Read Ebook: Silence is—Deadly by Shurtleff Bertrand Kolliker William A Illustrator

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Ebook has 254 lines and 13717 words, and 6 pages

"Breakers ahead!"

He was beside Navigating Officer Nelson on the bridge, and saw the helmsman climbing the rapidly spinning wheel like a monkey as he put it hard aport.

Then the ship struck. Everything movable shot ahead until it brought up at the end of a swing or smacked against something solid.

Curtis felt Nelson's hand grip his shoulder, as he put his lips close to his ear and shouted: "You must have been right, sir, and the radio bearings and my reckoning wrong. We've hit that reef a terrific smack. I'm afraid we're gor to making his acquaintllision mat!" Curtis ordered. "We ought to be able to keep her up!"

And then he became aware of a deadly stillness. A vast wall of silence enveloped the entire cruiser. Looking over the side, he could no longer see the waves that a few minutes before had beaten savagely against the ship.

Somehow, Curtis' mind flashed to the stories he'd heard of the forts of the Maginot Line, and of other forts in Holland and Belgium that had fallen before the early Nazi blitzkrieg, when their defenders found themselves struck numb and helpless by a gas that had been flooded into the inner compartments of their strongholds.

There were those who said it was the work of sappers who had tunneled under the foundations, while others laid the induction of the gas to Fifth Column traitors. There were a hundred more or less plausible explanations--

Nelson was nowhere in sight. The steersman lay in a limp heap beside the swinging wheel. Then a gas-masked figure appeared through the shroud of mist and steadied it, so that the cruiser would not be completely at the mercy of the wind and the waves.

Curtis heard the anchor let down, as if by invisible hands, the chain screaming and flailing its clanking way through the hawse hole. Then he was completely walled in by the yellowish-gray mist. He felt his senses swimming.

Voices droned all around him in mumbling confusion--guttural voices that ebbed and flowed in a tide of excited talk. He caught a word of English now and then, mixed in with a flood of Teuton phonetics.

He felt something strike the side of his head, and realized that he had fallen in a heap on the bridge. And after that, he wasn't conscious of anything--

From her bridge, Navigating Officer Nelson watched the gas-masked figures moving about the decks, descending companionways--like goblins from an ancient fairy tale or a modern horror story. Nelson looked like a goblin himself, with his face covered by a respirator. At his side, stood his fellow conspirator Bos'n's Mate Joe Bradford, also wearing a gas mask.

Nelson spoke in a low tone, his lips close to Bradford's ear. "It worked, Joe!"

"Yeah!" Bradford agreed. "It worked--fine!"

Nelson swore under his breath. "Reckon it'll take a couple of hours before the ship's rid of that damn gas!"

Bradford shook his head in disagreement. "The old geezer claims he's got a neutralizing chemical in one of them tanks of his that'll clear everything up inside half an hour."

"I'd rather get along without Androka, if we could!" Nelson muttered. "He's nothing but a crackpot!"

Nelson grunted and turned away. A short, thick-set figure in the uniform of a German naval commander had ascended the accommodation ladder and was mounting to the bridge. He, too, was equipped with a respirator.

He came up to Nelson, saluted, and held out his hand, introducing himself as Herr Kommander Brandt. He began to speak in German, but Nelson stopped him.

"I don't speak any German," he explained. "I was born and educated in the United States--of German parents, who had been ruined in the First World War. My mother committed suicide when she learned that we were penniless. My father--" He paused and cleared his throat.

"My father dedicated me to a career of revenge--to wipe out his wrongs," Nelson continued. "If America hadn't gone into the First World War, he wouldn't have lost his business; my mother would still be living. When he joined the Nazi party, the way became clear to use me--to educate me in a military prep school, then send me to Annapolis, for a career in the United States navy--and no one suspected me. No one--"

"Sometimes," Bradford put in, "I think Curtis suspected you."

Brandt nodded his square head. "We have a full crew--two hundred men--officers, seamen, mechanics, radio men, technical experts, all German naval reservists living in the United States, who've been sent here secretly, a few at a time, during the past six weeks!"

And bustling all over the place, barking excited commands in German, pushing and pulling and pointing to emphasize his directions, was the strange figure of Professor Zukor Androka!

"The professor's in his glory!" Nelson remarked to Kommander Brandt.

"Funny thing about him," Bradford put in, "is that his inventions work. That zone of silence cut us off completely."

Kommander Brandt nodded. "Goodt! But you got your message giving your bearings--the wrong ones?"

"Yes," Nelson said. "That came through all right. And won't Curtis have a time explaining it!"

Brandt said: "She's a freighter in a convoy out of St. Johns--twelve thousand tons. The orders are to take her; not sink her."

"What's the idea?"

"Her cargo," Brandt explained. "It iss more precious than rubies. It includes a large shipment of boarts."

"Boarts?" Nelson repeated. "What are they?"

"Boarts," Brandt told him, "are industrial diamonds--black, imperfectly crystallized stones, but far more valuable to us than flawless diamonds from Tiffany's on Fift' Avenue. They are needed for making machine tools. They come from northern Brazil--and our supply is low."

"I should think we could get a shipment of these boarts direct from Brazil--through the blockade," Nelson said, "without taking the risk of capturing a United States navy cruiser."

"Can we trust Androka?" Nelson asked, with a sudden note of suspicion in his voice.

"Yes," Brandt assured him. "Of all men--we can trust Androka!"

"But he's a Czech," Nelson argued.

Another crew was installing radio apparatus in the mizzentop turret.

Returning to the bridge, he found that the tide in the inlet had risen considerably, and that the cruiser was riding more easily at her anchor.

Then, at Brandt's orders, the anchor was hauled in, and lifeboats and a motor launch were used as tugs to work the vessel entirely free of the sand bar. This was accomplished without difficulty.

Brandt came over to where Nelson was standing on the bridge and held out his hand.

Stars were twinkling in a patch of black-blue sky, and broken mountains of gray cloud were skudding before the east wind. Commander Bob Curtis found himself lying in wet sand, on a beach, somewhere, with the rain--now a light, driving mist--beating on his face. He was chilled; his limbs were stiff and numb. His nose and throat felt parched inside, as if a wave of searing heat had scorched them.

It was hard work getting to his feet, and when he did manage to stand, he could only plant his heels in the sand and sway to and fro for fully a minute, like a child learning to walk.

All around him in the nearly total darkness, he could make out the dim forms of men sprawled on the beach; and of other men moving about, exploring. He heard the murmur of voices and saw the glow of lighted cigarettes.

A man with a flashlight was approaching him. Its white glare shone for a moment in Curtis' face, and the familiar voice of Ensign Jack Dillon spoke: "Commander Curtis! Are you O. K., sir?"

"I think so!" Curtis' heart warmed at the eager expression in Dillon's face; at the heartfelt concern in his friendly brown eyes. The young ensign was red-headed, impetuous, thoroughly genuine in his emotions. "How about yourself, Jack?" Curtis added.

"A bit of a headache from the gas, but that's all. Any orders, sir?"

Curtis thought for a moment. "Muster the crew, as best you can. We'll try to make a roll call. Is there any sign of the ship?"

There was a solemn note in Dillon's voice. "No, sir. She's been worked off the sandbar and put to sea!"

The words struck Curtis with the numbing shock of a blow on some nerve center. For the first time, he realized fully the tragedy that had swept down on him. He had lost his ship--one of the United States navy's fastest and newest small light cruisers--under circumstances which smelled strongly of treachery and sabotage.

The pieces of the picture fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle--Androka's zone of silence; the bearings given by radio; Navigating Officer Nelson's queer conduct. They were all part of a carefully laid plan!

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