Keiler…
He didn’t fit into the new pattern. He had defected to Russia with his secret information and his blueprints of Warmaster. So where did they all come together — or didn’t they? Was this, could it be, a case of two sets of people — Nazis and Communists — running in what one might call ‘contemporaneous opposition,’ separately and coincidentally?
Shaw gave an almost unconscious sigh. He didn’t feel he was really very much farther ahead… he gave himself a shake, realized that the girl was looking at him curiously. He asked, ‘What about this place, this strongpoint? What was it intended for?’
She said, ‘I don’t know in detail.’
‘I wish I knew why it has packed up.’
‘I’d say Fleck’s just kind of shifting base. Far as I know, the main function of this dump has been to act as a communications centre. You’ve seen the receiving sets out there, I reckon. Well, they cover Germany itself, Canada, Africa, Britain, France, Italy… well, pretty well all over, you know? The boys who work those sets, they take messages in code from pretty well all those places, maybe others too. There’s been a fair amount of stuff coming in from South America lately. He may be opening up another centre somewhere else.’
‘What about the transmitters?’
‘I don’t know about them,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Well, I doubt very much if they’ve been in action. They’d be a dead give-away… but it is interesting to speculate as to when they would have been used. They wouldn’t have been put down here for fun.’ Shaw’s hands came down hard on the arms of the chair and he lifted himself out of it. ‘Well — let’s take a look around, Miss Yarrow. Who knows, they may have left a scrap or two of paper behind!’
‘No,’ she said, ‘they won’t have done that. Harry Willoughby is far too keen and thorough — and scared of Fleck, too. He’ll have dumped everything in the shredder, you can take my word for that.’
Shaw shook his head, but smiled. ‘I could,’ he said kindly, ‘but I’m not going to! I’m thorough too — and scared stiff of my chief! And don’t forget I may have interrupted Mr Willoughby in the middle of his clear-up operation…’
Myra Yarrow was dead right, however.
Shaw sent her off to dress while he searched the office and when she came back they went through the whole place carefully and found nothing. Shaw took a good look at the radio equipment but was none the wiser afterwards. Of documents, there were none. And it wasn’t until he decided to call it a day and make his way out so that he could contact Pullman that Myra Yarrow came up with something. She said, as though finally making up her mind to a course of action, ‘There is one thing that might help. Come into my bedroom a moment.’
Shaw followed her out of the radio room and along the passage and they went together into her own room. It was a luxurious, scented apartment and the bed looked enticing with its expensive drapes and huge down pillows. She went across to her dressing-table and reached into a drawer, feeling about at the back of it. She brought out a small box, a box that had contained a toilet preparation, and handed it to Shaw.
She said, ‘Take a look at those.’
He opened the box. Inside was a scattering of very tiny squares of film, each one barely a sixteenth of an inch across and looking like no more than a minute black speck. Shaw gave a whistle. ‘Microdots!’ He looked at the girl, feeling a mounting excitement now. ‘Where in heaven’s name did you get these?’ he asked in wonder.
She said crisply, ‘I’ll tell you. Fleck once showed me how to put messages into microdots, just as a lark really, I guess. Most of his top-grade communication with Germany is direct — that’s to say, microdots, microfilm, couriers… H.Q itself doesn’t use the radio a lot, that’s left chiefly for the special agents and sub-agents all over, the people who use small portable sets and keep on the move. Follow?’
Shaw said impatiently, ‘Yes, of course. How did you get these, Miss Yarrow?’
‘It was this way,’ she said, moving her shoulders. ‘Fleck has a secretary, she’s gone now with all the rest of the outfit. A week or so back she got sick and Fleck made me stand in for her. Well, I came across some messages that had been blown up from microdots… at least, I assumed they had. These were actually the plain-language versions of the original coded messages—’
‘What did they say?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. Fleck had had them all decoded into German. Anyway, here’s the point: I put ’em back into microdots — took pictures of ’em, see? And there’s the result. Blow ’em up, and you may know a thing or two more’n you know right now. Maybe — I don’t guarantee it, but—’
Shaw interrupted, ‘This could be extremely useful… but why did you do it? Take the pictures, I mean?’
She looked at him with a half-smile. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I figured it might come in handy if I was to have something on Fleck that I could maybe use one day. Course, I took a chance that there was anything much in them. They may all be harmless stuff about his old grandma’s ulcers, but somehow I doubt that! And it’s costing me something to part with them,’ she added regretfully, ‘but you’re welcome to them. I guess you can make better use of them than I can, right now.’
‘Miss Yarrow,’ he said exultantly, ‘you’re a peach! If we’re lucky, these microdots’ll tell us quite a lot of what we need to know. At the worst they should at least give us some nice leads to work on.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get going — there may not be all that much time left now Fleck’s on the move. Look, can you tell me the names of all the people who lived down here, and anything else about them?’
She shook her head. ‘Honest, I don’t know a darn thing about them. Even their names… they just used code names, all of them. The only people other than Fleck who I think knew the full score were Harry Willoughby and his sidekick, Cass. And those weren’t their real names, I’d say.’ She looked him over critically. ‘You’re going to set hard soon, you know that? Like a change of clothing?’
‘Would I not!’ Shaw lifted his arms; flakes of cement flew off.
‘Okay, then, I’ll fix you a suit of Rudy’s. He left a wardrobe here to come back to if he needs to. You’d better have a wash, too — a bath if you like. I’ll show you… and while you’re doing it, I’ll write out a list of all the code names and the jobs each of them did. How’s that?’
‘Fine, but you don’t need to do that yet.’
‘How come?’
He said, ‘I’m taking you in, of course! But don’t start panicking… if you yourself haven’t done anything against the United States, I doubt if they’ll worry much about you now.’
‘I haven’t done a thing,’ she said, ‘but you can’t take me in and that’s just stating a simple fact. The last person down here, stays. That’s one reason I had to stay, so Fleck could come back when he wanted.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean,’ she said crisply, ‘that someone has to be down here to operate that elevator, both down and up. If I don’t stay below, neither of us’ll get away till Fleck comes back. There’s a funk-hole out back, but it’s blocked right off now, take a month to even get through to the door.…’
Within half an hour Shaw, washed and in clean clothing that was a fairish fit, was on his way up in the elevator — and reluctantly but unavoidably alone. He had promised Myra Yarrow that he would alert Washington immediately and have that underground strongpoint opened up and investigated, and herself brought in for protective custody until Fleck was hauled in. He didn’t like leaving the girl all alone down there, but it couldn’t be helped. He had no difficulty in leaving the Frazer Harfield premises; so well concealed was the entry to the underground quarters that there was no guard on it. There was simply an unsuspecting nightwatchman prowling the warehouse outside, an elderly man belonging, presumably, to the firm, whom Shaw had no difficulty whatever in avoiding.