Book: The False Faces

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




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

AT BASE


As the U-boat, with motors dead and way lessening, glided up alongside
the head of that T-shaped landing stage and was made fast, the wireless
operator popped up from below, saluted the commander, and delivered a
written message.

Lanyard, instinctively aware that this was the expected report from
Seventy-ninth Street on Dr. Paul Rodiek, quietly pulled himself together
and took quick observations.

At best his chances in the all-too-probable emergency were far from
brilliant. Yet one might better perish trying, however hopelessly, than
passively submit to being shot down.

The lieutenant, waspishly superintending the work of crew and base guards
at the mooring lines, stood preoccupied within an arm's length; while the
landing stage was a fair six feet away. From its T-head to the shore, the
distance was nothing less than two hundred yards.

Desperate action and miraculous luck might take the Prussian by surprise
and enable one to snatch the service automatic from its holster at his
belt, leap to the stage, and shoot a way landward through the guards
clustered there; after which everything would depend on swiftness of foot
and the uncertain light permitting one to gain a refuge in the surrounding
woodland without a bullet in one's back.

It was a sorry hope....

With catlike attention Lanyard watched the hands holding that paper to the
binnacle light--large hands, heavy and muscular but tremulous with drink
and nervous reaction from the long strain and cumulative horror of the
cruise then ending. Their aim would not be good, except by accident. None
the less, if the report were unfavourable, their first gesture would be
toward the holster, signalling to Lanyard that the moment had come to
initiate heroic measures.

The Bavarian was an unconscionable time absorbing the import of the
message. Bending his face close to the paper, the better to make out the
writing, he read with moving lips, slowly, a doltish frown of concentration
clouding his congested countenance.

At length, however, he stood up, swaying a little as he folded and pocketed
the paper.

Lanyard relaxed. The man was too far gone in drink to be crafty, too sure
of his absolute power of life and death to imagine a need for craft. Since
his hand had not immediately sought the holster, it would not.

Turbid accents uttered the name of Dr. Rodiek.

Lanyard stepped forward alertly. "Yes, Herr Captain?"

"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.

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