangars at the other end of the field. "Haven't yet cut the grass here," commented .Curt "Huh. Probably don't intend to it's a better indication indica-tion that the buildings aren't in active ac-tive use." High in the walls was a continuous continu-ous horizontal strip of windowing in ground glass. Not the faintest glimmer of light showed anywhere. "Absolutely perfect camouflage from above," growled Curt "Look how they built the center portion around trees. The trunks go up through the roof. I'll bet not a square foot of these buildings can be seen from the air. Only the tracks leading in here would tell anything, and they can't be avoided. But even the tracks, with the weeds not kept down, probably look like a cart path." They were now in front Down at the other end of the field only a few night lights showed. "This loading platform along the front," went on Curt. "It's anchored only lightly to the buildings and the ground. My guess is it could be picked up by a couple of dozen men and swung out of the way in a few minutes. Pretty darn clever." True, this loading platform, the height of a flat car, was not solid. It jiggled to a healthy push. "Well, we can't, force the doors, $Hh CHAPTER XVI Jrerjl minutes neither man Gradually Curt edged him-peeper him-peeper blackness, got clos-"be clos-"be figure, between himself (he light from the Co-:a Co-:a Bot far distant The out-'ti out-'ti like Collins, 'pedj the name softly. No !K tried again, fcajne the low acknowledge 1 approached. "Looking uh" twef. r?thing?" 1 then, "No." fri friend, it's time for Imef to have a talk. First f 4ials. Let's see them." k ( pom the other at first, fanf able "Sure," and Col-bed;1 Col-bed;1 into a pocket. tetter. Lieutenant, Na-Uigeiice, Na-Uigeiice, eh? Glad to have takef" i the handclasp that turned i. fjollins unbent "I need her," he confessed, arried?" lid my service pistol . 's nearly eleven. The vi'Jibe asleep by midnight, . $o back to your .room, your rear window screen t yeu make no noise later." . 4ot out that way." r ned. "Well, go back to i v &ile. You've likely sized lacaf and know who's here?" " I when they're all abed and I tlire to get to sleep, wake han( He's in the last room." w,j 1 him out along the main the motorcar shed, mid-urt mid-urt broke off, stared toward j-hill. Some groups were it$ for the night judging ( sounds, "middle of the loi that? Enough for now. : id your room, I'll see you eturned to his bungalow, "-appeared into the night I mess-hall Emilio was w last words with his jfcirtners before heading peering bungalow. Curt time to climb In, hook screen behind him, hang eslover a chair as they l earlier, and stretch out s riosquito bar. He'd have Cs magazine against the , jjope that Emilio would i thought, or at worst sup- sik burst of wind had it to the floor. r Emilio fumble at the eight scrape of the maga-e maga-e Boor pushed it back over 4 shadow blocked out the is bedroom door. He sim-breathing sim-breathing and closed until he could see only llti lashes. This lower gate was locked. there throughout these countries. First thing was to check up on Mitchell the type of man, how responsible re-sponsible he was, and so on. Well, while we were doing that we got word of his murder. So that seemed to indicate a pretty thorough investigation investi-gation was needed. I drew the detail. de-tail. "While over In Soledad getting the lay of the land, I heard of the other two deaths. That clinched it. The next step was to get in here on the ground, ferret out what was going on." "Is that what you were doing, snooping around the docks at Tempujo Tem-pujo tonight?" Curt chuckled. "What did you think you could learn there?" . "Listen, man," retorted Collins in a huff, "I couldn't Just walk in here, look arourrtl, and ask questions. I had to get established first, so as to be accepted. You've planted me up river where there's obviously nothing noth-ing to see. I've had one definite objective since our plane faked trouble the other day, but it's at San Alejo. Meanwhile, until I can get to it, there's no harm looking around where I can." "Okay, okay," Curt apologized. "No offense. We'll give you a crack at that objective right now. Mitchell Mitch-ell wasn't hitting the pipe. I've been smelling trouble myself for the two weeks I've been here, but only tonight to-night did I click on it" He told Collins the story Montaya had given him about the hangars first built, later abandoned to storage stor-age purposes because the flyers pointed out the bad location. He told of the boxed airplane wings he'd seen the day of his ar-rival. ar-rival. "I know," put in Collins enigmatically. enigmat-ically. "I had a talk with the men of that plane when they put down at Puerto Soledad." Curt grunted and went on. He told of Mitchell's rising suspicions over a shipment from Japan or 1 through Japan, he added of eight long, square-end boxes. Heavy boxes, like overstuffed coffins, Mon-ahan Mon-ahan had told him. J He told of having seen only yester- 1 day another pair of big, heavy i square boxes marked generators, i from Germany via Vladivostok. So far as he knew, and he was pretty i familiar with the project by now. they had no use for generators of i that size, nor were any on order i that he knew of, and he'd had ac- i cess-presumably-to all engineer- ing equipment orders then placed. i They reached the airfield spur. looked and listened, then Presently the porch light 0 the front door clicked i JCurt heard the man's -ed for the bachelor quar eji sounded sharp on the rajk. nftious dial of his watch i was 11:30. Later than !t. He lay relaxed for Jtes, but dared not close 4 aid he would fall asleep pi day. fgot up, dressed again, taking his hat, and let -1the front way. He rec- ! farefully. Uthe street lamps, Curt Jrvay to the rendezvous djimpatiently until at last 4 little darker than the t itself, came toward him. ixed Monahan's stride, nan. Slats," he said when (lose enough. "This will uf of your sleep, but it Ijelped. Get yourself a Jkeep alert. Colbns and gbne three or four hours, nt be longer, for the jfrtirring to life soon after out at my bungalow, yone starts snooping ik him. Tie him up, only siyone find out I'm miss-Jpn't miss-Jpn't be recognized your-tne?" your-tne?" " ircar shed was an open Jfling with three short own car was headed out, 1the first car on its track. nbered the speedometer Jiected it. There must be record on this trip, t open the car wide. I was smooth enough, but I on iron rails in this still fang alarmingly loud to Jfeded silence. Further, obviously. "Can we dig under as we did with the fence, or do you suppose there's a floor?" Curt pondered. "Bound to be a cement floor," he decided. "Anyway, "Any-way, we couldn't tamp down earth inside when we left. No, the wall is only corrugated sheet iron. T.t's find a section to pry loose." They searched along the back of the buildings, coming finally to a spot where Curt could use his chisel again with least likelihood of its being discovered. It took some minutes min-utes before they had one sheet of the sheathing sufficiently sprung to give them entrance. There was noise to this Job, try as they would to muffle it, but they seemed to have the field to themselves. They crawled through the opening. Only Curt had a flashlight. He played it about experimentally, then more boldly, taking care that neither the beam nor a reflection from it should hit the strip of windowing. Then it fell on something and stopped dead! Directly above them spread wings of death. "By God, Collins! What'd I tell you!" His words sounded hollow, and echoes slapped back at them from the walls. The finger of light picked out the fuselage of a huge plane that towered above the two men, played along it back and forth. A long, slender, cigar-shaped body, its nose of glass, two-motored, its wings appearing stubby from this angle. "A Heinkel!" exclaimed Collins, and again echoes reverberated. A Heinkel it was. But on the under side of its wings and on the side of the fuselage was lettering and the circle-within-a-star-within-a-circle emblem to identify it as an American plane! (TO BE CONTIMED) |