"New York says it had no knowledge of your intention to leave England on
the _Assyrian_, but that you may well have done so. The Wilhelmstrasse will
know, of course. It has already been telegraphed. Pending its reply, I am
to detain you."
"How long?" Lanyard demurred.
"As you know, transatlantic communications must now go by land telegraph to
the Border, by hand into Mexico, thence by radio via Venezuela to Berlin.
All that takes time. Also, we may not signal New York but at stated times
of night. You will be detained another twenty-four hours at least, possibly
longer."
"My errand cannot wait."
"It must."
"You will obstruct the business of the Imperial Government at your peril."
"I would incur still greater peril did I let you go," the commander replied
nervously. "With these swine-dogs at war with the Fatherland, our lives are
not worth _that_ should this base be betrayed."
"Do I understand America has declared war?"
"Two days since. Did you not know?"
"The _Assyrian's_ wireless room was under guard: the captain published no
bulletins whatever."
The Bavarian gave a gesture of impatience.
"You will remain on board for the night," he announced heavily.
"Pardon!" Lanyard insisted with every evidence of anxious excitement.
"What you tell me makes it more than ever imperative that I reach New York
without an hour's avoidable delay. I warn you, think well before you hinder
the discharge of my duty."
"It is not necessary that I think," the commander replied. "My thinking has
all been done for me. Me, I obey my orders; it is not my part to question
their wisdom. Moreover, Herr Doctor, to my mind your insistence is to say
the least suspicious. Even had I discretion in the matter, I should hold
you. Therefore, you will keep a civil tongue in your head, or go below in
irons immediately!"
He swung on his heel, showing an insolent back while he conferred with his
subaltern.
And Lanyard shrugged appreciation of the futility of more contention
against such mulishness. Not that the Bavarian was not right enough! As to
that, one had really hoped for no better issue; but every shift is worth
trial till proved worthless; and he was no worse off now than if he had
submitted without complaint. Still one had Chance to look to for aid and
comfort in this stress; and Chance, the jade, is not always unkind to her
audacious suitors.
Even now she flashed upon Lanyard a provoking intimation of her smile.
He began to divine possibilities in this overt ill-feeling between the
officers; advantage might be made of the racial hostility of Prussian and
Bavarian.
The commander's attitude and tone were consistently overbearing, if his
words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted
only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the
commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in
Lanyard's hearing:
"Dog of a Bavarian!"
"The good Herr Captain," Lanyard suggested pleasantly, "is not in the most
agreeable of tempers, yes?"
The high and well-born lieutenant spat comprehensively into the darkness
overside. After a moment of hesitation he moved nearer and spoke in
confidential accents. And the fragrant air of the night was tainted with
the vinous effluvium of his breath.
"Always he prattles of his precious duty!" the Prussian muttered. "Damn his
duty! Look you, Herr Doctor: months we have been on this cruise, yes, more
than three months out of Heligoland, penned together in this ramshackle
stinkpot, or isolated here in this God-forgotten hole, seeing nothing of
life, hearing nothing of the world but what little the radio tells
us--sick of the very sight of one another's faces! And now, when we have
accomplished a glorious feat and have every right to look for prompt recall
and the rewards of heroes, orders come to remain indefinitely and operate
against the North Atlantic fleet of the contemptible Yankee navy! The life
of a dog! And that noble commander of mine pretends to welcome it, talks
of one's duty to the Fatherland--as if he liked the work any better than
I!--solely to spite me!"
"But why?"
"Because he hates me," the lieutenant snarled passionately--"hates me even
as I hate him--he knows how well!"
He interrupted himself to define his conception of the commander's
character in the freest vernacular of the Berlin underworld.
Lanyard laughed amiably. "They are like that," he agreed--"those
Bavarians!"
Which inspired the Prussian to deliver a phosphorescent diatribe on the
racial traits of the Bavarian people as comprehended by the North German
junker.
"To be cooped up God knows how long in this putrescent death-trap with such
cattle," he concluded mutinously--"it passes all endurance!"
"I wonder you stand it," Lanyard sympathised--"a man of spirit and good
birth, as one readily perceives. Though the life of a secret agent is not
altogether heavenly either, if you ask me," he added gratuitously. "Regard
me now, charged with a mission of most vital moment--more than ever so
since the Yankees have shown their teeth--delayed here indefinitely because
your excellent Herr Captain chooses to doubt my word."
"Patience. Maybe your release comes quickly. Then he will regret--or would
had he wit enough. There is no cure for a fool." The sententiousness of
this aphorism was unhappily marred by a hiccough. "Anybody with eyes in his
head could see you are what you are...."
The last of the operating-room crew piled up the hatchway, saluted, and
hurried ashore to join in noisy jubilations. There remained on the U-boat
only the lieutenant with Lanyard, and two base guards detailed as anchor
watch.
"I must go," the lieutenant volunteered. "And believe me, one welcomes a
change of clothing and a dry bed after a week in this reeking sieve. As for
you, my friend, if it lay with me, you should receive the treatment due
a gentleman." A wave of maudlin camaraderie affected him. He passed an
affectionate arm through Lanyard's and was suffered, though the gorge of
the adventurer revolted at the familiarity. "I am sorry to leave you. No,
do not be astonished! No protestations, please! It is quite true. I know a
man of the right sort when I meet one, the sort even I can associate with
without loss of self-respect. It is a great pity you may not come with me
and make a night of it."
"Another time, perhaps," Lanyard said. "The night may yet come when you and
I shall meet at the Metropole or the Admiral's Palace.... Who knows?"
"Ah!" sighed the Prussian, enchanted. "What a night that will be, my
friend!... But now, it is too bad, I really must ask you to step below.
Such are my silly orders. I am made responsible for you. What do you think
of that for a joke, eh?"
He laughed vacantly but loudly, and, attempting to poke a derisive thumb
into Lanyard's ribs, lost his balance.
"What a responsibility!" said Lanyard gravely, holding him up.
"Nonsense, that's what it is. You have no possible chance to escape."
"Suppose I make one--tip you overboard, take to my heels--?"
"You would be shot like a rabbit before you got half way to the shore."
"Ah, but grant, for the sake of argument, that these brave fellows, the
guards, aim poorly in this gloom?"
"Where would you go? Into the forest, naturally. But how far? You may
believe me when I tell you, not a hundred yards. It's a true wilderness,
scrub-oak and cedar and second growth choked with underbrush, almost
trackless. In five minutes you would be helplessly lost, in this blackness,
with no stars to steer by. We need only wait till daylight to find you
walking in a circle."
"You can't mean," Lanyard pursued, learning something helpful every moment,
"there is no communicating road?"
"The main woods road, yes: but that is far too well patrolled. Without the
countersign, you would be caught or shot a dozen times before you reached
the end of it."
"Ah, well!"--with the sigh of a philosopher--"then I presume there's no way
out but by swimming."
"Over to the beach you mean? Well, what then? You have got a twenty-mile
walk either way through deep sand sure to betray your footprints. At dawn
we follow and bag you at our leisure."
"You are discouraging!" Lanyard complained. "I see I may as well go below
and be good. It's a dull life."
"Tell you what," giggled the lieutenant, leading his prisoner to the
conning-tower hatch and lowering his voice: "do just that, go below and be
nice, and presently I will come back and we'll split a bottle. What do you
say to that, eh?"
"Colossal!"
"Not a bad notion, is it? I like it myself. One gets weary for the society
of a gentleman, you've no idea.... As soon as my commander is drunk enough,
I will slip away. How's that?"
"Grossartig!" Lanyard approved, turning to descend.
"Wait. You shall see for yourself what it means to have the friendship of
a man of my stamp." The lieutenant raised his voice, addressing the anchor
watch: "Attention. Heed with care: this gentleman is my friend. He is
detained merely as a matter of form. I do not wish him to be annoyed. Do
you understand? You are to leave him to himself as long as he remains
quietly below. But he is not to come on deck again till I return. Is all
that clear, imbeciles?"
The imbeciles, saluting mechanically, indicated glimmerings of
comprehension.
"Then below you go, Dr. Rodiek. And don't get impatient: I will rejoin you
as soon as possible."
"Don't be long," Lanyard implored.
As he lowered himself through the hatch he saw the Prussian stumble down
the gangplank and reel shoreward.
Well satisfied with his diplomacy, Lanyard lingered a while in the conning
tower, closely studying and memorising the more salient features of the
Island of Martha's Vineyard and its adjacent waters and mainland as
delineated on a most comprehensive large-scale chart published by the
German Admiralty from exhaustive soundings and surveys of its own
navigators and typographers, with corrections of as recent date as the
first part of the year 1917.
Here the breach in the south coast line which permitted the utilisation
of what had formerly been an extensive fresh-water pond as this secret
submarine base, was clearly shown. And a single glance confirmed the
lieutenant's statement concerning its remote isolation from settled
sections of the island.
Somewhat dismayed, Lanyard descended to the central operating compartment
and scouted through the hold from bow bulkhead to stern, making certain he
enjoyed undisputed privacy. And it was so; every man-jack of the U-boat's
personnel--jaded to the marrow with its cramped accommodations, unremitting
toil and care, unsanitary smells and forbidding associations--having
naturally seized the earliest opportunity to escape so loathsome a prison.
Lanyard, however, was anything but resentful of condemnation to this
solitary confinement. His interest in the interior arrangements of
submersibles seemed all but feverish, as intense as sudden; witness the
minute attention to detail which marked his second tour of inspection. On
this round he took his time. He had all night in which to work out his
salvation; the wildest schemes were revolving in his mind, the least
fantastic utterly impracticable without accurate knowledge of many matters;
and such knowledge might be gained only through patient investigation and
ungrudging expenditure of time.
It was now something past ten by the chronometers. He could hardly do much
before dawn, lacking the instinct of a red Indian to guide him through
that night-bound waste of woodland. So he felt little need to slight his
researches through haste, except in anticipation of his lieutenant's
return. And as to that, Lanyard was moderately incredulous: he expected to
see nothing more of this new-found friend, unless the infatuation of the
Prussian proved far stronger than his head.
Turning first to the private quarters of the commander, a somewhat more
commodious cubicle than that across the alleyway in which Lanyard had been
berthed, his interest was attracted by a small safe anchored to the deck
beneath the desk.
To this Lanyard addressed himself without hesitation, solving the secret
of its combination readily through exercise of the most rudimentary of
professional principles. The problem it offered, indeed, was child's play
to such cunning of touch and hearing as had made the reputation of the Lone
Wolf.
Open, the safe discovered to him a variety of articles of interest:
some five thousand dollars in English and American banknotes of large
denomination, several hundred in American gold; three distinct cipher
codes, one of these wholly novel in Lanyard's experience and so, he
believed, in the knowledge of the Allied secret services; the log of the
U-boat and the intimate diary of its commander, both in cryptograph; a
compact directory of German agents domiciled in Atlantic coast ports; a
very considerable accumulation of German Admiralty orders; together with
many documents of lesser moment.
Rapidly sorting out the more valuable of these, Lanyard disposed them about
his person, then confiscated the banknotes as indemnity for his stolen
money-belt, replaced the rejections, and reclosed and locked the safe.
His next interest was to arm himself. After several disappointments he
discovered arms-lockers beneath the berths for the crew in the forward
compartment just aft of that devoted to torpedo tubes. Here he selected
a latest pattern German navy automatic pistol with three extra cartridge
clips and, after some hesitation, a peculiarly devilish magazine rifle
firing explosive bullets. The latter he placed handily, yet out of sight,
near the foot of the companion ladder. The pistol fitted snugly a trousers
pocket, its bulk hidden by the sag of his sweater....
Some time later the lieutenant, slipping down the ladder, found Lanyard
studying with a convincing aspect of childlike bewilderment the complicated
combinations of machinery which crowded the central operating compartment.
Fresh from a bath and shave and wearing a clean uniform, the Prussian
showed vast improvement in looks if not in equilibrium. But his mouth
twitched fitfully, his eyes wandered and disclosed a disquieting
superabundance of white, and his tongue was noticeably thicker than before.
"Well, my friend!" he said--"you are truly disappointing. The watch said
you had made no sound since going below. I was afraid of another of those
famous naps of yours."
"With the prospect of a bottle with you? Impossible! I have been waiting
and waiting, with my tongue hanging out."
"Too bad. Why did you not look around, help yourself? Why not?" the
lieutenant demanded. "Have I not given you freedom of ship? It is yours,
everything here 'yours!"
"I want nothing but an end to this great thirst," Lanyard protested.
"Then--God in Heaven!--why we standing here? Come!"
Releasing the handrail the Prussian took careful aim for the alleyway door,
launched himself toward it, slipped on the greasy metal grating, and would
have fallen heavily but for Lanyard.
Cursing pettishly, he stood up, threw off Lanyard's arms without thanks,
and made a new attempt, this time shooting headlong through the alleyway,
to bring up against the wing table in the third forward compartment, the
kitchen and messroom in one.
"A great pity," he muttered, opening a locker and fumbling in its
depths--"rotten pity...."
"What?"
"Keep you waiting so long. Not my fault." The lieutenant brought forth two
bottles of champagne and one of brandy. "You open them, Herr Doctor, like
'good fellow," he said, placing the three on the table. "I just wish you
'understand no discourtesy meant ... unavoidably detained ... beastly
commander ... drunk. Give 'my word, hopelessly drunk. Poor fool...."
"If my judgment is sound," Lanyard said, "this noble vessel will soon need
a new commander."
"True. Quite true." The Prussian placed two aluminium cups upon the table
and half filled one with brandy, then brimmed it with champagne. "Try
that," he said thickly, "That will keep your tail up, my friend."
"Many thanks," Lanyard protested, filling another cup with undiluted
champagne. "I prefer one thing at a time."
"Unfortunate ... don't know what is good ... King's peg ... wonderful
drink. No matter. To 'new commander--prosit!"
He drained his cup at a gulp.
"To the new commander!" Lanyard echoed, and drank judiciously.
"Excellent.... How long can he last, do you think, at this pace?"
"No telling--not long--too long for my liking. Shall I tell 'something?"
He filled his cup again, half and half, and sat down, his wicked, rat-like
face more than ever pale and repulsive. "Not 'whisper of this, mind--though
I think 'crew sometimes suspects: he's going mad!"
"Not that Bavarian?"
The lieutenant nodded wisely. "If 'knew him as I know him, 'never be
surprised, my friend. You think too much drink. Yes, but not entirely. He
keeps seeing things, hearing them, especially by night."
"What sort of things?"
"Faces." The Prussian licked his lips, glanced furtively over his shoulder,
and drank. "Dead faces, eyes eaten out, seaweed in their hair.... And
voices--he's forever hearing voices ... people trying to talk, 'can't
make him understand because 'mouths 'full of water, you know. But they
understand one another, keep discussing how to get at him.... He tells me
about it ... I tell you, it is Hell to hear him talk ... especially when
submerged, as last night. Then he hears them fumbling all over the hull
with their stumpy fingers, trying to find 'way in, talking about him. And
he tells me, and keeps insisting, till sometimes I seem to hear them, too.
But I don't. Before God, I don't! You don't believe I do, do you?"
His eyes rolled wildly.
"Why should you?"
"Just so: why should I?" The lieutenant's accents rose to a shrill pitch.
"I have not his record ... still in training when he sent _Lusitania_ to
the bottom. Yes: it was he, second-in-command, in charge of torpedo tubes.
His own hand fired that torpedo...."
He fell silent, staring moodily into his cup, perhaps thinking of the
number of torpedoes it had been his own lot to discharge upon errands of
slaughter.
And the dead silence of the ship was made audible by a stealthy drip-drip
of water from the seams, and the furtive slaver of the tide on the outer
plates.
A shiver ran through the body of the Prussian. He pulled himself together
with obvious effort, looked up with an uncertain grin, and passed a shaking
hand across his writhing lips.
"All foolishness, of course, but 'gets on one's nerves ... constant
association with man like that.... 'Know what he's doing now, or was, when
I came away? Sitting up with doors and windows locked and blinds drawn,
drinking brandy neat. He can't sleep by night if sober, or without 'light
in the room. If he does, he knows they will get him ... people he hears
crawling up from the sea, slopping round the house, mumbling, whimpering in
the dark--"
He broke off abruptly, with a whisper more dreadful than a
shriek--"_God_!"--and jumped to his feet, whipping the automatic from his
belt.
A footfall sounded in one of the after compartments. Others followed.
Someone was coming slowly down the alleyway, someone with dragging, heavy
feet.
The lieutenant waited motionless, as one petrified with terror.
The bulkhead doorway framed the figure of the commander. He paused there,
louring at his subaltern with haunted eyes ablaze in a face like parchment.
"So!" he said, nodding. "As I thought. It is thus I find you, fraternising
with one who may be, for all we know, an enemy to the Fatherland. You
drunken, babbling fool! Get ashore!" His angry foot thumped the grating.
"Get ashore, and report yourself under arrest!"
With no more warning than a strangled snarl, the lieutenant shot him
through the head.