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Show lfP ; All Over But the BIRtcharS Powell- ShootiflCJ W '(Hclri ' Alsl iew SAMCTu-i MYSTERY t $ M X IWU STARRING ARAB ANDY BLAKE who tui KB steel and flame onto the beaches of North Africa. But if the subs were massed and waiting oft" Gibraltar Gibral-tar .. . The fat man might have been reading my thoughts. "It Is fortunate fortu-nate that a contact is scheduled for tonight," he said. "The troop ships cannot be far at sea. There will be ample time to prepare." I said, "What you Nazis better prepare is to duck." "I think not. Lieutenant, what is your estimate of the crossing time? Seven days? Nine days?" "Not that long. We got a secret new outboard motor we hook on back of the ships. Doubles their speed." That was on the feeble side, and he didn't bother to answer. He was busy setting up a tripod, topped by oversize binoculars. He took a compass com-pass bearing, adjusted the binoculars binocu-lars south-southeast. I stared hard across the glimmer of waves. Nothing Noth-ing showed. Of course the sub might be lying well out, decks awash. I wondered how they made the contact. Plain Mr. Jones hadn't touched the short-wave set, so it must be by visual signal. I tried not to breathe fast. The Sea Frontier Fron-tier and Defense Command boys were waiting for something like that. playing with oversize binoculars after all. It was something tricky. "We have here," he said, patting the gadget on his tripod, "a piece of signaling equipment." He chuckled, chuc-kled, "The lieutenant has been hoping hop-ing for a wild display of lights. He has been hoping that I would not see the destroyer to the northeast. You could have your whole two-ocean two-ocean Navy out there and it would not matter. It is almost impossible to spot a motionless periscope at night and that Is all that our friends on the U-boat will show until everything is safe." I said hoarsely, "After this buildup build-up it better be good That gadget ought to produce black magic, at least." "It does," he said. "It produces a beam of black light . . . light beyond be-yond the visible spectrum. To send signals one merely interrupts the beam. Nothing can see the beam except a photoelectric cell through a lens fitted with the proper filter. One set Is here, one set on the U-boat." He held his watch into the moonlight and peered at it. "Eleven-fifteen. The contact spot is carefully charted. Our friends will be cruising there at periscope depth. We will not be Interrupted." He bent, peered through the eyepiece of the signal set. Arab whispered, "Andy, Is a destroyer de-stroyer really out there?" "He says so," I said. "But I think he's Just making it look tough so he can yell for a lot more credit. Listen. Lis-ten. Chief, if you get destroyer fever, how will we board your sub?" "First," the fat man said, "I will make my report. In case of accidents. acci-dents. Then, if everything is safe, I will have them send in a rubber boat. If your destroyer stays around, I will send its position and we will see what the new torpedoes do to old warships." "We'll never get aboard if there's a torpedoing." "Oh, yes. It will be easier. If the ocean is filled with survivors, who would suspect a rubber boat of carrying enemies? Who . . . ah!" He had a contact. His right index in-dex finger tapped a key. It was frightening. No flashes. No crackle of electricity. Nothing to see or hear at all . . . but you could imagine the silent broken streaks of invisible light beaming out to sea, reflecting down through the prisms of a periscope, peri-scope, coming out as dots and dashes from a photoelectric cell. There ought to be some way to stop him. Some way to take his strength and turn it against him, the way he liked to do with others. There ought to be I laughed. I put everything into it. It had to be good enough to worry him, to start him on the way to one of his hysterical spells. I had seen him that way twice: once to- THE STORV THUS FAR: Lt- Andy Blake and his wile, Arab, discovered evidence evi-dence of a spy ring headed by a Mr. Junes Followed to Andy's house by Jones' gang, Arab was taken prisoner, Andy escaped. After reporting to the army, be set out to And the gang. He was taken by two of them to the Jersey coast and In crossing to a small Island managed to upset the boat. He swam ashore, entered the bouse and found Paula. After turning Paula loose, he was captured and tied up. Arab came Into the room and was also tied to a chair. Jonei then explained that they were leaving leav-ing that night by submarine for Germany. He said Arab could go along if they would furnlsb certain Information. CHAPTER XVII "We may take her and the lieutenant. lieu-tenant. We were discussing it before be-fore you came back." Arab looked at me inquiringly, nd I explained, "We got an offer. An all-expense trip to Germany. See the ruins of Cologne and Essen. See : the Herrenvolk in their native airraid air-raid shelters. Watch the bombs go : by." "It sounds awfully attractive, dar- ling." The fat man said, "You may stay here if you insist. It can be arranged." ar-ranged." He walked over toward us and began wiping Invisible smears from the slide of his automatic. "He seems to have a gun," Arab i said. "He'd better be careful playing with It. People get hurt that way." "Do I get the idea." Arab said, "that there's a price on this trip to Germany? Let's wait and go free with the army." "There's a price. I think the trip Is selling for a secondhand military secret. Got any on you?" "I had one a minute ago, Andy. Oh, yes. That new rifle they invented invent-ed up In Pennsylvania." The fat man crooned, "That is sensible. sen-sible. Tell me about the new rifle." "It's wonderful," Arab said., "It can knock out a squirrel's eye at a hundred paces. It means curtains for the Iroquois and Mohawks." "Iroquois? Mohawks? I do not understand." I explained politely, "Her military secret Is a bit old. Two hundred years old, as a matter of fact. Pm afraid she's talking about the Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania long rifle, sometimes miscalled mis-called the Kentucky rifle." "It will," Arab said firmly, "make the smooth-bore musket obsolete." Light glared from the fat man's glasses. He swung his head from side to side, looking at us. "I wish to know merely little things," he said. "One could hardly call them military secrets. Little things like the operating ceiling of the B-17-E." "Oh, that!" I said. "I don't mind telling you that." I peered around nervously, and whispered, "It's twentv-flvp thousand feet." He frowned. "That does not seem to be very high." "Well, of course, that's with a fifty-ton bomb load." "Fifty tons! But the entire plane does not weigh that much!" "Uh-huh. Amazing what designers design-ers can do nowadays. And as for armament ... it makes me shudder to think what that baby carries. It's got turrets from the M-4 tank mounted mount-ed all over it, and . . . and that thing sticking out of Its nose whew!" "What thing do you mean?" "Lean closer," I said. "I hate to say It right out loud." He bent over me, and I said, "It's a blow gun!" He jerked back. "A blow gun!" "Yop. We got the Jlvaro Indians In South America turning them out on an assembly line. You blow tiny bamboo arrows through it. When one of those things connects with a guy, It's taps." Joey said wearily, "He's givin' you the business, Chief. Should I work over him some?" night when Joey hadn't flattered him fast enough, and once in the garden gar-den of the house on Q Street when I had hinted that Renee wouldn't be out with him by choice. He seemed to go into those mad spells when he suspected that somebody was sneering sneer-ing at him, when somebody hinted that he was ugly or stupid or weak. He needed flattery the way some people crave dope. Tonight he had a chance to become a great man in Germany. He would turn insane and deadly if anyone tried to rob him of that. And so I laughed. Laughed while my throat ached and sweat pickled my face. He turned from the tripod. "What is it?" he snapped. "Why do you laugh?" I snickered. "Do you know what kind of decoration you're going to get?" He moved toward me. Pudgy white fingers squirmed like tentacles. tenta-cles. "Yes," he said. "I will be given the Knight's Cross with swords and oak leaves." His voice lifted hall an octave. "You think I will not get it? You think the work does not demand it?" "Oh, sure, sure. The work demands de-mands it. But you won't get the ; Knight's Cross. You'll" The fingers coiled at my throat. "Go on, choke me," I yelled. 'That won't change things! The sub commander will get the Knight's Cross! You know what cross you'll get? Do you know? Do you?" Arab's voice cut in, "The double- cross." Some day I was going to buy her a store full of hats. The fingers loosened. "What do you mean?" he said thickly. I talked fast. "You got big stuff here. You hand it to the sub commander. com-mander. Where's your receipt? What's to stop him from taking all the credit? You work for Hlmmler. Who does he work for? Not Hlmmler. Hlmm-ler. Himmler dotsn't have the subs. Who does he work for?" "Canaris," the fat man muttered. "Admiral Canaris. German Naval Intelligence." His hands went to work on a phan-torn phan-torn neck. "The High Command! runs it." he choked. "They hate us." "Sure. You think that sub commander's com-mander's gonna give you and I Himmler a buildup? Like hell. Naval Na-val Intelligence will steal the credit They'll say they sweated the dope from the survivors of torpedoed ships." I made my voice low and nasty. "And do you know what hap-' pens to you? I know." His body was twitching, Jerking. "What happens?" His voice skirled up suddenly. "What happens?" (TO BE CONTINUED' "Do you know what kind of a decoration deco-ration you are going to get?" What the fat man and the sub commander com-mander could see, our boys could spot Just as well. And there had to be destroyers and corvettes off the coast, there had to be. Chills whisked across my skin. I shut my eyes, opened them after a few seconds. This time the shadow hadn't vanished. It was still there, far off In the moon lane, east by north of the house. A black sliver of steel was easing across the chromium-tipped waves. It carried four tilted funnels. That meant only one thing. I had seen those babies back in peacetime, back in Philadelphia. They had lain moored in deserted red-painted rows in the back channel chan-nel of the Navy Yard. You would drive past them and wonder why they hadn't been scrapped. That was back In the thirties when nobody no-body would ever dare attack America. Amer-ica. Why didn't they scrap those tin-can destroyers from the World War? One of them was out there now snuffling slowly through the waves. Saving her strength, like an old bird dog. She must be four miles north of the spot where the fat man expected ex-pected his sub contact. I tried to pray her south. I wanted her In position to make a short fast run when the light signals began flickering. flicker-ing. If she had to open up a long way off, the sub would very likely pick up the beat of her screws in time to get away. And the fat man could do his damage in five words: Invasion headed French North Africa. Af-rica. Apparently nobody else had seen the destroyer; they were all peering south-southeast. I pretended to imitate imi-tate them while watching the four-piper four-piper from the corners of my eyes. The silhouette narrowed as she went into a turn a turn which would take her farther away. I sawed the rope deeper into my wrists, trying to get free. The tin can turned slowly, relentlessly north. She steadied on the new course. Sweat stung my eyes. By the time I blinked them clear the moon lane was empty. The fat man stooped, fumbled with a floor plug "You may be interested in-terested in this," he said. "It is a nice application of a well-known principle." I thought: go on, baby, show off. You'll still be in trouble when you start flashing lights. "It is," he said, "the same principle prin-ciple by which doors open when a beam of light is broken." I began to feel sick. He wasn't "No. We will take them, anyway, any-way, If there is room. It is always i possible to teach people manners." He placed his foot carefully on my I bare toes, shifted his weight onto j them, and turned slowly. The sand on his shoe ground Into flesh. Pain scorched up my body. I locked my I Jaw muscles and tried to pretend that the feet were miles away and didn't belong to me. The pressure stopped Anally. I wriggled my toes. They moved and throbbed. No bones were broken. "Would you like another lesson?" the fat man asked. "Let's sit this one out." I said. : "You need dancing lessons before you have another waltz with me." "He sounds tough but he ain't," loey said. "Try It on Joey," I said. "I bet he'd bawl." "We have other work to do now," the fat man said. "It is time for the contact. Joey, turn out the lights and raise the window shades." The room blacked out. Joey felt his way past me, jabbing an elbow el-bow into my face. He raised the shades The windows were wide and deep; the Atlantic, curving out to its distant horizon, filled the room with a misty silver glow. A moon swung low in the sky and inlaid the waves with chromium patterns. If everything clicked for our side, somewhere off Gibraltar the convoys would meet other task forces from English ports. A thousand ships would blast through scattered U-boats and spill a tidal wave of |
