elf as he saw the camera on the bureau. He
took a step toward it, then snapped his fingers as he remembered
Lieutenant Defoe had said that the Maginot Line was one place where even
the President of France could not take a camera. For a second he was
tempted to take one anyway, but sober judgment quickly squelched that
idea. He knew that Lieutenant Defoe had gone to a lot of trouble to get
permission for him and his father to visit that great string of
fortresses, and it would be pretty cheap to do anything that would get
the Lieutenant in wrong.

So he left the camera where it was, caught up his hat, and went over to
the connecting door and knocked loudly.

"Rise and shine in there, Mister!" he called out. "Big doings today,
remember? Are you up, Dad?"

There was no sound save the echo of his own voice. He knocked again and
shouted, "Hey, Dad!" but there was still no sound from the room beyond.
He hesitated a moment, then grasped the knob and pushed the door open.

"Hey, Dad, get...!"

An empty room greeted his amazed gaze. The bed hadn't been slept in. As
a matter of fact there was not a single sign that the room had been
occupied. There were no clothes in the closet, no toilet articles and
stuff on the dresser, and not even any traveling bags. The sudden shock
made his heart contract slightly, and for a long moment he could do
nothing but stare wide eyed at the vacant room.

"Can I be dreaming?" he heard his own voice murmur. "This is Dad's room.
I said good night to him here last night. But, there's no one here.
Dad's gone, for cat's sake. _Hey, Dad!_"

All that he got for his extra loud shout was a muffled voice protesting
violently in French, and an angry pounding on the floor of the room
above. He closed his Dad's door and went down the stairs three at a time
and straight across the lobby floor to the desk.

"Have you seen my Father?" he asked the girlish looking man at the desk.

The girlish looking man didn't hear. He was talking on the telephone.
Talking a blue streak with his hands as well as his mouth. In fact, in
order to make full use of both his hands the clerk had dropped the
receiver and was giving all of his attention to the mouth piece. He
looked like he was trying to do the Australian Crawl right into it and
down the wire to whoever was at the other end of the line.

Dave grinned and stood watching the clerk. The words came out like a
string of machine gun bullets. Much, much too fast for D