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Show Page Six- - -- BEAR RIVER VALLEY LEADER. Thursday, November Tremcriton. Utah- - 1, 194. 7J RtcharS Powel- l- AN INNER STARRING ARAB KM. tit Lt. Andy FAR: THE STORY Joined in Wasn-fc- f Slake of Operations ton by bit wife, Arab, who took a Job After an exciting time with Ordnance. in the but, a chase in which Andy was knocked out, Arab secured room, wber he had reasons to believe that enemy Stents were at work. At the bouse, Andy tot Into a fight with one of the roomers, net the landlady, whom he bad previously known In Paris. Arab told Andy sbout a girl that bad disappeared from the bouse, and looking out the window they saw a newly erected bird bouse. They noticed that the bird bouse built in the backyard tree hid from view a win-loIn a near-bhouse. Arab thought It was there to hide something. THUS wi CHAPTER V I slipped into the shrubbery of the bouse on Q Street. After all, I was itill responsible for Arab. I walked juietly through the grounds until I came to the pin oak. It had one branch and I had no trouble scrambling up to the crotch which held the birdhouse. The thing had been put up recently, all right. There were spots where lomebody's feet had crumbled bark. The birdhouse was new, and the nail beads were shiny. There had been rain the night of the crazy bus ride. If the birdhouse had been up then, the nail heads would have started to rust. I sighted along an imaginary line from Arab's window through the crotch of the tree. She had been right. From her window, one of the second-floo- r windows of the next house would show through the crotch ike a target in a V sight I climbed down, took a last look at her window, and came close to clearing out for good. Silhouetted against the drawn shade was Arab, fixing Joey's necktie. The only thing which kept me from leaving was spotting a light on the first floor. It was in the room where I had dumped Joey last night. The shade wasn't down all the way and I felt curious. I slipped ever to the house and peered in the window. I took a final look around. There was a coat on the bed. A white leather raincoat with acorn-shape- d buttons. I would have known it anywhere. Arab was playing cop in a very tough neighborhood. She was afe only as long as nobody knew she was playing cop. She was laughing and having fun, while down here on Joey's bed was the white raincoat she had worn two Bights ago . . . the raincoat which would label her as the girl who had heard too much on the bus. And beside the raincoat was a pencil, paper, and tape measure. Joey was getting ready to try the coat n somebody for size. An idea tiptoed shyly into my head and I pounced on it before it could die of loneliness. It wasn't a great idea, or even a good one. But it was worth trying. I shut the window Quietly, took the coat and crept cut into the first-floo- r hall. I had to Have the raincoat altered. Arab was unavailable, and I could take a chance on only one other person in tfc house: Sadie, the maid. She knew we were suspiciously Interested in Paula Thompson's disappearance. If she happened to be working against us, we were already auni. If she were friendly, this was a gsrad time to find out. sneaked down the hall and through the big dining room to the door of the lighted kitchen. Sadie was in a rocking chair, knitting. The chair squeaked like boards in a haunted house. A black cat was curled at her feet, staring at me ifrom candle-flam- e eyes. A pot bub-Ble- d on the stove. Sadie said, without looking up, "You want something?" I gulped. "Yes," I said, "I want jou to help me." low-bangi- ShOOttfiq thanked her, and couldn't help asking, "What's going on in this house?" "I don't know an' I don't want to know." she said. "I see things I don't understand an' keep my mouth shut. Like the way Mis Reynolds keeps playing with one of the fingers on her left hand. Like she was used to having a wedding an" engagement ring on it, and was used to turning them so the stones would be straight. But of course she ain't married." "Well," I said, "she's really" "I don't want to know. Just tell her to leave that ring finger alone. Now maybe you better hurry." I tried to thank her again, but she rocked in the chair and didn't look at me or speak, and the chair was sounding like a board In a haunted house again, so I left. I slipped back to Joey's room and found that he hadn't returned yet. Maybe I should have considered my self lucky, but I didn't. There isn't anything unusual about guys not breaking away from Arab any sooner than necessary. Back in Philadelphia I almost had to wave good night with a gun to some of our bachelor friends. If I were having luck tonight, it was the kind you run clover into when you find a four-lea- f in a bed of poison ivy. I left the raincoat on the bed in the room. I was tempted to do some snooping among his things but it wasn't worth taking a chance. Renee Fielding or I "Urn." e It's" "Sit down." she said, "an' don't tell me anything mo.' I ain't inter- ested." She went Into a small bedroom opening off the kitchen, came out gain, and spread the raincoat on the kitchen table. Scissors gleamed Ib her brown hand. "If I just took up the hem an' sleeves," she said, "you could tell what was done." She straightened out the bottom crease and showed me that it was marked 'bj a discolored line. "So we got to out it Off." "There," she said, handing me the raincoat. She had folded the raw edges up inside the new hems and had sewed them Into place. You might be able to tell that the coat had been shortened, if you looked carefully, but nobody would know when it had been done. And it would no longer be the right length for Arab. "I'd like to pay you for this," I said. Sadie shook her head. ww. "I just wondered, that was all." "Can we have lunch together today, Andy? I'm supposed to go in fifteen minutes." The air I breathed didn't seem to get to the bottom of my lungs. I would take a deep breath and my ribs would bulge, but the suffocating feeling went right on. "I'm pretty busy," I muttered. "Oh. WelL you'll be around early tonight, won't you? Or why can't we have dinner together instead of me going back to Q Street for dinner? We could go "Things are piled up here." "Oh." "You know how things can get." "Yes. Yes, I do," she said brightly. "Well, you'll give me a call sometime, Andy, won't you? After all, we have a few things in common, don't we? Like a marriage license and all that." "Sure, I'll give you a call." I went out and caught a bus into Washington. If I had to be miserable I might as well be miserable hanging around the house on Q Street, waiting for Arab, to get into a jam. It was past eight when I arrived. .1 CV I wandered along the street and ...... t - .1. .w i. Nineteen-Ine- li DDdDILIL- spot- ted Joey's roadster. Seeing it there gave me a senseless feeling of relief. The guy could be making as much time with Arab inside the house as in his car. Evidently Joey had been one of the smart boys who bought cars just before the freeze, because his car was quite new and had white sidewall tires. Judging from the treads it had been driven hard and far in less than a year. I peeked at the speedometer. He had racked I wouldn't have thought you could get that kind of mileage from anything bigger than a cigarette lighter. I crossed the street to the shadows hiding the horsemounting block, and settled down to keep an eye on things. There were a lot of lights in the house on Q Street, but the shades were all down. I wondered what Arab was doing. Maybe she was trying to telephone me at the Crowleys'. Maybe she was feeling bad about our scrap. It was a still night. My ears were tuned to catch wisps of sound. The rustle of leaves seemed as loud as the turning of newspaper pages. My watch ticked like a grandfather's clock. And so, when the silence was ripped apart for a split second, my ears tingled. Across the street, in the shaggy grounds of the house on Q Street, a woman had screamed. She hadn't screamed long. Something had stopped her. Stopped her as fast as if her vocal cords had snapped on the fourth or fifth vibration. But she had put everything into that splinter of sound. I ran across the street and plunged into the tangled garden. Fifty feet away, a shadow moved out of sight behind the pin oak which masked Arab's window. I sprinted toward the tree. I couldn't have acted more brainlessly if I had been a puppy charging a cat. A man stepped out from the shelter of the tree. He was short and squat but moved like a panther. I swerved too late. Trees and sky and ground around me. I yanked my body into a tight ball, hit the ground, and rolled most of the shock out of the impact. When I scrambled up he was waiting for me. Waiting in irinrn She's Every Little Girl's Wish for Christmas - 408 t rv Her eyes move and her long lashes are definitely "glamour girl, fane wears a beautiful flock dot dress and matching bonnet, cute undies, socks and bootees. Composition head, - aiuia auu lugs. Other Beautiful Dolls ... 98c to 9.95 Bcsli-Ty-p Blackboard 4.03 Fold It up, there's a black, hoard. Unfold, and there's Inches a desk! Forty-fiv- e finish with Natural high. ted trim. CRYSTAL GARLAND 18-f- t. . . 2e5C Sparkimg white or brilliant red and white. Made of fireproof Fiberglas. , 3JfIAGI SLATE ek y Mm to" A "I want you to help me.' It one of the girls might happen by to see if Joey had a headache and needed his forehead stroked. I returned to the hall and let myself out the front door. I didn't feel very successful. Maybe I had kept Arab out of one kind of trouble, but if she went on encouraging Joey she was headed for another kind. And I couldn't do anything about it. A warning would be useless. Women don't seem to recognize trouble when it comes wrapped up in a six-fopackage of husky blond virility. Sure, she could be putting on an act. Maybe she thought that by encouraging Joey she could pry some interesting bits of news out of him. That's how she might figure at the start. But after encouraging him for a while she might find herself enjoying it more than she had planned. She wouldn't be the first dame in history to fall for a guy she started out to take. I started trudging toward my bus stop. Perhaps to some people the stars overhead looked like diamonds on black velvet, but for my money they were moth holes. During the next morning I had to fight against the desire to call Arab in Ordnance Department to make sure that she was all right I won the fight but didn't feel very proud At eleven-thirtabout It. Arab called me. Her voice sounded wist- jw ut9 up 21,921 miles. Of course he could have put that on before gasoline rationing started last May. although it would have meant a lot of concentrated driving. But I was curious. The door was unlocked. I opened it and looked around inside, lighting matches to study dark corners. I was looking for the tag which lots of gas stations put on a car when they change oil; a tag showing the mileage on the date the car was in for servicing. There was none inside the car. I lifted the hood and found a tag wired to a rod above the oil intake. The figures were interesting. They might even had seemed fascinating to Joey's ration board. The oil had been changed at a service station two Washington weeks ago and the speedometer reading had been 20,885. Joey had driven more than a thousand miles in the past two weeks . . on a up-tai- rs I stammered for a moment and then happened to glance at the cat and got angry. No cat can look at me with a question in its eyes. "I need your help and I need it badly," I said. "I want a couple inches taken oil the skirt and sleeves of this raincoat. It has to fee done so it won't show. It has to be done fast. A half-hou- r from bow might be too late." "Too late fo' what?" I was in this too deeply to try to Be cagy now. "Too late to keep somebody out of trouble," I said. "Big trouble." She got up, took the raincoat, and studied it. "You come in through Mistuh Raeder's window an got triis." she stated. "That's right. But it isn't his. r SANCTUM MYSTERY ANDY BLAKE futunts card. Child's TABLE ANB CHAIR SET m U to 9.05 1 Lift up the film and the writing disappears like magic! Pencil included. Soft erav with brieht red trimming. Wen and sturdily mad of hardwood with masonite seats and table top. For ago tkrea to eight. WAGON PEG NAIL PLAY O BLOCKS 2.19 About sixty blocks In TABLE a cunning wood wagon. Means hours 2.29 of happy fun. " an odd, hunched-forwar- d position. It reminded me vaguely of the way ful. She asked, "Do I always have to Jimmy Londos used to wait for a chance to slap a flying mare on a be the one who telephones?" I mumbled. "A challenger for his wrestling title. But lot of "Sorry," there were a lot of differences bework piled up on me." "I'm sorry about last night, Andy. tween this man and Londos. The man facing me carried as much fat About giggling, I mean." "That's all right. My fault I've as muscle. And he was off balance. Nobody could produce got to break myself of getting mad Way off. when people laugh at me." power from a stance like that. No"Please don't take it that way, body except I shivered. My memory hadn't darling. I didn't really laugh at you. I was laughing at the whole situareally been trying to dig up Jimmy Londos. It had been groping for a tion." "Yeah, sure, I know. Uh did picture I'd seen once. A picture everything go all right after I left? done on shiny rice paper. There had Have any trouble getting rid of been a short fat man in this same hunched pose. He had been naked Joey?" There was a pause, and while I except for a G string and his belly waited for her answer my lungs be- had seemed enormous. In the backgan to ache, as if I couldn't get ground the artist had painted a tiny mountain. Fujiyama. enough oxygen. This was the time for her to tell me about driving with This was the way Jap wrestlers Joey. . If she confessed, things waited. The picture flashed through my weren't bad yet. But If she didn't mind as I sidled toward him. I tell me . . . watched his hands. His fingers were "Why, no," she said carefully. "Did you worry about anything?" stroking the air in front of him, feel'Oh, no. Just wondered If you had ing it, almost like a pianist getting the feel of keys. I flicked out jab. any trouble with Joey." (TO BE CONTINUED i "Why . . . why, no." t I V They can play and ponnd by the h"r wh ths wvT'erfiil table. 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