Night had come again to the German city of Duisburg. As yet the air raid sirens had not given their terrifying warning that the R.A.F. was on the prowl once more, but the streets of the city were practically deserted. Many of the inhabitants had gone underground to spend the night there whether there were bombs dropped on Duisburg or not. Only a scattering of soldiers and patrolling guards were to be seen on the streets. One of them, though, was an officer. An officer of the Nazi Luftwaffe, as a matter of fact. At least he was dressed that way, and being a Luftwaffe officer none of the patrols stopped him for questioning. Or if they did they instantly saw his rank, his decorations, and gave him a snappy salute, and a loud "Heil Hitler!" in the very next breath.

All afternoon, and during the early evening, that "Luftwaffe" officer had strolled about the Kholerstrasse section. Every now and then he had stepped into a restaurant for a bit of food. And in Duisburg a bit of food was just about all that one could get at a sitting. Whether private soldier, or field marshal, it didn't matter. There just wasn't enough. But after going into several spots Dawson was able to get filled up. Getting filled up, however, was not the entire reason for his many visits to Duisburg restaurants and food shops. Into each one he walked with the burning hope that he might see Freddy Farmer trying to fill that perpetually hollow leg of his. But it was all in vain. There was no sign at all of Freddy Farmer. His English-born flying mate and dearest pal had simply vanished from the face of the earth. Or rather, vanished from the face of a dawn sky where Dawson had last seen him alive.

And now with the darkness of night closed down over Duisburg, he was standing in what was left of the doorway of a bombed out house directly across Kholerstrasse from Number One Fifty-Six. Several times during the afternoon and evening he had passed by Number Sixteen in the faint hope that he might be able to see or hear something that would help him in deciding his next move. Once again, though, his hopes were in vain. From the outside Number Sixteen looked as though it hadn't been occupied since the start of the war. All of the window shades were drawn down, and half of the window shutters had been closed and bolted. The front door, which contained no window, was closed and locked. And not once had Dawson seen a single person go up or down the short flight of stone steps. If Number Sixteen was Intelligence headquarters in Duisburg, one certainly would not guess it from the looks of the outside of the building.

Eventually convinced that he would gain nothing by parading past Number Sixteen, and having finally given up hope of spotting Freddy Farmer in any of the Kholerstrasse section eating places, Dawson had fallen back on his final and last hope. If this hope proved to be false and no good, then he was at the end of his rope. His mission to Germany would end in failure right there on the streets of Duisburg.

And so he was playing his final card. From a good vantage point he was carefully studying the building that was Number One Fifty-Six Kohlerstrasse. The address of Major Crandall's agent, who was believed to reside there under the name of Heinrich Weiden. But did he? That question taunted Dawson as he surveyed the place, and half a hundred times he was tempted to go boldly over there, bang on the door of Number One Fifty-Six and demand of whoever answered that he be shown to Herr Heinrich Weiden's rooms at once. A tiny voice of caution warned against that move. For one thing, after two solid hours of watching the place, he had not seen anybody go in or come out. There wasn't so much as a single crack, of light showing, but of course that was probably due to the strict enforcement of the blackout regulations.

In other words, Number One Fifty-Six was pretty much like Number Sixteen. No sign whatsoever that anybody occupied the place. Just the same, Dawson made no move to go over and find out for himself. He told himself that such a thing was silly. That he could probably wait all night, and not see a single thing of interest. And yet there was something that made him determined not to leave his place of concealment. Silly? Perhaps. But how was he to know if real Gestapo agents weren't watching the place? Ten days ago Heinrich Weiden had sent word through to Major Crandall that his old address was not good, and that he should be contacted at a new one. Ten days ago, but what had happened since?

As a matter of fact, it was a mounting conviction that he was not the only one who was hiding in the darkness and watching Number One Fifty-Six that caused him to stay where he was. No proof. Nothing tangible. It was just that a few times he would have sworn that he saw shadowy movement across the street. Maybe it had been his imagination, the strain on his eyes. But maybe not. It was almost as though he could actually feel somebody over there on the opposite side of the street. And so he remained hidden and watching as another hour dragged itself off into the eternity of forgotten time.

But by the end of that hour he had reached the limit of his endurance. Gestapo agents or no Gestapo agents, he just had to go over there across the street and find out for sure if Number One Fifty-Six was occupied or not. If it wasn't occupied, then—

He gave a little shake of his head in the darkness and wouldn't let himself complete the rest of the sentence.

"It's my only hope!" he whispered fiercely to himself. "As things are now, I'm right up against a brick wall. Weiden's got to be living there, and I've got to contact him. He's the only one who can possibly help me now. Come on, Lady Luck, give us another little break, please."

For a moment he bowed his head as though in prayer, and then, silent as the very darkness of night itself, he moved out of his place of hiding and started across the street to the other side. When but halfway across the street he heard a faint sound ahead of him that made his heart stop beating, and his hair practically stand up on end. It was just a sound, one of a million different kinds of sounds that anybody might have heard. Maybe it was a door closing, or someone taking a step, or knocking against something accidentally in the dark.

The sound had come and gone before he could even begin to figure what it might have been. But as he froze motionless in the street, with his service Luger clutched tightly in his free hand, he was convinced beyond all doubt that the sound had been made by a human being. There were no stray dogs or cats in Duisburg to go around nights making sounds. They had long since disappeared, and no doubt more than one German housewife, who had stood in front of the butcher shop all day only to learn that there wasn't a scrap of meat left, could tell where those stray dogs and cats had "gone"!

No, the sound had been made by a human form, a human being. And in a crazy sort of way Dawson expected to see the night spurt flame, and to hear the bark of a gun in his ears, expected his body to feel the sting of a bullet from the gun of some Gestapo killer who had mistaken him for one Heinrich Weiden. It was perhaps a completely mad thought, but in that instant Dawson experienced more cold fear than he had in all his life before.

However, no unseen gun spat flame and sound, and presently Dawson got his pounding heart and jangled nerves under control and started moving forward silently again. Then presently he had reached the opposite sidewalk, and the front door of Number One Fifty-Six was not over fifteen feet away. He could actually see the little metal frames made to hold name cards, but there were only the frames, and no name cards. It was obvious that if anybody did reside at Number One Fifty-Six he was not announcing it to the chance passer-by.

And then suddenly, as Dawson moved toward a little clump of scrub bushes that had been planted to take the place of the iron fence that had long since gone into Hitler's melting pot, he sensed rather than heard movement. Movement came from the other side of the bushes. For a fleeting instant his keyed up nerves snapped, and he was undecided whether to take to his heels as fast as he could go, or to jerk up his gun and pump bullets through the clump of bushes.

He didn't do either, however, because in the next moment there was swift movement right behind him and the muzzle of a gun was jammed into his back.

"Not a move, not a sound!" a whispered voice told him. "Just stand perfectly still if you don't want to die!"

The inside of Dawson's head seemed to explode. He went hot and cold all over, and it was all he could do not to spin around. But he didn't move a muscle even though he recognized the voice instantly.

"Freddy!" he said in a soft whisper. "Freddy, boy! For heaven's sake don't shoot!"

There were tears in Dawson's voice as he whispered. And there were real tears in his eyes, too. Like a man in a dream he felt the gun muzzle being removed from the middle of his back; then strong fingers grasped his arm and turned him around.

"Good gosh, Dave!" Freddy's broken whisper came out of the darkness. "Why, I—I—"

Young Farmer's voice faltered and stopped. And not for all the money in the world could Dawson have spoken a single word at that moment. The two of them just grabbed each other there by the bushes, and simply hung on, as words utterly failed them. But presently Freddy Farmer dragged Dawson around in back of the bushes, and down close behind them.

"It's true, Dave, it really is?" he whispered. "I thought you were dead, old thing. Thought the Jerries had got you. Dave, this has been the worse day of my whole life. It really has. I mean it!"

"And my worst day, too, kid!" Dawson breathed, as he kept squeezing Freddy's arm to reassure himself again that it was true, that Freddy wasn't dead but very much alive. "But what do you mean, you thought the Jerries got me? I thought they got you, Freddy. I saw a Mustang catch it square and blow up. I was sure it was you. And I didn't see another single parachute in the air. I—Gosh, Freddy! You just can't imagine what this moment means to me."

"Oh yes, I can, because I feel the same way, old chap," the English youth said in a choked up voice as he lightly brushed the knuckles of one fist across the point of Dawson's chin. "But about that business this morning. Just as I was getting set to jump, two or three of the Focke-Wulf beggars came in at me, and I had my hands full for a few moments. I managed to get one of them, and broke off action with the other two. I looked around for you, but there was nothing but burning planes in the air, and flak bursts. I thought then that you had caught one, Dave. I jumped anyway, but didn't judge the wind right at all. Perhaps I should have practiced a couple of times, eh?"

"Then you didn't come down close to that factory we had picked?" Dawson asked.

"Close?" Freddy whispered in self-scorn. "I didn't come within miles of it. Landed right in the middle of a little lake, no less. Imagine it! I ditched my parachute and swam ashore right head on into some German troops from a nearby camp. They had a car and their officer insisted on my going along with him. What else could I do? If I had refused to let them assist me in my drenched condition, they would have become suspicious. After all, a Luftwaffe officer doesn't go wandering about town soaked to the skin. So I went with them, and it wasn't until a few hours ago I got them to drive me into town. I pleaded that I was meeting my Kommandant at a certain place. Lord! I thought I'd never get away from those blighters. Their blasted guest most of the day, and all the time me going near balmy wondering what had happened to you. Can you imagine such a silly business, Dave? But when I did manage to get rid of them, I came down here hoping that I might at least contact Major Crandall's man. That was the only thing I could do, having lost complete touch with you. I—But here! What about yourself, Dave?"

"A full day, too, and just about as non-productive as yours, Freddy," Dawson said. And then he gave his pal a brief report of his own movements and experiences. "And so there was only one thing left for me to do," he finished up. "Try to contact Weiden to see if he knew anything of what's going on. My gosh! To think that we've both been watching this place for hours, and each of us thinking that the other had caught his this morning."

"And very unpleasant to think about, too," Freddy murmured. "But we've had some luck, Dave. At least we've joined up together. And that is a lot. But that Farbin factory business is certainly devilish queer, Dave. It just doesn't make sense, I mean."

"You're telling me?" Dawson groaned softly. Then turning his head and staring at the night-darkened front of Number One Fifty-Six, he murmured, "And if we can't contact Weiden, or if he can't give us any more of the picture, if there is a picture, then we will be sunk. The only thing we can do then is lie low until tomorrow night, and then make our way to where the British Recco plane is to land early the next dawn, and go back to England a couple of chumps. Particularly me, because I was the one with the bright idea that we come on this wild goose chase in the first place. Boy! Will I feel a fool when I tell Colonel Fraser that I didn't even get to first base. He thought the idea was cracked and impossible right at the beginning. Wind-Bag Dawson, that's me. The guy with the bright ideas—I don't think!"

"Rubbish!" Freddy Farmer breathed at him. "I was just as much for it as you were. Just simply didn't get the chance to suggest it before you did. But blast it, let's not do our weeping and grinding of teeth yet. Maybe Weiden is here, and maybe he does know something that will help."

"Yeah, maybe," Dawson echoed, but not very convincingly. "What do we do, though? Bang on the front door, or just stay where we are and wait to see if anybody goes in or comes out? And that last I think is a very punk idea."

"Both ideas are punk," Freddy told him. "I've been doing a little snooping around. There's an alley that leads to the back. And the rear door is open. I really think the only thing for us to do is search the place, room by room. After all, you played Gestapo with a certain amount of luck once today. Let's both try it and see if it works a second time. After all, isn't it a strict Gestapo rule to break in on people at night, and go thumping and tramping around? At least, if anybody lives here, he'll be too scared to ask questions. And if we meet with no luck searching the place, we can simply leave the way we came."

"Well, it's worth a try," Dawson grunted. "Gestapo or Luftwaffe, what difference does it make to civilians in the middle of the night? Okay, lead on, Freddy. Get your gun and flashlight?"

"Both," young Farmer replied. "But don't use your flash until we get inside. Right you are; follow me. I know the way. And luck, old thing."

"And how we both will need it!" Dawson echoed under his breath.