Читать книгу Grey Shadow - George E. Rochester - Страница 4

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Imperatively, a harsh voice, commanding silence, rang out above the din and chatter in Lorenz’s crowded basement café. Startled, every dancing couple halted. Those who were not dancing looked up sharply from the stained and wooden-topped tables at which they were seated, to stare through the smoke-laden atmosphere at the grey-uniformed picket military which had appeared in the doorway.

“Stop that piano!” Again the voice of the grim-faced picket sergeant barked the order. It was Lorenz himself fat, perspiring, and shirt-sleeved, who waddled hastily to obey. Name of a dog, what was this? What did the military want here? He had been serving no meals—nothing—without first seeing the necessary food tickets. He was a loyal and honest citizen. Nothing to hide——

“Line the walls! Everyone will produce identification papers for inspection!” came the next order.

Ah, that was it! Identification papers. Then the picket must be in search of some deserter. From the piano, his fat and podgy hands folded together, Lorenz surveyed his customers with quickened interest.

A motley crowd they were, such a crowd as might only be found in a third-rate place like Lorenz’s. Uniforms predominated, the tidy dark blue of the German fleet being most in evidence. But here and there, worn and mud-stained field-glory of the trenches bespoke of leave from the Line.

And somewhere amongst them was a deserter. Well, it was to be hoped the sergeant would smell him out quickly. Cowardly rat to desert, when every man was wanted out yonder on the Western Front. If he, Lorenz, was younger he himself would be out there fighting against the Englanders. Always he had deplored that he was too old——

“Your papers!” The sergeant had halted in front of him, and barked at him, with hand outstretched.

“But you know me!” wheezed Lorenz protestingly. “I am Lorenz, the proprietor——”

“I know no one to-night!” rasped the sergeant. “Your papers!”

A sudden paralysing thought came to Lorenz, leaving his flabby face ashen, his eyes protruding. The age limit had been raised again, and this was a rounding up! A search for more cannon-fodder with which to feed the hungry English guns! With shaking fingers, he produced his papers from the capacious pocket of his woollen waistcoat.

“I cannot fight!” he gasped. “My heart—no tribunal would pass me——”

Brusquely the sergeant took his papers, examined them, and handed them back.

“Now you!” he rapped, turning to Adolph, the waiter. Rapidly he scanned the man’s papers and thrust them back.

“An invalid, eh?” he sneered, his contemptuous gaze taking in Adolph’s hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. “Why don’t you ask to be sent to the Front, where there is the chance of a swift, clean death from a bullet through the head? Better that”—he broke off as a fit of coughing racked Adolph’s emaciated frame—“than dying like that!”

He moved on, examining the papers of everyone in the place. Then, from the leather pouch on his belt, he produced a notice printed in heavy black type and pinned it to the wall.

Impelled by curiosity, Lorenz waddled forward, and, peering over the sergeant’s shoulder, read:

REWARD!

FIFTY THOUSAND MARKS!

The above reward will be paid to anyone giving information which will lead to the apprehension of the British spy known as Grey Shadow. Anyone found guilty of wittingly withholding such information will be shot.

(Signed) General Lodz,

Military Commandant of Wilhelmshaven.

“Grey Shadow!” wheezed Lorenz excitedly. “Here in Wilhelmshaven?”

“Yes, here in Wilhelmshaven!” The sergeant turned and surveyed him. “He has been traced this far. He is on the run. He is trying to get out of Germany. But there is a net drawn round this town through which he will not slip!”

He jabbed Lorenz on the chest with a forefinger which hurt, and said: “So keep your eyes open!” Then to Adolph: “And you, too!”

Wheeling, he rapped out a harsh order to the picket, and clumped with them from the place. The departure of the picket served to unleash the eager and excited crowd lining the walls. They surged forward, jostling to read the notice the sergeant had pinned up.

Grey Shadow here in Wilhelmshaven. Incredible! Impossible! There was not one there that night who had not heard of Grey Shadow, that mysterious and elusive British spy on whose head the German High Command had placed such a price.

The stories told of Grey Shadow were many. Was it not said of him that for nine long months, by means of forged commission and identification papers, he had served in the field as a trusted Staff officer of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria?

There was audacity for you! Audacity which had spelt tragedy for the Fatherland. For vital indeed had been the information which this daring rogue of a spy had sent across the line to his fellow-countrymen, the Englanders.

And when his work there had ended, what had he done, this cursed Grey Shadow? Quietly vanished? No, not he. For that was never his way. What he had done was to send a courteous note to General von Ruller, aide-de-camp to Prince Ruprecht, resigning what he was pleased to term his commission, and thanking them, one and all, for the pleasant sojourn which he had been permitted to make in their midst!

Again, had he not, honoured and fêted and passing himself off as the Kaiser’s emissary, inspected the great Zeppelin base at Stralsund and been shown some of its most closely guarded secrets? Two highly placed officers of the Fatherland had been shot by order of the German High Command because of that episode. And two more, stripped of all rank and decorations, had been banished for life to a fortress in East Prussia.

Again this daring Englander had written a pleasant little note of thanks, this time to the headquarters of the German Air Force at Berlin.

Again, it was common knowledge here in Wilhelmshaven that his was the hand which had stolen and sent to the British Admiralty the plans of the German mine-fields in the Skagerrak and the Cattegat, thus bringing almost to naught the work of weary and laborious months—work which had been carried out in storm and peril and at the cost of many lives.

Yes, it was Grey Shadow who had stolen those plans, for in the empty safe where they had been he had left a card bearing his name!

And these were but a few of the things laid to the credit of Grey Shadow. There were many others, every one of them characterised by the same cold nerve, the same almost superhuman cunning, the same unparalleled daring and colossal impertinence.

And now he was here, in Wilhelmshaven. He was trying, the sergeant had said, to get out of Germany. Well, only let him be discovered and it would be a marvel if he ever lived to stand his trial and face a firing-party.

“We will tear the villain limb from limb!” wheezed Lorenz venomously. “Donner! But what wouldn’t I give to see him walk in here—what wouldn’t I give to feel my hands around his English throat——”

“Ah, you talk—and talk!” cut in a dark and swarthy sailor roughly. “Always talking—that’s you. If the Englander came near you you would run as fast as those barrel legs of yours would take you!”

A bellow of laughter from those near by greeted this observation. His flabby face flaming, Lorenz raised a podgy finger quivering with rage and said furiously: “You get out of here!”

The sailor took a step forward, his fists clenched.

“No, no!” Lorenz stammered, in sudden fright. “Just my pleasantry. There, go and sit down.”

“D’you think I’ll take orders from you?” shouted the other. “I’ll sit down when I like. What’s that there?” He pointed to a covered plate which Adolph had just brought from the serving hatch and placed on the counter.

“That,” quavered Lorenz, “is my supper.”

“Oh, is it?” sneered the other. “Then undoubtedly it’ll be the best meal in the place. I’ll have it! D’you hear me? Send it over to that table there!”

He lurched away, seating himself heavily at a vacant table.

“Take it to him!” muttered Lorenz to Adolph, who carried the greasy dish of beef, potatoes, and carrots to the sailor’s table and set it down in front of him, together with a chunk of black bread.

“And bring a bottle of wine to wash it down with!” ordered the fellow, tackling the food with gusto. Adolph brought the wine, then returned to the counter and busied himself with the needs of other customers.

A hail from the sailor’s table brought him hastily back to the side of that individual.

“Tell that slug over there,” ordered the latter, “that I have enjoyed his rations. And now”—he produced his shore food tickets—“I am going to buy some food to take away.”

Taking the tickets, Adolph glanced at them. They were made out to Emil Holz, torpedo rating on forty-eight hours’ completion of course leave, and issued by the commandant of the submarine school at Kiel.

“These are yours?” questioned Adolph.

“Of course they’re mine!” said the other roughly. “My name is Holz—Emil Holz—as it is written on there. I want every bit of food which those tickets entitle me to. And also what these two entitle me to!”

He pulled from his pocket two more food tickets—well-worn civilian cards issued to one Anna Holz by the Food Bureau of Wilhelmshaven.

“But you cannot buy food with these,” said Adolph, taking them and studying them. “They are made out to a person named Anna Holz——”

“Who is my mother!” cut in the other. “And she is ill—dying! See? She cannot come herself. I join my boat at midnight, and before I go I take her food.” His voice rose menacingly.

“And there’s neither you nor that fat toad over there’ll refuse me food. Do you understand? She is dying, that mother of mine. And if I’m refused food by that animal over there, then I’ll throttle him!”

“But, Herr Holz——” Adolph made a despairing gesture.

“There’s no but about it!” roared Holz, crashing a clenched fist to the table. “I’m a U-boat man. A U-boat man, d’you hear, and I’ll get what I want! You take these cards to that fat weevil over there and tell him to stamp them and wrap me up some food!”

“You say you are on the U-boats, Herr Holz?” Adolph asked then, admiration in his voice.

“Yes, on the U-boats!” announced Holz. “And we sail at dawn for the open sea. And before I go I’ll have food for the one person in the world I care a jot about. When I go to her, I’m not going empty-handed——”

Adolph touched him on the arm, bent to pick up the empty plate from the table, and said, in a lowered voice:

“I have food in the room where I lodge. Far better food than you can buy here to take away. White bread from Denmark. Good red cheese from Holland. I go off duty at ten o’clock. Wait for me outside, and I will give you some.”

Holz looked up at him through suspicious, bloodshot eyes.

“You will give me food?” he repeated. “Why should you?”

“Because you are a man,” replied Adolph steadily. “Not like Lorenz, nor others that we get in here. And I—well, you heard what the sergeant called me. It is a little enough thing that I do for my country to help you. But it is all I can do.”

Holz understood. Poor invalid! No assistance could he give his country in her hour of need save the handing of some stolen and hoarded food to a U-boat man. What a pitiable gesture it was—but generous and comradely.

“You’re a good sort!” Holz said heartily. “I shall be waiting outside.” He pushed back his chair, and rose.

“And tell that maggot who employs you,” he went on, “that if he’s still here, and not conscripted, I may pay him what I owe him—when next I am ashore!” He laughed rumblingly, turned on his heel, and strode out into the night.