"Do you think, Dave? I mean.... Gosh! I'm still whizzing around in circles. I thought sure Manners understood how things turned out as they did. And I thought sure he had another assignment to give us. I ... I don't know what to think. I wish I were dead!"

Freddy Farmer groaned, gave a helpless shake of his head, and leaned wearily back against the bomb compartment wall of the Lockheed Hudson. Their stuff was all aboard and they had been waiting for Air Marshal Manners a good half hour. Dave grunted, studied the finger nails on his right hand and absently started chewing on one.

"You and me both!" he finally grated. "Of all the let-downs this is tops. And right after his admitting that it was his fault! Sweet tripe! What do these brass hats expect? Miracles out of a hat like rabbits? Boy, did I want to toss his own words back into his teeth, with Squadron Leader Hays standing right there, too. Freddy, it was the rottenest trick ever played on us. It was just plain low down and mean. Praise a fellow, and then cut the world right out from under his feet. I don't get it. I don't get it even a little bit!"

"I was dead certain he was about to tell us of a new assignment when Hays came in," Freddy said, a baffled frown creasing his brows. "Something must have happened. Maybe something that Hays said. I can't even begin to guess, but it changed his mind."

"Yeah, he sure froze up on us like an Arctic winter," Dave growled. "So it's back to our old Fighter Command squadron, huh? Well, I say, okay. That suits me fine. And for two cents I'd take off in this crate right now, and let him walk back to London. I'd...."

"Too late to do even that, Dave!" Freddy cut in quickly. "Here he comes!"

The words were no sooner off Freddy's lips than Air Marshal Manners came in through the compartment door. He tossed a brief case he carried on an empty bomb rack and looked at Dave.

"My pilot's suddenly gone sick," he said. "Take the controls, please, Dawson. Get us off as soon as possible, and get lots of altitude as you head for London."

"Yes, sir," Dave said, and got to his feet.

He took one step along the cat-walk leading forward, then stopped and turned. He knew what he was about to say was childish, foolish, and the uncensored ravings of a sorehead. But for all the gold in the world he could not have kept the words back. The seething pot of justified anger within him had suddenly boiled over on all sides.

"Do you mind, sir, if I crack us up taking off?" he said evenly.

Air Marshal Manners stiffened up straight, gave him a blazing stare, and opened his mouth to speak. He held back the words, though, and looked from Dave to Freddy and back again.

"I see," he said. "Thought you caught on. Yes, I mind very much your cracking us up, Dawson. Now, you get forward and get us up in the air before I turn you over my knee. Chase along, lad, now. Explanations later."

"Then you mean, sir—" Dave cried joyfully and stopped.

"I mean get us into the air!" Manners snapped. "And hurry it up!"

"One Lockheed on the way!" Dave shouted, and dashed forward to the pilots' compartment.

In less time than it takes to tell about it he had the twin engines turning over and was taxiing to the far end of the runway. There he wheeled around into the wind, waited a moment or so for Freddy and Air Marshal Manners to come forward and join him, but when they didn't he opened up the throttles wide and sent the American built plane rocketing forward. Once the ship was clear he cranked up the wheels and continued prop clawing upward for altitude.

When he was above a layer of cloud and well out of sight of the Plymouth Base, Freddy and Manners stepped through the compartment doorway. Dave glanced quickly at Freddy only to realize at once from the wondering look on his pal's face that Manners hadn't told him anything yet. Then he looked at the Air Marshal and pinked a bit as the steady steel blue eyes bored into his. But almost immediately the Air Ministry official grinned crookedly and sighed.

"You certainly fumbled that one, lad," he said. "After all that's happened I was sure you'd understand. By George, son, did you think I was dropping you two chaps like a couple of hot bricks? Of all the crazy notions!"

"My error, I guess, sir," Dave replied sheepishly. "But it was sort of a bolt out of the blue that tossed me over on one wing. I mean.... Well...."

"Well, let's forget about it," Manners said. "The reason was simply that from now on I'm trusting no one but you two. Not that Squadron Leader Hays isn't the finest type of Englishman you could find. He is. And in addition he's a very good friend of mine. However, my idea was to create the impression that I've taken you off this special convoy mission, and am sending you back to your old squadron. We don't know where von Khole is. He may be in France or even in Germany. Then again he may be right back there at Seventy-Four again. The beggar's a blasted ghost, so I'm not taking any chances whatsoever of his finding out that you're still connected with Emergency Command."

Dave blew air out of his lungs and smiled happily.

"Gosh, do I feel reborn!" he exclaimed. "Sorry, sir, I was such a dope not to catch on."

"And that goes for me, too, sir!" Freddy Farmer echoed.

"Right you are, lads," Air Marshal Manners said with a laugh. "Just make sure you don't get any crazy ideas any more. I'll be through with you two just about the time the war's over. And I doubt even then. Right-o. Now...."

"Enemy aircraft!" Freddy suddenly yelled and pointed off to the east. "See it? A Messerschmitt One-Ten and heading our way!"

Both Dave and Manners snapped their heads around and spotted the Nazi plane at the same time. The craft was a couple of thousand feet above their altitude, but even as they spotted it the nose dropped and the plane came down toward them at terrific speed.

"Man the tail guns, Freddy!" Dave barked. "Here's our chance to pay back with a few slugs. We'll...!"

"No!" Air Marshal Manners said sharply. "No scramble with that plane. Get us down into those clouds, Dawson, and lose him. We haven't got time for a fight."

A wave of rebellion swept through Dave but he curbed it instantly. Something in Manners' face told him that the Air Marshal hated to run away just as much as he did, but that he had a very good reason for ordering it.

"Right, sir!" Dave cried.

Even before the words had popped off his lips he shoved the controls forward, pushed the nose down to almost the vertical, and sent the Lockheed Hudson wing screaming for the clouds. It was not more than the matter of a few split seconds before they were plunging through the billowing mist, but even then he heard the savage snarl of the Messerschmitt's aerial machine guns, and the heavier, louder note of its twin 20-mm. cannon. And a split second after that he heard the yammering reply from Freddy Farmer's guns in the tail turret of the Lockheed.

As soon as the Lockheed was completely hidden in the depths of the cloud layer he pulled out of the dive, leveled off and banked due west. For some ten or fifteen minutes he flew on the instruments, twisting this way and that, but always in the general direction of London. And during all that time Air Marshal Manners didn't say a word. He sat like a statue of stone in the co-pilot's seat staring out forward as though his steady gaze might pierce right through the bank after bank of cloud mist that rushed toward them and was sliced and churned by the whirling propellers.

Then suddenly, perhaps a second or two before Dave would have climbed up on top for a quick look-see around, a blurred shadow came racing in from the right. It was no more than a shadow tearing in, and Dave only caught sight of it out the corner of his eye, but his sixth sense told him at once that it might be the Messerschmitt One-Ten.

"Dawson! Look out! There's...."

Air Marshal Manners' wild cry was just a waste of breath. Dave had already slammed the Lockheed over and around on wingtip in a wing shaking vertical bank. The terrific force of the turn cut off the rest of the Air Marshal's cry and pinned him up against the side of the compartment as though he were nailed there. Every muscle of his body braced, and his mouth open to prevent possible blacking-out from the turn, Dave hung grimly to the controls and prayed in his thoughts as he had never prayed before.

A lifetime of agony was his. He lived and died a thousand deaths. Then suddenly he felt the right wingtip shudder as something ticked it. His heart stood still and his whole body became bathed in cold sweat. Nothing happened, though. The wing stayed on and the Lockheed kept on whanging around.

"Just brushed us lightly!" Dave heard his own choking voice cry out. "Another inch and it would have been a sweet mess!"

"Great guns, they can't come any closer!" Air Marshal Manners gasped. "Blast him, anyway! I might have expected as much. Look, Dawson, get off the London course. Head east or west, but not toward London!"

Dave cut out of the turn, went into a shallow dive that took the plane down deeper into the cloud layer, then leveled off and banked due south. Once he was heading south he turned his head and gave the Air Marshal a questioning look.

"You expected something like this, sir?" he asked.

Manners shook his head.

"No," he said. "I meant that I should have. No way for us to find out, and we're not going to try, but I'm pretty sure Baron von Khole was in that Messerschmitt One-Ten."

At that moment Freddy appeared at the compartment door, and in time to hear the Air Marshal's words.

"Von Khole?" he echoed excitedly. "Good grief, sir, what makes you think so?"

"For one reason," Manners replied grimly, "because you can expect that blighter to turn up anywhere. For another reason, because I sighted that same One-Ten on the way down to Plymouth this noon. Spotted him soon enough to lose him before he could get close and give any kind of a chase. And for another reason, because now I happen to be the one man in all the world von Khole desires most to remove from it. Remember my saying Intelligence found code books and things at the flat of that poor devil, Sergeant Kinney?"

"Yes, sure!" Dave said excitedly. "And by the way, was the real Sergeant Kinney's body found? I mean, you're sure von Khole actually did murder him, and he isn't the real Sergeant Kinney, himself?"

"Whether von Khole murdered Kinney, or one of his bunch did it, we don't know," Manners replied. "But the real Sergeant Kinney was no dirty Nazi spy. Early this morning some of my men dug up the cellar of the place. They found a body nobody could recognize, but the old World War identification tag they found on the wrist belonged to Kinney. No, there've definitely been two Kinneys serving in the R.A.F. One, the real chap. The other, Baron von Khole."

"And you learned something from the code books and stuff you found, eh, sir?" Freddy questioned eagerly.

"Enough to worry the Nazis sick!" Manners replied with a curt nod. "The code books alone are the greatest prize of the war, as far as I'm concerned. I now know the code signal for every U-boat and surface raider the Nazis have in the North Atlantic."

"Hot dog!" Dave cried in a burst of exuberant enthusiasm. "It's practically in the bag! We can knock them off like clay pigeons, and make the Atlantic clear sailing for British convoys."

"No, it isn't going to be as easy as that," Air Marshal Manners said with a shake of his head. "They'll change those codes as soon as they can. But with so many of their craft at sea it will take a certain amount of time. A couple of days, at least. Having failed to trap that devilish raider and her wolf pack of U-boats this morning, our only hope is to trap her through the code signals before she can receive a new set."

"But couldn't that be done in the matter of a few hours?" Freddy objected. "A Nazi plane fly out to her with the new code?"

"No," Manners said bluntly. "A new code that can't be broken down by the enemy in short order isn't something that you think up over night. True, every country has emergency codes, but even they need constant rearranging in order to fool the enemy. And the point is, I feel pretty sure that I've got hold of the Nazi's emergency code as well as all of their regular codes. As head of Nazi Intelligence in England it's only natural that von Khole would have a copy of every existing code."

"And leave them around for somebody to pick up?" Dave gasped. "Boy, that's just about tops for being dumb, I'd say!"

"It is," Air Marshal Manners agreed. "Incredibly stupid, but that kind of stupidity is a part of the German make-up that amazes one. Especially when you consider how thorough and clever they are about so many other things. You two lads are too young to have been in this world at the time, but it is a matter of confirmed history that before the entry of America into the last war, von Papen, the German ambassador to Washington, left a briefcase on a New York subway train containing a world of information regarding German sabotage and espionage activities in the United States!"

"Yes, my Dad once told me about that boner," Dave said. "Gosh, it's something like you'd read in a fairy story book!"

"The Germans are a strange race, for fair," Manners said dryly. "They lead the world in so many things, and trail it in so many others. Well, I think we've lost that beggar for good, now, don't you think so, Dawson?"

"Unless he's got cat's eyes, or some trick airplane engine detector on his ship," Dave replied. "Want me to go up on top? We've been heading south by east for a spell, now. Unless I'm all wet we should be just a bit off shore from Southampton. We can go up on top and find a hole and check."

"Then go on up," Air Marshal Manners ordered. "And if you're right, then so much the better. Find a hole and locate us, and then I'll give you further orders. But make it fast. Time is the most precious thing in the world to us, right now."

"Up she goes!" Dave cried and pulled the Lockheed's nose toward Heaven.