by Mark Hodder
Then suddenly Blake released his grip altogether, and the nerve reaction did its work. The trigger finger squeezed automatically, and the sears had been filed. The explosion seemed to shake the room, and when the sound had died away there was only half a face left to the dead man.
Blake rose slowly, looking rather grey.
“It was beastly, but it had to be done,” he said. “I would have avoided it if I could, but there was no other way. And the worst of it is they—his men, I mean—must have known that he came in here and has never come out again. We shall have them making inquiries inside of ten minutes.”
“Yes,” said Tinker, “and I always did hate the sight of a rope. They’ll try and make horrible examples of us by hanging us to one of those beastly poplar-trees. I know I shan’t look my best on a poplar. Give me an apricot or plum-tree against a sunlit wall, and I might manage. They don’t grow more than about eight feet high, and, anyway, you could always eat the fruit.”
Blake strode to the door, which had been left ajar, and peered out. It was already growing dusk, and heavy snow was falling silently; but the square, at the end of which the guard-house stood, was empty and deserted. A little way off on either hand were the tall, grim houses, with storm shutters carefully closed, only a chink of orange-coloured light here and there, and the snow already gathering thickly on the steep, slanting roofs and gables.
“Let’s slip out and make a bolt for it while we can,” said Tinker. “It’s our best chance.”
“And be tracked in the snow in a few minutes. Listen! There are German soldiers in that cabaret opposite at this moment. The one with the door partly open. I can hear them talking. No, sonny, that wouldn’t do at all. We couldn’t go to the place where Van Zyl is staying, and we don’t know where his boat lies. We must just wait till he comes, as we said we would, and trust in him and our luck. But in the meantime we can take precautions.”
He slid his arm through the opening of the door as he spoke, grabbed for the piece of bent wire, and, having got hold of it, slammed the door to again and set to work on the great, ponderous lock.
“If he could unlock it from the outside, I can certainly lock it again from the inside,” said Blake, fumbling about in the dusk, “and I shall feel a jolly sight safer when I have. You remember that Van Zyl spoke of a second entrance known only to himself. We must have a look round for that presently.
“Ah! Listen! I told you they wouldn’t be long.”
There came the tramp, tramp, tramp of heavy footfalls muffled by the snow, and a thunderous knock at the door.
“Are you there, my captain?” called a voice.
Blake and Tinker kept perfectly still, and there was a sound of gruff muttering from the men outside.
“Are you there, my captain?” called the voice again. “Donner und blitzen, if someone doesn’t answer we will break in!”
There was more muttering, and then bang came a rifle-butt against the heavy door, followed by another and another.
Blake picked up the dead man’s sword and revolver and measured the height of the window grating with his eye.
“Three shots left in the chambers,” he said softly. “I don’t think they’ll gain much by monkeying with that door. If they try volley firing through the panels, lie flat and as close to the wall as possible. The window is our weak point. They can’t get in, but they could pot us through that like rats in a trap, if they had the sense to mount one man on another man’s shoulders. Let’s hope that they haven’t. If they were only to look through they’d see their captain’s body, and then I doubt if even old Van Zyl could save us. Thank goodness it’s pretty dark now!”
“Listen to the beauties! They’re making enough row to rouse the whole town.”
“Hello! What the deuce is that?”
A faint scraping noise had caught his quick ear in spite of the din outside, and he wheeled sharply, peering through the gloom in the direction of the sound, sword and revolver both ready for action.
One of the big flagstones of the flooring was slowly rising upward, evidently on a well-oiled hinge, disclosing a square opening, through which emerged the head and shoulders of Van Zyl, carrying a storm-lantern in one hand and a basket covered with a spotless white napkin in the other.
“Pouf!” he grunted. “I told you there were more ways in here than one.” And then, as he heard the din of the battering on the door, he stopped short.
“Name of a thousand fiends, what’s that?” he said, as he continued to emerge like a seal from an icehole.
Blake said nothing, but he plucked off his coat and flung it round the storm-lantern, lest the light should be seen from the outside.
Then very cautiously he raised one little corner of the coat so that a ray of light fell on the floor, and pointed to the dead man.
Van Zyl blew out his cheeks and made a noise like an outsized grampus.
He was a difficult man to astonish, and phlegmatic by nature, but this time he certainly did show surprise.
“The captain!” he said, in a gruff whisper.
Blake nodded.
“And those are his men out there kicking up all that shindy,” he whispered back. “They saw him come in, or at least they knew he was coming in, with the amiable intention of murdering us, and they’re puzzled all to pieces why he hasn’t come out again. Some of them must have been keeping an eye on the place from the inn across the square.”
“Pick him up, you two,” he said under his breath. “He must not be found here. Follow me! I go first with the lantern. The way is easy.”
They did as he bade them, and he himself lowered the trap behind them before uncovering the lantern and handing Blake back his coat.
The sound of muffled battering still reached them faintly.
“So!” said Van Zyl, and slipped two heavy iron bars on the underside of the trap back into place.
They found themselves in a stone-lined tunnel-like passage, which sloped gradually downwards for a little way and then became level.
Van Zyl led the way with the lantern, which threw fantastic shadows. Blake and Tinker followed with their gruesome burden.
They must have gone all of two hundred yards before Van Zyl pointed upwards and showed them a similar trap overhead.
“To the cellars of a house I own,” he said. “By that way I came.” And he swung on again down the passage.
“Much good cognac and wines of France used to find their way along here in old times. Some to my cellars”—he winked—“and some was stored beneath the prison-house. That was droll, was it not?” He gave a deep chuckle, and strode on.
Another fifty yards brought them a whiff of fresh, cold air, laden with the tang of salt seaweed, and the floor underfoot became damp and slippery.
Van Zyl produced a ponderous-looking key, unlocked a heavy wooden door, and pointed downwards at a glimmer of sluggish water.
He was not a sentimentalist.
“In with him!” he ordered. “Pooh! He will not be found for days, never fear, and then ten or fifteen miles down the river, for when they opened the sluices there is a strong stream here.”
His advice was certainly sound, and to have hesitated would have been to risk Van Zyl’s own safety. So they lowered the body into the stream. The man had been a bully, and would have been a murderer if he could, so their regrets were not of a lasting order.
Van Zyl locked the door from the outside behind them, and they found themselves standing on a narrow ledge. A rough ladder, built into the wall for the convenience of the fishermen at low-tide, was within easy armstretch on their left, and up this Van Zyl led the way with the activity of a lamplighter, and they found themselves on the top of the quay.
Fifty yards along this Van Zyl’s hogaast lay, moored alongside. He clambered down to her by a similar ladder. She was a fine boat, of about twenty tons, though so well devised that in light weather she could be managed single-handed. She had a fine roomy cabin, with plenty of head room, and on the table of this their host s
et down the lantern and the basket of provisions, to which he had clung persistently throughout.
“Clothes first,” he said; and, going to a locker, produced two suits of typical Dutch Fishermen’s things, baggy trousers and all. Their own things he did into bundles as they took them off, weighted them with lumps of iron ballast, and hove them over the side into midstream.
Then he looked at his transformed guests, and broke into a guffaw of laughter.
“There is a German patrol five miles downstream,” he said, suddenly becoming grave and businesslike once more. “You must not be seen. After that all is well. But till then I sail the boat myself. Take the basket and the wine and go to the fore-cabin. No one shall come there. When it is safe I will call you. Here are cigars to smoke. Off you go, and then I get under way.”
They went to the cabin, and Van Zyl secured the door on them. Afterwards, whilst they ate, they could hear him clumping about overhead, and the creaking of blocks and gear. Then there came the gurgling lap and ripple of moving water against the vessel’s outer skin, and a hoarse shout of farewell from Van Zyl to someone on the quayside.
Sure enough, as Van Zyl had warned them, after going about five miles they came to a lock, and sail had to be got off the vessel.
There was much shouting and yelling as she warped alongside, and then more tramping overhead and voices speaking in German.
Van Zyl, however, was evidently prepared for emergencies, for they heard him bellowing to his visitors to come down, then there was a clinking of glasses and a pungent smell of cigar-smoke.
Van Zyl knew how to handle his guests and avoid awkward questions. Once when he was asked what cargo he was carrying he burst into a roar of laughter and replied, “British prisoners-of-war,” and, of course, was naturally disbelieved.
Finally the Germans took themselves off, Van Zyl calling after them that he was going to pull out at dawn. He gave them about twenty minutes’ grace, however, and then slipped his mooring-ropes and slid off silently into the darkness, satisfied that the combined effects of Schwepps and a warm fire would prevent a second intrusion that night.
When they had left the lock half a mile and more behind them he called to Blake and Tinker that it was all clear, and that they could come on deck with safety.
They found him swathed in oilskins, smoking a particularly villainous black cigar, a thick muffler round his neck, and a copper kettle sizzling on a small stove beside him, into which he occasionally dropped green coffee-beans from some mysterious recess of his numerous pockets.
He steered apparently entirely by instinct, for compass he had none, and in the pitch-black darkness it was impossible to make out even the loom of the long rows of trees on either side of the canal-like stretch they were in.
He had both lee-boards up, his little canvas gaff was partly dropped, and in confidence he told them that he steered his course almost entirely by sound. Long years of training had enabled him, even on the darkest and thickest of nights, to distinguish between the sounds of five foot of water and over and, say, three or four. The flat bottom of his boat—she drew under two foot—acted for him as a sort of submarine telephone, and only once—in early days—had he run her ashore or alongside the dyke bank without meaning to. The ensuing disaster, involving the purchase of a new Oregan pine-pole mast and gear, a gashed head, and a carpenter’s big bill, had taught him caution and the knack of skilful handling.
“In five hours we reach Huis, you understand. That is on the coast, and there are ten, twelve, thirty of your tramp-steamers, as you call them, who have been carrying cargo. Five miles out you will find a guard of your destroyer peoples just beyond the territorial limit.
“Oh, they are very careful, your people! But they are watchful—watchful as a cat at a mousehole.”
He chuckled again.
“Twice last week they got a German submarine. How do I know? Pouf! It was not in the papers—no, not at all! But I have a nephew fishing, you understand, for herrings, and he sells some of his catch to your destroyers. As he sailed back he noticed two little calm pools of oil on the sea not a mile apart—little still pools of oily water. Yet there was what you British call a nasty lop of sea on.
“That meant two of their submarines gone. Pouf!
“At Huis I sail you out beyond the limit. I have a permit. Then one of your destroyers picks you up, and away you go. I know things! I—”
Blake nodded.
“We owe you a great deal, Captain Van Zyl. Our lives to start with. Do me one more favour, and you will find our Government is not ungrateful.”
He stooped down to the light of the stove and scribbled a message on the back of an old torn envelope.
“Shipment unadvisable at present,” it ran. “Coast too carefully watched.”
It was addressed to Eckstein, New York. The address was in code—a code taken from Adler’s private papers.
Seven hours later the hogaast was bumping gingerly, with rope fenders out, against the side of a long, lean destroyer, whose youthful commander was extremely annoyed until he had had five minutes’ brief and lurid conversation with Blake under the shelter of the forebridge, with its murderous little gun on top.
“Can do!” he said, with a laugh. “Jimmy—I mean, Sir James, happens to be my avuncular relative, and Van Zyl is a pal of ours. My dear chap, we’ll run you over in time to catch the Harwich mail.”
He ran up an iron ladder, barked out a few rapid orders, and then came down again in a hurry.
“So-long, Van Zyl, old man—unless you’d like a run over to London to see the picture-palaces and get some decent grub! Lor’! What wouldn’t I give for a devilled bone and a pate de Schwalof at the club! Canned horse and biscuits may be all right in their way, but one can have too much of a good thing.”
“I come some other time,” said Van Zyl.
“Right-ho! Get a move on, then, because we’re in a hurry. I can whack her up to thirty-four-and-a-bit knots now under oil fuel and forced draught.”
Van Zyl ponderously shook hands with them all, refused a glass of mess port, and clambered back on to his own deck.
“So-long, uncle!” yelled the commander. “See you again soon. This is our busy day.”
The long, lean hull glided away, gathering speed as she went, whilst a signalman struggled frantically with a mass of bunting, sending messages to sister ships—some of them strictly unofficial and pointedly insulting.
At half-past seven that night she decanted Blake and Tinker at Harwich, backed away, and slid off into the North Sea again on her lawful occupation.
Blake managed to secure a couple of overcoats at a slopshop near the docks to cover their Dutch clothes, and they caught the train, with exactly one minute and a half to spare.
SIR JAMES SAT at his writing-table in his room near Whitehall. His face was more haggard and lined than before, and a silver clock, at which he glanced anxiously from time to time, stood just beneath the green-shaded reading-lamp.
There were papers before him—small, neat bundles of official documents—but they lay unread and unheeded. His mind was far away from them and their contents, and quite unconsciously he drew idle scrawls on the blotting-pad in front of him, and then glanced at the clock again.
There was a whir of the telephone-buzzer on the table at his elbow, and he started nervously. He was overstrained by long extra hours of work and lack of a proper amount of sleep. He took up the receiver.
“What is it?” he said testily.
“Two gentlemen to see you, sir. Important business, they say.”
Sir James swore softly under his breath. He had been pestered day and night for months by requests for interviews from people on important business.
About one percent of them really had any business at all, the rest were mostly touts for contracts, or looking for a soft job with good pay and nothing to do. Still, he felt bound to see them all, in case he should miss the man with the real business.
“Very well, show them up,” he sai
d reluctantly, and turned back to his aimless scribbling. Then he took a blank telegraph-form, wrote an address on it, and glanced at the clock once more. He hesitated for a moment, and then dashed off a brief message.
There came a tap at the door.
“Come in!”
The door swung open, and Blake and Tinker came in, both in immaculate evening-dress.
“Good-evening, Sir James!” said Blake.
“Good heavens!” said Sir James, starting up. “I had given you up for lost! See!” He pointed with a quivering forefinger. “I had just written out the telegram for your successor, and ordered him to report for duty early to-morrow. Ten days was the time-limit you mentioned. It is now over—a quarter-past twelve. I know your punctual ways. Can you blame me if I fancied you had failed?”
Blake glanced at his wrist-watch, walked to the window, and threw it open.
“We have not failed,” he said quietly. “Listen!”
Big Ben was just striking the hour of midnight.
“It is your clock that has failed; in fact, we have arrived in the nick of time—with a couple of minutes or so to spare.
“I’ll tell you what made us run it so fine. Your Antwerp agent—there is no need to mention names—was murdered a minute or two before we reached him. He was in a state of collapse, but retained strength to gasp out a word or two before the end. So we took the paper on to Stiltz. I haven’t the receipt for it, for the simple reason that I was obliged to light a cigarette with it under the eyes of a German officer. But you can take my word for it that it is now in the right hands.
“Incidentally, we were travelling with false passports, which we had annexed, to put it mildly, from some German-Americans who were ordering and arranging for big consignments of foodstuffs and material for Germany via Holland.”
Sir James looked up sharply.
“Schmidt and Adler!” he snapped.
“Precisely! Well, I took the liberty of wiring to their people—Ecksteins, of New York—in their name and private code, cancelling the whole deal, as too risky and unsafe a proposition.”
Sir James chuckled.
