Henderson daily dispatch., 1940-09-26

| lIIt NiS gnu. iHO SiiiOhS
stcadied his nerves.
He turned his attention to the
desk. There were six drawers, two
unlocked, four locked. y glance at
those that were not locked showed,
as he expected, that they contained
nothing but note paper, pens, paper
clips and other office necessities.
They were very tidy. Gun looked
for some sort of printed note head
ing. but found none. He had hardly
expected to.
Now he turned his attention tQ
! the locked drawers. The first one
contained lot of books and ledg,
crs. with 4 Ready Reckoner on top.
Gun lifted the ledgers onto the
floor. and tlickcd the pages over,
occasionally studying one with in
tercSt. They were illuminating. APP
parcntly Trent, or the people he
represented, dealt a good deal in
explosives. There were itemiZed
purchases Of picric acid. nitro gly-
crrinc, dynamite, Gclgnite, r. N. T.
Also percussion caps, time fuses
and contact fuses, etc.
But the most puzZling thing was
the quantities. They had been pay
ing { heavy price for the stuff, but
the quantities were comparatively
small. Evidently there was no
question of them making NUM-
tons Oh a large scale-all the
same, they must have fairly
complete arsenal about, some
where.
Another ledger dealt with all
sorts Of stores. Not so interesting.
The interest revived in a third
ledger in which We're recorded pur-
chases Of small arms, machine and
sub-machine guns and ammuni-
ton. Again not in large quantities.
More raw material. Gun knew
enough about such matters to real
iZe that they were manufacturing
incendiary bombS-but again in
aStoniShly small quantities.
And then a particularly interest
ing item: "To 5 Cylinders G.13."
Gun happened to know something
about G.12. 1t was a recently in
vented gas, which did not actually
kill, but rendered all who breathed
it unconscious for several hours. 1t
was designed for throwing into
dug outs when one wanted to take
prisoners, for Interrogation or 9TH
er purposes. What the devil did
these people want witt that stuff
and, incidentally, how did they
manage to get hold Of it? 1t was
supposed to be a rather tight War
Office secret.
Gun glanced at his wrist watch.
Time was going too fast.
No time to analyze these clues
noW-must think them out later.
Gun put the ledgers back, just
as he had found them, and closed
and locked the drawer. Turned to
the next one. This contained
money, receipts and postage
stamps. y clue here, perhaps. Gun
examined them eagerly. They were
Greek.
Then were somewhere in the
Greek Archipelago, for flyer! I
was right" Gun said to himself.
The next drawer contained more
boCks-cipher and code keys. Sew
eral of the official w. o. and A. F.
codes and ciphers there, too. Also
a number Of German official ones.
But the keys were not official
they were carefully prepared
copies, both in the case Of the
British and the German ones That
was curious, because it not only
meant that what Gun lad half sus-
pccted-that this was some Ger
man or fascist piot-was no. cor
rect, but it also looked as though
whatever scheme these people had
was aimed against Germany as
we'll as Britain.
No time to analyze. Gun glanced
at his watch again. All this had
taken a lot of time. And he still
had discovered nothing definite.
One more drawer lett-but only
a few minutes to devote to it. AS
he unlocked the last drawer and
peered inside, Gun almost gave
vent to a whoop of triumph. This
was what he Wanted-correspond-
ence.
Damn tit was all in code. no
some of the letters hac the de-
coding attached on slips of paper.
Hastily Gun went through them.
As he did so his dark eyes gloWed
with anger, and his lips uncon-
sciously tig!ltened. For here was as
foul {. plot-as ruthless scheme
for tile mere acquisition Of money
AS ever brain could devise.