Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air ForceBowen, Robert Sidney
General
Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air Force
Bowen, Robert Sidney
World War, 1939-1945 -- Juvenile fiction
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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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