Читать книгу Grey Shadow - George E. Rochester - Страница 5

Holz was waiting for Adolph, kicking his heels in the street outside, when the waiter came off duty.

“Where is your sty?” Holz asked pleasantly, as they set off together along the dark and narrow street. “I should have thought you would have slept on the premises.”

“No. Lorenz sleeps there in the kitchen,” replied Adolph. “I have a room just here, in the Gasschen.” He turned into a narrow alley, and pushed open a door. A match scuttered into flame in his hand, and he led the way up a rickety flight of wooden stairs to the second floor.

Halting outside a door shorn by time of much of its paint, he opened it and ushered Holz into a room, sparsely-furnished with a bed, table, a couple of broken-backed chairs, and a cupboard.

“Be seated, my friend,” he said, applying a match to a small oil-lamp, “and I will get you the food I promised. But first, maybe, you would like a little wine?”

“I never say no to that!” laughed Holz, seating himself. “But we haven’t too much time. I must report aboard my boat at midnight!”

He broke off, a certain pity in his eyes, as Adolph was racked by a fit of coughing.

“I feel sorry for you,” he said, with brutal directness. “It must be terrible to be like that!”

“Do not let us talk of it,” Adolph said. “The only hurt it has for me now is that it prevents me joining the colours of our Fatherland!” From the cupboard he produced a bottle of wine and placed it on the table, together with a glass and a tin mug.

“Perhaps,” he said, a trifle wistfully, “you will tell me something of what it is like out there in the North Sea. Me, I think of it—I dream of it——”

“Ay, and that’s as near to it as you want to get!” cut in Holz, pouring himself out a glass of wine. “There is nothing but death out there now. Mines—depth charges—nets. The Englanders are devils! And another thing. Every time you submerge to lie on the bottom, you never know if your boat will surface again!”

“D’you mean the machinery is bad?” ejaculated Adolph.

“It is not good on some of the old boats, and that is a fact!” grunted Holz. “I know them. I have seen hydroplanes jam—valves stick—flooding gear go wrong. I will be all right this trip, though, as far as that is concerned. I am joining U.240, a new boat just back from her trials off the Ems.”

“You like her?”

“I haven’t seen her yet. I tell you, I don’t report aboard till midnight.”

“If it had been me,” said Adolph, “I would have been down at the submarine pier having a look at her.”

Holz laughed boisterously.

“What, and get roped in for a warping job, or something?” he jeered. “Not me. I’ve been caught that way before. No, if there’s one thing this war’s taught me it’s to keep clear of the docks when I’m on leave.

“But what about that food, friend?” he went on. “If you’ll get it, I’ll thank you and be going.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Adolph. Crossing to the bed he laboriously shifted it away from the wall and pulled up a loose floorboard.

“Got it hidden, have you?” laughed Holz.

“Yes; hoarding food is punished by imprisonment now. One has to be very careful. The eyes of the police are everywhere.”

“And so they should be,” Holz said angrily. “No, don’t think I’m meaning that you’re wrong in hoarding food. You, an invalid, I don’t blame. You get out of life just what you can and while you can. That’s my tip. It’s the rich, the profiteers—that I’m talking about.”

He watched, his eyes widening in astonishment as Adolph brought white loaves, butter, cheese, coffee, bacon, eggs, and other edibles to light from the cache in the floor.

“If your mother does not live too far from here,” said Adolph awkwardly, stowing the food away in a linen bag, “perhaps I might be able to take her some little things whilst you are away at sea.”

“Now, by thunder!” exclaimed Holz. “That’s good of you, friend! You do that and I’ll bring you back a souvenir from the sea—an Englander’s lifebelt, or something like that. She lives in the Plazenstrasse, my mother, No. 42, the Plazenstrasse. You know it?”

“Yes, I know it,” nodded Adolph, tying the mouth of the linen bag and placing it on the table. “Well, there you are, Herr Holz. Now one more drink before you go!”

“It’ll have to be the last!” said Holz.

Adolph looked at him queerly, then turned towards the cupboard and muttered, “Yes, it will be the last!” Bringing out another bottle of wine, he returned to the table and drew the cork. The liquid was poured into Holz’s glass and into the tin mug.

“I give you a toast, Herr Holz,” said Adolph, placing the bottle on the table and picking up the brimming mug. “A safe voyage to English waters for U.240!”

“Yes, and a safe return!” cried Holz, tossing off his drink at one gulp. Then suddenly a startled look came to his face.

“That wine,” he said hoarsely, “it—it tasted——” His voice was harsh with sudden suspicion—“and you—you have not drunk yours!”

“No, Holz!” Adolph’s voice was sharp and incisive. “I have not drunk mine!”

“By thunder! You—you’ve doped me——” Swaying on his feet, Holz lunged with outstretched hand across the table. Then suddenly his arm went limp, his body slumped on to the table, then slid heavily to the floor.

Setting down his untouched wine, Adolph stepped quickly round the table and bent over the prostrate man.

“Sorry, Holz,” he murmured, “but it was the only way out for me.” Straightening up, he moved quickly to the door and looked out into the deserted corridor. Satisfied that there was no one moving about, he stepped back into the room, drawing the door shut and locking it.

A great change had come over him, a change which seemed inward as well as outward. No longer was he the thin-chested figure, bent of shoulder, whom Lorenz and his customers had known so well.

No, there was now a litheness and virility about him which was amazing, as swiftly he peeled off his jacket and waistcoat and went to work to effect a change of attire with Holz.

At length, clad in the dark blue uniform of the German fleet and with Holz’s papers in his pockets, Adolph stood in the centre of the room taking a last quick look round.

Holz, breathing evenly, lay on the bed to which Adolph had carried him. It would be a good twelve hours before he came back to consciousness.

For a moment Adolph stood there, his narrowed eyes searching every corner of the room.

Then, picking up the bulging linen bag of food from the table, he blew out the light and quitted the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

Once out in the street, Adolph moved quickly, heading towards the Plazenstrasse, keeping to byways and alleys, in order to avoid an encounter with any of the naval pickets patrolling the streets. For to be stopped and asked to explain what he was carrying would be more than awkward!

Without incident, such was his caution, he reached No. 42, a squalid tenement house. By inquiry, on the ground floor, he ascertained the room of Anna Holz and mounted the staircase to a door on the third floor.

In response to his knock a faint voice called to him to enter. Opening the door, Adolph stepped into a poorly-furnished room not unlike the one he had just vacated back in the Gasschen. On a bed against the wall lay the small and thin figure of an old woman. At sight of Adolph she weakly raised her head.

“I thought,” she whispered, “that you were—Emil——”

Two strides took Adolph to the bed.

“Emil cannot come, little mother,” he said softly. “But, see, he has sent you this. It is food. Good food, which will make you strong and well.” He showed the linen bag.

“Food?” quavered the weak voice. “But how did he come by it?”

“Honestly, little mother. Yes, I swear it!”

Weak, trembling fingers, thin and fragile, plucked at Adolph’s sleeve, and the weak voice faltered:

“Emil cannot come—you say——”

“No, he cannot come, I am taking his kitbag down to the submarine pier. There, be brave, little mother.”

“Yes,”—the dim and faded eyes filled with tears—“I understand. But I lie here—thinking—thinking of what is happening out there on the sea—so many of our sons do not return——”

“But Emil will return.” Adolph’s voice was very gentle. “And soon it will all be over. The end is in sight. Peace is coming!” From his pocket he drew a wad of notes.

“And see,” he said, pressing them into the frail and trembling hand, “here is something else Emil has sent you! Five hundred marks saved out of his pay and prize-money just for you. That is a surprise, eh?” Stooping, he kissed the wrinkled forehead.

“Farewell, little mother,” he whispered. Then, straightening up, he turned away, picked up Emil’s kitbag from where it stood in a corner, and strode from the room.

Out in the night again, he turned towards the docks. Through darkened streets of shuttered shops he walked. Twice he was stopped by naval pickets who examined his papers—the papers of Emil Holz. Unsuspecting, they sent him on his way.

Again, at the dock gates, his papers were examined. Then he passed on to the submarine pier, and inquired of one of the naval sentries on duty there where U.240 was lying.

A few minutes later he was standing gazing down at the long grey hull and the black bulk of the conning-tower of U.240, dimly visible against the murky background of water. Sure-footed, he negotiated the steep gangway which led down to the steel deck. Mounting to the conning-tower, he reported to the officer of the watch.

“Holz, torpedo rating?” grunted the officer. “All right, get below and report to Torpedo Officer Muller!”

Obediently, Adolph swung himself down into the control-room, where the atmosphere was warm and reeking of oil. For a moment he stood quite still, taking stock of the great tangle of pipe-lines, voice-lines, pressure-tubes and gauges. Then he passed through the aft bulkhead door to the torpedo compartment.

Torpedo Officer Muller was a short, stocky man, brusque of speech.

“Get your kit stowed away!” he rapped. “Then return here!”

Adolph did so, and for an hour he laboured with others of the torpedo crew in adjusting the deadly torpedoes and fitting them into their tubes.

By midnight every man of U.240 was aboard, and at four bells the submarine was towed out into the basin. There was great excitement aboard amongst the men, for it was rumoured that they were sailing under sealed orders.

Excitement, yes, and confidence. For Lieutenant Count von Schagel, one of the most famous and most experienced of Germany’s U-boat captains, had been given command of this latest U-boat.

Tall, slim, and with the erect carriage of the Prussian, Count von Schagel looked very elegant, very efficient, in his tightly fitting uniform as, with two of his officers, he made a tour of the boat shortly before the dawn.

“Men,” he said, in sharp tones, “this is a new boat, and you are a new crew. But I know that you will, every man of you, acquit yourselves in accordance with the proudest traditions of the German Fleet. Soon we will be in enemy waters.

“It may be that we will never live to return. But if, by our efforts, we can in some little way help weaken the remorseless blockade of our coasts by the British Fleet, then we will not have died in vain!”

With that he passed on. And a short time later, jerseyed and leather-jacketed, he mounted to the conning-tower. Dawn was very close now. And as its first grey light appeared in the eastern sky, the Diesel engines rumbled into life and U.240 moved slowly from the basin, to stand out for the open sea.

The rumour that she was sailing under sealed orders was correct. And in the conning-tower Von Schagel drew a heavily sealed envelope from the pocket of his reefer jacket. Ripping open the flap, he withdrew the flimsy sheet of paper inside. Unfolding it, he read:

“Carry out war on commerce in accordance with International Prize Law on the south-west coast of England. Confine your operations to within a radius of 100 miles of Land’s End. Proceed through the English Channel to take up position.”

With steady hand, Von Schagel handed the orders to First Officer Vorsatz, standing with him in the tower. Vorsatz read, and his eyes hardened.

“The fools!” he said gratingly. “With a boat of this size, we will never make the passage through the Straits of Dover!”

“We must make it!” said Von Schagel quietly. But his eyes, too, were sombre. He knew what lay ahead in those Straits, which had been the grave of many a U-boat—mines, nets, timber-booms, armed patrol-boats, and submarine-chasers! Well protected indeed was the English Channel. A veritable death-trap! Even the sea itself seemed allied against the U-boats in the shifting, treacherous Goodwin Sands.

“We will attempt to slip through in the darkness, running on the surface,” said Von Schagel. “The Flanders U-boats report that to get through, submerged, a boat must keep on the bottom. And there is little chance that way. The mines are very deep!”

The sun had by this time swung up above the horizon, and the U-boat was slipping through the water at a speed of sixteen knots. Soon the yellow sand-dunes of Borkum, visible on the port bow, golden in the morning sun, faded from view, and nothing broke the even contour of the grey North Sea.

Throughout the day the U-boat drove steadily on, heading south-westwards towards the English Channel. Twice before midday she was forced to dive to avoid being sighted by British warships on patrol. Afternoon found her cruising at periscope depth, for now she was well within enemy waters.

It was when the sun had sunk in a crimson ball and darkness had crept in across the sea that she surfaced once again, and the drone of her electric motors, which she used when submerged, was replaced by the rumble of her powerful Diesel engines.

Below, all hands were standing to diving stations. For at any moment a wheeling searchlight beam from a destroyer or a submarine chaser might split the darkness and make a swift dive necessary to avoid being sighted.

Adolph, together with the fore and aft torpedo crews, was off duty. There would be no torpedoes fired, no attack launched, until U.240 was safely through the barrage. All she was concerned with, all her commander was concentrating on, was to get through that gauntlet of death.

In the conning-tower, his night glasses to his eyes, Von Schagel continuously swept the night-enshrouded waters around him. Once he spoke into the voice tube connecting with the engine-room:

“Half-speed!”

He gave no reason for that order. But Vorsatz, on the tower beside him, understood. It had been that bow wave—too big—a shimmering silver wash which might be spotted by alert eyes out there in the darkness!

To starboard, friend to German as well as Englander, the long, broad beam of the North Foreland Lighthouse stabbed through the night. And then the smaller, twinkling light of the North Goodwin Lightship came into view on the starboard bow.

Running parallel with the coast, and stretching from the Elbow Light Buoy off the Foreland to a point due east of the Gull Lightship, was a barrier of mines, and Von Schagel kept well out in order to give them a wide berth.

He and Vorsatz had spent the greater part of that afternoon in poring over the charts prepared by the German Admiralty from the reports of Flanders U-boat captains and German Secret Service agents.

Those charts set out in detail the position of the mines, the nets, and the timber-booms of the Channel barrages, and were, in the circumstances, remarkably accurate.

On through the night slipped the U-boat, past the darkened towns of Ramsgate and Deal, neither of them visible. Not a light showed anywhere.

In the conning-tower Von Schagel and Vorsatz, together with the officer of the watch, were tense and silent, listening with straining ears for the sound of engines out there in the darkness, continuously sweeping the night with their glasses.

The main barrage of nets, sunken mines, and booms, stretching right across the Channel from Folkestone to Cap Gris Nez, was very close now. Taking his glasses from his eyes, Von Schagel spoke into the voice tube:

“Full speed ahead!”

He would rush the barrage—get past it on the surface. If only he could do that he’d be safe! It was in the depths, where hung the nets and submerged mines, that danger lay. And once past the barrage he would submerge, and, at periscope depth, nose his way down the remainder of the Channel, close in to the French coast.

The rumble of the Diesel engines grew in volume. The bow wave rose higher and higher, pouring away, a leaping, silver surge. Like some desperate, hunted animal of the seas the U-boat tore towards the barrage.

They were nearly there. It could not be far now——

Splitting the darkness with vivid and appalling suddenness came the powerful beam of a searchlight. For an instant it wheeled, then settled on the U-boat, bringing a silver sheen to the streaming deck and flooding the conning-tower with brilliant golden light.

Instantly the deafening clamour of the “alarm” sounded throughout the U-boat. Simultaneously, flame stabbed out in the darkness, and a shell screamed low over the conning-tower.

Von Schagel, his face grim and set, was at the voice-pipe:

“Dive! Take her to fifteen fathoms!”

Another shell, and another, screamed past the conning-tower. Already Vorsatz and the watch-keeping officer had dropped into the control-room. Von Schagel followed them, the hatch was closed, and, with water swirling into her ballast tanks and mounting round her conning-tower, U.240 slid below the surface of the sea.

“A British destroyer!” The watch-keeping officer’s face was haggard, his voice shaking.

Boo-oom! Boo-oom! The depth charges were coming down now, dropped by the swift little destroyer which had dashed up to the spot where her prey had dived. Boo-oom! Boo-oom!

The U-boat dived madly through the roaring welter of sound as the depth charges exploded about her. Suddenly she reeled, mortally stricken. Her lights went dim, then out. And in the awful blackness which followed there sounded the gurgling inrush of water. Out of control, her motors dead, she sank like a stone to the bottom.

“There is a chance in the tower!” Von Schagel’s voice rang out in the blackness of that living tomb. “Take it—all who can!”

“And you, sir?” rasped the voice of Torpedo Officer Muller.

“I stay with my boat!”

It was the men off duty and the bridge watch who had survived the first inrush of water, for they had been in the control-room and in the tower. There was only a handful of them, but, led by Muller, they groped their way up and crowded into the iron tower.

Adolph was last. He lingered a moment, knowing that somewhere near him in the darkness was Lieutenant Count von Schagel.

“Will you not come, sir?” Adolph pleaded.

“I remain with my boat!” was the reply.

Realising that to the last Von Schagel was resolutely determined to uphold the finest traditions of his rank and calling, Adolph turned away and swung himself up into the tower.

Beyond the plea he had made, there was nothing Adolph could do to save this gallant sailor, who was prepared to die with his boat.

“Are you ready?” Muller’s voice was hoarse. “I am going to open the hatch!” The compressed air in the control-room was by now holding back the water. Under its pressure the hatch opened easily enough, and in the great air bubble thus formed the men in the control tower were thrown out.

Instinctively Adolph struck out with arms and legs in a downward movement, to avoid being swept too rapidly to the surface. There was a roaring in his ears. His lungs full to bursting point. The torture of them was terrible. He must breathe—must expel some of that air from his inflated lungs. The roaring in his ears increased. Strange, fantastic lights danced before his eyes.

Then suddenly he broke water, his head bobbing above the surface, and thankfully he drew in great gulping breaths of the cool night air.

Near him he heard the sound of oars, and gave a faint hail. One of the destroyer’s boats, looking out for survivors, made towards him. Willing hands grabbed him, and he was hauled aboard.

“Another of ’em!” he heard a voice say. Then it addressed him: “All right, Jerry?”

“Yes,” answered Adolph weakly, but in perfect English. “I—I’m all right, thank you!”

Before dawn, after a brief interview with the captain of the destroyer—an interview which had startled that individual considerably—Adolph was put ashore at Dover.

In response to a wireless message from the destroyer, a fast car was waiting for him. It whirled him Londonwards, and within three hours of leaving Dover he was talking with a certain high personage in the British Admiralty building in Whitehall.

For a long time the two talked earnestly behind locked doors. At length the high personage pushed back his chair and rose.

“Well, Captain Ellis,” he said, “this information which you have brought back with you about the submarine bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven will prove invaluable to us. But”—with a smile—“you took a great risk in impersonating that German seaman!”

“It was the only way for me to get out of Wilhelmshaven and Germany, sir. The net had been drawn very close about me. I did not anticipate, however, our being holed. It was my intention to go overboard the first time we were on the surface near a British ship.”

The high personage laughed and held out his hand.

“Well, you must now take some leave,” he said; “but I am afraid we cannot spare you for long. General Headquarters in France want you for an important mission. Do you think you will be able to get back into Germany?”

“Yes; I will slip in somehow, sir,” the other replied. “And as far as leave is concerned, I do not want any. I will leave for France to-morrow!”

And a few minutes later Captain Guy Ellis of the British Secret Service, alias Adolph, alias Grey Shadow, stepped out of the Admiralty building into the bustle of Whitehall!