Don't ever ask me about the next few minutes. I was there in body only. My mind was as blank as a Fourth of July cartridge. I remember seeing figures--two, three, or twenty--darting toward us; I remember yelling, ducking, and punching with one and the same motion; I remember hearing guttural voices snarling commands that ended mostly in "geworden sein" so it must have been German. I remember feeling, with satisfaction, a spurt of sticky warmth deluge my knuckles as I hit the jackpot on something spongy that howled. I remember, too, hearing Hank gasp, "Judas priest--German spies!" just before his lanky length toppled under the impact of an accurately wielded blackjack. And I remember my last conscious thought: that when I got a chance I must offer an apology to sour-puss Grimper. Because that thin, hawk-nosed stencil of superiority-plus was--what-ever else his faults--a bang-up fighting man in a pinch! With a fury incredible in one his size and build, he was laying about him like a demon. One Heinie was peacefully slumbering at his ankles already, a second was bawling for assistance. Then three, or four, or a thousand of them rushed me at the same time. I remember something playing "Heavy, heavy--what hangs over your head?" above my cranium--then that's all I do remember. A bomb exploded in my cerebrum and I went to beddy-bye. I had a nice little dream, then. I dreamed I was in Spain during the Inquisition, and a black-robed priest had me fastened to a windlass. As he murmured pious paternosters in my ears, he was gently screwing the instrument tighter, and I was gasping with pain as my arms slowly, grindingly, withdrew from their sockets. I wriggled, emitting a muffled howl, and awakened to find the dream based on cold, brutal fact! My mouth was full of cotton waste--slightly the worse for wear--explaining my muffled tones. My arms were tied together with a short scrap of hemp; this length had been passed through the draw-chain of a skylight, and thus, securely locked, I hung dangling like a pendulum with my toes barely scraping the floor. Nor was I the only trussed duck in this tableau. My pal Hank was swinging from another skylight chain a few yards away, while Grimper made it three-on-a-ratch. The government agent was the luckiest of us all. He was out cold, and so he didn't have to listen--as did Cleaver and I--to the gleeful chucklings of the saboteurs. And chuckling they were, like the hooded villains in a Victorian meller-drammer. Apparently one or two thousand of them had gone home, because there were now only a half dozen, but these six were the nastiest looking Nazis I ever hope not to see again. Beetle-browed thugs, fine examples of the pure Aryanism Herr Shickelgruber is always bragging on. * * * * *