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Show If All Over But the v 6 Richard Powell- ShootinCT Mr AN IhJSiER SANCTUM MYSTERY f IB STARRING ARAB -ANDY BLAKE fflX "Uti-huh, bait. All week I've been keeping a diary. And everv time I heard one of the girls drop an in-teresting in-teresting remark, I noted It down I have quite a collection. Some of it is junk but some looks intriguing." in-triguing." "You framed me," I growled. "I wondered last week why you insisted insist-ed on staying around the house every ev-ery night. You did it so this story of yours would look good." "Andy, don't get angry yet because be-cause that's only the start. I said you weren't taking all these notes directly for Counter-intelligence but just sort of on your own and would take it up with Counter-intelligence when you got a real collection of loose talk. I said you had all your notes at your quarters and had invited in-vited me to come up and see them tonight, but I giggled and said that It sounded just like a new way of asking a girl to come up and see your etchings and of course I wouldn't dream of going to your rooms. And after I finished, Joey got up and left the table very fast and Mrs. Fielding looked pale and then you came before anything could happen." "Friends," I said, "let me introduce intro-duce you to the Widow Blake." "So," Arab said happily, "we're going to your quarters and wait In ambush." "I'll be right with you just as soon as I can run down to Fort Knox and borrow an Armored Division." "Darling, if you think you can get help, I'm all for It." That remark startled me. It was the first time Arab had ever admitted admit-ted that we might need help in taking tak-ing on a few dozen thugs. I tried to imagine how our story would Tm s FAR: Lt. Andy Mn,s IT II Joined by his wife, WOej to work 'or Ordnance iMAncly liad had a run ln vKbo owned a house near iB lurched the house and mai dippings that indlcat-IKftt indlcat-IKftt be German agent. Ejjsi toward the house, to IBjm prevent Jones from find-Lart,.i! find-Lart,.i! itlention to himself E indw. Jones came on L stalking of each other, M grew a gun on Jones. JK and the next day Andy MATTER IX Be car tonight, Andy. I ML out. Maybe we can JB at the apartment. And -9 ii ;Hibow up around that m,- ven when I stopped house on Q Street, fluid get out of the car, Hdown the front steps. Boost skipping. she cried, "the timing B Now we've got to Mpidly, "Huh?" getaway, darling. Hur-Hi Hur-Hi don't want us to be began skipping in my Si maybe bats. It would Bo remember, all right H i" the dark and Hthe whisper of stealthy fl ' When she acted Bias n0 time t0 'oolt for B It was a moment for in sir-raid shelter. May from the CUI-b with Mrs, grumbling, "What's B go to your quarters, B her suspiciously. Miald, "but I wish you Me way I was going to idy ( Had you planned to re? Lovely!" tleys are out for the eve- . . and I thought we re and be alone and . . ." ; a sinister laugh. "We me," she said. muttered. "I was afraid forward happily on the seat like a little girl tell-story tell-story to her friends. I i circle of wide staring like this," she said. "The k!s decided that there spy angle, so I decided oof." :ave a front seat at my I" Et court-martial you if The army shoots me if The spies shoot me if '. I got about as much fruit fly." 1 me. "There are," she t girls in the house on By an odd coincidence torn important branches anient By an odd co-fall co-fall have good jobs and ler." 'that. A guy might think ed into the parrot house not getting the point, tyou see that every girl i must have been care-' care-' There isn't one of us ' hear important infor-if infor-if the day." t mean that you girls dope around, do you?" it's hard to explain, never heard any of them tell any secrets. But latter a lot, things slip I things. Things that mean anything to the fcner." wound in the dregs of I "Wait a minute," I 'hunk of paper I picked p man's house. What two notes on it?" Bed them," Arab said. 'Betty I hope I can we've been working late lilts ' The other was: It's i wonder to me that let ven more crowded but maybe people are s'a home.' Are you know that there's a girl !!n the house who works I in the War Depart-1 Depart-1 Dt named Genevieve 'or the Transportation "i interested." you figure anything out femaiks when you know them?" I" I said cautiously, Oper.-.tions was bringing b t oil. I might think lavements had been in- H think that Plain Mr. loey ttaeder might be in- "e so stodgy! Of course Wed. They take little e that and things they Jspapers and play jig- of hard to prove." 'your seat, big boy. I'm ve it. Tonight." now wait. I'm not - I'll turn in a report aren't going to have le ny report. I elect- i 'bait." to undeceive her? "Sure." I gald, I "bring on your spies." I turned the car off the lane and ! through a cowpath gap in the hede and drove bumpily back over the meadow, paralleling the lane, as far as possible. That left the car far enough away from the cottage to escape anything but a real search We walked the remaining few hum dred yards to the Crowley place and found it quiet and deserted. Arab looked around the living room, and said, "Maybe I ought t( yell for the U. S. Marines." A fifth of Scotch, two highbal glasses, and a silver basket-weav. bottle of carbonated water stood oi the table. Beside them a sign lei tered ICE pointed to the kitcher. Bill Crowley's dragon-embroidere dressing gown hung on one chaii while Ellen Crowley's wickedes pink negligee was on another. little trail of rice led upstairs. Th Crowleys were cute. "Let the Marines get their owi girls," I growled. "This is one situ ation the army has well In hand." "It might take them a while to flnt this place. If you played your card-right card-right you might be able to hold mi hand." "Take it easy. We have a Job to do. I could not love thee, dear, so much loved I not honor more. Tennyson." Ten-nyson." "It isn't. It's Lovelace, Richard Stxteen-something to sixteen-some-thing. Do you really think we can't natch a minute?" "Yeah. Let's see your notes." I picked up the notebook and sheaf of typed paper, taking care not to disturb the artillery. "Bring the rest and let's go to the cellar," I said. "Can't we stay here?" I began pulling down the shades on the first floor, and explained, "No use letting any lights show. The cellar cel-lar has blackout shades." We turned out the lights and went downstairs, closing the cellar door behind us. It might be an unnecessary unneces-sary precaution, like hiding the car, but nobody ever shot himself by making a detour around an unloaded unload-ed gun. I adjusted the blackout shades over the cellar windows. We settled down in a couple of wicker wick-er chairs and I began reading the typed translation of Arab's notes. She had done quite a job. Apparently Appar-ently she had never stopped taking notes from the time of our wild bus ride, nearly two weeks ago, right up to and including breakfast that morning. There were dozens of quotes on everybody in the house. I went back to the beginning of Arab's notes and read them again. This time I checked every quote with a list which identified the job held by each girl. When I finished, fin-ished, my skin was prickling. Something Some-thing was there. I couldn't see anything any-thing but I could feel it. We divided the pages and spread them over the ping-pong table. We went through them like prospectors hunting for gold except that instead of a thrill you got a shudder when you found something. We jotted down notes that fit the pattern on pages torn from the back of Arab's notebook, and scribbled comments about the remarks. We traded Items and tossed some away after a discussion and went back and got others that we'd passed up at first. Probably we missed things because we didn't have the necessary background back-ground knowledge to interpret them, but that couldn't be helped. When I finished reading I could feel Arab trembling against me. I swallowed, and it was like downing gravel. "Nobody mentioned D-Day," I growled. "That's a hell of a thing. We're going to put the enemy to the trouble of finding out all by himself when we land in North Africa." "Andy, I'm so scared I don't quite know what all these notes mean." "They mean a huge operation. Witness V-mail, a lot of Silver Stars, many cargo ships being collected, lots of maps and big demand for oil." "And how much points to North Africa?" "Pocket guide to North Africa, maps probably using Arabic place names, Admiral Darlan, pyrethrum, First Armored Division trained for desert warfare, goggles and mosquito mosqui-to bars, iodine in water, narrow-gauge narrow-gauge railroads, report on scorpions, and battleship Jean Bart. The battleship bat-tleship even gives us one landing place: Casablanca. But since the real desert is farther east, lt sounds like landings over a long coastline." "A lot of those things show we're going in to stay, don't they? What else have we found out?" "Well, it's a joint operation, Army-Navy. The boys climb down cargo nets into Hlggins landing boats, grab beach heads, build airfields air-fields with . air-borne equipment, throw new tank destroyers at Germans. Ger-mans. Among those present will be the First Armored Division, the First Infantry Division, now in England, Eng-land, and the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division. We catch Rommel in a vise between the invasion forces and the British Eighth Army from Egypt." "It's all right to say it sounds thrilling, isn't it, Andy?" "It sounds thrilling to tell a guy you're going to smack him in the jaw. But sometimes it works out better to smack him first." "There isn't a chance we could be having bad dreams?" (TO BE CONTINUED) "Maybe I ought to yell for the U. S. Marines." sound to some high-ranker of the Military District of Washington. He would listen politely, and the next thing a doctor would be tapping my kneecap to find ouf if the leg reacted normally. "With that story," I muttered, "a guy would be a fool to lend us even one M.P." "That'S what I thought, too. So it's up to us." "What do you mean? Stop being so sinister!" "Well, suppose there's nothing to my story. No enemy agents. No secret se-cret information in my notes. No nothing. What happens?" "Nobody raids my room ... but I'd age five years waiting for them, just the same." "Suppose there is something in my story. Suppose they raid your room and find nothing. What happens?" "We go on living. A little thing, but nice." "And how long do we go on living?" liv-ing?" "Huh?" "Andy, you don't seem to realize that now we're tagged as the couple who prowled through the fat man's house a week ago. Nobody could miss connecting us with that, after the act I put on at dinner. If Joey and the fat man are agents, they won't want to leave us hanging over their heads. We've been too curious." curi-ous." "You're telling me." "Oh, darling, don't you understand? under-stand? We haven't any real evidence evi-dence on Joey and his boss. If we wait, they may do a lot of damage before they're tripped up. This is our one chance to make them come out in the open. If they raid your room, we've got evidence. Then it'll be all over but the shouting." "O. K.," I said. "Put on your wedding ring, Mrs. Blake. We're about to play house." "Andy, you're a darling! You'll do it?" I didn't explain my reasoning to her. If a beautiful blonde wanted to hink I was wonderful, who was I |