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ОглавлениеTHE SUBMARINE MYSTERY
The story made the front pages of most of the newspapers. A typical headline and bulletin was the one appearing in the Planet, a morning newspaper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It read:
BLAST SINKS U. S. SUBMARINE
NEAR BOSTON
A mysterious explosion sank the U. S. navy submarine Swordfish four miles outside Boston harbor at 2 P.M. to-day.
A young woman survivor was picked up by a private yacht cruising in the neighborhood at the time. The survivor seemed dazed by the shock, and when the yacht brought her ashore in Boston, she broke away and escaped. She has not been found.
It is reported this girl leaped from the submarine some moments before the explosion.
There is also a rumor that the girl wore a portion of a suit of ancient armor, and that the few words she uttered were couched in accents of the Sixteenth-Century in England.
It is feared the submarine sank in water too deep for a rescue to be affected.
Naval officials are reluctant to discuss the matter.
This was the story which appeared in the Tulsa newspaper. The only difference between this story and the others which were printed was a matter of wording and color. Some papers printed a dramatic eyewitness story by the yachtsmen, telling how the sub had been literally ripped from end to end by the blast.
There were also fuller descriptions of the young woman who had been rescued. Her unusual attire—the portion of a suit of ancient armor—came in for comment. It was remarkable. It was unusual for a woman to be on a U-boat. And for the woman to be dressed in the fighting garb of another century was puzzling.
The newspapers guessed at various explanations, the most prevalent one being that the young woman was a professional artist’s model dressed for some kind of publicity photograph.
All the descriptions mentioned the look of terror which had been in the girl’s eyes.
And all the newspaper stories mentioned the fact that naval officials were reluctant to discuss the affair.
They were reluctant for a very good reason.
A rear admiral at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the first one to discover an incredible fact about the submarine disaster. He read a radiogram to the effect that the U. S. navy U-boat Swordfish had blown up.
“Hell’s bells!” he bellowed.
The U. S. navy had a submarine named Swordfish. But the Swordfish was lying at the Panama Canal. Or was it? The rear admiral sent a volley of radio messages. It was. The U. S. navy submarine Swordfish was at the Panama Canal. It was really there. Nothing had happened to it.
“Must have been another one of our subs that sank,” the rear admiral muttered.
He sent another batch of radio messages. The replies apprised him of an astounding fact: Every single U. S. navy submarine could be accounted for! Not a U-boat was missing!
The submarine which had sunk was obviously not a U. S. navy sub.
“Darn yachtsmen must have made a mistake identifying it,” the rear admiral decided.
He flew to Boston and personally questioned the yachtsmen who had observed the blast. He left that conference holding the back of his neck. The yachtsmen had positively seen U. S. S. Swordfish on the submersible. The U-boat had absolutely been flying American colors. The rescued girl had certainly worn part of a suit of ancient armor, and her few words had been spoken in Sixteenth-Century English.
All of which was a headache.
The American people and the American newspapers are prone to credit their government, their army and their navy with little or no ability as diplomats. For some contrary reason, they like to insist that whenever a mess comes up, the Americans are sure to put their foot in it. At the drop of a hat, they will declare an American diplomat is no diplomat at all. It now developed that this was a slight mistake.
The world at the moment was in one of those stages where it is called a powder keg. There was an undeclared war or two going on in Europe; the Japanese were swallowing another chunk of China, and various dictators were shaking hands with each other and making faces at the rest of the universe.
Fully a dozen so-called civilized nations had teeth and claws all set to fly at each other. All they needed was something to give a little push.
If somebody’s submarine had been blown up, that might be just the little push that would start world fireworks.
There was a tense conference of U. S. government bigwigs. No one ever told exactly what was said there.
But the U. S. navy submarine Swordfish lying in Panama suddenly had its name changed to Trigger Fish.
The navy did not deny paternity of the submarine Swordfish which sank near Boston. True, the navy did not seem to coöperate in its usual hearty fashion with the newspapers. It did not, for instance, publish a list of names of those who had died in the disaster. As the rear admiral said privately, the U. S. navy had no way of communicating with the dead to get the information.
At any rate, no European or Asiatic war started over the matter.
If any of the newspapers smelled a rat, they did not manage to dig the rodent out of its hole.
The U. S. Naval Intelligence, the Feds, and other government-sleuthing agencies did conduct an intensive hunt for the girl who had escaped—the girl with the armor and the look of horror. They made just one discovery:
A girl wearing armor and a look of horror on her face had stolen a fast airplane from a flying field near Boston. The plane had contained enough gas to fly to South America, Ireland, Spain, Canada or other places.
The armor-wearing girl took the plane off in the direction of the South Atlantic, which was no help. There was nothing she could fly to in that direction.
New York was only one of the places where the government agencies kept a sharp watch for her.
