Illinois Valley News, Thursday, September 13, 1945 All Over But the Rie ha rei Powell- Shooting A N IKINtR SANCTU m fWYSTERY STARRING ARAB‘"»ANDY BLAKE THE STORY THUS FAR: 14. Andy Blake ot Operations was Joined In Wash- imton by bis wife. Arab, who took a Job with Ordnance. Arab secured a room on “Q” street, which she believed to be the headquarters of German agents. Andy fot into a fight with Joey, one of the roomers, and a neighbor. Jones, knocked Joey out. The neat night Andy went over to the house to look around. He checked on Joey’s ear and found out that Joey was using considerably more gas than bls A card would allow. He then heard a scream across the street, ft was Renee, and when Andy rushed up. Jones rushed toward him to attack. They start­ ed to fight. Renee stepped In and made them stop. CHAPTER VI I felt his fingers strike across my wrist and miss a grip. A woman's voice lashed at us. "Stop it!” I danced back a couple of steps and saw her come out from behind the tree. It was Renee Fielding. She gripped the man’s shoulder and shook him. He straightened and turned his head slowly to her, al­ most as if he had been wakened. Pale starlight washed over his round polished skull and glittered blankly on his glasses. It was the man Joey Raeder worked for; the man who had laid Joey out cold two nights ago. He dropped his hands to his sides and turned to me. •I beg your par- don, Lieutenant," he said, “I was very hasty. You came at me fast and I failed to note your insignia.” “A woman screamed,” I said. “Who was It? You, Mrs. Fielding?” “Yes. Something ran through the bushes. A rabbit, perhaps. Or a cat. I am nervous.” “Good night,” I said, and started to leave. “Wait a minute," the man said. “Wait, Lieutenant." His voice was calm now. The urgency had drained out of it. "Please wait. I have not apologized properly for my actions." “It” O. K .” I said. “I stumbled into something that wasn't my busi­ ness.” “But really,” he said. “I am very sorry. It might have been bad. I tried to throw you into that tree. It might have broken you. I do nat think that your body missed it by more than a foot.” “Better luck next time." “Oh, but there will be no next time. You acted very gallantly and it is too bad that there was no lady in distress. But you were also very foolish.” “You’re telling me." “Yes, foolish, Never run at an enemy that way. Come more slow- ly. Otherwise he may use your mo- mentum to throw you or . . He paused, picked up a dead branch. “Can you break this?” he asked. It was an inch thick and the wood was still sound. I tried to snap in my hands, failed, then started break it over my knee. "Oh, no,” he chuckled, taking from me. ‘ 'Let us pretend that this branch is a man's neck. You can- not reach it with a knee while he is on his feet, We must do this." He braced one end of the branch on the ground. The edge of his right palm chopped at it. There was a crack. Hie branch snapped. He dropped the broken stick, lost interest in the subject. “1 believe.” he said, “Renee called you Lieuten­ ant Blake My name is Jones.” I was so wrapped up in my men­ tal game that I said automatically, “Glad to meet you, riain Mr Jones.” “It is Mr. Jones! Not Not Professor Jones. Mr Jones!” I grinned and said, “Sorry.” But now 1 was happy. I had him prop­ erly tagged. I could make people sit up and take notice when 1 talked about a guy with the sinister name of Plain Mr. Jones, He had carried the thing too far. You would im mediately sus|>ect a guy who called himself Plain Mr. Jones, just as you would start counting the silverware if somebody introduced himself as Honest John Smith. Renee said, "Lieutenant Blake comes over to visit one of my girls I —Miss Reynolds." He said, "Oh, yes," and nodded Tben his shiny forehead creased, and he asked. "You . . . you visited her tonight’” It was interesting He knew who Arab was and he knew she was out tonight. The worried note in his voice hinted that he was getting sus­ picious of me 1 didn't care for that “No," I said hastily. "I haven’t seen her tonight I was out this way visit ing friends and 'hought ' I'd give her a hail on my way back.” "I believe that she is out with Joev." Renee' said. "Oh." "1 am sorr y that we had a mis- understandini; about the house rules last night." s he said "We do have to hat e rules. you understand ” 'Yes. sure. Well, if she isn't in 1 1 Flam Mr Jones said, "Why do you not Invit«: the Lieutenant to the picmc tomorrow night, Renee? “Oh. Do ... do you think “Of course. Tell him about it." She said, almost reluctantly, “The weather is still so nice that I de cided to give the girls and their friends a picnic supper in Kock Creek Park tomorrow night We have picnics there every once in a while and the girls seem to like them very much All of us go Even Sadie, to help with the servuig. 1 Would 1 »e you to come ” "I’ll try.” I said, "but of course work might pile up and—" "Please do try.” She gave me directions how to get there, and add­ ed, ‘There are always extra girls, so if . . . if . . .” “Sure, I understand. Joey’s giv­ ing me tough competition, isn’t he? I’ll make it if I can. And thanks." After dinner in the cafeteria I got the car and invested part of my A ration in a drive to Rock Creek Park. A car would be handy for the program I had scheduled. I parked some distance away from the picnic site, and crept close. My woods­ manship would probably have deaf­ ened an Indian, but at least I got close without dislodging any boul­ ders or snapping any dead trees un­ derfoot—and besides nobody at the picnic was paying any attention. Everybody from the house on Q Street was present. I peered out from the shadow of a tree and spot­ ted Renee and my pal Sadie and all the CAF twos and threes and Arab and Joey. A fire blazed in the dusk, Arab had her head thrown back. laughing at Joey, and her hair tossed rippling golden reflections back at the fire. Joey looked like the kind of guy they fix up with a coconut palm and a sarong and a featured role opposite Dottie La- mour. He seemed to be doing all right in the role he had right now. I went back to the car and drove down Rock Creek Parkway toward the turnoff to Q Street. My recon­ naissance had produced the infor­ mation I wanted: the house on Q Street was deserted. A block away from the house I pulled to the curb, switched off the motor, and began to change cos- I shivered. tume. A service cap flaunting a big fried egg. a blouse with lots of shiny brass, and freshly pressed pinks weren’t regulation for this sort of work I skinned out of the pinks and into a pair of dark O. D pants I swapped the blouse for a field jack­ et without insignia and left the cap in the car. I was out of uniform, but the way I was going they'd over­ look little details when they court- martialed me. The first window I came to. on the ground floor, was unlocked. 1 could have raised it and climbed in easily, but I didn't. Sneaking into dark houses is the sort of thing I tend to put off. like going to the dentist. I circled the place and found quite a few unlocked windows Just out of curiosity I decided to test the front door I climbed over the porch rail­ ing and crept to the door. Its latch moved under my thumb. I shrugged. Everybody was away and the front door was unlocked. Things couldn’t have been arranged more conven­ iently. I started to open the door— and then my nerves began snapping like old rubber bands Things couldn’t have been arranged more conveniently. Uh-huh. And maybe they had been arranged I backed away from the door and my foot skidded on something round and hard. I picked it up. Probably it wouldn’t have bothered anybody but a guy with the reflexes of a rabbit. 1 stared at it and almost shuddered a shoulder out of joint. It was a dead branch about an inch thick, neatly broken in the middle Not the one I'd handled the night be fore I held the thing like a person taking lesson number one tn snake charming Plain Mr. Jones had been practicing. The branch was a plus sign which added up everything for me. The fat man and his friends suspected that somebody was unusually inter­ ested in the house on Q Street Per­ haps Arab had been prying around and had left traces, or i>erhaps they wondered why I was hanging around. At any rate, one of them, possibly Joey, had coaxed Renee to stage a picnic in Rock Creek Park. 1 crept off the porch and into the WNU FtATURtS ! shelter of the shrubbery. I found myself starting to yawn. It had been a long day. I needed to be fresh and alert for my job. It was really my duty to go home and get a good night's sleep and quit bothering peo­ ple who didn't want company. The trouble was that going home wouldn't settle anything . . . and I owed Plain Mr. Jones a few bad moments. I made a wide circuit across the street, across the grounds of the big estate, and then back across the street to the side ot his house away from Renee Fielding's place. His house was a Victorian type with gables at each end like ears pricked up to listen. No lights wer* show­ ing. It wasn’t likely that his house had been turned into a booby trap, too, and besides it wasn’t a pleasant thought and the hell with it. I didn't have to worry about Plain Mr. Jones spotting me. There was enough space and shrubbery between the two houses to insure privacy. I walked onto his porch and immedi- ately found one bit of information. A small brass plate beside the door announced: JONES NEWSPAPER CLIPPING SERVICE I tilted an eyebrow at the sign. It was an interesting business for him to be operating. I tested the front door and checked all the ground­ floor windows. No intruders were expected or wanted; everything was locked. I didn’t mind that. After my experience next door an un­ locked downstairs window would probably have sent me screaming home. I climbed onto the porch rail and found that I could get a good grip on the roof. Surprisingly enough, I could still chin myself. I pulled up, hooked an elbow and then a knee over the edge, and finally made it. After that feat I deserved to find an unlocked second-floor win­ dow, and I did. Before getting too involved in any­ thing I carried out the operation known as securing one's lines of re­ treat. I went downstairs, unlocked the front and back doors and all the windows. If things got bad I was all set, as the Axis communiques say, to disengage the enemy in a rearward direction. Then I began snooping around. After returning to the second floor I examined the room I had first en­ tered. It was just like the down­ stairs setup except that no clippings were lying around. Only one, that is I found it inside the leather reinforcing corner of a big desk-size blotter. I had been looking in the corners because people often tuck notes there, and then the notes slip in out of sight and are forgotten. The clipping was a short personal item, stamped with a date over a month old. and it had been clipped from a small-town weekly. It an nounced: NO FURLOUGH FOR BILL DWIGHT Corp. Bill Dwight, son of Drug- gist and Mrs. Arthur Dwight, wrote his mother this week that he could not get home as expected because all furloughs were canceled for his outfit. Mrs. Dwight had to call off a party arranged for him, much to the disappointment of several of our prettiest girls. Bill wrote that he is mighty fit and that his Second Ar­ mored Division will give a good ac­ count of itself whenever it is called to go into battle for freedom. Good luck. Bill, and here's hoping you get that visit home soon. I tucked the clipping away in my billfold. There should have been a couple of twenties to keep it com­ pany instead of a pair of wrinkled dollar bills and a dry cleaner's tick­ et. In certain quarters a clipping like this would be worth plenty, al­ though you might have to take pay­ ment in reichsmarks. A fortune tell­ er wouldn't have to squint at Bill's palm to chance a prediction that he was about to make a trip across wa­ ter If the Second Armored were canceling all leaves it was either go­ ing on maneuvers or heading for a staging area. The Second Armored was pretty hot. It had been on lots of maneuvers and its next battle problem was likely to be for keeps. There were a couple of bedrooms on the second floor, and a big side room fixed up as a study. The lat­ ter was furnished with a big mahog­ any desk, a leather couch, two up­ holstered chairs, and a couple of straight ones. A bust of Caesar scowled from a table; it was the same one which used to sneer down at me in my Episcopal Academy days as I murdered sight transla­ tion. One wall was paneled with books: history, psychology. Haushof- er's study of geopolitics. Clausewits on war, Mahan on sea power. Ho­ mer Lea's once-forgotten bo >ks on Jap and German militarism, de Gaulle's analysis of tank warfare (the one which the French General Staff had snooted but which had greatly influenced the Germans). Rommel’s hard-hitting book on mi­ nor tactics, and the like Washington Digest; Allied Occupation of Germany Thankless Job Life-Sized Doll Can Wear Tot’s Clothes Methods for Restoring Normalcy to Reich Meet With Criticism From Smaller Liberated Nations of Europe. By BALKHAGE A rms Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, 1616 I Street N. W., 1 America has a big waiting demand Washington, D. C. With the fanfare accompanying the first steps of the occupation of Japan now dying on the Pacific breezes, some hints of the heavy responsibili­ ties of Uncle Sam’s European problems begin to appear. Already the small nations which were occupied by the Axis and whose peoples resisted the Nazi-Fas­ cist yoke are being heard from in a rising chorus of complaint and criticism against the Allies. Belgium and Holland are perhaps loudest in their charges of what they feel is discrimination against them in favor of their former enemy- neighbor, but voices are raised as far away as Greece and Yugoslav- ia. which say that Germany and Italy should not receive material assistance on the same basis as the once-occupied countries. The charges from Holland are the most specific. The Netherlands gov­ ernment has presented claims for a share in both the external and in­ ternal assets of Germany as repara­ tions. The note handed the Allies asks for immediate return of loot now within the occupied zones in Germany, which the Dutch claim is listed and identifiable They say that parts of their country were stripped bare of capital and consumer goods; that some of the former, such as machinery, is now being used to the advantage of the Germans. In addition to the formal protest. Col. J. C. A. Faure, deputy chief of staff of the Netherlands civil affairs administration, was quoted in Lon­ don as saying that the Allied mili­ tary governors were playing into German hands when they prevented the Dutch, Belgians and French from reclaiming immediately ma­ chinery and other property stolen from them by the Nazi armies, He said that protests to SHAEF, while it existed, were fruitless “and when the new child (the British and American occupation organization) was born it was too young." He ex­ plained it was understandable that since the Allied commanders in their respective spheres have their hands full in creating order out of chaos in Germany, each wants to do a good job. and for that reason doesn’t want to lose any material aid that will help. But that doesn’t provide much comfort for the Dutch or Belgian farmer who looks across the fron­ tier and sees a German peasant driv­ ing home a cow which he swears he knows is his by its crumpled horn and the spot on its rump The same applies to the factory owner who ¡3 positive bis property is turning wheels in Germany. Army Aim: Speed Job From sources in close touch with conditions in Germany I heard this example which pretty well echoes Dutch explanations but doesn't solve their problem. For instance: An Al­ lied commander moves into a Ger­ man town. One of the first things he wants is light and power. His men repair the power plant. Later it is claimed that the main dynamo was stolen from Holland. That is not the commander’s affair Light­ ing the town is. His job is to re­ store the place as nearly as possible to a self-supporting community. But that is not the end. for the restoration of European economy as a whole is of vital importance and naturally those nations which suf­ fered under the German heel feel they should have first call on the sinews of normality, especially when those sinews were torn from their body economic by Nazi hands. On this score there have already been rumblings of complaint against the American occupation. Already the wheels of German factories are turning in the American zone The purpose is to manufacture goods and provide services required to keep the occupation forces going and to supply the minimum needs of the com munity The Germans have to have shovels and hoes and rakes if they are to till their fields and cultivate their gardens in order to get enough food to live on These tools, if made and sold, would be in competition with goods the Americans make But there are not enough ships to carry a vast supply f such products across the Atlantic and besides r B A R B S of her own. Therefore, in many cases German capital may be used to resuscitate German factories and Germany money will buy its prod­ ucts. The Americans are doing ev­ erything to facilitate this type of re­ construction (light industry and manufacture of household equip­ ment). If necessary and they can do it, they will see that a missing shaft or flywheel is obtained some­ how. They permit the Germans to combine partly damaged factories into one complete plant. They en­ courage reconversion of certain plants from wartime to civilian use. It so happens that of all the occu­ pied zones the one which the Ameri­ cans control is capable of creating most easily a balanced economy. It is a land of small towns and vil­ lages, most of which were not im­ portant enough to have been bombed. It is a land of cattle and of orchards, of fields and meadows. It is highly probable that with American organization to guide the people this area will be the first to regain a fairly normal life. If we don’t help the Germans, we’ll be criticized for fumbling; the occupation will be made more dif­ ficult. If we do help, we will be under heavy criticism from the peo­ ples of less fortunate areas and charged with treating the former enemy better than we treat our friends. The British operate in a far less favorable area, for they have the bombed-out Ruhr on their hands and they control a territory whose exist­ ence depended on industries which no longer exist and which will not be permitted to exist in the future. Such factories as they can operate to make the community self-sup­ porting may well be equipped in part with stolen machinery. Russ Strip German Industry The pattern of Russian occupation is quite different. The Russians know what they are doing in their zone. They are treating the “little people” with kindliness, assuring them that they need have no fear of oppres­ sion. Their apparent intention is to divide up the land and give the Ger­ mans a chance to win a livelihood from the soil, meanwhile giving them a thorough indoctrination in the advantages of the Soviet form of government. At the same time they are removing every movable piece of machinery to Russia. Meanwhile. Poland will be allowed to scrape together such German ag­ ricultural equipment as she can sal­ vage tn East Prussia. Disease is rampant in Poland; there are short­ ages in all kinds of equipment. The Germans took most of the agricul­ tural machinery; much of the rest was destroyed and the whole coun­ try wrecked. The other next-door neighbors have not even such an opportunity to recuperate their losses. And so the Americans will prob­ ably bear the onus of helping the for­ mer enemy most of all. although their only intent is to carry out the program agreed upon by the Allies. America wants no loot. She does want all she can get in the way of important formulae; all she can learn of German methods; all of the ideas which can be adapted success­ fully to American life. Already some valuable scientific information has been obtained and in many cases the German scientists, with that disinterested attitude chaiacter- istic of their profession, are quite as willing to work in an American lab­ oratory as they were in one run by the Nazis. America also wants to finish her occupation job and get out. A part of that job is to make the Germans self-supporting. ’S as big as life and twice as S HE natural! Wears the size 3 clothes that a youngster has out­ grown — has yarn hair that kids can braid. ♦ • * A real life-size playmate — 32 inches tall in stocking feet! Pat­ tern 527 contains pattern of doll only; complete directions. Due to an unusually large demand and current conditions, slightly more time is required in filling orders for a few of the most popular pattern numbers. 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