Dawson took a deep breath, and slowly got up onto his feet. Then he grinned over at Freddy Farmer.

"I don't care how you did it, kid," he said. "Just doing it was okay by me. And if I haven't mentioned it, thanks, pal. I was sort of close to getting lead poisoning just about then."

"And we were both close to getting heaven knows what," young Farmer said. His face became hard, and deadly serious. "To me it's still like a mad dream. Imagine it, Dave! Right here in London. It just can't be true! Balmy things like this just don't happen!"

"I know, of course not," Dawson grunted, and dropped to his knees beside the prostrate Hans. "But Erich, there, wouldn't believe you, Freddy. He found out. Let's search these rats for anything we can find, and then get out of here fast. I guess British Intelligence would like to hear what we have to tell them."

"There's a phone in the next room, Dave," Freddy said, as he recalled the fact. "The one that Erich used. Let's just tie them up, and then get on the phone. Intelligence may want them just as they are."

"Maybe, but I'm a curious cuss," Dawson said with a dogged shake of his head. "Truss up that bird with his belt, and then go phone the big shots. Me, I'm going to see what these birds have on them, if anything. I—Ye gods! Did Herr Baron's face slip!"

Dave gulped out the last as he got his first really good look at Herr Baron's face. Freddy had half rolled the limp figure over, and at first look Herr Baron seemed to have been hit square in the face by a pan of soggy bread dough. His nose was over on one cheek, and his jaw was twice as big on one side at it was on the other, his eyebrows pointed straight up, and his lips looked twisted all out of shape.

"Good grief, the floor must have done that!" Freddy Farmer gasped as he looked down. "Make-up paste, no less, Dave. Why—why, he hasn't really got any real face. It's horrible!"

"Just truss him up and leave him, Freddy," Dawson said, and swallowed hard several times. "I guess the rat was in some kind of an accident, and did his own plastic surgery with make-up paste, or whatever that stuff is. Sweet tripe! This thing gets screwier and screwier. Truss him up, and then get British Intelligence over here in a hurry. We'll—Hey, I'm nuts! We don't even know where we are!"

"That's simple, old thing," Freddy said, and lashed Herr Baron's arms behind his back with the man's own belt. "A fine detective you'd make. British Intelligence can simply trace my call, that's all, and be over here in no time."

"Call me dunce, and get going, pal!" Dawson said with a sigh of relief. "Sure, of course, kid. Boy, maybe old age is slowing me down at that."

"Not judging from what I saw just recently!" Freddy Farmer said, as he got to his feet, and headed for the side door of the room. "Be back in a jiffy, old thing."

Dave just grunted, completed his job of making sure that Hans would give no trouble should he come to, and then went systematically through the man's pockets. He collected the usual amount of personal belongings, but the man's papers were very interesting. They were all made out and officially stamped to identify him as a born Englishman, by the name of John Dobbler, with an East London address.

Dawson thumbed through them for a moment, and then stuffed them into his pocket and moved over to Erich's dead body. And what he found in the dead man's pockets made him realize all the more to what pains Nazi agents go. There was nothing on Erich's person to indicate that he was a Nazi. But everything to prove that he was one Harold Cabot, an Englishman who lived at an address in the Cheapside part of London. As a matter of fact, Erich's papers went Hans' one better. Erich also had identification as an Air Raid Warden.

"An Air Raid Warden, the dirty skunk!" Dawson grated, and put Erich's papers into his pocket, too. "I wonder how many of the poor devils he left to die under piles of bomb rubble?"

With a look of scorn and loathing for the dead man, he got to his feet and went over to the prostrate form of the man referred to as Herr Baron. The false face still looked the same, and the Yank air ace tried not to look at it as he went through the pockets of the man's uniform. What he found so amazed him and angered him that for a moment he trembled with loathing and blazing anger. Herr Baron's papers, all strictly official and military, showed that he was an American colonel in the Yank Air Forces, that he was commanding officer of such and such group, but that of recent date he was attached to Air Forces Intelligence in England.

"The dirty—!" Dawson began, and then words failed him.

He put a hand to his forehead, and closed his eyes tight for a moment. Like Freddy Farmer, he was almost inclined to believe that all this just hadn't happened. That he was having a wild, crazy dream, and that he would wake up soon to find that everything was all right. But it wasn't a dream; it was cold, stark truth, incredible as it seemed. Three Nazis of no less than Herr Himmler's brood, yet two carried perfect identification as Englishmen. And the third, definite identification as a colonel serving in the U. S. Army Air Forces.

"But it just doesn't make sense!" Dawson muttered, and stared at Herr Baron's picture with the official Air Forces stamp imprinted on it. "How in the world did he get away with it? If I could tell that his face was faked, anybody else could have spotted the same thing. I don't see how the—"

He cut the rest short as something peculiar about the man's left tunic lapel caught his eye. He reached out a hand and felt of the lapel. His heart leaped, and in the next instant he had whipped out his jackknife and was slashing at the lapel seams. When he had cut an opening big enough, he thrust his fingers inside and felt a thin inch by inch and a half leather-covered book. He pulled it out to see that it was a worn address and memo book that had several pages missing. And when he thumbed through those that were left it was to discover that they were filled with countless numbers. Some of them in groups, and some of them but a single number. All were written in a fine hand with a needle-sharp indelible pencil.

"Code, of course," he grunted. "British Intelligence will break it down soon enough, and—"

Dawson stopped and sat up straight.

"Speaking of British Intelligence," he grunted, "what's Freddy doing on that telephone? Making a date with the operator?"

As there was only one way to get the answer to his question, he got to his feet, went over to the side door and pushed it open.

"Hey, Freddy, what—?" he began, and stopped short.

The room beyond was a well furnished bedroom. Included in the furnishing were twin beds with a little night table between them. On the night table there was a French phone, but the instrument was in its pronged cradle. Most important of all, though, there wasn't hide nor hair of Freddy Farmer. Dawson gaped for a moment as though he couldn't believe his eyes. Then he shook himself out of his trance and leaped into the room.

"Freddy!" he yelled, and looked wildly about. "Hey! Where are you, Freddy?"

Four walls sent back the echo of his voice, and that was all. There was no other reply to his yell. He noticed what was obviously the bathroom door on the other side of the room, and to the right of the twin beds. In three leaps he crossed the room and yanked the door open. It led to the bathroom right enough, but there was still no Freddy Farmer to be seen.

"What the heck?" he gasped, and his heart started to chill slightly. "Where is the guy, anyway? He couldn't have just disappeared through solid walls. Ah!"

The last slipped off his lips as a blast of cool night air blew against his face, and he saw that the window over the bathtub was open. A split second later he saw the prints of more than one pair of feet on the edge of the bathtub. One look and he was up on the edge of the bathtub himself, and sticking his head and shoulder out the window. For a moment he couldn't see a thing because of the darkness of night. Even the light that poured through into the bathroom from the bedroom, and out the opened window, didn't reveal anything in those first few seconds.

Then as his eyes quickly adjusted themselves he saw that there was a flat roof some four feet below the level of his eyes. It was really the main roof of the building; the apartment he was in being the English conception of a penthouse. To the right and left were the motionless darker shadows of chimneys and building ventilation vents. He opened his mouth to call out Freddy's name when suddenly off to his right came the scuffing of feet on the gravel-topped roof, and then the clear bark of a gun and a sharp cry of anger or pain.

The bark of the gun was still ringing in Dawson's ears as he went head first through the opened window and landed heavily on all fours on the gravel roof. He paused a second to get his breath; then, with Hans' Luger clutched in his hand, he went sneaking silently forward toward the spot whence had come the scuffing of feet, the sharp cry, and the shot. He bumped into a vent pipe that he didn't see in the darkness, and almost went to his knees. As he fought to maintain his balance he plainly heard running feet a short distance off to his right. He jerked his head around in time to see a running shadow etched against the London sky. He whirled and brought up his gun.

"Hold it!" he rasped out. "Hold it, and get your hands up!"

The running shadow ducked down, and in practically the same instant the night stabbed red flame, and a wasp of death whined by Dawson's face almost before he heard the crack of the shot. He ducked instinctively, and lost the running shadow before he could return the fire.

"Keep low, Dave!" he heard Freddy Farmer's voice to his left. "Two of the beggars, and they are both armed. Keep low and watch the fire escape on the rear side. Only way they can get off—"

If Freddy Farmer said any more Dawson didn't hear it. He was in the act of turning and moving toward the rear of the building roof when something moved in front of him, and a thunderbolt slashed down out of nowhere to hit him on the head. As his knees turned to rubber, and buckled, he flung out his arms in a desperate effort to grab hold of something that would help him remain on his feet. But there was nothing but thin air there to grab hold of, and he fell headlong on the roof. Whether he was hit by another thunderbolt, or it was just hitting the gravel-topped roof, he didn't know, but in the next second he had lost consciousness of everything. Everything, save that he was spilling down into a huge bottomless hole that was filled with pitch darkness and utter silence. And then even that was no more.