The Scorpia Menace by Lee Falk Read Free Book Online

the air and there was a humming and a crackling noise. An officer turned from a table and saluted as Crang approached.
"Message just coming through from Otto Koch," he whispered.
Colonel Crang nodded and sat down in a padded leather chair. He stared over to where a soldier hunched beneath the steel circlet of his earphones writing the message on the signal pad in front of him. In rows around the rough stone walls were grey-painted transmitters and receivers.
The only compartment in use was one which had UNITED STATES painted on a board screwed to the wall above it. The message continued for about ten minutes. The officer clicked his teeth in impatience as the operator bent over his morse key again. He asked for a repeat on a section of the message. The officer was already leaning over the operator's shoulder, copying the first two groups of coded letters on his own pad. He went to the signal book and flipped the pages.
Then he turned to the Colonel, his eyes wide and surprised.
"It's a Red Alert, sir," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to decode the message yourself. I don't have the authority."
"I thank you, Lieutenant," said Crang smoothly, his mind exploring the possibilities. He was too old a hand to get excited about Red Alerts. His past experience had proved that they were seldom justified, especially with the operators they were forced to use these days; they seemed to think any sign of police activity called for the highest priority to Center. On the other hand, Otto Koch was one of the most skilled and experienced operators in the Western Hemisphere. He seldom got excited about anything unless it was out of the ordinary.
Crang frowned. He had better decode it at once. But his tones had their accustomed smoothness and control as he told the Lieutenent, "I will take the codebooks into your office. Perhaps you would be good enough to bring the balance of the message in when it is completed."
The officer saluted again and bent over the operator's shoulder as Crang gathered up the books. He made himself comfortable at the desk in the Lieutenant's small office and looked idly out of the window as he waited. The view from here was most disappointing. But then it would be, as Crang's own suite had one of the finest and most spectacular views in the Castle, except when compared to the Baron's.
He waited five minutes, and only the soft drumming of his stubby fingers on the desk indicated his inward impatience. He brushed aside the Lieutenant's apologies and took the coded message from him with a muttered thanks. He was pleased to see that the officer had torn off the four sheets beneath the top copy, thus preventing the operator from reading the impressions of the letters and figures beneath. Crang now detached these sheets and set fire to them with a lighter taken from the pocket of his uniform jacket. He watched them crumple to powder in the metal wastebas- ket at his feet.
Then he set to work decoding Koch's message. It took him less than fifteen minutes. He had not absorbed the meaning of it and it took another minute or two before the essence of the decoded version became clear. He put the
original signal in his pocket and prepared a typed decoded version for the Baron.
He then burned the balance of the papers so that only the operator's coded signal and his own typed version in English remained. There was a knock on the door as he finished. The Lieutenant entered, saluting.
His face tried to conceal his curiosity.
"I trust it's nothing serious, sir?"
"It will be serious if you don't stop prying into top-secret signals," said the Colonel. "I've warned you before. The Cipher Officer at Toeplitz cannot be too discreet."
The Lieutenent turned a dull pink.
"Sorry, sir," he said. "It won't happen again."
Crang smiled briefly.
"Just make sure it doesn't," he said.
He saluted and went out. He felt a sense of apprehension as he climbed the battlements on his way to the Baron's private apartments.
6
BARON SOJIN'S EYRIE
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