The Secret Service Submarine Part 14

After tea, 'prep.' began. Old Pugmire had shuffled off home. Old Mrs.

Gaunt was still groaning in bed. At eight-thirty the younger boys went up to their dormitories, only four of the elder ones remaining downstairs. Lockhart left them to their own devices--they were roasting chestnuts, I heard--and waited in his own sitting-room.

At nine o'clock, Marjorie Joyce came hurriedly from the Doctor's wing and tapped at Lockhart's door. The Doctor had told Amy, the housemaid, to light a fire in his bedroom. He said that he would have much writing to do and that when it was finished he would go out upon the marshes to shoot, as usual.

I can picture the scene quite well. Pretty Marjorie, panting, with wide eyes, in the door of Lockhart's sitting-room; the staunch little man, keen as a ferret, wondering what this meant. He knew from me, of course, that Upjelly was to go to the Hulk that night with his _dossier_ of plans and betrayals.

They sent for d.i.c.kson major from the senior boys' room. They were closeted together for nearly ten minutes. Then Marjorie led them quietly from the school-wing into the Doctor's house.

The Doctor, at that moment, was having supper by himself. He would not be upstairs for quarter of an hour. Marjorie showed Lockhart and the lad to the big bedroom with the dancing fire upon the hearth. d.i.c.kson major had a nickel-plated revolver, of which he was very proud.

"If anything happens, sir," he said, "I can do him in with this."

Then d.i.c.kson major was put under the bed, where he lay, grasping his revolver, keen as mustard, glad to be in the mysterious business of which he had been told so little and in which his elder twin was so actively engaged.

A tear comes into my eye as I think of that quiet bedroom and those two poor conspirators waiting for von Vedal, doing their little best, such as it was.

There was a big, green curtain, running on rings, in an alcove of the bedroom. Behind this, the headmaster of Morstone kept a lot of clothes which he never wore and never even looked at. Here the ardent cripple, Lockhart, was ensconced.

There is something comic in the business--the schoolboy and the ferret-faced master hidden in this fas.h.i.+on. I think that all sinister tragedies have their bizarre element of comedy--comedy to change so swiftly into horror.

In twenty minutes the Doctor came up. He strode into the room with a firm step, carrying a brown leather bag, which he placed upon the table by the fire. Then he locked the door. He took off his coat, warmed his soft, pink hands at the fire, unlocked the bag, spread a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments from it upon the table, and began to write steadily.

There was a round clock upon the mantelpiece which ticked incessantly.

It was a quick and hurried tick that came from the clock, and sometimes it seemed to be accentuated, to be a race with Time; at others, it was slow as the death-watch.

The Doctor wrote on. He covered sheet after sheet with swift, easy writing. When each sheet was done, he blotted it and added it to the pile on his left hand.

He had written for three-quarters of an hour, and the hidden watchers had made no sound whatever, when the big man suddenly jumped up from the table. They heard his chair crush over the carpet; they heard him sigh deeply, as if with relief.

Then d.i.c.kson major, peeping under the valance of the bed, saw his headmaster go to the mantelpiece, open a box of cigars, select one and light it. It was a long, black, rank Hamburg weed, and the pungent smoke curled round the room as the man stood with his back to the fire, looking down upon the table.

The smoke went round and round. It grew thick. It curled and penetrated everywhere. It penetrated behind the green curtain where, in an agony of rheumatism and tortured bones, little Lockhart was standing.

Lockhart coughed.

The boy underneath the bed was watching all this. He saw the Doctor turn quietly and swiftly towards the alcove. He took three soft steps, pulled the curtain aside, and drew Lockhart out.

It was horrible. Von Vedal said nothing at all. His great hand descended upon the shoulder of the cripple and he drew him into the middle of the room--into the full light of the lamp--looking down at him with a still, evil scrutiny.

Lockhart spoke. He did not seem a bit afraid. His curious voice jarred into the quiet, firelit room with almost a note of triumph in it.

"You've found me, Doctor Upjelly; but you've lost everything, Graf von Vedal!"

d.i.c.kson said that the Doctor, bending lower, turned Lockhart's face upwards with his disengaged hand, pulling it towards the light. The boy was paralysed. The fingers of his right hand grew cold and dead. The revolver lay in them like a ton weight. He could not move or cry out. He could do nothing.

With the greatest deliberation, von Vedal took Lockhart by the throat.

He felt in his trouser pocket and pulled out an ordinary penknife. Still clasping his prisoner, he opened the blade with his teeth; and then, without the slightest haste or sign of anger--I cannot go on, but there was a thud and the gallant little cripple lay writhing on the floor.

Von Vedal peered over the edge of the table at him for a moment, and then pushed him gently away with his foot. Then he sat down and began to write again.

It was as if he had brushed away a fly.

He wrote on, and the boy beneath the bed fainted dead away. When again the poor lad's eyes opened, he saw the great, white face bent over its papers, the firm hand moving steadily from left to right, heard the resolute scratch and screech of the pen as it traversed the pages. But he saw also that the huddled heap upon the floor was moving slowly.

With infinite effort, though without a sound, the cripple's arm crept down the side of his dying body. With infinite effort, and with what agony none of us will ever know, Lockhart withdrew the pistol with which I had provided him. He could not lift his arm, but there was movement in his wrist. Slowly, very slowly, the hand rose from the floor.

The flash and crash were simultaneous. Upjelly's mouth opened wide. He tried to turn his head and could not. He coughed twice and then sank quietly forward upon the records of his treachery.

The shot broke the nervous bonds in which young d.i.c.kson had been held.

He scrambled up from beneath the bed. He ran round the table with averted eyes and bent over Lockhart. There was a little hissing noise, like a faint escape of gas. d.i.c.kson bent his ear to the mouth of the dying man.

"Take Miss Marjorie to Wordingham--Inn--village. Gather up--all those papers. Put them in bag. After--Miss Marjorie--Inn--run--fast as you can--to--Doctor's--old Hulk--Thirty Main. Give everything--Mr. Carey.

Good-bye, boy...."

One last gasp, and the word "England!" sighed out into the bedroom.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRUTH AT LAST, THE INCREDIBLE TRUTH! AND HOW THEY FOUGHT FOR THE SUBMARINE

Just after midnight, my brother and myself sat crouching behind the bulwarks of the Hulk.

It was the weirdest hour, the strangest scene, that my eyes had ever looked upon. Snow was falling fast, and yet, somewhere above, there was a moon. It was all white and ghostly-green, s.h.i.+fting, moving, unreal, as befitted the horrors which pressed us close. Yet we were exultant; I can testify to that. "The Judge was set, the doom begun"; in our hearts was the fiery certainty of success.

In the deck-house were Bernard's three men, Scarlett, Adams, and Bosustow--all of whom had served with him in his own s.h.i.+p. Below, in the saloon, Doris, old Lieutenant Murphy of the Coastguards, and the two d.i.c.kson boys were waiting.

Let me give the very briefest resume of events up to the present.

d.i.c.kson major had fulfilled his trust. He had taken Marjorie Joyce to Mrs. Wordingham at the inn; then he had come to us with the bag of papers. He had told us everything. All we told Doris was that her sister had been taken to the inn and that her stepfather was arrested at the school. We had to keep Doris with us for a time, but old Lieutenant Murphy, who was now entirely in our confidence, would take her back to the village when the adventure of the night was over. His car was waiting there and Doris and Marjorie would both find refuge with Mrs.

Murphy at c.o.c.kthorpe.

The prisoners, Kiderlen-Waechter and the German boatswain, had been moved into the galley, where one of the lads was watching them.

It was cold beyond thinking. The snow fell softly on us till we were blanketed with white. Bernard was whispering.

"You see, old John, I look at it this way. When we searched Kiderlen-Waechter an hour ago we found the signal. Doris translated it for us. The lamp is lit in that box they fitted up so carefully in the bows. It can only be seen straight up the Creek. They'll make for that."

"What do you think it is?"

"They've spoken of it as 'She'--it's a boat, of course. I should say either one of those wretched little coasters, or possibly even a fis.h.i.+ng-smack. She'll stand a mile out at sea and they'll row into the Creek with a longboat, for the plans. There is a huge manoeuvre on--what it is we can't tell yet, and it's touch and go to-night whether we snooker them or whether we don't. You are ready for anything?"

"Anything! So old Upjelly's dead, and poor little Lockhart!"

"He died for his country, as you and I may do to-night, old John. Shed the sentimental tear on some future occasion. What?"