CHAPTER V
IN THE NIGHT
The night was moonless, dark, warm with the inviting softness of latespring that holds out promises of romance. Stars wavered and wimpledin the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence fromthe foot of Twenty-seventh Street.
This launch contained four men. They carried but little baggage; nomore than could be stowed in a rucksack apiece. All were in their oldservice uniforms, with long coats over the uniforms to mask them. Allcarried vacuum-flashlights in their overcoat pockets, and lethal-gaspistols, in addition to ordinary revolvers or automatics. And all werekeyed to the top notch of energy, efficiency, eagerness. The GreatAdventure had begun.
In the stern of the swift, twenty-four cylinder launch--a racingmodel--sat Captain Alden and Rrisa. The captain wore his aviator'shelmet and his goggles, despite the warmth of the night. To appear inonly his celluloid mask, even at a time like this when darkness wouldhave hidden him, seemed distasteful to the man. He seemed to want tohide his misfortune as fully as possible; and, since this did no harm,the Master let him have his way.
The bow was occupied by the Master and by Major Bohannan, with theMaster at the wheel. He seemed cool, collected, impassive; butthe major, of hotter Celtic blood, could not suppress his fidgetynervousness.
Intermittently he gnawed at his reddish mustache. A cigar, he felt,would soothe and quiet him. Cigars, however, were now forbidden. Sowere pipes and cigarettes. The Master did not intend to have eventheir slight distraction coming between the minds of his men and thecareful, intricate plan before them.
As the racer veered north, up the broad darkness of the Hudson--theHudson sparkling with city illumination on either hand, with still ormoving ships' lights on the breast of the waters--Bohannan murmured:
"Even now, as your partner in this enterprise--"
"My lieutenant," corrected the Master.
"As second in command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not whollyconvinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones,covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss ofswiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me,and avoidable danger."
"It is neither," answered the man at the wheel. "What would you havedone? What better plan could you have proposed?"
"You could have built your own flyer, couldn't you? Since money's noobject to you, and you don't even know, accurately, how much you'vegot--nobody can keep track of figures like those--why risk legalinterference and international complications at the start, by--"
"To build the kind of flyer we need would have taken six or sevenmonths. Not all my money could have produced it, sooner. And absoluteennui can't wait half a year. I'd have gone wholly stale, and so wouldyou, and all of them. We'd have lost them.
"Again, news of any such operations would have got out. My plans wouldpossibly have been checkmated. In the third place, what you proposewould have been tame sport, indeed, as a beginning! Three excellentreasons, my dear Major, why this is positively the only way."
"Perhaps. But there's always the chance of failure, now. The guards--"
"After your own experience, when that capsule burst in the laboratory,you talk to me about guards?"
"Suppose one escapes?"
The Master only smiled grimly, and sighted his course up the darkriver.
"And the alarm is sure to be given, in no time. Why didn't you justbuy the thing outright?"
"It's not for sale, at any price."
"Still--men can't run off with three and a half million dollars' worthof property and with provisions and equipment like that, all ready fora trial trip, without raising Hell. There'll be pursuit--"
"What with, my dear Bohannan?"
"That's a foolish statement of mine, the last one, I admit," answeredthe major, as his companion swung the launch a little toward theJersey shore. "Of course nothing can overhaul us, once we're away.But you know my type of mind weighs every possibility, pro and con.Wireless can fling out a fan of swift aerial police ahead of us fromEurope."
"How near can anything get to us?"
"I know it all looks quite simple and obvious, in theory.Nevertheless--"
"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master,incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swiftattack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That'syour racial character.
"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next incommand. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's nottoo late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a specialconcession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."
His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward theManhattan shore. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again theother way.
"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'llever hear me utter. Full speed ahead--to Paradise--or Hell!"
They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north.By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smileappeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joywhich to some men ranks supreme above all other joys--that of bendingothers to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets ofhis fancy.
Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kepthis lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word toCaptain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master'scross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials weregenuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but thesame thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind themall. Now he was trusting him with much, already.
"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of thecaptain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed thecommand. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at thebows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. Thegoal lay not far off.
To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breastingSpuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base ofthe cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades weredrawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropoliswere being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrantsteamer-whistles from astern.
A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that anexpress was hurling itself cityward. Its muffled roar began to echoout over the star-flecked waters. The Master threw a scornful glanceat it. He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city'slights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river's edge. Thenhe looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by themetropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.
"Child's play!" he murmured. "All this coming and going incrowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming overpennies--child's play. Less than that--the blind swarming of ants!Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?"
He turned back and thrust over the spokes. The launch drew in towardthe Jersey shore.
"Let the engines run at half-speed," he directed, "and control her nowwith the clutch."
"Yes, sir!"
The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master noddedto himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be avalued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There mightbe stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in casethat should be necessary.
The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward thecliff. Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto sirenshrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A human voice came vaguelyhallooing.
Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light wasvisible. The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening.He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel. But allhe said was:
"Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!"
As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouringstars. The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hookand came forward. Out
of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet thelaunch. The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradledagainst the stringpiece.
Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out.Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulatingsomething in the bottom of the launch. Then he stepped to the engine.
"Out, Rrisa," he commanded, "and hold hard with the hook, now!"
The Arab obeyed. All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.The Master leaped to the wharf.
"Let go--and throw the hook into the boat!" he ordered.
While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launchbegan to draw slowly back into the stream. Already it was riding a bitlow, going down gradually by the bows.
"What now?" questioned the major, astonished.
"She will sink a hundred or two yards from shore, in deep water,"answered the Master, calmly. "The sea-cock is wide open."
"A fifteen thousand dollar launch--!"
"Is none the less, a clue. No man of this party, reaching the shoretonight, is leaving any more trace than we are. Come, now, all this istrivial. Forward!"
In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow,rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff,and began to ascend. A lathering climb it was, laden as they were withheavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.
Now and then the Master's little searchlight--his own wonderfulinvention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using nobatteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolutevacuum--glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bitof going. For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleamwas allowed to show. Silence, darkness, precision, speed were nowall-requisite.
Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among aconfused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavytimbers on the brow of the Palisades. Off to the north, the faint,ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees. Far below, the jetty rivertrembled here, there, with starlight.
They paused a moment to breathe, to shift straps that bound shouldersnot now hardened to such burdens. The Master glanced at the luminousdial of his wrist-watch.
"Almost to the dot," he whispered. "Seventeen minutes to midnight. Atmidnight, sharp, we take possession. Come!"
They trailed through a hard, rocky path among thick oak, pine,and silver-birch. Now and then the little greenish-white lightwill-o'-the-wisped ahead, flickering hither, yon. No one spoke a word.Every footstep had to be laid down with care. After three minutes'progress, the Master stopped, turned, held up his hand.
"Absolute silence, now," he breathed. "The outer guards are now withinan eighth of a mile."
They moved forward again. The light was no longer shown, but theMaster confidently knew the way. Bohannan felt a certain familiaritywith the terrain, which he had carefully studied on the large-scalemap he and the Master had used in planning the attack; but theMaster's intimate knowledge was not his. After two and one-halfminutes, the leader stopped again, and gestured at heavy fern-brakesthat could just be distinguished as black blotches in the dark of thewoods.
"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorizedorders!"
He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise.Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. Avagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which afew stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from anyothers. And yet--
_Were_ there any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, nosound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted upagainst the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distantlaugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps thesame that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came thefaint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.
"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a fewminutes it'll be too late, _if_ we don't strike now!" He felt a greattemptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility ofany suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other _faux pas_, hebridled his impatience and held still.
Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yardsfrom the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal--ifyou can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now plannedconsummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands everyultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the _coup_should be put through--realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of aprofound excitement.
His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself uplike a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages ofwar though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breakingstress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspensebefore the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and thelives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. Hedesperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fatefulmoments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.
The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remainedmotionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or signof it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication ofthem could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woodsencircling the stockade. Was each man really there and ready for thepredetermined role he was to play?
It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all theseadventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, withany other, should all have taken their assigned posts. That each, withluminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second,before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony withall the rest, the finished composition. Such an assumption partookmore of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality inthis Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world's greatestcity.
The Master, crouching, whispered:
"Two minutes more! Keep your eyes on your watches, now. Get yourlethal guns ready! In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsuleburst. Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours. Ten later, yours,Bohannan. Ten later, yours, Rrisa. Listen hard! Hold steady!"
The silence drew at them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something inwhich the words: "_La Illaha ilia Allah_" transpired in a wraith ofsound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly holdhis poise.
All three now had their capsule pistols ready. The self-luminouscompass and level attached to each gun gave them their exact directionand elevation. Glimmering watches marked the time, the dragging of thelast few seconds.
The Master drew no weapon. His mind, directing all, observing all, wasnot to be distracted by even so small a detail as any personal hand inthe discharge of the lethal gas.
If he felt the strain of the final moment, on which hung vasterissues than mere life or death, he gave no indication of it. His eyesremained fixed on the watch-dial at his wrist. They were confident,those eyes. The vague shimmer of the watch-glow showed them dark andgrave; his face, faintly revealed, was impassive, emotionless.
It seemed the face of a scientist, a chemist who--having worked outhis formula to its ultimate minutiae--now felt utter trust in itsreactions, now was only waiting to observe what he well knew mustinevitably happen.
"Thirty seconds more," he whispered, and fell silent. Presently, afterwhat seemed half an hour: "Fifteen!"
Another long wait. The Master breathed:
"In just five seconds the first capsule will burst there!" He pointedwith assurance. "In two--in one--"
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