CHAPTER THREE
_Fate Laughs_
The echo of Air Vice-Marshal Leman's last words seemed to hang in theair for long seconds. And then suddenly the echo faded out and the roomwas filled with a silence in which a pin could have been heard to drop.Dave Dawson gulped softly as he let the clamped air from his lungs, andinched forward on the edge of his chair.
"Only half the information, sir?" he questioned. "So it didn't do AgentJones any good?"
The senior R.A.F. officer smiled sadly, and seemed to emphasize hisfeelings with a soft sigh.
"Let me continue with the story, and I think your question will beanswered, Dawson," he said. "Yes, the injured man gave Jones only halfthe information he had collected. But even that half didn't help any.You see, this man had written down everything that he had learned.According to Jones he must have done it with a needle point pen, andunder a magnifying glass. It filled two sheets of ordinary manuscriptpaper, on both sides. It was sewn in his coat, and he got Jones to takeit out for him. And then the man tore the two sheets in half and gavehalf to Jones. Then he tore his half to bits, put them in his mouth andswallowed them!"
"Well, for cats' sake!" Dave Dawson blurted out before he could checkhimself.
"Quite!" the Air Vice-Marshal said with a faint smile. "It was quite amad thing to do, considering. But we must suppose that the poor chap wasprobably half mad from the pain he was suffering. And of course, Joneshad naturally not revealed his true identity. Well, anyway, this mantold Jones to get away from the spot as soon as he could, and reach thevillage of Tobolsk as soon as he could. Tobolsk doesn't appear on any ofthe maps, but it is a tiny village situated about eighty miles west ofStalingrad on the Volga. He told Jones to deliver his half of thatprecious information to a farmer who lived in Tobolsk. And--well, that'swhere the real hard luck began to set in."
"Beg pardon, sir?" Freddy Farmer murmured as the senior officer suddenlylapsed into silence and sat scowling darkly down at the top of hisdesk. "You mean, sir, that Agent Jones wasn't able to contact thisfarmer in Tobolsk?"
"I mean much more than that!" the other replied with a grimace. "I meanthat everything simply went from bad to worse. To begin with, Jones wasunable to catch the name of the man he was to contact in Tobolsk. Heasked the injured man to repeat it, but it wasn't repeated. The man hadbecome unconscious. Jones had no chance to try to revive him, or to waitfor the man to regain consciousness either, for at that moment a partyof Nazis swept down on him, thrust him to one side and started gettingthe injured man out from under the wreckage. It seems that they hadsuddenly decided that the poor devil had had an active part in causingthe wreck. I know that sounds incredible. But I ask you, is thereanything sane about the Nazi mind, let alone their actions?"
"Not the ones I've run up against," Dawson grunted with a shake of hishead.
"Definitely not!" Freddy Farmer agreed. "But what rotten luck for AgentJones!"
"And only the beginning!" Air Vice-Marshal Leman growled in his throat."As Jones stood there quite helpless, the Nazis hauled that poor chapout from under the wreckage and whisked him away, just like that. Therewas absolutely nothing Jones could do about it without getting intotrouble himself. After all, he certainly couldn't take any chances ofbeing arrested. Himmler, of course, knew full well that we had ouragents all over Europe, and with war just around the corner it would beall up with any of the poor chaps who were caught. War or no war, we'dcertainly never hear from them again. And we couldn't very well admitthat they were agents of ours and ask the German Government to releasethem. Once an agent goes out on a mission he is absolutely on his own.If he gets into a tight corner it's up to him to get himself out of it.To assist him would simply tip our hand, and unquestionably disrupt ourentire espionage system. And--"
The R.A.F. Intelligence officer stopped short with a little laugh.
"But I'm a fine one to be telling that to you two chaps, who haveactually experienced the situation more than once," he said. "Of courseyou understand what Jones was up against. His hands were tied, and hesimply couldn't make any move without walking straight into the clutchesof the Nazis. However, his very good judgment didn't gain him a singlething. He _was_ arrested by the Nazis!"
"Arrested?" Freddy Farmer gasped. "Good grief! What for?"
"For the same reason other passengers aboard the train were arrested,"the Air Vice-Marshal replied. "Simply for no good reason at all, otherthan the fact that the Nazis figured they weren't functioning accordingto plan unless they made some arrest. Anyway, Jones was presentlyarrested along with the others, perhaps because he was seen talking tothe injured man. At any rate, they arrested him and herded him into oneof the several police vans that had mysteriously appeared out ofnowhere. Just picture what must have been going on in his mind! Stuffeddown in one of his pockets were two halves of sheet paper containingdata on Hitler's war plans for ultimate world conquest. And there he wasin a Nazi prison van under guard, and being driven _back into Germany_."
"Not so good!" Dawson grunted impulsively. "Right behind the old eightball, and how!"
"Eh?" the R.A.F. Intelligence chief echoed with arched eyebrows.
"An American expression, sir," Colonel Welsh spoke up with a chuckle."Dawson means that Jones was certainly between the devil and the deepblue sea. Right out on the end of the limb, so to speak."
The Air Vice-Marshal blinked just a little at that string of descriptiveadjectives, but decided to let them ride without further explanation.
"Yes, Jones was very much in a bit of a spot," he said with a nod. "Hehad the two halves of paper, but of course he'd had had no time toexamine them yet. Fact is, he had no way of knowing whether what he'dheard was true or not. Perhaps those torn halves of paper in his pocketwith all the minute writing didn't mean a thing to anybody. In short, itmight be best to wad them into a ball and toss them unseen over the sideof the police van, and forget the whole thing. Whether they containedthings of importance or not would certainly make no difference to theNazis should those blighters find them on him. The Nazi beggars arethorough, if nothing else. As you say in America, they don't overlook asingle bet. They do things automatically, and take care of thequestioning part of it later."
"And lots of times they don't even bother with the questioning part!"Dawson spoke up, with a knowing nod. "They may be butchers andmurderers, but they aren't anybody's fools."
"Far from it," the Air Vice-Marshal agreed instantly. "So it was verytouch and go with Jones. Should he get rid of the stuff and payattention to saving his own skin? Or should he risk everything until hehad a chance to make what he could from the writing on his two tornhalves of paper? Well--well, permit me to say that he was a BritishIntelligence officer, so the decision he made is obvious. He took thechance on keeping the two halves. And for once luck was with him. Unseenby the guard on the van, he managed to wad the two halves of paper--theywere very thin sheets--into a ball and hide them in his left armpitunder a patch of gummed skin tissue that all agents carry--as you twochaps well know."
The senior officer stopped talking as though waiting for the two airaces to nod. And then he continued on.
"Well, Jones, and those with him, were taken to the town of Opellninside Germany, and thrown into jail. For thirty hours they had neitherfood nor water, and four unfortunates died. Or perhaps they werefortunate in being able to die, considering what the others sufferedlater. Anyway, Jones was unmolested for thirty hours. And you can besure he made full use of them. He borrowed a pair of thick lens glassesfrom one of the other prisoners, and using a lens as a magnifying glass,he read what his two halves of paper contained. And I will say righthere that it was the most exciting bit of reading that Jones or anyother man ever perused. Before his eyes was revealed a good part of whatHitler intended to do. _And_, mind you, exactly what he _has_ done sincethe start of the war! Of course, with only half of it there, Jones wasunable to learn definite details. He could only read what he could read,and guess at what the other half contained. But had Jones been able t
oturn his newly gained knowledge over to us, the--well, I can tell youthat the history of this war thus far would have been completelydifferent from what it has been."
"You mean he didn't turn it over to you, sir?" Freddy Farmer blurted outon impulse.
"He didn't have the chance, worse luck!" the other replied, and rubbedone clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. "But he did do theonly thing he could do. During those thirty hours he was left unmolestedhe not only read every one of the unfinished sentences, but he memorizedevery single word before destroying and disposing of the two torn halvesof paper. However, Fate, you might say, was still giving him a blacklook. At the end of the thirty hours the prisoners were herded into theprison head's office and questioned. Questioned, and knocked about fromhere to there when they didn't, or couldn't give answers that satisfiedtheir captors. Jones was no better off than any of the others. In fact,it developed that he was worse off. An answer he gave to one questiondidn't please the Nazi overlord, who lost his temper and struck Jones inthe face with his fist. Jones, to save himself from toppling overbackwards, flung up both hands, and his right hand unfortunately whackedone of the lesser Nazi officials in the face. And that tore it, ofcourse. Jones wasn't questioned any more. He was promptly jumped on,half beaten to death, and then chained hand and foot, and sent off to aNazi internment camp."
The senior R.A.F. officer stopped short. His lips stiffened, his twohands bunched into rock hard fists, and there was the bright glint ofcold steel in his eyes.
"I need not describe to you the things Jones went through, and suffered,after that!" he finally grated out through clenched teeth. "Theso-called routine of a Nazi internment camp is well known all over theworld by now. But I come to the end of my part of this story. Six daysago, Agent Jones arrived back in England. He was the mere shadow of theman I sent into Europe over three years ago, but the British spirit,like the American spirit, knows no such thing as defeat. He never gaveup. He tried to escape three times, and was caught. He himself says thathe'll never know how he managed to go on living from one attempt atescape to the next. But the fourth time he made it. His escape is ahair-raising story in itself, but it's unimportant here, so I won'tbother with it. But he did return to England six days ago, and he wasable to put down on paper every one of those words he had memorized."
"Stout fellow!" Freddy Farmer cried enthusiastically. "He certainlydeserves the Victoria Cross, if ever a chap did. So now all thatinvaluable information is ours!"
Air Vice-Marshal Leman smiled sadly and shook his head.
"No, Farmer, it isn't," he said slowly. "We only have half of it. Andthe half we have is practically useless without the other half. LikeJones when he first read it, we can only guess at what the other halfreveals. We don't _know_. And guesses in war are quite often as uselessas no information at all."
"But, my gosh!" Dawson cried. "You mean, sir, he went through all thatfor nothing? That he might just as well have tossed the whole thingoverboard in the first place?"
"No, not quite, Dawson," the Air Vice-Marshal said. Then, looking overat Colonel Welsh, he added, "I guess you'd better tell the last half ofour story, sir."