Secret Operative K-13

by Joel Townsley Rogers

  No other sound.

  Innocently, the girl with the fair braids came on across the grass, humming to herself. And the tune she was humming was the old Lorelei tune of the Rhineland Germans, which Dick had heard on his mother’s breast, and which tugged at his heart.

  “. . . . Sie kammt ibr goldenes Haar;

  Sie kammt es mit goldenem Kamme,

  Und singt ein Lied dabei . . . .”

  Though her features were unrecognizable, suddenly Dick knew that he had heard her voice before, and somewhere at Oldemonde. Quickly, his mind searched back. But the memory escaped him.

  As she passed a great beech tree, a low voice spoke to her a sharp command. She paused and stared, then replied in laughing Flemish. An arm reached out from behind the huge beech to seize her, but she eluded it, simpering.

  “Halt an!”

  A German soldier crept into view. He cast a quick, wary glance up at Dick’s window, then stepped a pace or two sheepishly after the girl. She flounced her head and faced him with a provocative gesture.

  “What wert thou doing, sweetheart,” he whispered, “with Hans Sieger in the wood?”

  She replied with some mocking Flemish phrase that doubtless the German understood. He burst into subdued laughter. He seized her waist in a rude grasp and bent her head far back. In the darkness, she laughed up at him. Her arms stole softly up around his shoulders. When her right hand had reached behind his head, she dealt him one quick thud at the base of the brain.

  It must have been a sandbag in her hand. The German slid to the ground without a whisper.

  Dick had been watching this brief romantic scene meditatively. As the German crumpled, he dived out the window. He sprawled upon the soft, grassy soil and got to his feet immediately, running like the wind. The girl had kicked off her shoes. Barefooted, she fled toward the cedar wood.

  At the edge of the wood, she paused an instant, a slim, tense shadow against the impenetrable gloom of the thick evergreens.

  “To the hayfields beyond here!” she whispered as Dick ran toward her. “Lie low in the sixth stack you come to, till I join you! We’ve got to get out of here, both of us, big boy, and I don’t mean maybe!”

  It was as pure an American accent as was ever heard at Vassar. Dick was almost up to her now. She slipped in between the whispering trees, lithe and pale in the night.

  “You are—?” he gasped.

  “K-13!”

  It was no more than a breath. He was not sure he had heard it. Was not sure he had even seen her, now. She had vanished like a shadow. And where she had been, there was nothing.

  “A girl—well, I’m damned!”

  He ran breathlessly on through the wood, toward the hayfield that had been pointed out to him. Once he thought he caught sight of her again. But it was only a spotted, half grown fawn, aroused from slumber and rushing eerily away. He saw no other living thing at all except a solitary German soldier standing erect and motionless with his back to the trunk of a juniper tree. The fellow was lashed fast to the tree and a gag was in his mouth, and his eyes were huge with terror. No doubt he was the soldier Hans Sieger, one of the Nachrichtenamt’s human hounds set to trail Dick, who had been so unwary as to make a rendezvous with K-13.

  Dick slipped backward silently, avoiding the bound man before those terrified eyes had seen him. He crept across stubbly hayfields in the shadows and buried himself deep under a mound of sweet new-mown hay.

  Chapter VI

  The Butcher’s Beard

  In that cold, black half hour that comes just before the dawn, Lieutenant General Paul Friedrich Hermann von Schmee, Baron of Eglesdorf, Count of Schlossheim, commanding officer of the great 7th Corps of the Guards—the “Invincibles,” as they were known, the hammerhead of von Falkenhayn’s flank—aroused from a profound dream. He lay on his back a moment, staring at the darkness with frightened eyes.

  He had dreamed that a formless and obscure shadow had crept into his bedchamber through the open window, and had passed by him into his great headquarters office room beyond. There had been no shape to this shadow he had seen in his dream. It was no more tangible than smoke. Yet there was a terror in the quiet passage of it that had caused a sweat to break out on the broad backbone of the general, even in his profound sleep.

  His soul was wrenched awake. He lay inertly, cold with his own sweat, staring at the ceiling with small, unblinking eyes. There was no one in his bedchamber, no nightmare vision, no shape of smoke. There was no shadow lurking in all the blackness that he could not identify.

  Below his opened window, he heard a pair of sentries conversing lazily together, yawning and snickering at times over some joke. He examined his watch. The hour was a quarter after four. He had been asleep three hours, then, since the conclusion of a long conference with his staff over the reports of Number Two that had been brought by Big Dick Fahnestock. It had been a quarter after one when he issued his final instructions for the movements of the 7th Corps. In the intervening time, he had slept heavily.

  What was it that had awakened him? It had been a nightmare dream.

  He lay and listened for any sound from his great headquarters room. In there he kept his records and battle plans, his secret orders, maps and code books. It was the heart of his command.

  Why was the massive oak door closed into that room? It was always open. He slept with his bed so arranged that he could see through the door, watching the small night light burning above his ponderous safe. Now the door was closed. And no wind had blown it. General von Schmee breathed softly.

  He pulled out a Luger from beneath his pillow. Soft and quick as a huge cat, he sprang up and slipped across the floor. His glance was gleaming red.

  Beyond the door, he heard the faint crisping and rustling of a paper, as if examined in haste by trembling hands. It was a sound that made his huge body quiver with silent suspense. Yet, he was no coward. Far from it. He listened, and heard no more.

  Suddenly, he flung the door open, snapping an electric switch that flooded all the tall wide room with light.

  “Wer ist’s?” he snarled.

  No one there at all. The gleaming doors of his safe were closed, he saw, and the customary night light burned above them. The paper was still rustling on his carved oak desk, but there was no visible hand to move it. Suddenly, as he tiptoed toward it with pointed gun, a frightened mouse leaped down. It scurried like a gray streak down the edge of the wainscoting.

  No intruder here. He had been frightened by a mouse, that was all. By a mouse, and a nightmare dream.

  “Ach!” he growled, shaking his head.

  He shuffled down a short corridor leading from the headquarters room. He tapped upon the outer door of Vrow Alys Dervanter’s suite. Meditatively, he scratched his stomach.

  “Sweedhard,” he whispered, “are you asleeb?”

  “What iss it?” her drowsy voice replied.

  “Nefer mind. It is nuttings.”

  He returned to his desk and rang a buzzer. A brisk brigadier general reported immediately from the smoke-filled anteroom beyond, where a handful of aides and sentries kept the night-long watch. Only by that anteroom and his own bedchamber was there entrance to the headquarters room.

  “It is me,” said von Schmee grimly. “Do not stand there looking at me like I was a piece of cheese.”

  “Pardon, Excellency—”

  Von Schmee waved away the stammering apologies with a gesture of his hand.

  “Who has entered here, General Mittel?” he said.

  “No one, Excellency.”

  “Who has gone out?”

  Brigadier General Mittel coughed discreetly.

  “The lady, if His Excellency will pardon—”

  “What lady?” growled von Schmee.

  “The lady in the peasant dress, with the elegant brown legs and the yellow braids,” said the brigadier in confused surprised. “Was she not Madame Alys?”

  “The vixen is not a lady,” snarled von Schmee with a dark look on his f
ace. “If she has been out, upon what business? And how has she re-entered? Question the sentries at my window. Inquire if she returned that way.”

  He padded softly down the corridor again. At the door of Vrow Alys’ suite, he listened to her quiet breathing. He had regained his desk when Brigadier Mittel returned.

  “The lady did indeed enter by His Excellency’s bedchamber window,” he said, coughing behind his hand. “If His Excellency will pardon me, my compliments . . . . An enviable conquest . . . . The lady had a very chic air about her. . . .”

  “Madame Alys?” said von Schmee, with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  “She was not recognized as Madame Alys by the sentries at your window,” explained Mittel hastily. “A true peasant girl, but very charming. It was understood . . . A rendezvous . . . . His Excellency need not fear my discretion, nor that of the sentries . . . . After all, we live but once . . . . Only the brave deserve the fair, as the poets say, ha, ha, ha! If His Excellency will pardon—”

  “Not Madame Alys!”

  Von Schmee’s broad face had grown deathly ill. The blue veins throbbed on his temples. He clapped both hands to his heart. For a moment, he breathed with difficulty. A terrible intuition had come to him.

  “Excellency!”

  Von Schmee hurled an ink well at General Mittel’s head.

  “Fool! Fool!” he shouted. “Fool three times damned! It is K-13 who has been in!”

  He leaped to his safe and spun the dials of it. Thank God, nothing had been touched. He had been too quick and wary, or else the construction of the safe had balked even the incomprehensible skill of the master spy. He leaned against the opened doors, recovering his breath.

  “Change all the guard!” he cried. “Arrest, and hold in close confinement for court-martial the sentries stationed at my window! Send out the alarm! Capture this false peasant girl! Do not shoot! I will have K-13 alive!”

  A reaction from his fear came over him. Laughter rumbled in his throat. He washed his huge hairy hands together.

  “We have K-13 now,” he said. “Send in von Kleinhals and his aide! Likewise, an orderly-sergeant attached to von Kleinhals’ department, by name Sergeant Ordonnanz Wolf.”

  With a nervous hand, von Schmee pulled out the priceless reports of Number Two. Untouched. He sat at his desk and ran through them. But what was this? His lips moved with silent ejaculations as he examined the papers more closely. Suddenly, he struck his forehead a sounding blow.

  “Asleep!” he muttered. “Ach! How could I have been so stupid?”

  As he had remembered the analysis, three veteran British divisions under Major-General Sir Keith Cothaven were reported lying heavily entrenched at Laraine Wood, while at Hill 439, thirty miles to the east along the Somme, a single brigade of battle-exhausted troops under Lord Worleigh, without fresh reserves and depleted of artillery, was straggled out along three miles of front. Against Worleigh at Hill 439, von Schmee had aimed the thrust of his eighty thousand picked Invincibles, in a blow that would sunder the British line and open the wedge to Paris.

  “Madness! Madness!” he gasped. “My eyes were blind! I must have been asleep!”

  Now, analyzing the reports again, he saw that he had directly reversed the true situation. It was Cothaven at Laraine Wood who lay helpless, and Worleigh at Hill 439 who was impregnable.

  He wiped his sweating forehead. Rapidly, he drafted a series of revised battle plans. His lips moved soundlessly. His shaven skull was wrinkled like the hide of a rhinoceros as he bent all the energies of his sagacious brain to this game of super chess.

  “Thank God, it is not irretrievable! I would have been decimated. I must have been mad.”

  Furiously, he rang his battery of buzzers.

  “Colonel von Keinhals, without delay!”

  He paced up and down. His flat, naked feet padded on soft rugs and gray slate flags. He scratched his swaying stomach.

  “My whole staff, Kleinhals! Immediately!”

  Von Kleinhals had only thrust his red-bearded face in. He disappeared at once. In a few minutes, von Schmee’s division and brigade commanders began making their entrances. One by one, they clicked to the salute, staring at their commander with more or less well-concealed astonishment.

  “What is loose?” shouted von Schmee, waving his arms at them. “Do not stare at me like educated pigs!”

  His eyes were crimson with anger. He thought he heard someone snicker. He strode up and snapped his fingers beneath the nose of a fat major-general with a shining baby face.

  “Revised plans of battle!” he said to his assembled staff. “We attack Cot- haven at Laraine Wood! Artillery, no preliminary bombardment! Concentrate on Hill 439 as a feint. Tanks march with the infantry! At eleven tonight, we thrust through en masse! The same hour, but change of objective! Get under way!”

  He waved his huge, black-haired hands furiously. The general with the round baby face was still staring with bulging eyes. Suddenly, he burst into deep repressed chuckles. The tears came into his eyes and he held his ribs, while his fat body jiggled all over. Right into the face of Herr General-Leutnant von Schmee he laughed.

  “What is loose?” screeched von Schmee. “Why hive you the giggles, Herr General Major Schmid? At what hour did I become such a monkey-face that you must laugh every time you look at me?”

  He was purple with rage. He banged a great fist on his desk till his jewel-hilted sword slid over the edge and clattered to the floor. He put up his hand furiously to rumple his magnificent beard. But his hand clutched nothing.

  Helplessly, he fumbled, over his breast, about his chin, and a look of blank amazement gathered on his face. He stared down. He saw then that all the luxuriant, spiky, thick black beard had been scissored off close to his chin. Worst of all, the edges of it were trimmed in deep scallops.

  “Mein Bart!” he said. “Was ist los mit ihm? Wo ist er gegangen?”

  The beautiful, proud beard was gone, the pride of his soul, the adornment of his face. All gone. Gone with last year’s snows and the dust of withered flowers. Vanished without a trace. Spurlos verschwunden. His hand fumbled at his breast. His thick lips trembled, and tears came into his eyes.

  “My beard! What is loose with him? Where is he gone?”

  Yes, he had been plucked. He, General-Leutnant Paul Friedrich Hermann von Schmee, Frieherr von Eglesdorf, Graf von Schlossheim, and so forth, and so forth, had been shorn like a naked lamb.

  Colonel von Kleinhals advanced gravely to him then, and unpinned from the breast of his striped silk pajamas a cigarette paper that bore the single word—

  “K-13”

  Chapter VII

  The Betrayer

  All morning Big Dick Fahnestock lay hidden in the dank, musty hay mound behind the château of Oldemonde. At times squads of soldiers went hurrying by on the hunt for him, led by sharp-voiced sub-lieutenants, empty scabbards slapping against their thighs, carrying bayoneted rifles at the port.

  “Recht! Recht! Gewehr—Auf! Doppeltempo—Marsch! Hep! Hep! Hep!”

  They were looking for him in places farther away from Oklemonde than the hayfield behind the cedar wood. Particularly, the search was being carried on down in the swamps by the sluggish Meser River, two or three miles away. Yet, on two separate occasions, the field was thoroughly explored. Peasant women working down at the far end were closely questioned. The endless mounds of hay were tossed about and probed with sharp bayonet thrusts. Once the edge of a bright steel blade ripped through his coat sleeve as he lay quiet as a dead man on the ground.

  The turning over of one more handful of straw then would have exposed him to the rifles. But an impatient voice called the searcher away.

  The hot noon came and passed. He lay for long hours without motion, bathed with sweat in the torrid heat. Where was K-13? There had come no sign nor message. He boiled with impatience. Yet there was nothing to do but wait. She knew the game, and he did not. Any movement on his part now might only hasten her betrayal.

&nbs
p; He tried to learn, from brief snatches of conversation he heard as the searching parties passed, whether the girl had been caught. There was much laughing and banter among the Germans concerning a battle soon to be engaged in, mingled with boastful promises that they would be drinking beer in the Paris cabarets in a week.

  “Well, old horse, a couple of these Parisian ladies on your knee, hey? That is better than being a sausage-maker. Can you parley-vous?”

  “Only with my hands, ha, ha, ha!”

  “Well, the ladies of Paris will understand.”

  “They say they are very kind-hearted. They say they like them big—”

  A roar then from some sweating unter-leutnant.

  “Silence in the ranks! Gewekr—Über! Hep! Hep! Hep!”

  There was no word spoken of K-13. Dick hoped that it was a good sign. Yet it might mean the very worst.

  He learned that dogs had been sent for to trail him down, none being at Oldemonde.

  * * * * *

  At one o’clock, the peasant women that were mowing the last grass down at the far end of the field laid down their scythes. It was the dinner hour. They sprawled themselves down behind hedgerows, out of the sun. Their fair, cheerful voices came to Dick as they investigated their ample dinner baskets. A great hunger seized him.

  Two of the women detached themselves from their companions and came sauntering over toward his end of the field. One of them had thick ropes of yellow hair hanging down over her shoulders. Far away, he saw them gleaming in the sunlight.

  When she and her companion had drawn nearer, however, he saw that she was not the graceful girl he had been expecting. Her cheeks were rosy, it was true, and her eyes a bright ocean blue, and no doubt her soul was virtuous. But she was built like a haystack and her legs were the legs of an elephant. Out of her could have been carved three such girls as the slender elfin shape that had vanished from Dick so fleetly in the darkness.

  “What a box-car full of legs!” he groaned.

  The two women carried food baskets. Sauntering casually, they approached and sat themselves down on the shady side of the very stack that concealed him. They talked together in Flemish, with loud, hilarious voices. Unfortunately, he understood none of it. An impulse came to him to make his presence known, and ask by pantomime for a handout from their baskets. It was a shame for a couple of big fat girls like that to stuff themselves so full of food.