Secret Operative K-13

by Joel Townsley Rogers

  “What were you looking at, K-13?” the executioner snarled.

  “At the moon,” said von Reuter.

  Wolf’s head was twitching nervously. He had begun to shudder at the sound of the heavy midnight bell.

  “What have you done with Fahnestock?” he said.

  “Is there anything more you want to know?” replied von Reuter gently.

  Wolf pulled forth a cigarette paper and spread it delicately on his palm.

  “I found this memorandum,” he said. “There were no other papers of any value. What does it mean? It will not be harder for you if you show some willingness to help us.”

  “You do not know the code?” said von Reuter.

  “The code will be discovered,” said Wolf. “The Nachrichtenamt is patient.”

  “I will save you wear and tear on your brains,” von Reuter said, “since you have need of conserving all you possess. It is not code. It is Latin—dente lupus, cornu taurus petit. It is from the ‘Satires’ of the ancient poet Horace, and the meaning is, ‘The wolf attacks with his teeth, the bull with his horns.’”

  “The significance?” said Wolf sharply.

  There was a strained and expectant look on von Reuter’s handsome face. He was listening, listening, listening. And, suddenly, he heard it, faint and far off, a sound that swiftly would grow louder, drowning out all other sounds in Oldemonde. He heard it unmistakably, though it was only a faint whisper yet, a low wild-bee humming sound from the direction of the moon. A light flashed in his stormy eyes. He straightened up, throwing his head back.

  Wolf had not heard. He pressed his gaunt bony face closer to von Reuter, staring with hard and merciless eyes.

  “The significance of the ancient poet’s words, K-13?” he demanded again, tapping his finger repeatedly on the paper in his palm.

  “The significance is that all things fight with whatever weapons they may have, executioner,” replied von Reuter in a louder, more jubilant voice. “The wolf attacks with his teeth, the bull with his horns. And I, being neither wolf nor bull, attack—with TNT!”

  They heard it then, Wolf and Abendstern and the rest of them heard it, the crescendo droning of the British ships that were coming up across the sky! Cursing and yelling, they fought their way to the windows of the room. They clawed at one another. Rank was forgotten in a frenzy of blind terror. Not more than a thousand feet above Oldemonde, there came the roaring Handley-Page night bombers in a wild duck wedge, sweeping fast across the center of the moon drenched sky!

  Ritter von Reuter threw back his head. He laughed into the face of the executioner as the first crash fell, an appalling and terrible crash.

  Chapter XII

  The Seventh Shot

  At the striking of midnight, Big Dick Fahnestock broke off his interminable pacing by the border of the fish pond. He knew now that von Reuter would not join him, though he waited the night through. The ultimate hour appointed had come and gone, and the hounds of the Nachrichtenamt had caught K-13 at last.

  Now, here’s where von Schmee goes spinning down in fire, and a few more choice Huns with him, thought Big Dick Fahnestock.

  He might have spun the propeller of his ship then, and hopped off into the night. The sward was level and hardrolled. The way was clear. He had a runway of four hundred yards against the wind. In an hour he could have been safe home, and snuggling beneath his own blankets. It was what K-13 had told him to do, yet the thought never came to him to do it. Chewing a blade of grass, he stalked across the darkness, straight into von Schmee’s hornets’ nest.

  This is the night! he thought. We’re going to crash head on, Butcher.

  He had no weapon—von Kleinhals had not been carrying a gun—but he did not want any. He rather despised any weapon smaller than a rifle or an ax. If he could not get to von Schmee unarmed, then he would grab a Mauser from some dumbhead sentry and blaze his way in. But he was going in.

  Tonight’s the night, von Schmee! he thought.

  With head bent low, with his topcoat collar turned up and half his face muffled, unarmed he strode into the hornets’ nest.

  He was caught up in the confused gray-green streams that were pouring in and out of Oldemonde’s door. Scurrying officers and men bumped blindly into him, gasped apologies with half salutes and pushed on past without a glance. Their faces were white and strained. Already an atmosphere of confusion and terror had descended on Oldemonde, as reports began rolling in from the front. Down in the muddy bottomlands of the Laraine, Keith Cothaven was hammering. How terribly he was hammering was mercifully not yet known in full. But there was enough information already in hand to mark the faces of the German staff with a terror that grew greater every moment.

  “There’s been a mistake! There’s been a mistake! There’s been a mistake!” a withered old two-star general kept whimpering to himself as he ran by.

  Dick was borne in unchallenged amidst the seething, gasping turmoil. In the great, flag-paved entrance hall of Oldemonde, the crowd of milling Germans was greater. Squeezed shoulder to shoulder, they were stirring slowly around in packs like the movements of a heavy sea. He found himself wedged in, carried along with the confusion. For the moment he was helpless, in spite of his weight and strength. Slowly he pressed his way forward in the direction of von Schmee’s headquarters room.

  The staring eyes of men around him seemed blind. When a free space opened, they went bumping headlong into one another. Though all of them were struggling to push their way forward, it was too plain that most of them were moving no place in particular. A chalky-faced junior officer carrying a message plunged head-on into Dick, and with an almost inaudible groan collapsed immediately in a dead faint. Yet Dick knew that the youngster’s popping eyes had not even focused on him. It was pure nervous exhaustion. There he lay on the floor amid the weaving, scuffling feet, and no one noticed him, no one stooped to aid him.

  “There’s been a mistake! There’s been a mistake!” the shriveled old two-star general cried in a singsong, pushing his way back in the direction from which he had just come.

  A shouting sub-lieutenant came fighting his way through the turmoil, slugging with fists and elbows at men of all ranks.

  “Falkenhayn must send more troops!” he shouted. “In God’s name, where is the artillery?”

  There was no one to answer him. No one paid any attention to him. He fought his way viciously athwart the slowly moving currents, cursing and shouting in a hoarse voice till some officer felled him with a pistol butt.

  Down in the bottomlands of Laraine Wood, Keith Cothaven was hammering. Hammering, hammering. . . . The massed regiments of the Invincibles were tangled in the trap.

  Yet, how terrible the trap would be was not yet understood completely at Oldemonde. The Invincibles themselves, huddled like cattle together in their massed ranks, surging in wave after wave over the mounting piles of their dead, blind and leaderless, slaughtered by whole companies, probably even yet did not understand the full horror of their defeat. They were the Invincibles, von Schmee’s great Invincibles. They had never been defeated. They did not believe that they could die, poor cattle.

  “There’s been a mistake! A horrible mistake!” the ancient lunatic of a general went crying by a third time.

  And now the tears were running down his face.

  Two guards came pushing through the milling mass toward Dick. They were holding by the arms a kicking, writhing field officer who was yelling like a fiend.

  “Give me a rifle for Christ’s sake!” he screeched. “I’ve got three brothers down in that Hell! Give me a rifle! I’ll stop Cothaven!”

  He flipped and twisted himself around like a wildcat, trying to bite the hands of the men who were pushing him along. His flesh was the color of gray clay, and saliva was drooling from his mouth.

  “Crazy as a bedbug, sir,” one of the guards gasped to Dick, when for a moment they were caught and held in the throng face to face. “Three brothers, sir, dead with the Brandenburg Guards. The Guards
have been wiped out.”

  Terrible night!

  * * * * *

  It was easier than he had hoped to reach von Schmee, though there were three communicating rooms he must pass through from the great outer hall to reach von Schmee’s inner headquarters.

  He pushed his way into the headquarters suite. Discipline and watchfulness had been dumped by the board. In the confusion, he was not challenged. Through the guardroom he forged, into the communications room, into von Schmee’s anteroom. Radio and wired telegraph were crackling a terrific staccato. At the telephone switchboard, three young soldiers with shaven heads stood rapidly plugging connections, while red call-lights sparkled over the board like fireflies. Swift as the weaving Fates, their quick hands darted. Crackle-crack-crack flashed the blue lights of the radio, and the telegraphs clattered with the fury of a hailstorm.

  “Eighteen enemy night-bombers in wedge formation at 11:45 west ten miles from Mauberge!” an operator shouted. “Flying at a thousand, convoyed by combat ships, heading for Oldemonde! Orderly! Orderly! Orderly! Orderly!”

  Dick pushed through into the anteroom, where the scene of the great entrance hall was repeated on a smaller scale. Von Schmee’s aides, his guards and messengers were swarming around in headless confusion. A brisk, sharp-faced brigadier general came weaving rapidly through the throng from von Schmee’s room, holding a sheaf of papers scrawled with messages high overhead. He was General Mittel, von Schmee’s own personal aide. His cap was off, his coat was ripped open down his chest, and a pulse beat like a triphammer in his throat.

  “The Saxons are falling back!” he panted. “Five divisions of Prussians standing fast, and the Saxon swine have knifed them! Show me a Saxon, and you’ve showed me the guts of a fly!”

  A blond private wearing the uniform of the 17th Saxon—the only division of the Invincibles that was not Prussian—bumped his way forward. He careened against Dick’s chest. His glance flashed up to Dick’s collar markings. Kleinhals had been of the Saxons.

  “Show me a Saxon, and you’ve showed me tripe!” Mittel went raving.

  The Saxon private grasped Dick by the arm.

  “Stop that blasted Prussian’s mouth, sir, or by God I’ll do it!” he choked.

  Dick wrenched himself free. The infuriated soldier drove at Mittel. He swung both arms wildly at the brigadier’s face. Then the two of them were the center of a wild, milling turmoil. In the confusion Dick reached von Schmee’s door.

  The massive oaken door was opened half a foot. Through the crack, he could see a portion of the great headquarters room into which he had been hustled as a prisoner twice before—the first time twenty-four hours ago almost to the dot, the second time at ten o’clock. Only two hours ago, in this great room, he had listened to his death sentence from von Schmee’s lips.

  Yet, much had changed in those two hours. Much had changed with von Schmee, and much with the Invincibles. And Big Dick Fahnestock now was unguarded and unbound.

  Junior officers were slipping in and out of the room continually, rushing fresh communications of disaster to the Butcher. A great, yellow-bearded sergeant stood on guard at the door, struggling vainly to keep some semblance of orderliness and discipline. He sighted Dick and clicked to the salute.

  “Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!” he gasped. “What name for His Excellency?”

  It had been Dick’s intention to go as far as he was able under the name and reputation of the man whose uniform he was wearing. But suddenly he had grown sick of pretense. He pushed himself up hard against the yellow-bearded sentry, gripping the breast pockets of his coat.

  “Announce Lieutenant Richard Fahnestock of the Royal Flying Corps!” he said.

  “Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!” cried the sentry.

  He swung the door open. Then abruptly the name that Dick had given him must have registered on his excited senses. He heeled around with a dazed look, and his hand clutched his pistol.

  “Your credentials?” he said.

  “This!” said Dick.

  He was holding his fists on his breast, as a fighter does when he is prepared for action at close quarters. His hard right fist cracked up like a hammer. It struck the huge yellow-bearded German on the button at the end of a six-inch jolt. He faded to the floor, and didn’t even know what hit him.

  Dick stepped quickly through the great oak door and closed and locked it behind him. The moonlight shone through the high, barred windows. A hearthfire burned. Von Schmee was alone, except for the green-eyed Holland woman, Alys Dervanter of the Nachrichtenamt, who crouched on the floor at his feet.

  Von Schmee had his pistol in his hand. He stood behind his desk, eyeing Dick with a burning stare.

  Now Dick was unarmed, if it can be said that a tiger with full-grown claws about to spring is unarmed. He had no gun. But he had his own two very terrible hands. Slowly and softly, he crept across the floor toward the black-bearded German who stood behind the desk.

  Dying logs flickered in a great marble fireplace to the left hand of von Schmee. The red shadows darted and faded across his little gleaming eyes. His pendulous abdomen moved like a bellows with his slow and profound breathing.

  He did not use his gun. He had not seen Dick, though he was staring directly at him. He bent over his desk again, where his large-scale war map was spread out. He was still manipulating pins in it. But their numbers had changed since the hour when Dick had been here before. Now the blue, orange, yellow, green, violet and black pins upon the map were fewer. Now the red pins, which had been a scant three in number, had been increased to thirty or more, each one a British regiment, sprinkled thick about the trap of Laraine Wood.

  A thin scattering of latest battlefront communications lay about on the map. The floor about von Schmee’s desk was littered with crumpled balls of paper. Dick was close enough now to see the gray sweat on von Schmee’s face, to see the working of his thick, moist lips beneath the stubble of his beard.

  Silently, von Schmee muttered. With glazed eyes he stared at the latest reports spread out on the map before him. His stubby fingers moved about. He pulled out a violet pin, a yellow pin, two blue pins, and tossed them over his shoulder. Rapidly he thrust ten more of the fatal red pins into the map. Again he read, and moved the pins about. The whimpering woman who crouched at his feet stirred. He pushed her away with his foot. Suddenly he made a quick gesture and plucked out four black pins in one handful.

  “The Brandenburg Guards, Kleinhals!” he shouted, staring up at Dick with a glassy look. “The Brandenburg Guards are wiped out!”

  He uttered a hoarse sound like a sea lion’s bellow that might have been a sob or a great laugh. Before his face he held in a strangling fist the four black pins, shaking them with murderous fury.

  “The Brandenburg Guards, Kleinhals!” he shouted. “The dogs didn’t know how to retreat, but they knew how to die! They’ve lost me themselves, the eternally damned swine! What good are they to me now?”

  He hurled the black pins to the floor.

  “The Brandenburg Guards—may they rot in hell!” he shouted. “I counted on them, Kleinhals.”

  His glazed eyes lightened. A piercing gleam came in them. He bent across his desk, staring hard at Big Dick Fahnestock, who had crept up within ten paces.

  “You are not Kleinhals,” he said.

  He lifted up his Luger and covered Dick. His left hand reached for a buzzer. Suddenly he burst into a roar of laughter.

  “You are not Kleinhals,” he said. “The Invincibles are not invincible. I am not God.”

  Dick knew then that von Schmee was a lunatic.

  “I have come to find von Reuter,” he said. “Don’t try to block me, or what will happen to you won’t be anything for the lady here to see.”

  Von Schmee’s face was black. A look of diabolic passion came over him.

  “Tell me what you have done with K-13,” said Dick. “I’m here to help him, Butcher. Come out from behind your beard. Don’t stand there swallowing your own spit.”

>   Von Schmee’s teeth were clicking together quickly and viciously.

  “Stand back!” he said. “I am a marksman. Do not be fooled.”

  “If K-13 is dead,” said Dick softly, “I’ll bury your fat carcass beside him. If he’s still alive, I’ll swap you life for life. What have you done with him? Spill it, or I’ll pull it out of your windpipe with these two paws. Don’t ring for help again. There’s no help for you. I have about as much respect for that gun in your hand as I have for a pea-shooter.”

  He crouched from the knees, ready to spring, hunching his powerful shoulders forward. He measured the distance across the desk. He was quick as a flash when he tried. But there is nothing so quick as lead.

  He heard a heavy knocking on the locked door behind him, but did not let it trouble him.

  “Excellenz! Excellenz! Excellenz!”

  Half a dozen frightened voices were shouting beyond the door.

  “Excellenz! Herr General! General Von Schmee!”

  It would take more than the yelling of all the Huns in the All Mightiest’s armies to break down that thick oak door, Dick thought grimly. They’d better try dynamite or an ax, and stop their damned bellowing.

  He watched von Schmee’s hairy hand tightening about the Luger butt. He measured the distance and tried to estimate his own endurance. He knew that many a man has been drilled through the stomach or some other vital organ by a high-velocity steel-jacket, and has managed to keep his feet for a long time afterward. To be sure, the clean drilling of rifle steel and the ragged smashing of pistol lead are entirely different things to stand up and meet at five paces off. Yet, if a man has a fighting heart, there is a chance that he can still fight on when by all the laws of nature he should be dead.

  The problem was, must the first shot necessarily drop him? If it didn’t, Dick knew that von Schmee would never have time to get home another. Von Schmee knew it, too. If he could rush von Schmee head-on, and take that first smash and keep on going, perhaps he could get von Schmee before his strength failed.