Book: The False Faces

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




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.




XI

UNDER THE ROSE


Vague stupefaction replaced the scowl upon the countenance of the
commander. He swayed, a hand faltering to his forehead, where dark blood
was beginning to well from a cleanly drilled puncture. Then he collapsed
completely, falling prone across the raised sill of the bulkhead opening. A
convulsive tremor shook savagely his huge frame.

Thereafter he was quite still.

The report of that one shot had reverberated stunningly within those narrow
walls of steel. Momentarily Lanyard looked to see the alarmed anchor watch
appear; so too, apparently, the lieutenant, who remained immobile, pistol
poised in a hand for the moment strangely steady, gaze fixed upon the mouth
of the alleyway.

But through a long minute no other sounds were audible than that ceaseless
dripping from frames and seams, with that muted, terrible mouthing of
waters on the plates.

Unable either to fathom or forecast the workings of the drink-maddened
mentality masked by that rat-like face, Lanyard waited with a hand covertly
grasping the automatic in his pocket. There was no telling; at any moment
that murderous mania might veer his way. And he was not content to die, not
yet, not in any event by the hand of a decadent little beast of a Boche.

Slowly the arm of the lieutenant dropped, lowering the pistol till its
muzzle chattered on the top of the table: a noise that broke the spell upon
his senses. He looked down in dull brutish wonder, then roused and with a
gesture of horror let the weapon fall clattering.

His glance shifting to the body of his commander, he started violently,
backing up against the plates to put all possible distance between himself
and his handiwork. His lips moved, framing phrases at first incoherent,
presently articulate in part:

"... _done it at last!... Knew I must soon_...."

Abruptly he looked up at Lanyard.

"Bear witness," he cried: "I was provoked beyond human endurance. He
insulted me in your presence ... me!... that scum!"

Lanyard said nothing, but met his gaze with a blank, non-committal stare,
under which the eyes of the lieutenant wavered and fell.

Then with a start he realised anew the significance of that still figure at
his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back into his wretched,
fear-racked being.

"A good job!" he muttered defiantly. "And you will stand by me, I know....
Only there is nothing in that, of course, no justification possible before
a court martial. Even your testimony could not save me ... I am done for,
utterly...."

He hung his head. Lanyard heard whispered words: "_degraded," "dishonour,"
"firing squad_"....

A chronometer in the central operating compartment tolled eight bells.

With a sharp cry the lieutenant dropped to his knees. "He can't be dead!"
he shrilled. "It is all play-acting, to frighten me!"

Frantically he sought to turn the body over.

Lanyard's hand shot swiftly out, capturing the automatic on the table. With
rapid and sure gestures he extracted and pocketed the clip, drew back the
breech, ejecting into his palm the one shell in the barrel, and replaced
the weapon, all before the Prussian gave over his insane efforts to
resurrect the dead.

"He is dead enough," he announced, eyeing Lanyard morosely--"beyond
helping.... Look here; are you with me or against me?"

"Need you ask?"

"I count on you, then. Good. I think we can cover this up."

He checked and stood for a while lost in thought.

"How?" Lanyard roused him.

"Simply enough: I go on deck, send the watch ashore on some trumped-up
errand. They suspect nothing, thinking the commander and I have you in
charge. If they heard that shot, I will say one of us dropped a bottle
of champagne, and it exploded.... When they are gone, I bring the dory
alongside; and with your help it should be an easy matter to carry this
body up, weight it, row it out to the middle of the lagoon, dump it
overboard. Then we return. Our story is, the commander followed the anchor
watch ashore; if later he wandered off, got lost in the woods in his
alcoholic delirium, that is no affair of ours. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," said Lanyard with a look of fatuous innocence. "But how about
the water--is it deep enough?"

The Prussian took no pains to dissemble his scorn of this question,
seemingly so witless. "To cover the body? Why, even here there is
sufficient depth at low tide for us to submerge completely, barring the
periscopes. And it is deeper yet in the middle."

"Thanks," Lanyard replied meekly.

"Have another drink? No?" The Prussian tossed off a half cupful of
undiluted brandy, and shuddered. "Then stop here. I'll be back in a--"

"Half a minute." The lieutenant halted in the act of stepping across the
body. Lanyard levelled a hand at the automatic. "Do you mind taking that
with you? I have no desire to be found here with it and a dead man, should
anything prevent your return."

With a sickly grimace the murderer snatched up the weapon, thrust it in its
holster, and hurriedly departed.

Lanyard watched him pass through the alleyway and turn toward the companion
ladder, then followed quietly.

As the lieutenant climbed out on deck, Lanyard ascended to the conning
tower and waited there, listening. He could not quite make out what was
said; but after a few brusque words of command two pair of boots rang on
the gangplank and thumped away down the stage. At the same time Lanyard let
himself noiselessly out through the hatch.

As soon as his vision grew reconciled to the change from light to darkness,
he discovered the slender figure of the lieutenant skulking on tip-toe
after the retreating anchor watch; about midway on the landing stage,
however, he paused and bent over one of the piles, apparently fumbling with
the painter of a small boat moored in the black shadows below.

At this Lanyard began to move along the deck, one by one working the
mooring lines clear of their cleats and dropping them gently overboard,
till but two were left to hold the U-boat in place.

Throughout he kept watch upon the manoeuvres of the lieutenant--saw him
drop over the side of the stage, heard a thump of feet as he landed in a
boat, and a subsequent creak of oar-locks.

The small boat was rounding the bows of the submarine when the adventurer
ducked back through conning tower to hold.

He was standing where he had been left when the lieutenant came below.

"It's all right," this last announced with shabby bravado as he stepped
over the body in the doorway. "We are rid of that damned watch for a time.
They won't return within half an hour at least. I have the dory moored
amidships. If we are lively, this dirty job will be over in no time at
all."

Lanyard nodded. "I am ready."

"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."

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