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Show fkAll Over Bui the PFRichaKi Powell Shooting 1 'fel51lL AJ INNER SANCTUM MYSTERY J jrM r Wfil STARRING ARAB ND ANDY BLAKE. w features GiSl THE STORY THUS FAR: Lt AJy Blake and his wile, Arab, found evldee of a spy ring working out of her boards house. Andy had searched Jones' hme and found additional evidence, whicl ne had turned over to the FBI. Arabtol1 the eirls that the evidence was In A3y' home. That night she and Andy w' to the house, sorted out the evidencl and waited. Renee was captured by thfl1 as she climbed In the window. Ar escaped es-caped from the cellar but was cai'ured as she was leaving the yard. Rene was hit by a bullet fired by Jones 1 the cellar. In order to save Andy, SB cut a mall flesh wound over his heart a had him play dead. Jones broke lntothe cel-lar, cel-lar, believing Andy dead, left wit Renee. CHAPTER Xn j I left the house, ran Jwn the road, and found the car stfl tucked I away safely in the field. headed It back toward Washington Colonel Parker's house was alout four miles away, near Fort Jyer. He could be counted on to jet on my story first and read up ol the Manual Man-ual of Courts-Martial secfld. On the way I checked the time and found that It was only a little after midnight. mid-night. It seemed as thotgh it should be hours later. I triednot to'think about Arab very often, aecause that thought seemed to stirt my head aching again. She w)uld be safe for a time, I was su. I couldn't help her by worrying myself sick. Colonel Parker cane to the door of his house yawning and wrestling with the cord of a bathrobe. He peered at me, and mapped, "Been painting the town rd, Blake? You got some on youself." "Sorry, sir. I'm afraid it's blood." "Yours?" ; "No, sir." ' "You look as if you've been out campaigning for a separate Air Force. What harpened?" "It's that house on Q Street business. busi-ness. Colonel. They've got the North African invasion spotted and they grabbed my wifj and" A big hand reached out, yanked me inside. "Keep, your voice downl" he said "My gosh, is it really North Africa?" "Colonel, the; put together a lot of loose talk. look." I handed him the scraps of paper on which Arab and I had made our notes. He glanced at them. Muscles squirmed along his jaw. "Come in and fiit down' he said. "I'll get on the phoned This is plenty to go on." We went into the living room and I watched Colonel Parker go to work. He made four calls in about five minutej. He didn't mention North Africa but once or twice he used a code name which apparently identified the operation. Finally he completed his calls, and said, "We'll have the house on Q Street and the Jones place in the bag in ten minutes. 0 About your wife . . ." He cleared his throat and said gruffly, "Good kid, isn't she?" "What chance has she, Colonel?" ' "I won't feed you any sirup," he muttered. "Nobody knows what those people might do. But I think she'll be safe for a while. Two companies com-panies from Myer are going out to your place. They'll turn over every leaf around Falls Church, on the chance that the Jones crowd didn't take her along. Too bad we weren't able to get the goods on that bunch earlier." The next few hours passed dizzily. diz-zily. Before I could get halfway through my report, cars began screeching up outside. The house bulged with silver leaves and eagles and even stars. I lost track of the number of times I went over the story. Questions whipped at me like tracers, and my head buzzed from trying to squeeze out new facts. Sometime during that period word came that they had drawn a blank at the two houses on Q Street. The fat man and Joey and Renee Fielding Field-ing had not returned, and there was no sign of Arab. The notes took second place In importance after that news. Maps began to cover the dining-room ta- ble until the room looked like a GHQ. They questioned me again and again on what Renee had let slip about the hangout at the shore, trying to dig up some other remarks which I might have forgotten. There were arguments about routes and speeds of cars. Finally they worked out a radius of operations based on the "five or six hours' drive" which Renee had mentioned. The radius swung in a great arc from Washington, Washing-ton, cutting the Jersey coast up near Sandy Hook and swinging down the Maryland beaches and the long Cape Charles peninsula across Virginia and into North Carolina. Somebody said, "With ships listening lis-tening in here and here and here and here we can intercept any transmission. We get a fast fix on the sending station. We flash word to the Eastern Defense Command and the Eastern Sea Frkitier. We have the coast blanketed with planes and the inshore patroL And we blast the station." Then for a minute there was silence si-lence and I got up nerve to speak. "Sir," I said to Colonel Parker, "do you still need me?" A dozen pairs of eyes looked coldly cold-ly at me. It was just luck that it was only a lieutenant colonel who snapped, "We may. Can't have you running off. Might be some more questions that " My colonel stared at the lieuten ant colonel, and growled, "Suppose I handle this." "Certainly, sir. I only meant " "Blake," Colonel Parker said, "have you anything in mind?" "Yes, sir." He took a deep breath and said, "I know you're worried about your wife, Blake. But everybody's going to do his best and I doubt if you can accomplish anything by yourself. your-self. What was in your mind?" "Colonel, I thought I might be able to stir something up." "Blake, if you're holding out anything any-thing . . ." "No, sir. It's just that the Jones gang dropped some loose talk too. About where they went and all that. Favorite places like a restaurant and a roadhouse and a filling station sta-tion that apparently sells black-market black-market gas. Maybe the whole gang hasn't skipped. Maybe some of them are around those favorite places." "We can look into that," somebody said. "But I don't think anything is likely to come of it." "That's just it, sir," I said. "One sight of a jeep and any of the gang at those places would be warned. But by myself I might stir up some interest." "Bait," the four-striper said, nodding. nod-ding. "Yes, sir. They know me. They might get scared and try to get rid of me." A major said, "We could cover you with a strong detail." "No, no," another argued. "If there's anything in it. It's a one-man job. The first thing anybody'd look for after spotting Blake would be to see if he has friends." Nobody spoke for a few moments, and then Colonel Parker stepped in to make the decision. "Go ahead. "Been painting the town red, Blake?" Blake," he said. "You're on your own. Report anything you dig up. Get going." He glared around defiantly. de-fiantly. Nobody said anything more than shrug, and so I ducked out fast. I hadn't picked the gas station over the restaurant and roadhouse because of any hunch or deduction. I picked it because I needed gas. But the more I thought about it the better I liked it as a place to start. If the Jones boys had a hangout hang-out five or six hours' drive away, they must buy plenty of black-market gas. In fact, the operator of the station might be more than just a ration chiseler. Even chiselers run out of gas, and the Jones boys needed need-ed a place they could count on without with-out fail. Like tonight, for instance. The operator might be one of the gang. "Let's have some gas," I said. "Pump dry." "Don't give me that stuff. Not unless you want trouble." "Gov'ment business?" "What's it to you? Fill It up." He shuffled past me to the pump, unscrewed the cap of my gas tank, inserted the hose nozzle, unlocked his pump, and began .grinding. "Joey get off O. K.?" I asked. His eyes flickered at me. "Joey?" "Joey Raeder. And Jones and the rest of them. I understand they had to scram last night." "Never heard of them." "Cagey, huh? Well, I'll be seeing them later today, so it doesn't matter. mat-ter. I'm headed up that way, too." He went on silently grinding gasoline. gaso-line. "Two-forty," he said finally, as a trickle of gas overflowed. I gave him a five and my ration book. He took three stamps from the book, shuffled into the house with my money. I got back in the car and waited. He might come back with a gun, but that was one of the chances I had to take if I wanted to learn anything. He returned in a few minutes and handed me the change. "Got to wipe off that gas," he said, flourishing a rag. "Thanks." He fiddled around the tank tor over a minute. It was curious; you wouldn't have expected a guy of his type to worry about gasoline spilled on a rear fender. He finished the job and came up to my window, stuffing the rag into a pants pocket. "I never heard of them guys," he said, and went back into his shack. I drove off grinning. He shouldn't have insisted twice that he didn't know them. Two hundred yards from his place, out of sight around a curve, was a narrow feeder road. I swerved into it and stopped past its first bend. I got out and walked back to the gas tank. The fender had not been wiped perfectly clean. Here and there I spotted a few white grains that dissolved when I rubbed them with a wet finger. He had poured sugar into the tank while pre-, pre-, tending to wipe the fender. I would't have gone far after that sugar gummed the carburetor. I cut across the fields and slipped up on the gas station from the rear. When I got close to the ramshackle repair shop I could hear him talking. talk-ing. I crept around to the front. The door was open and he was standing at a pay box with his back to me. I inched forward until I was only a right hook away from him. A shiver jerked at my skin. He was putting out my license number num-ber and a description of me. Not a flattering description, but it would have done the job. I had a vision of my car stalled two miles up U. S. 1, and a couple of friendly strangers stopping to give me the last lift I would ever get. "O. K.," he said finally, "I'll leave you handle it." He hung up, banged the side of the pay box, and dug a finger in the return slot. His coin didn't drop through. "This is your unlucky day, isn't it?" I said. He whirled, grabbing at a Stillson wrench in his belt, and I plugged him on the jaw. His head slammed back against the pay box. A coin rattled into the return slot. He melted melt-ed slowly down the wall, and came to rest propped in a sitting position. I retrieved his coin. It was a nickel. Indicating a call to someone not very far away. I went through his pockets pock-ets and found nothing of interest. I took the gasoline pump key, however. how-ever. He owed me twelve gallons of unsweetened gas. Plenty of fire tape was handy and I used it to bind his wrists and ankles. an-kles. It was too bad I'd had to hit i him. It delayed things. I got a can of radiator water and sloshed it over him. He didn't budge. I knew I hadn't smacked him that hard. I worked on him for several minutes without getting a flicker, and yet his I pulse was hammering like an outboard out-board motor. I went outside, unlocked the pump, and filled the can with gasoline. I doused him with that. His nose wriggled. "Yeah," I said. "It was gasoline that time. Got a match, buddy?" His eyelids snapped open. "You wouldn't do that," he whined. "Why not? I like playing with matches." "Go ahead, then." I scowled. I hadn't put on a good enough act, and now he wouldn't go for the torch stuff unless I really did drop a match on him. "Where did Jones and his gang go?" "Never heard of him." "Never heard of anyone named Jones, huh?" "No." I went to the phone. "It's a dime from here to Republic 6700, isn't it?" I asked. "What do you wanna call the War Department for?" "Some of our boys might like to find out which side of the war you're on." He ran a bluish tongue over his lips. "Look," he said, "you don't have to do that." "I'm going to do it whether you talk or not. But it may be nicer for you if you talk." j "I don't know much," he mum-: bled. "All I know is these fellows buy gas off me. You can't shoot a . man for that. Maybe I give them a little extra gas, but that's OPA I grief, not army." i "You'll have to do better than that. Where do they go on these long trips they take?" "I thought you knew." "I want to hear from you." His pale eyes slid around in their ' sockets like drops of mercury. "They go up to Ballymore and then ... and then . . . now lemme think what I heard them say." He muttered mut-tered to himself for a half minute and I began to get jittery. He was stalling and I couldn't figure out why. I got out a dime and lifted the phone receiver. "Now wait," he said, "I'm getting It It's down ! on the Eastern Shore somewhere. They mentioned the place. It's it's ... I got to think ..." I had been a fool not to have realized real-ized that his pals might have to stop at his place for gas before starting start-ing up U. S. 1 after me. They might arrive at any minute. I swung back to the phone. My dime seemed to take ages filtering down to the belL. "Number, please," the operator said at last "Republic 6700. Urgent." j (TO BE CONTINUED) j |