Part 4 (1/2)

”Kermit?”

It was Stoddard's voice.

”Yes,” I answered. ”What in the h.e.l.l is up? It had better be goo--.”

”Hurry,” Stoddard said. ”Over here, quickly!”

I stumbled across the board s.p.a.cings until I was standing beside Stoddard and peering up at what the beam of his flashlight revealed on the ceiling--a ragged, open hole, which he'd made by tearing several coatings of insulation from the spot.

For a minute, I couldn't make out anything in that flash beam glare.

Stoddard had hold of my arm, and was saying one word over and over, urgently.

”Look. Look. Look!”

Then my eyes got adjusted to the light change, and I was aware that I was gazing up into the interior of the crazy belfry atop the monstrous house. Gazing up into the interior, while voices, quite loud and clearly distinguishable, were talking in a language which I didn't recognize immediately. As far as my vision was concerned, I might as well have been looking at a sort of grayish vaporish screen of some sort, that was all I saw.

”Shhhh!” Stoddard hissed now. ”Don't say a word. Just listen to them!”

I held my breath, although it wasn't necessary. As I said, the voices coming down from that belfry were audible enough to have been a scant ten or twelve feet away. But I held my breath anyway, meanwhile straining my eyes to pierce that gray screen of vapor on which the light was focused.

And then I got it. The voices were talking in German, two of them, both harsh, masculine.

”What in the h.e.l.l,” I began. ”Is there a short wave set up there or--”

Stoddard cut me off. ”Can't you see it yet?” he hissed.

The voices went on talking, while I strained my eyes even more in an effort to pierce that gray fog covering the rent in the ceiling. And then I saw. Saw at first, as if through a thin gray screen of gauze.

I was looking up into a room of some sort. A big room. An incredibly big room. A room so big that two dozen belfry rooms would have fit into it!

And then it got even clearer. There was a desk at the end of the room. A tremendously ornate desk. A desk behind which was sitting a small, gray uniformed, moustached man.

There was another uniformed person of porcine girth standing beside that desk and pointing to a map on the wall in front of him. He was jabbering excitedly to the little man at the desk, and he wore a uniform that was so plus.h.i.+ly gaudy it was almost ridiculous.

The two kept chattering back and forth to each other in German, obviously talking about the map at which the fat, plush-clad one was pointing.

I turned incredulously to Stoddard.

”Wh-wh-what in the h.e.l.l goes?” I demanded.

Stoddard seemed suddenly vastly relieved. ”So you see it and hear it, too!” he exclaimed. ”Thank G.o.d for that! I thought I'd lost my mind!”

I grabbed hard on his arm. ”But listen,” I began.

”Listen, nothing,” he hissed. ”We _both_ can't be crazy. Those are the voices we kept hearing before. And those two people are the talkers.

Those two German (five words censored) louses. Hitler and Goering!”

There, he'd said it. I hadn't dared to. It sounded too mad, too wildly, babblingly insane to utter. But now I looked back through that thin gray cheesecloth of fog, back into the room.