Читать книгу War Masters from the Orient - Emile C. Tepperman - Страница 5

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IT was the seventh month after the entry of the United States into the Second World War, as it was already officially termed. Two million eight hundred thousand stalwart young Americans had been equipped with arms, hastily trained, and shipped across the Atlantic to bolster up the cracking battle-line of the League of Nations Sanctioning Powers. Materials of war had poured across the ocean in equally amazing quantities.

In seven months, the United States had stripped herself of men and materials in order—as the propagandists put it this time—'to make the world safe for Liberty'.

So cleverly had foreign diplomacy maneuvered—so brilliantly had foreign financed propaganda played its cards—that the objections of those veterans who still recalled the tortured days and nights of the trenches of 1917 had been smothered under a wave of high-pitched national feeling.

America was plunged into the war...

A regiment of fresh conscripts was marching down Broadway to the accompaniment of blaring bands and the raucous cheers of the thousands who lined the curbs. From every window of the tall buildings on either side of New York's great thoroughfare, bits of paper and confetti fluttered down upon the marching men.

At the docks, four huge transports were waiting to take them aboard, together with other regiments which were hastily leaving to plug up the gaps in the Twelfth Division on the Southern Front.

In the Hudson River, eight huge ships of war rode at anchor. These were to be the convoys for the transports. There were six long, sleek cruisers, and the capital ships, Dakota and Oregon. The Dakota was the flagship of the Atlantic fleet, and Admiral Stanley Winston, who was going across to take command of the Mediterranean blockade for the Sanctioning Powers, would soon board her.

At Broadway and Forty-second Street, a black limousine purred at the corner, waiting for a break in the ranks of the marching draftees so that it could proceed west.

The man at the wheel was pockmarked, with gnarled, bony hands and a face upon which there was a set expression of stolidity. He wore a chauffeur's cap and uniform, but his bearing was far from being that of a servant.

In the rear of the car sat a man and a woman. The man was grossly fat, and small eyes peered furtively out from between folds of flesh. There was a queer, unhealthy color in his cheeks. His companion was taller than he. Her dark hair was braided around her head, and set off as in a frame by the high collar of her ermine coat. Her red lips formed a bright line of color in her otherwise white face. The coat was open at the throat, revealing a string of shimmering pearls which lay across her breast.

The woman, as well as the two men, was quite distinctly of Eastern origin. A keen observer might have placed them as belonging to one of those Eurasian races of mixed European and Asiatic descent—which are notoriously known to have bred the most unprincipled spies and intriguers in history.

At the feet of the fat man and the woman, a bundle lay stretched across the floor of the car, covered by an auto robe. This bundle was wriggling frantically, and for a moment the robe was thrown back, revealing a young, freckled-faced boy, whose arms were tied behind his back, and who was cruelly gagged with a greasy automobile rag thrust into his mouth and tied behind his head with a luggage strap.

The boy's eyes expressed desperate anger as he labored to a half-sitting position, and tried to wriggle himself still higher.

The woman, who had been staring straight ahead at the marching men, over the shoulder of the chauffeur, glanced down and saw the struggles of the boy. She nudged her companion, said:

"That brat is up again, Dmitri. Some one will notice him while we are stopped here."

She spoke in English, with a trace of soft, slurring accent. Her beautiful features showed no tinge of emotion at the lad's pitiful struggles.

The fat man stirred, and frowned. He said nothing, but raised a foot, planted the sole squarely in the boy's face, and pushed. The bound lad's head cracked against the floor with a thud, and he lay still.

AT that moment the marching men halted, and a traffic officer motioned to the limousine to proceed. The chauffeur shifted into first, and shot the car across, then sped west toward the Hudson.

The woman said chillingly to the fat man beside her: "It will be too bad if you have cracked the boy's skull. We will need to have him conscious for a while, Dmitri."

Dmitri grunted, bent over and pinched the lad's pallid face. The boy uttered a muffled groan through the gag, and his eyes opened wide. The fat fingers had left a livid mark on his cheek.

Dmitri laughed. "You needn't worry," he said to the woman. "This boy is hard to kill—like his friend."

The boy glared up at his tormentor.

The woman looked down at him coldly, and remarked to her companion: "He has a lot of spirit; he will be hard to break."

"We'll break him, all right," the man chuckled. "We've broken harder ones."

Playfully he raised his foot again, poked his toe at a spot in the boy's elbow. The young captive squirmed in agony, and the fat man's chuckle rose higher.

"You see, Lina, my dear, there is a good deal of science to this business. One must use finesse. My toe poked him in what these Americans call the funny bone. Just a little tap, and you see the agony it causes. There are many little spots like that in the human body. I assure you this boy will not be able to resist my—er—persuasion for long."

The woman's gray-green, expressionless eyes regarded the fat man for a moment, and she shuddered. "I should hate, Dmitri, to be the subject of your attentions," she said. "It is not wise to have you for an enemy."

Dmitri bowed. "Thank you, Lina," he murmured. "Let us hope that the Leopard will appreciate my services when the time comes for dispensing rewards."

At Eleventh Avenue, the limousine swung onto the ramp leading to the elevated express highway, sped north to Riverside Drive, then up the Drive to One Hundred and Third Street. It pulled up before a brownstone house around the corner from the Roerich Museum. In the first floor window of this house was a modest sign which read:

Dmitri Osman

Studio of the Dance

Cold wind roared in from the Hudson, causing pedestrians to walk with their heads down, more occupied in holding onto their hats than in watching the queer bundle which Dmitri and the chauffeur carried into the house.

The door was opened without their ringing by a skinny Oriental in a white house jacket, who grinned knowingly at sight of the squirming bundle, and lent a hand to the two men in carrying it into a room at the rear of the long, dark hall. The woman followed them in.

The room which they entered was darkened; there were two windows, but heavy steel shutters allowed no light to filter in. The walls were bare, and the only furniture was a cot with a single chair beside it, and a desk in one corner.

Dmitri and the chauffeur dumped the boy on the cot while the woman lit a cigarette and watched dispassionately.

Then the chauffeur, at a nod from the fat man, untied the lad's hands, and removed the gag. He stepped back, drawing from a shoulder holster an automatic which he trained on the youthful prisoner.

The boy sat up on the cot with an effort, moved his arms, painfully, in order to restore circulation. He gazed from one to the other of his captors, and his young, freckled face wrinkled in perplexity. Finally he let his glance settle on the fat man and said:

"Maybe you'll tell me what's the big idea of the kidnapping, mister?"

Dmitri stepped close to him, brought his fat, pudgy hand down in a vicious, openhanded slap that stung the boy's cheek to a vivid purple hue. "You will answer questions," he purred, "and not ask them."

The boy was flung back on the cot by the force of the blow. He did not cower, but lay there, glaring up at the other.

Dmitri bent over him. "Your name," he grated, "is Tim Donovan. You are the boy who assists the man known as Operator 5. You are his constant companion. I want to know if he has recently received a visit from a young lady named Katerina Saratoff?" He bent lower, his eyes fastened on the boy's. "Well?"

Tim Donovan

The lad's cheek still stung from the vicious blow. He pressed his lips tight to keep back the tears that came involuntarily to his eyes, and suddenly raised his knees, kicked upward with both feet. The heels of his shoes caught the fat man in the stomach, and Dmitri was thrown backward, doubled up in agony, both hands pressed to his paunch.

The boy grinned, shouted: "That's for the smack you took at my funny bone, Fatty! Maybe—"

He got no further, for the stocky, pockmarked chauffeur had rushed in with his automatic clubbed. He brought the butt down on the boy's head, and the youngster buckled over on the cot, unconscious. Blood oozed from his scalp at the spot where the gun-butt had struck. He twitched a moment, then lay still.

The fat man was groaning with pain. He backed into the chair, leaned far forward, still clutching at his stomach, swaying from side to side, and moaning loudly.

The woman paid no attention to the fat man, but hurried to the cot, put a hand on the boy's heart. After a second she nodded, then turned to the chauffeur, her eyes flashing.

"You are an utter fool, Selig!" she snapped. "Don't you see that this boy deliberately kicked Dmitri in order to goad you into doing something like this? Now we cannot question him further!"

Selig hung his head. "I am sorry, Lina."

She didn't answer him, but turned to the fat man, helped him to get up.

"Come, Dmitri," she said. "I'll help you into the office. Leave this brat here till he recovers. There is much to be done."

She aided him to arise and walked him, still groaning, to the door.

The chauffeur remained in the room with the unconscious boy.

"When he awakes," the woman said to the chauffeur from the threshold, "call us."

The fat man groaned, said through pain-twisted lips: "Yes. Call—me. I will have something to—say to him!"

The chauffeur nodded, and watched them leave. Then he seated himself in the chair which Osman had vacated and settled himself to wait for Tim Donovan to come to.