Fantasy fiction; Short stories; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States -- Fiction
"Okay, buddy," he chuckled. "Enjoy yourself. Quite a card, ain't you?
Well--" He yawned prodigiously--"'at's okay by me. I'm gettin' ...
kinda ... sleepy. Think I'll snatch ... forty winks. Wake me up ...
when the alert's over ... over...."
He slumped onto a bench, and fell fast asleep!
* * * * *
For a moment fantastically long, Peter stared at him incredulously.
Then recollection of a more immediate problem than this flooded back
on him. There was a mystery here, but elsewhere in the building was a
skulking spy whose plot Peter must nip in the bud.
He wheeled and hastened into the drill-room. No one there but a
drowsy radioman, nodding over his transmitter. A dozen doors opened
off the drill-room. Peter, scurrying from one to another, noted with
subconscious approbation that each room with windows to the outer
street was darkened. Only the inner chambers of the Armory were lighted.
But of the sack-bearing stranger there was no trace. Room after room
was deserted, save for here a detail of slumbering reserves, there an
Intelligence officer cat-napping at his desk. This latter raised his
head when Peter roused him, repeated muzzily, "Whuza? Lil man with a
bag? Uh-uh. Di'n see'm--" and went back to sleep.
Peter wasted no more time upstairs. The basement was "out of bounds"
for all civilians and, indeed, for all soldiers save those specifically
assigned to guard it, but this was no time to adhere to normal
regulations. Peter raced toward the store-rooms, and was just in time
to see, as he found the top of the staircase, a tableau on the landing
below that forever justified his fears.
The little man was there! He was tiptoeing silently toward the
unsuspecting back of a guard assigned to watch the stores. As he crept
he fumbled at the mouth of his gunnysack and--remarkable verity Peter
could scarcely believe--he was humming a soft tune!
Peter knew what he should do. He _should_ shout aloud to warn the
soldier. But when he opened his mouth it felt as if he had swallowed
a throatful of warm glue; his lips were a pair of adhesive plasters
muting a larynx frozen with terror. The best he could manage was a
tiny, whimpering bleat.
It was not enough. The soldier, as though warned by some belated,
intuitive sense, whirled just as the interloper gained his side. But
his eyes never recognized peril, for at that instant the little man's
hand flew from the bag, hurling something squarely into the guard's
face.
And--the soldier dropped his rifle, yawned noisily, rubbed his eyes
with clenched fists, staggered to a seat, and fell fast asleep at his
post!
In that moment, Peter Pettigrew understood all. Now he knew why the
guard at the outer gate had not stopped--had not even remembered!--the
stranger. He knew, too, why every defender of this building save
himself was lost in Dreamland. The stranger's bag was filled with a new
and dreadful weapon. A powder with the power of drugging victims into
heavy slumber!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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