"That close-shave landing!" he muttered savagely. "It still has my brains all scrambled up. You're quite right, Farmer. What you say makes it more of a mess than ever. The Indian is to sail whether her skipper hears from me or not. Those two men of mine serving as machinists' mates are already aboard. At least they were to go aboard last evening. But she won't wait for you two. The skipper has his sailing orders, and he'll sail whether he's shy two pilot lieutenants or not. Blast and double blast it all! What you say, Farmer, gives me a very disquieting thought. Perhaps I _wasn't_ the one that unknown killer was interested in. It's quite possible that it _was_ you two. The attempt was made to stop you from reaching the Indian before she sailed. Confound it! If I've fumbled this thing all up, I'll go out somewhere and cut my throat. But--but I still can't see how anybody else could possibly have found out about this flight, let alone the real reason!" Dave didn't say anything, but he was thinking of a case he had heard about in England not so long ago. A bad leak had been found in the Air Ministry Intelligence, and when it was eventually tracked to its source it was discovered that a high official's own secretary--a supposedly loyal Englishman who had held his post since long before the outbreak of war--was actually in the pay of the Nazis. "I'm wondering something, myself," he said presently. "Not to toss more cold water on things, Colonel, but--well, you don't know for sure if your two men went aboard the Indian last evening, do you?" "No, not for sure," the senior officer replied with a shake of his head. "But it's--Oh, I see what you mean. Maybe they were--er--delayed, too, eh? You think of the nicest things, Dawson! But keep on thinking. Don't stop. Maybe you'll think of a way to get us out of this jam in a hurry." "I sure wish I could!" Dave said fervently. Then, reaching out and taking a flashlight from the instrument panel clamps, he said, "Meantime I'm going to have a look at the engines. I could be wrong about an oil line being nicked. It wouldn't be the first time. Maybe it's something that we can patch up with some gum and a piece of our shirts, and we can get ourselves out of here come daylight. That's a hope, anyway." Half an hour later, though, it wasn't a hope. The oil feed lines of the right outboard engine were split and parted in three different spots. Besides that, she was seized up tighter than a drum, and couldn't be made to move short of using dynamite. The left outboard engine wasn't in a much better condition. Bullets from the unknown attacker's guns had started a bad leak in the gas line that couldn't be repaired without the proper tools. And so at the end of the half hour Dave wiped oil and grease from his hands and climbed down off the wing onto the ground where Freddy Farmer and the chief of Intelligence waited.