The Bavarian glanced significantly at his subaltern, who hastened to leave
them.
"Who are you? What is your name?"
"Dr. Paul Rodiek."
"Your employment?"
"Personal Intelligence Bureau--confidential agent."
"What were you doing on board the _Assyrian_?"
Lanyard mustered enough strength to look the man squarely in the eye.
"Pardon," he said coldly. "You must know your question is indiscreet."
"I must know more about you."
"It should be enough," Lanyard ventured boldly, "to know that I set off
that flare as arranged, at risk of my life."
"How came you overboard?"
"In the scuffle caused by my lighting the flare."
"So you tell me. But we found you half clothed, lacking any sort of
identification. Am I to accept your unsupported word?"
"My papers are naturally at the bottom of the sea, in the garments I
discarded lest their weight drag me down. If you have doubts," Lanyard
continued firmly, "it is your privilege to settle them by communicating via
radio with Seventy-ninth Street."
He shut his eyes wearily and turned his head aside on the pillow, confident
that this reference to the headquarters and secret wireless station of the
Prussian spy system in New York would win him peace for a time at least.
After a moment the commander uttered a non-committal grunt. "We shall see,"
he prophesied darkly, and went away.
Later, one of the crew brought Lanyard a dish of greasy stew and potatoes,
lukewarm, with bread and a half-bottle of excellent champagne.
He ate all he could stomach of the first, devoured the second ravenously,
and drained the bottle of its ultimate life-giving drop.
Then, immeasurably refreshed and fortified in body and spirit, he turned
face to the wall, composed himself as if to sleep, shut his eyes, adjusted
the tempo of his respiration, and lay quite still, wide awake and thinking
hard.
After a while somebody tramped into the cubicle, bent over Lanyard
inquisitively and, satisfied that he slept, retired, taking away the empty
bottle and dishes.
Otherwise his meditations were disturbed only by those echoes of revelry
in honour of the late manifestation of the Hun's divine right to do wanton
murder on the high seas.
The rumour waxed and waned, died into dull mutterings, broke out afresh in
spurts of merriment that held an hysterical note. Once a quarrel sprang up
and was silenced by the commander's deep, unpleasant tones. Corks popped
spasmodically. Again there were sounds much like a man's sobbing; but these
were promptly blared down by a phonograph with a typically American accent.
When that palled, a sentimental disciple of frightfulness sang Tannenbaum
in a melting tenor.
Everything tended to effect an impression that all, commander and meanest
mechanic alike, were making forlorn efforts to forget.
Devoutly Lanyard prayed they might be successful, at least until the
submarine made her secret base. If too much alcohol was bad, too much
brooding was infinitely worse for the German temperament. He remembered
one U-boat commander who, returning to the home port after a conspicuously
successful cruise, had been taken ashore in a strait-jacket.
Lanyard himself did not care to dwell upon those scenes which must have
been enacted on board the _Assyrian_ after the torpedo struck....
Deliberately ignoring all else, he set himself the task of reviewing those
events which had led up to his going overboard.
One by one he considered the incidents of that night, painstakingly
dissected them, examined their every phase in minute analysis, weighing for
ulterior meaning every word uttered in his presence, harking even farther
back to reconstruct his acquaintance with each actor from the very moment
of its inception, seeking that hint which he was convinced must be
somewhere hidden in the history of the affair, waiting only recognition to
lead straightway out of this gloomy maze of mystery into a sunlit open of
understanding.
In vain: there was an ambiguity in that business to baffle the keenest and
most pertinacious investigation.
The conduct of Cecelia Brooke alone bristled with inconsistencies
inexplicable, the conduct of the German spies no less.
To get better perspective upon the problem, he reduced the premises to
their barest summary:
A valuable dossier brought on board the _Assyrian_ (no matter by whom) had
come into the possession of British agents, with the knowledge of Captain
Osborne. Thackeray had secreted it in that fraudulent bandage. German
agents, apparently under the leadership of Baron von Harden, had waylaid
him, knocked him senseless, unwrapped the bandage, but somehow (probably
in the first instance through the interference of the Brooke girl) had
overlooked the document. Subsequently the Brooke girl had found and
entrusted it to Lanyard. (No matter why!) He on his part had exerted his
utmost inventiveness in hiding it away. Nevertheless it had been discovered
and abstracted within an hour.
By whom?
Not improbably by the Brooke girl herself. Repenting her impulsiveness,
after leaving Lanyard with the captain, from whom she had doubtless learned
the truth about "Monsieur Duchemin," she might well have gone directly to
Lanyard's stateroom and hit upon the morphia phial as the likeliest hiding
place without delay, thanks to prior acquaintance with the proportions of
the paper cylinder.
But why should she have assumed that Lanyard had not disposed of the trust
about his person?
Not impossibly the thing had been found by the first officer of the
_Assyrian_, searching by order of the captain--as Lanyard assumed he had.
But, if Mr. Warde had found it, he had not reported his find when
telephoning to Captain Osborne; or else the latter had gone to great
lengths to mystify Lanyard.
There remained the chance that the paper had been stolen by one of the two
German agents--by either without the knowledge of the other.
If Baron von Harden had found it--necessarily before Lanyard returned
to the room--he had subsequently been at elaborate pains to conceal his
success from both his victim and his confederate. Why? Did he distrust the
latter? Again, why?
If "Karl" had been the thief, it must have been after Lanyard's return,
and while the Baron was preoccupied with the task of keeping the prisoner
quiet, to let the search proceed.
In that event "Karl" had lied deliberately to his superior. Why? Because
the document was salable, and "Karl" intended to realize its value for his
personal benefit?
Not an unlikely explanation. Nor could this be called the first instance in
which the Prussian spy system, admirably organized though it was, had been
betrayed by one of its own agents.
This hypothesis, too, accounted for that most perplexing circumstance of
all, the murder of Baron von Harden. For Lanyard was fully persuaded that
had been nothing less than premeditated murder, in no way an accident of
faulty aim. Even the most nervous and unstrung man could hardly have missed
six shots out of seven, point blank. A nervous man, indeed, could hardly
have gained his own consent to take so hideous a chance of injuring or
killing a collaborator.
It appeared, then, that one of four things had happened to the cylinder of
paper:
Miss Brooke had taken it back into her own care. In which case Lanyard was
no more concerned.
Captain Osborne had secured it through Mr. Warde. This, however, Lanyard
did not seriously credit.
It had gone to the bottom when the _Assyrian_ sank with the body--among
others--of Baron von Harden.
Or "Karl" had stolen it.
Privately, indeed, Lanyard rather inclined to hope that the last might
prove to be the true solution. He desired earnestly to meet "Karl" once
more, on equal terms. And the more counts in the score, the greater his
satisfaction in exacting a reckoning in full.
But he anticipated. That chapter might only too possibly have been closed
forever by the hand of Death. As yet he knew nothing concerning the
mortality of the _Assyrian_ débâcle. He had not enquired of the officers of
the U-boat because they knew little if anything more than he. Their glasses
had discovered to them trouble with the lifeboats; they had spoken of one
boat capsizing, of "people going overboard like cattle." There must have
been many drownings, even with a United States destroyer near by and
speeding to the rescue.
A single question troubled Lanyard greatly. Officers and crew of the U-boat
had betrayed profoundest consternation upon the advent of that destroyer,
presumably a warship of a neutral nation. And that same ship had without
hesitation fired upon the submarine.
Was it possible, then, that the United States had already declared war on
Germany?
It seemed extremely probable; in such event these Germans would have been
notified instantly by wireless from the New York bureau of their country's
Secret Service; whereas, Captain Osborne, receiving the same advice by
wireless, might reasonably have kept it quiet lest the news stir to more
formidable activity those agents of the Wilhelmstrasse whose presence among
the passengers he must at least have strongly suspected.
Presently the closeness of the atmosphere began to work upon Lanyard's
perceptions. In spite of his long rest, a new drowsiness drugged his
senses. He yielded without struggle, knowing he would soon need every ounce
of strength and vitality that sleep could give him....
The din of an inferno startled him awake. Those narrow metal walls were
echoing a clangour of machinery maniacal in character and overpowering in
volume. Clankings, tappings, hissings, coughings, clatterings, stridulation
of a wireless spark, drone of dynamos, shrewdish scolding of Diesel motors
developing two thousand horsepower, individual efforts of some two thousand
valves, combined--or, declined to combine--in a cacophony like nothing
under the sun but the chant of a submersible under way on the surface.
Lanyard, gratefully aware of a current of fresh air sweeping through the
hold, rolled out of his bunk to find that, while he slept, clothing had
been provided for him, rough but adequate; heavy woollen underwear and
socks, a sweater, a dungaree coat, trousers of the same stuff, all vilely
damp, and a friendless pair of oil-sodden shoes: the sweepings of a dozen
lockers, but as welcome as disreputable.
Dressed, he turned aft through the alleyway, entering immediately the
central operating room and storm center of that typhoon of noise, a
wilderness of polished machinery in active being.
Of the score or more leather-clad machinists silent at their posts, none
paid him more heed than a passing, incurious glance as he crossed to a
narrow steel companion ladder and ascended to the conning tower. This he
found deserted; but its deck-hatch was open. He climbed out to the bridge.
The night was calm and heavily overcast, with no sea more than long, slow
swells. Through its windless quiet the U-boat racketed with the raving
abandon of the Spirit of Discord on a spree in a boiler factory. To the
riot of its internal strife was added the remonstrance of waters sliced by
the stem and flung back by the sides, a prolonged and stertorous hiss like
the rending of an endless sheet of canvas.
To eyes new from the electric illumination of the hold, the blackness was
positive, with the palpable quality of an element, relieved alone by the
dull glow of the binnacle housing the gyroscope telltale, from which the
faintest of golden reflections struck back to pick out a pair of seemingly
severed fists gripping the handles of the bridge steering wheel with a
singular effect of desperation.
For some moments Lanyard could see nothing more.
The mirthless chuckle of the lieutenant sounded at his elbow.
"So the good Herr Doctor thought he had better come up for air, eh? My
friend, the very dead might envy you the sincerity of your slumbers. We
have been half an hour on the surface, with all this uproar--and you are
only just wakened!"
"Half an hour?" Lanyard repeated thoughtfully. "Then we should be close
in...."
"Give us ten minutes more ... if we don't go aground in this accursed
blackness!"
A broad-shouldered body passed between Lanyard and the binnacle,
momentarily eclipsing its light. Down below in the operating room a bell
shrilled, and of a sudden the Diesels were silenced.
The dead quiet that followed the sharp extinction of that hubbub was as
startling as the detonation of high explosive had been.
Through this sudden stillness the submarine slipped stealthily, the hissing
beneath her bows dying down to gentle sibilance.
From forward the calls of an invisible leadsman were audible. In response
the commander uttered throaty orders to the helmsman at his elbow, and
those unattached hands shifted the wheel minutely.
Lanyard started to speak, but a growl from the captain, and a touch of the
lieutenant's hand on his sleeve cautioned him to silence.
There was a small pause. The vessel seemed to have lost way altogether, to
swim like a spirit ship that Stygian tide. The lieutenant moved forward,
leaving Lanyard alone. The voice of the leadsman was stilled. By the wheel
the captain stood absolutely motionless, his body vaguely silhouetted
against the glow of the binnacle. The hands that gripped the wheel so
savagely were as steady as if carven out of stone. An atmosphere of
suspense enveloped the boat like a cloud.
Lanyard grew conscious of something huge and formidable, a denser shadow in
the darkness beyond the bows, the loom of land. Off to starboard a point
of light appeared abruptly, precisely as if a golden pin had punctured the
black blanket of the night. The captain growled gutturals of relief and
command. The hands on the wheel shifted, steering exceeding small. A second
light shone out to port, then shifted slowly into range with the first,
till the two were as one. Again the bell sang in the operating room, and
the vessel forged ahead quietly to the urge of electric motors alone. A
third light and a fourth appeared, well apart to port and starboard, the
range lights precisely equidistant between them. Between these the U-boat
moved swiftly. They swam back on either hand and were abruptly extinguished
as if the night, resenting their insolent trespass, had gobbled both at a
gulp.
The temperature became sensibly warmer and the salt air of the sea was
strongly tinctured with the sweet smell of pines and forest mould.
Up forward carbons sputtered and spat; a searchlight was unsheathed and
carved the gloom as if it was butter, ranging swiftly over the tree-clad
shore of a burnished black lagoon, picking out en passant several unpainted
wooden structures, then steadying on a long and substantial landing stage,
on which several men stood waiting.
X