Book: The False Faces

V >> Vance, Louis Joseph >> The False Faces




Released, the other spy stepped back and swung his left fist viciously to
Lanyard's jaw. Something in the brain of the adventurer seemed to let
go; his head dropped weakly to one side. The man who had struck him said
quietly, "Loose the fool, Ed," and followed as Lanyard reeled away,
striking him repeatedly.

For a giddy moment Lanyard was darkly conscious--as one dreams an evil
dream--of blows raining mercilessly about his head and body, blows that
drove him back athwartships toward a fate dark and terrible, a great void
of blackness. He felt unutterably weary, and was weakened by a sensation of
nausea. Beneath him his knees buckled. There fell one final blow, ruthless
as the wrath of God.

He was falling backward into nothingness, into an everlasting gulf of night
that yawned for him....

As he shot under the guard rope and into space between the edge of the deck
and the keel of the lifeboat, the spy rounded smartly on a heel and darted
to the smoking-room door. His confederate was in the act of stepping across
the raised threshold. He followed, closed the door.

The first officer, charging aft from the bridge, rounded the deck-house and
pulled up with a grunt of surprise to find the deck completely deserted....

The shock of icy immersion reanimated Lanyard.

He felt himself plunging headlong down, down, and down to inky depths
unguessable. The sheer habit of an accustomed swimmer alone bade him hold
his breath.

Then came a pause: he was no more descending; for a time of indeterminate
duration, an age of anguish, he seemed to float without motion, suspended
in frigid purgatory. Against his ribs something hammered like a racing
engine. In his ears sounded a vast roaring, the deafening voices of a
thousand waterfalls. His head felt swollen and enormous, on the point of
bursting wide.

Without warning expelled from those depths, he shot full half-length out of
water, and fell back into the milky welter of the _Assyrian's_ wake.

Instinctively he kept afloat with feeble strokes.

The cold was bitter, as sharp as the teeth of death; but his head was now
clear, he was able to appreciate what had befallen him.

Already the _Assyrian_, forging onward unchecked, had left him well astern,
her progress distinctly disclosed by that infernal bluish glare spouting
from her after deck.

She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so
tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could
conceivably be that great liner, the _Assyrian_....

Temporarily a burning pain in his left shoulder drove all other
considerations out of mind. The salt water was beginning to smart in the
raw, superficial wound made by that assassin's bullet ... back there in the
stateroom ... long ago....

Then the cold began to bite into his marrow, and he struggled manfully
to swim, taking long, slow strokes, at first comparatively powerful, by
insensible degrees losing force.

Just why he took this trouble he did not know: for some dim reason it
seemed desirable to live as long as possible. Withal he was aware he could
not live. Whether careless or utterly ignorant of his fate, the _Assyrian_
was trudging on and on, leaving him ever farther astern, lost beyond rescue
in that weird, bleak waste. Even were an alarm to be given, were she to
stop now and put out a boat, it would find him, if it found him at all, too
late.

The cold was killing.

He felt very sleepy. Drowsily he apprehended the beginning of the end.
His senses, growing numb with cold, presently must cease to function
altogether. Then he would forget, and nothing would matter any more.

Yet the will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard wished it he could
not have ceased to swim, at least to keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how
people ever managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to pass human
power to resist that buoyancy which sustained one, to let go, let one's
self go down. Impossible to conceive how that was ever done....

Why should he care to go on living?

No reading that riddle!...

On obscure impulse he gave up swimming, turned upon his back, floated face
to the sky, derelict, resigning himself to the cradling arms of the sea.
The gradual, slow rocking of the swells soothed his passion like a kindly
opiate. The cold no more irked him, but seemed somehow strangely anodynous.
Imperturbably he envisaged death, without fear, without welcome. What must
be, must....

For all that, life clutched at him with jealous hands. More than ever
sleepy, before he slept that last, long sleep he must somehow solve this
enigma, learn the reason why life continued so to allure his failing
senses.

Athwart the drab texture of consciousness wild fancies played like heat
lightning in a still midsummer night.

Death's countenance was kind.

That wide field of stars, drooping low and lifting away with rhythmic
motion, would sometime dip swiftly down to the very sea itself and,
swinging back, take with it his soul to some remote bourne....

The deeps were yielding up their mysteries. Past him a huge pale monster
swept at furious pace, hissing grimly as it passed, like some spectral
Nemesis pursuing the _Assyrian_.

Indifferently he speculated concerning the reality of this phenomenon.

The heave of a swell enabled him to glance incuriously after the steamship.
She seemed smaller, less genuine than ever, a shadow shape that boasted
visibility solely through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even
that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a candle lost in the
immensities of that night-bound world of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as
he that had been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny flame that
guttered toward its swift extinction....

Why live, when one might die and, dying, find endless rest?

Like a blazing thunderbolt one word rent the slumbrous web of sentience:
_Ekstrom_!

Galvanised by the flood of hatred unpent by the syllables of that name,
Lanyard began again to swim, flailing the water with frantic arms as if to
win somewhither by the very violence of his efforts.

This the one cogent reason why he must not, could not, die....

Unjust to require him to give up life while that one lived. Unfair.... It
must not be!...

Across the sea rolled a dull, brutish detonation. The swimmer, swung high
on the bosom of a great swell, saw a vast sheet of fire raving heavenward
from the _Assyrian_.

It vanished instantly.

When his dazzled vision cleared, he could see no more of the ship. He
imagined a faint, wild rumour of panic voices, conjured up scenes of horror
indescribable as that great fabric sank almost instantaneously, as if some
gigantic hand plucked her under.

What had happened? Had the accomplices of the dead Baron von Harden set off
an infernal machine aboard the vessel? In the name of reason, why? They had
got what they sought, that accursed document, whatever it was, that page
torn from the Book of Doom. Then why...?

And to what end had they exploded that light bomb on the after deck?

To make the _Assyrian_ a glaring target in the night--what else? A target
for what?...

Of a sudden all rational mental processes were erased from Lanyard's
consciousness. A wave of pure fear flooded him, body, mind, and soul. He
began to struggle like a maniac, fighting the waters that hindered his
flight from some hideous thing that was lifting up from the ocean's ooze to
drag him down.

He heard a voice screaming thinly, and knew it was his own.

The impossible was happening to him, out there, alone and helpless on the
face of the waters. A shape of horror was rising out of the deep to engorge
him. He could feel distinctly the slow, irresistible heave of its bulk
beneath him. His feet touched and slipped upon its horrible sleek flanks.

His most desperate efforts were all unavailing. He could not escape. The
thing came up too rapidly. Following that first mad thrill of contact with
it underfoot, he was lifted swiftly and irresistibly into the air. Almost
instantly he was floundering in knee-deep waters that parted, cascading
away on either hand. Then, elevated well above the sea, he slid and fell
prone upon a slimy wet surface.

His clawing hands clutched something solid and substantial, an upright bar
of metal.

Incredulously Lanyard pawed the body of the monster beneath him. His hands
passed over a riveted joint of metal plates. Looking up, he made out the
truncated cone of a conning tower with its antennae-like periscope tubes
stencilled black upon the soft purple of the star-strewn sky.

Slowly the truth came home: a submarine had risen beneath him. He lay upon
its after deck, grasping a stanchion that supported the small raised bridge
round the conning tower.

He sobbed a little in sheer hysteric gratitude, that this miracle had been
vouchsafed unto him, that he had thus been spared to live on against his
hour with Ekstrom.

But when he sought to drag himself up to the bridge, he could not, he
was too weak and faint. Ceasing to struggle, he rested in half stupour,
panting.

With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back. Rousing, Lanyard saw several
figures emerge from the conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless,
shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above him, filling their
lungs with the sweet air. He tried to call to them, but evoked a mere
rattle from his throat.

Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immediately over him, fixing
binoculars to their eyes, their voices quite audible.

A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he heard them conferring
together in the German tongue.

Death, then, was but a little delayed.

Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he shivered and his teeth
chattered uncontrollably.

Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon his senses he caught
broken phrases, snatches of sentences:

"... _sinking fast ... struck square amidships ... broke her back_...."

"... _trouble with her boats. There goes one over_!..."

"... _fools jumping overboard like cattle_...."

"_What's that rocket? Do the swine want us to shell their boats_?"

"_Why not? They're asking for it_!"

One of the officers lowered his glasses and barked a series of sharp
commands. The crew on deck leaped to attention. One leaned over the
conning-tower hatch and shouted to his mates below. A hatch forward of
the tower opened, and a quick-firing gun on a disappearing carriage swung
smoothly and silently up from its lair.

The other officer, looking down, started violently.

"_Verdammt_! What's this?"

The first rejoined him. "Impossible!"

"Impossible or not--a man or a cadaver!"

"Have him up and see...."

By order, two of the crew dragged Lanyard up to the bridge, supporting him
by main strength while the officers examined him.

"At the last gasp, but alive," one announced.

"How the devil did he get out here?"

"From the _Assyrian_--"

"Impossible for any man to swim this far since our torpedo struck--"

"Then he must have gone overboard before it struck--or was thrown--"

A cry of alarm from the group about the gun, awaiting final orders to open
fire upon the _Assyrian's_ boats, interrupted the conference. The officers
swung away in haste.

"Hell's fury! what's that searchlight?"

"A Yankee destroyer--in all probability the one we dodged yesterday
afternoon."

"She'll find us yet if we don't submerge. Forward, there--house that gun!
And get below--quickly!"

During a moment of apparent confusion, one of the men sustaining Lanyard
caught the attention of an officer.

"What shall we do with this fellow, sir?" he enquired.

"Leave him here to sink or swim as we go down," snapped the officer--"and
be damned to him!"

With a supreme effort the adventurer sank his fingers deep into the arms of
the two men.

"Wait!" he gasped faintly in German. "On the Emperor's service--"

"What's that?" The officer turned back sharply.

"Imperial Secret Service," Lanyard faltered--"Personal
Division--Wilhelmstrasse Number 27--"

A brilliant glare settled suddenly upon the deck of the submarine, and was
welcomed by a panicky gust of oaths. One officer had already popped through
the conning-tower hatch, followed by several of the crew. There remained
only those supporting Lanyard, and the second officer.

"Take him below!" the latter ordered. "He may be telling the truth. If
not...."

In the distance a gun boomed. A shell shrieked over the submarine and
dropped into the sea not a hundred yards to starboard. The men rushed
Lanyard toward the conning tower. He tried feebly to help them. In that
effort consciousness was altogether blotted out....




IX

SUB SEA


When he opened his eyes again he was resting, after a fashion, naked
between harsh, damp blankets in a narrow, low-ceiled bunk inches too short
for one of his stature.

After an experimental squirm or two he lay very still; his back and all his
limbs were stiff and sore, his bullet-seared shoulder burned intolerably
beneath a rudely applied first-aid dressing, and he was breathing heavily
long, labouring inhalations of an atmosphere sickeningly dank, close, and
foul with unspeakable stenches, for which the fumes of sulphuric acid with
a rank reek of petroleum and lubricating oils formed but a modest and
retiring background.

Also his head felt very thick and dull. He found it extremely difficult to
think, and for some time, indeed, was quite unable to think to any purpose.

His very eyes ached in their sockets.

In the ceiling glowed an electric bulb, dimly illuminating a cubicle barely
big enough to accommodate the bunk, a dresser, and a small desk with a
folding seat. The inner wall was a slightly concave surface of steel plates
whose seams oozed moisture. In the opposite wall was a sliding door, open,
beyond which ran a narrow alleyway floored with metal grating. Everything
in sight was enamelled with white paint and clammy with the sweat of that
foetid air.

Over all an unnatural hush brooded, now and again accentuated by a rumble
of distant voices and gusts of vacant laughter, once or twice by a curious
popping. For a long time he heard nothing else whatever. The effect was
singularly disquieting and did its bit to quicken torpid senses to grasp
his plight.

Sluggishly enough Lanyard pieced together fragments of lurid memories,
reconstructing the sequence of last night's events scene by scene to the
moment of his rescue by the U-boat.

So, it appeared, he was aboard a German submersible, virtually a prisoner,
though posing as an agent of the Personal Intelligence Department of the
German Secret Service.

To that inspiration of failing consciousness he owed his life, or such
of its span as now remained to him, a term whose duration could only be
defined by his ability to carry off the imposture pending problematic
opportunity to escape. And, assuming that this last were ever offered him,
there was no present possibility of guessing how long it might not be
deferred.

Its butcher's mission successfully accomplished, the U-boat was not
improbably even now en route for Heligoland, beginning a transatlantic
cruise of weeks that might never end save in a nameless grave at the bottom
of the Four Seas.

Only the matter of impersonation failed to embarrass in prospect. A natural
linguist, Lanyard's three years within the German lines had put a rare
finish upon his mastery of German. More than this, he was well versed in
the workings of the Prussian spy system. As Dr. Paul Rodiek, Wilhelmstrasse
Agent Number 27, he was safe as long as he found no acquaintance of that
gentleman in the complement of the submarine; for, largely upon information
furnished by Lanyard himself, Dr. Rodiek had been secretly apprehended
and executed in the Tower the day before Lanyard left London to join the
_Assyrian_.

But the question of the U-boat's present whereabouts and its movements
in the immediate future disturbed the adventurer profoundly. He was
elaborately incurious about Heligoland; and several weeks' association
with the Boche in the close quarters of a submarine was a prospect that
revolted. Wellnigh any fate were preferable....

Uncertain footsteps sounded in the alleyway, paused at the entrance to his
cubicle. He turned his head wearily on the pillow. In the doorway stood
a man whose slenderly elegant carriage of a Prussian officer was not
disguised even by his shapeless wreck of a naval lieutenant's uniform, a
man with a countenance of singularly unpleasant cast, leaving out of all
consideration the grease and grime that discoloured it. His narrow forehead
slanted back just a trace too sharply, his nose was thin and overlong, his
mouth thin and cruel beneath its ambitious mustache à la Kaiser; his small
black eyes, set much too close together, blazed with unholy exhilaration.

As soon as he spoke Lanyard understood that he was drunk, drunk with more
than the champagne of which he presently boasted.

"Awake, eh?" he greeted Lanyard with a mirthless snarl. "You've slept like
the dead man I took you for at first, my friend--a solid fourteen hours, my
word for it! Feeling better now?"

Lanyard's essays to reply began and ended in a croak for water. The
Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned with an aluminium cup of stale cold
water mixed with a little brandy.

"Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard, painfully propping himself
up on an elbow, gulped like an animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We
are holding a little celebration, you know."

Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in his eyes.

"Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded. "We got her, and that
means much honour and a long furlough to boot, when we get home, just as
failure would have spelled--I don't like to think what. I shouldn't care to
fill the shoes of those poor devils who let the _Assyrian_ escape them off
Ireland, I can tell you."

Something very much like true fear flickered in his small eyes as he
pondered the punishment meted out to those who failed.

So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one noticed no motion of her
progress, heard no noise of machinery.

"Where are we?" Lanyard whispered.

"Peacefully asleep on the bottom, about five miles south of Martha's
Vineyard, waiting till it is dark enough to slip in to our base."

"Base?"

The Prussian hiccoughed and giggled. "On the south shore of the Vineyard,"
he confided with alcoholic glee: "snuggest little haven heart could wish,
well to the north of all deep-sea traffic; and the coastwise trade runs
still farther north, through Vineyard Sound, other side the island. Not
a soul ever comes that way, not a soul suspects. How should they?
The admirable charts of the Yankee Coast and Geodetic Survey"--he
sneered--"show no break in the south beach of the island, between the ocean
and the ponds. But there is one. The sea made the breach during a gale, our
people helped with a little Trotyl, tides and storms did the rest. Now we
can enter a secluded, landlocked harbour with just enough water at low
tide, and lie hidden there till the word comes to move again--three miles
of dense scrub forest, all privately owned as a game preserve, fenced and
patrolled, between us and the nearest cultivated land--and friends in
plenty on the island to keep all our needs supplied--petroleum, fresh
vegetables, champagne, all that. Just the same we take no chances--never
make our landfall by day, never enter or leave harbour except at night."

He paused, contemplating Lanyard owlishly. "Ought not to tell you all
this, I presume," he continued, more soberly, though the wild light still
flickered ominously in his eyes. "But it is safe enough; you will see for
yourself in a few hours; and then ... either you are all right, or you will
never live to tell of it. We radio'd for information about Wilhelmstrasse
Number 27 just before dawn, after we had dodged that damned Yankee
destroyer. Ought to get an answer to-night, when we come up."

Heavier footsteps rang in the alleyway. The Prussian made a grimace of
dislike.

"Here comes the commander," he cautioned uneasily.

A great blond Viking of a German in the uniform of a captain shouldered
heavily through the doorway and, acknowledging the salute of the rat-faced
subaltern with a bare nod, stood looking down at Lanyard in taciturn
silence, hostility in his blood-shot blue eyes.

"How long since he wakened?" he asked thickly, with the accent of a
Bavarian.

"A minute or two ago."

"Why did you not inform me?"

The tone was offensively domineering, thanks like enough to drink, nerves,
and hatred of his job and all things and persons pertaining to it.

The subaltern coloured. "He asked for water--I got it for him."

The commander stared churlishly, then addressed Lanyard: "How are you now?"

"Very faint," Lanyard said truthfully. But he would have lied had it been
otherwise with him. It was his book to make time in which to collect his
thoughts, concoct a bullet-proof story, plan against an adverse answer to
that wireless enquiry.

"Can you eat, drink a little champagne?"

Lanyard nodded slightly, adding a feeble "Please."

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.

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