Captain America Comics #24
The Vampire Strikes
When Bucky puts hot sauce in Sgt. Duffy's coffee he blames Bucky, Steve Rogers and Joe Dawson and sends them up to Vampire Mountain, a supposedly haunted mountain, to set up a search light. As they drive up the mountain pass an avalanche starts up that blocks the road behind them. Steve and Bucky get out to clear up the path sending Joe up alone to start setting up the light.
Later, after dusk, Joe finished setting up the light and waits for Steve and Bucky to return. He is attacked by the ancient vampire Count Vernis who drinks his blood. When Steve and Bucky arrive they hear Joe's screams for help and change into Captain America and Bucky and come to Joe's rescue. They frighten off the vampire without getting a good look at it and take Joe to a nearby house.
There they are invited in by the ancient looking butler and introduced to Vernis, whom they do not recognize as the vampire who attacked Joe. After Joe is placed in a room to rest, Cap and Bucky join Vernis for supper. With night growing late, the two heroes are invited to stay the night and to leave in the morning, an offer which they accept.
That night Cap is awoken to the sound of Joe's moans and enters his room to see a vampire bat feeding on his blood. It flees and as Bucky enters the room Cap checks Joe's body and finds that he is dead. They rush to tell Count Vernis but when they come back to the room where Joe was resting they find his body missing. They decide to go back to bed, while Vernis goes outside and orders the newly vampirized Joe to attack both heroes.
He goes after Bucky first, but the boy wakes and fights back alerting Cap who comes to his rescue. Out numbered, Joe flees into the night with Cap and Bucky behind him. Joe runs int Vernis first and the two double back to the house to sleep in coffins for the night. Convinced that they have lost Joe, and with dawn coming Cap and Bucky decide to return to base without him.
When they explain to Sgt. Duffy that Joe "went missing" that night Duffy assigns them to dish washing duty and decides to go up to the mountain and set up the lamp himself. Seeing this, Steve and Bucky decide to follow after him to keep Duffy safe. After finishing his work, Duffy stops by Vernis' home to ask for a drink of water and is invited in. He is taken prisoner by Vernis' butler and taken down to the dungeon below the house to be feasted upon.
When Captain America and Bucky return to the property they too are captured and bound up as well. Left alone to await their fate, Cap instructs Duffy to use a sacrificial candle to burn through his ropes and free himself. Duffy does so and frees Cap and Bucky after. Pretending to still be bound up, they attack Count Vernis when he returns forcing him to flee into the night. During the fight outside, Vernis is thrown off a cliff by Captain America where he is impaled through the chest by a branch and killed. Following his death his butler crumbles to dust and Joe turned back to normal and returns to camp with Duffy.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Bucky, Sgt. Duffy, General Haywood
The Monument Murder
As the Mt. Rushmore monument nears completion, Torch and Toro agree to use their flames to clean the mountain's base of scrap rock. Soon after their arrival, a worker near Roosevelt's face falls to his death, and a gunshot wings Toro. Torch finds supervisor Ward quarreling with an armed worker. When Torch disarms the man, Ward draws a gun, identifying the man as his stepbrother Eric. Toro disarms Ward, and Torch pursues Eric, whom he finds planting dynamite by Roosevelt's face. When Torch intervenes, Eric falls, pulling the explosives with him. They explode killing him and Ward admits his step brother was a refugee Nazi, although Ward knew nothing of his scheme, and Torch and Toro get to work clearing debris.
Recurring Characters
Human Torch, Toro
Meet the Eel of Horror Harbor
Steve and Bucky take jobs at United Shipyard to investigate launch sabotage. As Cap and Bucky. they enter a nearly completed :rs coating the interior with fish oil. When they inquire, the workers attack. Cap and Bucky defeat them, allowing one to escape, following him into the shipyard's foundry where more workers attack. Eventually snared by a lasso, the pair surrender so as to be taken to the workers leader, the fishlike Eel at his hideout within coastal cliffs. Eel drops them into a pit of hungry electric eels, then departs to finish his ship-sinking preparations. While Cap fights back the eels, Bucky finds a stone passage through which to escape. Later, the empty ship launches and Cap and Bucky board it. The Eel's giant octopus, attracted by the fish oil, attacks the ship. Cap and Bucky, in diving helmets, submerge to fight the octopus, who eventually captures them, returning to the Eel's hideout where Cap instructs Bucky to clear the passage to the eel pit. They lure the octopus into probing the passage, and the eels shock it to death. Cap and Bucky then defeat the Eel and company.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Bucky, Sgt. Duffy, Nazis
The Mystery of the Song of the Wind
Roddy Colt and Thomas Trimble are assigned to work at the local library by their school teacher. There, Roddy becomes suspicious of a man who returns the novel "The Mystery of the Song of the Wind" after borrowing it for just one day, and then another man taking it out shortly thereafter.
Excusing himself, Roddy follows the man who recently borrowed the book back to his house and peeps into his window. There he sees the man looking at the book with a special lamp and realizes that he has uncovered a Nazi spy operation using invisible ink in library books to communicate secrets.
Returning to the library, Roddy learns that Thomas had rushed out after checking the borrowing records of the same book. Realizing that Thomas made the same connection, Roddy goes back to the spies house and finds one of Thomas's pencils, confirming his hunch that Thomas also deduced the spies operation.
Remembering that Thomas is a Scout and noting that the pencil is pointing in the direction of an aircraft manufacturing factory, Roddy goes there as the Secret Stamp. There the Stamp asks the factory foreman for help, however he turns out to be a spy as well and Secret Stamp is locked into a room with Thomas. There, they find books and a decoder lamp and realize that a bomb has been planted in the factory. They then begin looking for a way out.
Finding none, Roddy takes part of one of the lamps they use to decode messages and begins banging on the roof of the room. With part of one of the lamps, the Secret Stamp begins banging on the ceiling of the room. The banging is heard by men working in the factory and they free the boys. When the foreman attempts to accuse them of being spies the police arrive to arrest him instead. When the Secret Stamp finds the bomb and tosses it out of the factory where it harmlessly explodes, the foreman accuses them of being spies. However Thomas and the Secret Stamp show the police evidence that convicts the spies and they are taken into police custody.
Recurring Characters
Secret Stamp
