“You mean the spy?” said Dick.
The captain swallowed his Adam’s apple. He nodded.
“He’s the best we’ve got, isn’t he?” said Dick. “I’ve heard kind of rumors about him. In fact, I reckon the whole Army is buzzing about him. They say he’s got the Hun general staff half paralyzed. Knows everything the Huns are planning to do. Do you mean to say that you are—”
Again the captain swallowed. He shook his head.
“No, no!” he said. “Not I!”
He gave a curious, short laugh, more like a bark.
“I am working close to K-13, you understand,” he went on in a low voice, “but I don’t know who he is. No man knows, Fahnestock. Haig himself doesn’t know. Kitchener was the only man who ever knew. But he carried the secret of K-13 with him to the bottom of the sea. K-13 is just a number, working in the dark.”
“Well?” said Dick.
“The Germans would give a million pounds to catch him,” the captain muttered. “They would give an army corps. And they’re on his trail! But they haven’t caught him yet, Fahnestock. Not yet.”
He arose softly. He moved his finger over a huge map that covered half a wall.
“Do you know the château of Oldemonde, Fahnestock?” he said. “Eighty-five kilometers northeast of us, over the border?”
“A Red Cross hospital.” Dick nodded.
The captain’s cold smile flickered briefly again. He leaned over Dick’s shoulder and spoke quickly, in a whisper no louder than a falling leaf.
“Von Schmee’s headquarters—the 7th Corps of Falkenhayn’s Army of the West!” he breathed. “Confidential! Never let a hint of this get out to any man!”
“I’ll be jiggered,” said Dick.
“K-13 is working there,” said the captain.
Dick felt a cold spot creeping slowly down his spine, like a cold little spider.
“Good luck to him,” he said soberly. “I’d not like to be in his boots. I’d rather do my fighting in the open sky. What if they got on to him?”
“The Hun secret service knows he is at Oldemonde,” said the captain. “He is very clever, but he can’t last much longer. Leftenant Fahnestock, I am sending you up there to rescue him.”
“Me?” said Big Dick, punching his breast. “I don’t know him, sir.”
“No one else does,” said the captain.
He paced up and down in his stockinged feet. Up and down. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief of pale blue silk.
“Tonight, Leftenant Fahnestock,” he said, “you will rob my safe of those papers you saw me putting into it. You will steal a ship and desert to the enemy. I will arrange all the circumstances surrounding your desertion, so that it will appear genuine to the last detail. The German Intelligence, which will check up on you through their own operatives in the English lines, will be convinced of your sincerity. Once in Oldemonde, you will locate K-13. How you do that, I leave to your wits.”
“You want me,” said Dick, “to hop up there alone into the middle of the whole damned German Army, and pick up a bird I don’t even know the looks of? Do I look like a crack-brained fool?”
“You’re the man I’ve picked,” said the captain.
“And what if I don’t choose to go?”
“My orders are not a question of choosing or refusing,” said the captain delicately.
“It’s not in my line,” said Dick, shaking his head. “I can’t pretend, Captain. I haven’t got the brains. I’m a fighter, not a spy. I’ll forget what you’ve told me, sir, and you can pick some other bird to play the game with K-13. If that is all—”
He arose, stretching his mighty arms. Captain Face advanced on him with soft fury.
“Allow me to suggest,” he said between his teeth, “that there is a certain undercurrent of suspicion against you now, Leftenant Fahnestock. We both know the rumor that a Hun spy is in our lines. Perhaps one as clever as K-13. Who knows? Men are asking if you may be that spy, Leftenant.”
“If I met any bird,” said Big Dick, “who told me he thought I was a damned Hun spy, I’d knock his chin clean through the roof of his mouth. Do you know of anybody in particular who’s making such aspersions, Captain?”
“No one in particular,” said the captain hastily.
“I’d not be any good to your friend K-13 on the job you’ve outlined,” said Big Dick. “More’n likely, I’d only help the Huns to catch him. I’m only a flying fool, and when I got up there in the middle of the Huns, with all of them pawing over me, I’d be liable to get sore at something, Captain, and bust loose. You’re my C.O. You can try to make me go through with this job. And I can try to make you give birth to a litter of bull elephants. If it can’t be done, it can’t be done. You can go and stick that up the rear entrance of a squirrel’s nest.”
The colorless eyes of Captain Tillinghast Wainwright Oakley Face narrowed. They had a steel glitter.
“Are you afraid?” he said. “Are you a blasted coward?”
“Not that I know of,” said Big Dick. “Did I understand you to refer to me as such?”
“Control yourself, Leftenant,” said the Englishman coldly, stepping backward as Dick advanced. “I am not saying it. I am asking it.”
“Oh!” said Dick. “Well, it may be a fair question.”
He chewed grimly. He walked to the window and spat.
“Since you’ve been so kind as to ask me,” he said in a slow, deep, rolling, peaceful voice. “I’ll tell you. Any of the Fighters could tell you the same thing, but you’ve asked me. You’re yearning for information, I see. And I’m glad to help out a bright little guy that’s trying to increase his fund of information
“You ask me if I’m a coward,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know about that. But I know I’m not afraid of anything in the air or on the ground or down at the bottom of a cistern. I’m not afraid of anything that flies or crawls or hops or flops or struts around in a pair of Bond Street breeches. I’m not afraid of mice or lice or thousand-legged bugs or little twirps that have a couple of long blond hairs growing where cats and men have whiskers.
“I’m going on this job,” he said. “I’ll bring back K-13, if I have to bring back von Schmee and every stone in Oldemonde and the Kaiser’s winter underwear. And when I get back, Captain, sir,” he said, “I’m going to grab hold of a certain pasty-faced, tea-lapping, foxy-faced little squirt whom we both know without mentioning any names, and I’m going to turn him bottom end up over my knee, and I’m going to fan his breeches.
“Do I make myself clear, sir?” he said.
The captain wet his lips. He didn’t answer.
Big Dick Fahnestock saluted smartly. He bit off a large meal of Old Horse Plug. He hitched up his belt, and stalked out.
* * * * *
Captain Tillinghast Wainwright Oakley Face watched the tall, wild, American flier departing with expressionless eyes. Yet his teeth were clicking together softly and viciously. There was murder in him. Black murder.
He moved to the windows, and stared out at the field on which the darkness of night had fallen. The hangars were battened down. Their great camouflaged hulks loomed like masses of rocks in the gathering dark. The rain clouds had passed out of the sky, and stars were twinkling like hot electric points. For an hour or more, Captain Face stood at the window without moving a finger, without moving an eyelash.
He was a man of iron control. He could hide his thoughts. Yet there was black murder in him. It ate his vitals like a living beast.
After a time, there was his batman, Wiliam Sevenoaks, rapping at the door, bringing late supper to the captain. The captain stirred from his motionless pose. A sudden thought came to him. Delicately as a cat, he tiptoed over to his desk and pulled a long narrow rod out of it, which he thrust beneath his arm.
He faced the door then with a diabolic look.
“Come in!” he said, in answer to that respectful tapping.
“Swipes,” he said, when the stalwa
rt Yorkshireman had entered, bearing a tray, “Swipes, I’ve seen various signs and indications that you’re a bit fed up on this job. Eh, what?”
The batman’s flaming countenance grew even ruddier.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” he stammered, “I try to do my duty. But it’s not what I’m used to, nor what I ’listed for. I’m a plain, simple countryman, sir, and no servant. I don’t like, sir, being kicked in the stummick and being called dirty names. I don’t like, sir, being caned like I was a bloody dog. Begging your pardon, sir, but since you’ve been so kind as to ask me, I will make bold to say that you treat me like a blasted Prooshian. And things have come to such a state, sir, there’re times when I’d rather be dead.”
He gulped and choked.
The captain regarded him malignly.
“You want a transfer, eh, what?” he said in a hard, sharp voice.
“If you would be so kind as to arrange it, sir,” said the batman humbly.
His thick thumbs were hooked in his orderly belt. He stood up straight, with his blue Saxon eyes smiling, while his captain walked slowly toward him. Lightly as a cat, the captain crept up, and there was a very cruel look about his face. The glance of the Yorkshireman passed beyond the cruel face of the captain. For the moment, William Sevenoaks was staring with a certain wistfulness out at the starry night.
“You will have your transfer!” said the captain.
“Thank you, sir. And when?”
“Now!” said the captain.
And by this time, Captain Face had stepped up very close to William Sevenoaks, to this stalwart English soldier whom he called Swipes. From beneath his arm he pulled, with an incredibly quick gesture, the rod that he had taken from his desk a little while before. And that rod was a Maxim silencer, with a pistol at one end.
The thing made no sound that the sentry beyond the door could have heard. By and by, the captain sat down with a pale smile, dipping lumps of sugar in his tea.
Chapter III
The German Spy
At eleven o’clock that night, Sub-Lieutenant Richard W. Fahnestock, R.F.C., aroused the hangar night watch and ordered a two-seater Sopwith to be fueled and run out on the field.
This act, as well as certain other queer acts of his that are here set down, was later testified to in a drumhead court martial, convened to try Lieutenant Fahnestock on the charge of being a deserter and a spy.
“I want to see if the ship’s tuned up,” was all the explanation he gave to the hangar watch.
Though, at the time, the sergeant of the watch had no suspicion that there was anything traitorous under way, it struck him that Big Dick Fahnestock was extraordinarily uneasy. He seemed to talk with difficulty, so that the sergeant had to ask him to repeat his orders.
“’Tis a queer hour, sir, for tuning up a ship,” said the sergeant respectfully, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Adjutant Harvey heard the bellowing of the Rolls motor cutting the profound silence of the airdrome just at the moment he was turning in for the night. He came running across the darkness from officers’ quarters, joining up with the officer of the day on the way over.
“A raid?” he shrieked.
“’Tis Leftenant Fahnestock, sir!” the sergeant yelled above the motor roar. “He’s took a notion in the head to tune the ship up.”
The motor was new out of the crate. It roared with a beautiful, strong song. After testing it full on, while the hangar watch strained to hold back on the quivering wings, Big Dick throttled it down to bare idling speed. He climbed out.
“Are you drunk, Fahnestock?” demanded the adjutant.
Big Dick shook his head, his eyes on the ground.
“Just tuning her up,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” the adjutant complained. “You act as if you were about to set fire to an orphans’ asylum. By God, I never saw you with such a hangdog look before. Button your blouse up! Where’s your hat?”
“Oh, take a dose of castor oil!” muttered Big Dick.
Shaking his iron-gray head, Adjutant Harvey walked back across the field with Lieutenant Mud-Face Mortimer, the officer of the day. They discussed Big Dick in low voices. Undoubtedly he had been acting strangely. Mortimer gave it as his opinion that the wild American ace had become slightly balmy with too much flying.
“It’s got poor Big,” he said gloomily. “I’ve always said it would. He’s gone queer.”
In a few minutes, a sentry hurried out of the captain’s quarters. A shade in the captain’s office flickered twice. Big Dick Fahnestock was loafing beside the Sopwith, watching. Immediately he stalked toward the captain’s quarters.
Captain Face was expecting him. The windows were all shaded. Only a small kerosene lamp was burning beside the safe. On the floor against the wall, Dick made out the form of William Sevenoaks, the captain’s batman, lying face down in the eerie shadows. He was dead to this world.
The captain was nervous as a cat. He jumped up quickly from a rumpled cot as Dick came in. His pale forehead glistened with sweat in the hot, still night.
“Asleep,” he whispered, motioning to the recumbent form of the batman. “He’ll not wake up! I’ve dismissed the outside sentry on an errand. He’ll be back in five minutes or less. You’ll have to hurry it, through.”
Dick surveyed him grimly. The shadows of the flickering lamp darted over the captain’s countenance, giving him not a very pleasant look.
“There’s a crowbar,” whispered the captain between his teeth. “Pry the safe door of its hinges. It’s no more than a tin can. You’re the strong kind of a beggar who can do it. Here are the papers you are to take with you. Button them up safely. Put them only into the hands of Colonel von Kleinhals or von Schmee himself. Can you rip the safe? Good! The more rough work you do with it, the better. Remember, the German Intelligence on this side will be sending through a report on you. You’ve got to make it look real.”
The cast iron safe was old and battered. One hinge pin was missing from it. A chip in the doorframe gave entrance for the crowbar. Dick pried and sweated.
“Before I get through with it, I’ll make it look like it had been blown up with TNT,” he grunted. “My granddad wasn’t a Dutch blacksmith for nothing.”
The captain gave him a pistol with a shaking hand.
“Bang that off before you go,” he whispered. “Then run like a fiend for your ship. Wait a half sec. You’d better tie me securely, eh, what? And give me a bit of a bruise, you know. Just something to look like I had put up a fight. In God’s name, there must be no suspicion I have had any part in this!”
* * * * *
Adjutant Harvey was preparing for bed. He had just pulled off his pigskin boots and was hopping around the floor trying to skin himself out of his beautiful fawn breeches when someone knocked at his wardroom door.
“Who’s there?”
“Messenger from the captain, sir.”
The adjutant hastily pulled his breeches on again, and let the fellow in.
“Compliments of Captain Face, sir,” said the sentry, saluting. “And he directs you to present himself to him immediately, bringing with you the report on Leftenant Fahnestock. He says you will know what he means, sir. The report of Intelligence. You were discussing it with him after tea.”
“Immediately?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wonder what’s happened?” muttered Harvey.
“Him and Big Dick was having a long hot argument around supper time, so I hear,” said the sentry guardedly. “I understand they was calling each other all the names in the book.”
“You’d better sew a couple of buttons on your ears, and stop eavesdropping on your superior officers,” grunted Harvey.
A minute or more had elapsed before the spruce adjutant had his field boots neatly laced. He marched at a deliberate pace to the administration building, at the far end of the field from the captain’s quarters, accompanied by the sentry. The officer of the day, Lieutenant the Ho
norable Mud Face Mortimer, Lord Aleshire’s heir, was sitting in the outer office, drinking coffee with Washee Long.
“What’s in the wind, Adj?” asked Mortimer.
“The captain thinks he’s on the trail of this Hun spy,” whispered Harvey, shaking his head.
“In this outfit?”
“So he says.”
“Old Fairy Face is full of little fleas,” growled Mortimer. “There’s not one of the Fighters he dares accuse. It’s a stinking insult to every man in the outfit.”
Washee Long rolled his slant black eyes. His head swayed. His ugly, wrinkled face was white as paper. It was apparent that he was enjoying the tag end of a binge. He hauled a bottle of cognac out of his coat and mixed it half and half with his coffee.
“Who is the Fairy trying to pin it on?” he snarled.
Adjutant Harvey only shook his head.
“I know,” snarled Washee. “Big Dick Fahnestock. If Big is a traitor, then I’m the Queen of Spain. I warn you, Adj, Fairy Face had better think twice. Think twice!” he shouted.
He stumbled to his feet and smashed the cognac bottle down on the O.D.’s desk. Flying splinters of glass showered about him.
“That’s what I’ll do to him!” he said.
“Don’t threaten your superior officers!” said Harvey.
He went to his desk and unlocked from it the report that he had been directed to furnish. He stepped out into the starry night again, and heard the puttering of the Sopwith that Big Dick had left on the field. He had not gone three paces from the administration building when a sudden scream of pain and fright rang out in the deep silence across the field.
“What was that?” gasped Harvey.
“Captain’s room!” yelled the sentry, breaking forth into a mad run.
The scream was followed by a single pistol shot. The echoes of it went banging and banging away. Out of the captain’s quarters leaped the tall, awkward form of Big Dick Fahnestock. In the starry night there was no mistaking him. He was waving a pistol in his hand. He ran toward the idling Sopwith like the wind.
Secret Operative K-13 Page 4
