"No need to hurry--plenty of time for one more drink." The Prussian
splashed brandy into the cup, filling it to the brim. "And God knows I need
it!"
Lanyard watched critically as, with head well back, he drained that
staggering dose of raw spirit gulp by gulp without once removing the cup
from his lips. No mortal man could drink like that and stand up under it:
it was now a mere question of time....
Hardly that: the hand of the murderer shook and wavered widely as he put
down the cup. For a moment he swayed with eyes fixed and glazing, features
visibly losing plasticity, then lurched forward, knocking the brandy bottle
to the floor, swung around a full half turn in blind effort to re-establish
equilibrium, fell backward upon the table, and lay racked from head to foot
with savage spasms, hands clawing empty air, chest labouring vainly to win
sufficient oxygen to combat the poison with which his system was saturated.
Moving to his side, Lanyard laid a hand upon the left breast. The man's
heart was hammering his ribs with agonizing blows, at first rapid, by
degrees more slow and feeble.
No power on earth could save him now: he had committed suicide as surely as
murder.
Wasting not another glance or thought upon him Lanyard hurried aft to the
central operating room.
The time he had spent there, an hour earlier, was by no means lost in
purposeless marvelling. He boasted a certain aptitude for mechanics,
perhaps legitimately inherited from that obscure origin of his, largely
fostered by the requirements of his craft; into the bargain, he had been
privileged ere now to gain some slight insight into the principles of
submersible operation. If obliged to work swiftly and in some instances
upon the advice of intuition rather than practical knowledge, he went not
unintelligently about his task, made few false moves.
Turning first to the diving controls, he adjusted the hydroplanes to their
extreme downward inclination, then made the rounds of the vent valves,
opening all wide. With a sharp hissing and whistling the air from the
auxiliary tanks was driven inboard, and as Lanyard manipulated the wheels
operating the forward and aft groups of Kingston valves, to the hissing was
added the suck and gurgle of water flooding the main and auxiliary ballast
and adjusting tanks.
Immediately the U-boat began to sink. Lanyard delayed only to close the
switches which controlled the electric motors. As their drone gained volume
he grasped the rifle and swarmed up the companion-ladder, passing through
the conning tower to deck with little or nothing to spare--with, in fact,
barely time to throw off the two mooring lines and jump into the small boat
before water, sweeping hungrily up over deck and bridge, began to cascade
through conning tower and torpedo hatchways.
Constrained to cut the painter lest the dory be drawn down with the
fast-sinking submarine, he fitted oars to locks and put his back to them,
swinging the small boat hastily clear of whirlpools which formed as the
waves closed over the spot where the U-boat had rested.
From first to last less than five minutes' activity had been needed for
the task of scotching this water-moccasin of the salt seas and putting its
keepers at the mercy of the country whose hospitality they had too long
abused.
Well content, after a little, Lanyard lay on his oars and contemplated with
much interest what the night permitted to be visible: the landing stage, no
more than a dark, vague mass in the darkness; the land picked out with but
few lights, mainly at windows of the base buildings, painting dim ribbons
upon the polished floor of the lagoon.
Methodically these were eclipsed as a moving figure passed before them.
Listening intently, Lanyard could distinguish the slow footfalls of an
unsuspecting sentry--no other sounds, more than gentle voices of the night:
murmurs of blind wavelets, the plaintive whisper of a little breeze belated
amid the tree-tops of that dark forest, and a slow, weary soughing of
swells upon the distant ocean shore.
Perceiving as yet not the slightest indication of an alarm ashore, Lanyard
ventured to continue rowing, but with utmost caution, lifting and dipping
his blades as gingerly as though they were fashioned of brittle glass, and
for want of a better guide keeping the stern of the dory square to the
shank of the T-stage.
In time the bows grounded lightly on sand. The melancholy voice of the sea
now seemed a heavier sighing in the stillness. He pushed off and rowed on
parallel with a dark shore line, so close in that his starboard oar touched
bottom at each stroke.
At intervals he paused and rested, striving vainly to garner some clue to
his bearings. Inexorably the blackness forbade that. He might have failed
ere dawn to grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance of the
submarine been discovered within the hour.
A sudden clamour rose in the quarter of the landing stage, first one great
shout of dismay, then two voices bellowing together, then others. Several
rifle-shots were fired in the air. More lights broke out in windows ashore.
Many feet drummed resoundingly upon the stage, and the confusion of voices
attained a pitch of wild, hysteric uproar. Of a sudden a flare was lighted
and tossed far out upon the bosom of the lagoon.
Surprised by that sharp and merciless blue glare, Lanyard instinctively
shipped oars and picked up the rifle. He could see so clearly that
huddle of figures upon the head of the landing stage that he confidently
apprehended being fired upon at any moment; but minutes lengthened and
he was not. Either the Germans were looking for bigger game than a dory
adrift, or the dazzling flare hindered more than aided their vision.
At length persuaded that he had not been detected, Lanyard put aside the
rifle and resumed the oars. Now his course was made beautifully clear to
him: the blue light showed him that outlet to the sea which he sought
within a hundred yards' distance.
Presently the flare began to wane. It was not renewed. Altogether unseen,
unsuspected, Lanyard swung the dory into the breach, and drove it seaward
with all his might.
Swiftly the lagoon was shut out by narrow closing banks. The blue glare
died out behind a black profile of rounded dunes. Lanyard turned the bow
eastward, rowing broadside to the shore.
After something more than an hour of this mode of progress, he struck in
toward the beach, disembarked in ankle-deep waters, slung the rifle over
his shoulder by its strap and, pushing the dory off, abandoned it to the
whim of the sea.
Then again he set his face to the east, following the contour of the beach
just within the wash of the tide: thereby making sure that there should
be no trail of footprints in the sand to guide a possible pursuit in the
morning.
The rising sun found him purposefully splashing on, weary but enheartened
by the discovery that he had left behind the more thickly wooded section of
the island.
Presently, turning in to the dry beach for the first time, he climbed
to the summit of a dune somewhat higher than its fellows, and took
observations, finding that he had come near to the eastern extremity of the
island.
At some distance to his right a wagon road, faintly rutted in sand and
overgrown with beach grass, struck inland.
Following this at a venture, he came, at about eight o'clock, upon the
outskirts of a waterside community.
Before proceeding he hid the magazine rifle in a thicket, then made a wide
detour, and picked up a roadway which entered the village from the north.
If his disreputable appearance was calculated to excite comment, readiness
in disbursing money to remedy such shortcomings made amends for Lanyard's
taciturnity. Within two hours, shaved, bathed, and inconspicuously dressed
in a cheap suit of ready-made clothing, he was breakfasting famously upon
the plain fare of a commercial tavern.
The town, he learned, was the one-time important whaling port of Edgartown.
He would be able to leave for the mainland on a ferry steamer sailing early
in the afternoon.
Ten minutes before going abroad he filed a long telegram in code addressed
to the head of the British Secret Service in New York....
Consequences manifold and various ensued.
When the telegram had been delivered and decoded--both transactions being
marked by reasonable promptitude--the head of the British Secret Service
in New York called the British Embassy in Washington on the long distance
telephone.
Shortly thereafter an attaché of the British Embassy jumped into a
motor-car and had himself driven to one of the cardinal departments of the
Federal Government.
When he had kicked his heels in an antechamber upward of an hour, he was
received, affably enough, by the head of the department, a smug, open-faced
gentleman whose mood was largely preoccupied with illusions of grandeur,
who was, in short, interested far more in considering how splendid it was
to be himself than in hearing about any mare's-nest of a German U-boat base
on the south shore of Martha's Vineyard.
He was, however, indulgent enough to promise to give the matter his
distinguished consideration in due course.
He even went so far as to have his secretary make a note of what alleged
information this young Englishman had to impart.
During the night he chanced to wake up and recall the matter, and concluded
that, all things considered, it would do no harm to give the United States
Navy a little amusement and exercise, even if it should turn out that the
rumour of this submarine base was a canard.
So, the next morning, he went to his desk some time before noon, and issued
a lot of orders. One of them had to do with the necessity for absolute
secrecy.
During the day several minor officials of the department might have been,
and indeed were, observed going about their business with painfully
tight-lipped expressions.
Also many messages were transmitted by wireless, telephone, and telegraph,
to various persons charged with the defense of the Atlantic Coast; some of
these were code messages, some were not.
That same night a great forest fire sprang up on the south shore of
Martha's Vineyard, both preceded and accompanied by a series of heavy
explosions.
The first United States vessel to reach the lagoon found only charred
remains of a landing stage and several buildings and, at the bottom of the
lagoon, an incoherent mass of wreckage, a twisted and shattered chaos of
steel plates and framework that might possibly have been a perfectly sound
submarine, though sunken, had somebody not been warned in ample time
to permit its destruction through the agency of trinitrotoluene, that
enormously efficient modern explosive nicknamed by British military and
naval experts "T.N.T.," and by the Germans "Trotyl."