Dawson didn"t reply for a long moment. He struggled with himself, and then sighed softly.
"Okay, Freddy," he said slowly. "But of course it"s a crazy, screwy thought. Doesn"t make any sense at all. Really, to tell the truth, it ..."
"Just tell it to me, Dave," young Farmer said quietly, and fixed his eyes on Dawson"s face.
"That maybe this is _it_, Freddy," Dawson finally said, and gave a jerk of his head to include the room in which they were bound prisoners.
"Maybe they didn"t want to leave any signs, such as a couple of bodies, and so forth. Maybe they decided that it was best for you and me just to disappear, and ... and here we are. But I tell you, pal, it"s really a screwy thought. Absolutely absurd. You shouldn"t have forced me, kid."
Freddy Farmer didn"t say anything when Dawson finished speaking. He closed his eyes for a moment, licked his lips, and then opened his eyes and appeared to stare thoughtfully into s.p.a.ce. Dawson started to speak again, but Freddy smiled a little and shook his head.
"That"s all right, Dave," he said quietly. "Perhaps you are right, and then again, perhaps you are wrong. And I do think you"re wrong. As I look at it they simply wouldn"t take the chance."
"Take what chance?" Dawson demanded.
"That we"d escape from this place, wherever it is," the English-born air ace replied. "They"d kill us and leave us here, never to be found perhaps. They wouldn"t let us go out the slow way, knowing that we might possibly escape by some miracle. They"d make sure, don"t you see?"
"Yeah, I get your point, Freddy," Dave said with a nod. Then, grinning broadly, he added, "Well, didn"t I just get through saying that it was probably a c.o.c.keyed thought?"
"But I wonder _why_ they want to keep us alive?" Freddy Farmer murmured as though he were too busy with his own thoughts to hear Dawson"s question.
In the next moment, though, all conversation between them ceased abruptly. A door opened and two shadowy figures came into the room. At the sound of the latch and the soft footsteps that followed immediately, Dawson screwed his head around, fully expecting to see the leering, buck-toothed face of some son of Nippon. Neither of the two figures who came into the room were j.a.panese. At any rate they certainly didn"t look like j.a.panese. They looked more like a couple of ragged Hawaiians, although their cheek bones were unusually high. And when Dawson took a second look at their faces he was instantly struck with the impression that both were a trifle scared. One of them carried a tray of food, while the other carried a snub-nosed automatic, and acted as though he expected the thing to blow up almost any second. The one with the tray of food placed it on the floor, and then, while the other stood guard with his "nervous" gun, he moved around by Dawson"s head, and motioned for the Yank air ace to roll over on his stomach. Dawson hesitated an instant and then did as signalled. Hands fumbled with the rope about his wrists, and presently his half numbed wrists were free. He pulled them down by his sides, and with his head turned that way he watched the man free Freddy Farmer"s wrists, also. That done, the brown-skinned man leaped quickly backward and pushed the tray of food between them with one bare foot.
"Food," he said in a strange husky voice. "You eat. You eat food."
Not all of the circulation had returned to Dawson"s wrists and his arms from finger tips to shoulder sockets felt stabbed by a billion needles as he shifted over on his back, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He heard Freddy Farmer gasp as he, too, sat up. He shot a quick glance at his English-born pal, saw that he was suffering the same kind of pain, and then looked at the food. It was of the Hawaiian variety and didn"t look bad at all. His prime interest at the moment, however, was not in food, regardless of the growling that had started up in his stomach. He looked at the two raggedly clad brown men, of very uncertain origin no doubt. They returned his look with all the intelligence of a bottle fly showing in their high cheek-boned faces.
"Where are we?" Dawson asked, and smiled at them.
Like a rehea.r.s.ed act the two brown men shook their heads, and pointed long forefingers at the tray of food.
"You eat," they said in the same breath.
Dawson shook his head, smiled again, and made a gesture with his tingling right arm that included the house where they were.
"What place is this?" he said slowly, s.p.a.cing his words. "Where is boss man? Me make talk with boss fella, yes. You savvy?"
The two brown men, with jet black hair, shook their heads as one again and pointed.
"Okay, skip it!" Dawson said quickly. "I get the idea. Me eat. Okay, me eat."
He turned to the tray of food, picked up something that looked like a messy salad and stuffed it into his mouth. It tasted surprisingly good.
In fact, it tasted exactly like a highly spiced salad.
"Not bad," he grunted.
"Definitely good," Freddy Farmer said with his mouth full. "Which of course adds to the crazy mystery. Why do the blighters feed us, I"d like to know?"
"And I"d like to know who they _are_!" Dawson said with emphasis. Then, reaching out his hand, he said, "Wonder what this stuff is in this cup?
Looks like pineapple juice. I ... well, what do you know, it _is_ pineapple juice! But good, too!"
"Why wouldn"t it be pineapple juice?" Freddy Farmer murmured as he drank from the other cup. "We"re in the Hawaiian Islands, aren"t we? And I suppose this other stuff is what they call poi, what?"
"Search me," Dawson said with a shrug, "It"s not bad, but I"d rather have a nice juicy steak with French fries, and ..."
"Dave, stop!" Freddy Farmer groaned, and made an anguished grimace.
"That"s definitely torture to me, and you know it. Besides, you"re not thinking of that sort of thing at all. I wish we could get these two beggars to talk. I fancy they look a bit frightened to me."
"Check," Dave said, and looked at the two brown men, who stood there like a couple of wooden Indians. "And mostly too frightened to talk. I think ..."
Dawson didn"t continue to say what he thought. The air outside wherever they were suddenly became filled with the roar of many planes. He judged that there were a good fifty or more planes up there in the sky. He impulsively threw back his head and stared up at the high window. The light seeping down through was considerably less pale than it had been before, but the gla.s.s was still too dirty and covered with cobwebs for him to see the sky above.
"Yank planes," he said, lowering his gaze to the two brown men. "I wonder if it"s the welcome escort for the carrier force. I ... Oh-oh!
Take a look, Freddy! Our brown friends are scared of planes, too."
And it was seemingly true. The two brown men were virtually cringing back, and their jet black eyes were flitting from their prisoners to the high window, and back again. Their actions suddenly filled Dawson"s brain with a mad idea.
"Bombs!" he suddenly shouted at the top of his voice. "Get out of here, _everybody_!"
The two brown men jumped as though they had been shot, and their faces turned a milky chocolate with fear. They both shivered violently, and then one, the taller of the two, gasped something in a tongue Dawson had never heard. Both of them spun around and leaped frantically toward the door. They jerked open the door and went through it like a couple of brown streaks of lightning.
Wild hope leaped up in Dawson, but it lived for no more than three or four seconds. From beyond the open door came snarls like those of a trapped and wounded tiger. Almost instantly the snarls were followed by the unmistakable thuds of something crashing against human flesh. Back into the room came the two brown men, like a couple of acrobats doing back flips. They both hit the floor and went slithering across it to bang up against the opposite wall. In a crazy, abstract sort of way Dawson noticed that the one holding the gun still clung to it.
Then Dawson took his eyes off the two and looked toward the door opening. The door had been flung wide, and standing framed in it was a giant figure. A death giant, no less, for he was unmistakably j.a.panese.
He was positively huge, but he was j.a.p from the top of his close-shaven head all the way down to his splayed-toed feet. A savage leer twisted his thick lips back over his buck teeth. And in the slits that were his eyes was a fiendish gleam that made Dawson swallow in spite of himself, and his icy heart start downward like an express elevator.
For a long moment the two air aces locked eyes with the giant figure.
And then the j.a.p"s shoulders shook with silent mirth.
"Yes, it is very amusing to scare chickens, and watch them flee," he said in halting English, and threw a look of scorn at the two brown men cringing on the floor over by the far wall. "But we j.a.panese are not chickens. We are masters. All others are the chickens. We ... do this!"
The j.a.p suddenly spit out the last, and with his big yellowish brown hands he went through the motions of slapping a chicken down on the block and chopping off its head. Freddy Farmer gasped in spite of himself. The j.a.p heard him, burned him with his eyes, and once again his huge shoulders shook with silent mirth.
"You do not like to lose your head and neck, Captain Farmer?" he said, and almost pleasantly, too. "Then you were a fool to come to Oahu. But you are a fool in many things. Both of you are fools! You will both agree, as you _die_!"
CHAPTER TEN
_Unlucky Day_
Fifteen long seconds pa.s.sed before the huge j.a.p spoke again. He stood there motionless in the doorway, leering at them as though waiting for them to speak. But Dawson and Freddy Farmer returned his stare as best their tw.a.n.ging nerves would permit, and remained silent. The j.a.p grew tired of the silence, and grew annoyed. He came a step or two into the room and stood straddle-legged, with bunched fists on hips, and arms akimbo.
"Well?" he suddenly thundered. "You would like to make me think that you are not afraid? That you are not chickens, too?"
For a moment Dawson continued to regard him silently, but on impulse he changed his mind.