The man choked and cleared his throat. “Not in any one place. I don’t know where everything be.”
“Where are my saddlebags?”
He shrugged helplessly. “In the stables, I suppose.”
“What about the stuff that was in them?”
Eagerly he said, “They been fooling with that in the mess. Some of the boys.”
“Take us to the mess.”
“I can’t show you,” the officer said. “I can’t leave my post.”
I tickled his epaulet with my knife. “You’ll have to.”
“Don’t cut that!” he said in agitation.
“Show us.” I raised the knife.
“Very well,” he said helplessly. “It be on the second floor.”
I took the lamp from the desk and Jimmy prodded the officer to his feet. He led us out into the corridor and then up the stairs. We walked down another corridor on the second floor, our footsteps echoing hollowly. At last we came to a door and the pudgy little officer unlocked it and threw it open.
“There,” he said.
The lamplight showed a silent room with a great long white-cloth covered table surrounded by ranks of chairs. There was a lounge and a great fireplace.
“Show us,” Jimmy said.
The officer led the way over to the lounge. There was a dartboard there and newspapers and games, and on one of the tables Jimmy’s chessboard. I recognized it. I don’t know who Jimmy had been intending to play with. Some of his other things were scattered about.
“Jimmy,” I said, in a voice filled with dread. “I don’t see it.”
Jimmy took a quick look himself. “No,” he said. He turned to the officer. “We’re looking for a little block-sized object about so by so. Have you seen it?”
“No,” said the officer. “I haven’t been playing with your stuff.”
I poked him with the knife. “Are you sure?”
With some asperity he said, “I be sure! I don’t remember seeing anything like that.”
“What are we going to do now?” I said to Jimmy.
“I don’t know. It must be somewhere, but I don’t know where we could look.”
I was really beginning to worry as I hadn’t before. We couldn’t run loose around this place for very long without being caught, and if we didn’t find the signal we would never get home at all.
We went back downstairs and into the office. It was then that I was suddenly struck by an idea.
“There’s the scoutship outside,” I said. “We could take that! If these people can fly it, we can.”
The chubby officer said, “No you won’t! You Ship people think you have everything, but we’ll show you. We’ve got a little ship of our own now and we be tougher people than you. You won’t take that ship.”
“No need,” Jimmy said. He picked a paperweight off one of the desks. It was his missing signal. He turned with it to the officer. “I thought you hadn’t seen this . . . ?”
“Oh, be that what you wanted? I never noticed it.” The officer’s back was turned to me. I took out my pistol and somewhat squeamishly hit him with it under the ear.
“Come on, Jimmy,” I said. “If you’ve got the signal, let’s go.”
We went out into the night again. We went around the corner of the building toward the back, but then Jimmy pulled me to a stop. He put his mouth to my ear.
“It’s the guard. See?” He pointed.
We crouched there in the lee of the building as the guard paced slowly down the fence toward the other end of the building. Then, all of a sudden, the night was split with a shout.
“Guards! Guards!”
It came from the front of the building. The guard on patrol here swung around at the shout, but like a good soldier he didn’t leave his post. He simply cut off our retreat.
“Come on,” Jimmy said. We slipped along the buildings parallel to the fence. The shouting continued. Jimmy stopped by a small building at the corner of the square, a building set apart. From there we could see in two directions along the fence.
Jimmy said, “Couldn’t you have hit the officer harder?”
“I don’t like to hit people.”
There was all sorts of hoorah going on. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear it.
Then I said, “Jimmy, do you know what this building is?”
“No.”
“It’s a powder house. See the danger sign? Let’s create a diversion. Let’s blow up the scoutship.”
Jimmy smiled. He reached out and touched my hair for just a second.
We found the door and Jimmy broke the lock with his pistol butt. Whatever noise we made was amply covered. We piled inside and Jimmy swung the