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."