The echo of Air Vice-Marshal Leman's last words seemed to hang in the air for long seconds. And then suddenly the echo faded out and the room was 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, and inched forward on the edge of his chair.

"Only half the information, sir?" he questioned. "So it didn't do Agent Jones any good?"

The senior R.A.F. officer smiled sadly, and seemed to emphasize his feelings with a soft sigh.

"Let me continue with the story, and I think your question will be answered, Dawson," he said. "Yes, the injured man gave Jones only half the 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, and under a magnifying glass. It filled two sheets of ordinary manuscript paper, on both sides. It was sewn in his coat, and he got Jones to take it out for him. And then the man tore the two sheets in half and gave half to Jones. Then he tore his half to bits, put them in his mouth and swallowed them!"

"Well, for cats' sake!" Dave Dawson blurted out before he could check himself.

"Quite!" the Air Vice-Marshal said with a faint smile. "It was quite a mad thing to do, considering. But we must suppose that the poor chap was probably half mad from the pain he was suffering. And of course, Jones had naturally not revealed his true identity. Well, anyway, this man told Jones to get away from the spot as soon as he could, and reach the village of Tobolsk as soon as he could. Tobolsk doesn't appear on any of the maps, but it is a tiny village situated about eighty miles west of Stalingrad on the Volga. He told Jones to deliver his half of that precious information to a farmer who lived in Tobolsk. And—well, that's where the real hard luck began to set in."

"Beg pardon, sir?" Freddy Farmer murmured as the senior officer suddenly lapsed into silence and sat scowling darkly down at the top of his desk. "You mean, sir, that Agent Jones wasn't able to contact this farmer in Tobolsk?"

"I mean much more than that!" the other replied with a grimace. "I mean that everything simply went from bad to worse. To begin with, Jones was unable to catch the name of the man he was to contact in Tobolsk. He asked the injured man to repeat it, but it wasn't repeated. The man had become unconscious. Jones had no chance to try to revive him, or to wait for the man to regain consciousness either, for at that moment a party of Nazis swept down on him, thrust him to one side and started getting the injured man out from under the wreckage. It seems that they had suddenly decided that the poor devil had had an active part in causing the wreck. I know that sounds incredible. But I ask you, is there anything sane about the Nazi mind, let alone their actions?"

"Not the ones I've run up against," Dawson grunted with a shake of his head.

"Definitely not!" Freddy Farmer agreed. "But what rotten luck for Agent Jones!"

"And only the beginning!" Air Vice-Marshal Leman growled in his throat. "As Jones stood there quite helpless, the Nazis hauled that poor chap out from under the wreckage and whisked him away, just like that. There was absolutely nothing Jones could do about it without getting into trouble himself. After all, he certainly couldn't take any chances of being arrested. Himmler, of course, knew full well that we had our agents all over Europe, and with war just around the corner it would be all up with any of the poor chaps who were caught. War or no war, we'd certainly never hear from them again. And we couldn't very well admit that they were agents of ours and ask the German Government to release them. 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 our entire 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 have actually experienced the situation more than once," he said. "Of course you understand what Jones was up against. His hands were tied, and he simply couldn't make any move without walking straight into the clutches of the Nazis. However, his very good judgment didn't gain him a single thing. 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, other than the fact that the Nazis figured they weren't functioning according to plan unless they made some arrest. Anyway, Jones was presently arrested along with the others, perhaps because he was seen talking to the injured man. At any rate, they arrested him and herded him into one of the several police vans that had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Just picture what must have been going on in his mind! Stuffed down in one of his pockets were two halves of sheet paper containing data on Hitler's war plans for ultimate world conquest. And there he was in a Nazi prison van under guard, and being driven back into Germany."

"Not so good!" Dawson grunted impulsively. "Right behind the old eight ball, 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 deep blue sea. Right out on the end of the limb, so to speak."

The Air Vice-Marshal blinked just a little at that string of descriptive adjectives, 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. "He had the two halves of paper, but of course he'd had had no time to examine them yet. Fact is, he had no way of knowing whether what he'd heard was true or not. Perhaps those torn halves of paper in his pocket with all the minute writing didn't mean a thing to anybody. In short, it might be best to wad them into a ball and toss them unseen over the side of the police van, and forget the whole thing. Whether they contained things of importance or not would certainly make no difference to the Nazis should those blighters find them on him. The Nazi beggars are thorough, if nothing else. As you say in America, they don't overlook a single bet. They do things automatically, and take care of the questioning 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 and murderers, but they aren't anybody's fools."

"Far from it," the Air Vice-Marshal agreed instantly. "So it was very touch and go with Jones. Should he get rid of the stuff and pay attention to saving his own skin? Or should he risk everything until he had a chance to make what he could from the writing on his two torn halves of paper? Well—well, permit me to say that he was a British Intelligence officer, so the decision he made is obvious. He took the chance on keeping the two halves. And for once luck was with him. Unseen by the guard on the van, he managed to wad the two halves of paper—they were very thin sheets—into a ball and hide them in his left armpit under a patch of gummed skin tissue that all agents carry—as you two chaps well know."

The senior officer stopped talking as though waiting for the two air aces to nod. And then he continued on.

"Well, Jones, and those with him, were taken to the town of Opelln inside Germany, and thrown into jail. For thirty hours they had neither food nor water, and four unfortunates died. Or perhaps they were fortunate in being able to die, considering what the others suffered later. Anyway, Jones was unmolested for thirty hours. And you can be sure he made full use of them. He borrowed a pair of thick lens glasses from 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 right here that it was the most exciting bit of reading that Jones or any other man ever perused. Before his eyes was revealed a good part of what Hitler intended to do. And, mind you, exactly what he has done since the start of the war! Of course, with only half of it there, Jones was unable 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 to turn his newly gained knowledge over to us, the—well, I can tell you that the history of this war thus far would have been completely different from what it has been."

"You mean he didn't turn it over to you, sir?" Freddy Farmer blurted out on impulse.

"He didn't have the chance, worse luck!" the other replied, and rubbed one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. "But he did do the only thing he could do. During those thirty hours he was left unmolested he not only read every one of the unfinished sentences, but he memorized every single word before destroying and disposing of the two torn halves of paper. However, Fate, you might say, was still giving him a black look. At the end of the thirty hours the prisoners were herded into the prison head's office and questioned. Questioned, and knocked about from here to there when they didn't, or couldn't give answers that satisfied their 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 question didn't please the Nazi overlord, who lost his temper and struck Jones in the face with his fist. Jones, to save himself from toppling over backwards, flung up both hands, and his right hand unfortunately whacked one of the lesser Nazi officials in the face. And that tore it, of course. 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 a Nazi internment camp."

The senior R.A.F. officer stopped short. His lips stiffened, his two hands bunched into rock hard fists, and there was the bright glint of cold 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. "The so-called routine of a Nazi internment camp is well known all over the world by now. But I come to the end of my part of this story. Six days ago, Agent Jones arrived back in England. He was the mere shadow of the man I sent into Europe over three years ago, but the British spirit, like the American spirit, knows no such thing as defeat. He never gave up. He tried to escape three times, and was caught. He himself says that he'll never know how he managed to go on living from one attempt at escape to the next. But the fourth time he made it. His escape is a hair-raising story in itself, but it's unimportant here, so I won't bother with it. But he did return to England six days ago, and he was able to put down on paper every one of those words he had memorized."

"Stout fellow!" Freddy Farmer cried enthusiastically. "He certainly deserves the Victoria Cross, if ever a chap did. So now all that invaluable 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. And the half we have is practically useless without the other half. Like Jones when he first read it, we can only guess at what the other half reveals. We don't know. And guesses in war are quite often as useless as no information at all."

"But, my gosh!" Dawson cried. "You mean, sir, he went through all that for nothing? That he might just as well have tossed the whole thing overboard in the first place?"

"No, not quite, Dawson," the Air Vice-Marshal said. Then, looking over at Colonel Welsh, he added, "I guess you'd better tell the last half of our story, sir."