The Shadow - Death Ship Part 2

Sergon's bluff was a perfect one.

He was holding off the entire crew with a single gun, watching for the first hand that might start a move. In his hard rasp, he told them that there were still traitors among them, and he called upon such men to follow after he had reached the Barracuda. Thrusting away his revolver, Sergon coolly went over the side. From the deck of the Yukon, shaky officers and seamen watched him board the strange-decked craft, with its half-domed c.o.c.kpit.

It wasn't until the Barracuda started slowly away that Sergon suddenly pulled off his mask.

Too distant for his face to be recognized, he gave a contemptuous wave back toward the Yukon. That was when the men aboard the steamer realized that his talk of other traitors had been a fake.

The Barracuda was off again, heading indolently southward as though its master feared no pursuit. Within its hull, the stolen Z-boat was carrying loot that totaled close to one hundred thousand dollars.

By the time the pirate craft was a speck on the horizon, radio flashes were issuing from the Yukon. Sergon had not bothered to cripple the steamship's wireless, though he could easily have done so. He did not seem to care how widely, or how soon, his act of piracy was reported.

The news brought prompt action. Numbers of destroyers steamed out from San Francis...o...b..y, accompanied by other searching craft! They had orders to find the Barracuda, and if occasion demanded, to sink her on sight.

Airplanes zoomed seaward from all along the coast, hoping to aid the sea search. But finding the Barracuda by day proved as difficult as at night. Again the strange ship had vanished, this time with more than a bay to hide her. Seemingly, the whole expanse of the Pacific Ocean had become the Z-boat's own preserve.

One phase, at least, of the mystery was solved. Though Commander Prew had not been located, naval authorities announced-without his corroboration- that the Barracuda must unquestionably be a submarine, probably one that was capable of submerging to great depths. Nothing else could account for the way in which the ship had vanished, even from the sight of ocean-patrolling seaplanes.

AMID wild speculation and resultant rumors, the public was interested only in the sea search for the Barracuda. Little attention was drawn to certain work that took place on the bay sh.o.r.e, not many miles from Sausalito. There, searchers were probing the ruins of Prew's boathouse, hoping to find some chance clue to the missing Barracuda.

The work proved as slow as it was fruitless. When shattered timbers were pulled away, they revealed nothing except other chunks of wood below. At times, the task became precarious.

Broken beams slipped, almost plunging the workers into the debris.

Near sunset, there was a warning clatter while men were prying at a fragment of a wall.

Everyone made a scramble as the ruins gave way and tumbled deep among the pilings.

One man couldn't quite grab the hands that s.n.a.t.c.hed for him. He was caught in a vortex of caving ruins and barely managed to wriggle free. He splashed into the water beneath, and was almost senseless when rescuers dragged him out.

A piece of falling wood had struck the worker's head, which caused others to form the almost obvious conclusion that anyone trapped in the charred ruins could never come out alive.

It was lucky, they decided, that no one had been entombed there the night before. Such a person might have lived until morning, but he wouldn't have had a chance, after theseworkers began to tear the ruins apart.

Such was the verdict when the men quit work. With nightfall, guards went on duty, to see that no prowlers approached the wreckage of the boathouse. Nor did the guards venture too close, for they remembered the close call that a man had experienced only a few hours before.

That was why none of the guards heard the first sounds that came from the shattered ruin, a stir that belied the opinion of those who were sure that no one could be alive there.

The noise was scarcely louder than the lap of the waves that broke the hush of night. In fact, those licking waters of the bay were responsible for the stir beneath the ruined boathouse.

The debris had settled, the tide had risen-dried timbers were receiving their first taste of water. So was the human form within the ruins.

The lap of water against his face revived The Shadow from a state of semiconsciousness.

For the first time in many hours, he sensed more than a vague medley of sounds that had seemed to come from undefinable distances.

He was wedged in a water-filled s.p.a.ce of blackness, so tightly that he could scarcely move.

When he pushed one hand painfully upward, it slithered against a roundish slimy object, a piling that had remained unshattered by last night's blast.

Dimly, the past recalled itself to The Shadow. He remembered the cataclysmic destruction of the boathouse. Gradually, he realized how he had fared.

Struck by a flying timber, The Shadow had rebounded toward the corner by the open trapdoor. He had missed the buckling floor, to land between the upright pilings beneath. The flood of wreckage had piled about him; one chunk had actually wedged in between the pilings, just above his head. That had been fortunate. The piece of wood had acted as a buffer.

Today, The Shadow had gone lower, with the settling timbers. Men had worked around the pilings, pressing them apart. That accounted for his being above the level of the rising tide, and it made his present plight more precarious than ever. Soon, the tide would be high, above the level of his head.

WITH all his strength, The Shadow tried to withdraw his legs from the pressure of the pilings.

He failed. Stretching his arms, he gripped the wedged beam above his head, ready to risk loosening an avalanche of broken wood, if it came free. Again, he worked to free his legs, without result.

Desperate minutes, those, climaxed when the water came above The Shadow's face. The tide was high and he was completely beneath it. Too late to give a shout to those on sh.o.r.e, even had he guessed that men were there.

With every ounce of gathered strength, The Shadow pulled upon the wedged beam. It seemed useless, for the strain upon his legs was proof complete that he could not release them. Yet the effort brought results. Though The Shadow's body did not budge an inch upward, the beam came down.

Those pilings formed a long, narrow angle, spreading toward the top. To work up from their scissors grip was impossible, but to spread them by pressure from the top, was a feasible procedure. The beam that The Shadow gripped was the very wedge he needed.

Hauled down by The Shadow's desperate effort, it pressed the pilings inches wide. Slimywood offered no friction, and those inches were enough.

Just when The Shadow's breath gave out, his legs wrenched free. The beam stopped its descent despite his haul. Instead, The Shadow was coming up. His legs were no longer anch.o.r.ed; it was the beam's turn to stick fast. Chinning up to the crosspiece, The Shadow took long, grateful puffs of air.

A few minutes later, he was astride the beam, reaching gingerly among the cluttered wreckage that was jammed above. Vaguely, he recalled past clatterings and knew that men must have been at work. Chances were that the rubbish had settled tightly. Any s.p.a.ce would be worth an attempt at exit. Working his hands above his head, The Shadow found a gap.

Then he was burrowing upward, dragging his numbed body between ma.s.sive slivers that seemed to bite like claws. At times, his jostling shoulders brought tremors from the ma.s.s about him, and when he reached the looser s.p.a.ce above, his journey had reached its most precarious stage. His body was half clear; he was resting his weight on one arm, when he felt the whole ma.s.s shift.

Mere seconds might have carried The Shadow into a new, and less lucky, burial, if he had not remembered those pilings in the darkness beside him. He shot both arms in the right direction, embraced a bulky object with all the grip that he could give.

Then The Shadow was swinging clear, clutching the piling above the level where the slime began, while broken boards and shingles rumbled away beneath him, to bring splashes from the water below.

Shouts came from the sh.o.r.e. Watchers had heard the new crash and suspected that someone was prying into the ruins. The pilings here were wide enough for The Shadow to twist between them and brace himself during the brief search that followed.

The guards were cautious in their approach; their flashlights did not reveal the blackened shape that might have been one of the pilings among which it rested.

Deciding that the rubbish had settled of its own accord, the watchers groped back to the sh.o.r.e. The Shadow, as soon as the lights drew away, let himself downward, out beyond the pilings. Too weary even for a short swim, he worked his way from post to post, until he crawled on land.

THE guards tonight were not as crafty as the j.a.panese who had been on sh.o.r.e the night before. This group were still flashing their lights, and it was easy to avoid them. But The Shadow did not entirely trust his numbed legs. Instead of rising, he crawled on hands and knees, skirting bushes, keeping low each time he rested, until he found the pathway up to the road.

He hoped that any search had been confined to the sh.o.r.e itself, and that proved to be the case. The Shadow's coupe was exactly where he had left it, buried deep in the ditch of the side road. He started the motor; when it had warmed up, he carefully reversed the car, lest its noise reach the sh.o.r.e.

The guards, it seemed, were out of earshot; for when The Shadow paused to listen from the main road, he heard no sounds from below. Using the road as a gray-streaked guide, he started the car forward in the darkness and came to the nearest bend.

There, The Shadow risked his lights. He shoved the gear into high and pressed the accelerator. With a purr, the coupe was returning over its course of the night before, takingits owner back to San Francisco.

Once in that city, The Shadow would begin his own campaign to solve the riddle of the missing Barracuda.

CHAPTER V. THE NEXT QUEST.

AMONG the exclusive apartment hotels of San Francisco, the Leland Arms boasted not only the best location, but the most imposing array of guests. Many of the persons who strolled its clublike lobby were individuals of world-wide note.

Along with other services, the management kept close tabs upon its guests. That was done politely, un.o.btrusively, all for the benefit of the persons concerned. Persons of fame or wealth might encounter annoying situations when they stopped at some hotels, but never at the Leland Arms.

Tonight, the guest record showed one important checkmark. One guest, Mr. Lamont Cranston, from New York, was missing without due reason. Usually, when guests left the hotel, polite clerks learned where they intended to go. Last night, a slip had been made in Cranston's case.

The record showed, though, that he had departed without luggage and that he had not checked out. That made it very plausible that something might have happened to Mr.

Lamont Cranston. Everyone, from clerk to doorman, was anxiously hoping for his return.

Shortly after nine o'clock, a feeling of relief swept over the personnel. It was occasioned when a taxicab stopped at the Leland Arms, and discharged a tall pa.s.senger in evening clothes, who gave a short nod to the doorman. By the time Lamont Cranston entered the lobby, every attendant there had received the doorman's flash that he was back.

The clerk inquired politely where Mr. Cranston had been and learned that he had visited friends in Oakland. A bellboy was bringing in a large suitcase, so the clerk supposed that Cranston must have taken some luggage after all. Probably he had dressed in evening clothes before leaving Oakland for the trip across the bay.

There was certainly nothing in Cranston's appearance to betray where he had actually spent the preceding night. His calm, almost masklike face showed no traces of an ordeal; his immaculate attire indicated that he had remained fastidious ever since he had left the hotel the night before.

In fact, no greater contrast could have been imagined than Cranston, as he stood at present, compared to a bedraggled, water-soaked figure that had quite recently dragged itself from the ruins of a bay-sh.o.r.e pier.

Such contrasts, it happened, were The Shadow's specialty.

Persons who encountered The Shadow invariably marveled at his speed of action.

Conversely, those who met Lamont Cranston were impressed by his leisurely manner. He displayed it in the lobby of the Leland Arms - first, when he motioned the bellboy toward the elevator; again, when he loafed over toward the newsstand.

There, Cranston bought a newspaper that fairly screamed with news, but he glanced at the headlines in blase fashion.

Such things as a missing Z-boat, a vanished commander, j.a.panese plots, piracy on the high seas, were scarcely of moment to Lamont Cranston. When he wanted excitement, hehunted big game in Africa or Asia. When he read newspapers, he concentrated upon the stock market reports.

That, at least, was what he seemed to do, when he seated himself in a corner of the lobby; but during his turning of the pages, Cranston brought the front page in between the spread.

Behind that newspaper, his eyes took on a sharpness as he eagerly read details that he was scanning for the first time.

Odd that he, The Shadow, the only person to see the Barracuda vanish, should be the very one who needed information!

THE newspaper told much, yet very little. From the deluge of events, it was difficult to separate the kernels from the chaff. There were theories, however, that interested The Shadow, since they smacked of facts given out from official quarters.

First was the matter of Commander Rodney Prew. By rights, the inventor of the Z-boat should have been at the pier, instead of at his club, where he had last been seen. If Prew had not expected the things that had happened, why had he run out so suddenly when the news came?

Confronted with that question, the newspaper had sought an answer and had found a good one. Prew's past had been investigated, bringing much to light. His resignation from the navy, a few years ago, had actually been his method of escaping a court-martial.

Prew, it seemed, had been in command of a destroyer flotilla, and had put his ships to an unauthorized speed test. While higher officers were weighing the matter, he had left the service. It was after his return to private life that he had begun his development of the mysterious Z-boat.

Even there, Prew was due for criticism. He had not offered the ship to the government until authorities had learned of its construction. Prew's sudden willingness to turn the ship over to the navy, his insistence that such had been his original intention, was something that seemed very much a subterfuge, in light of recent events.

Intimation No. 1 was that Commander Rodney Prew had deliberately intended to sell his Z-boat to any foreign power that might make the highest bid. The fact that he was in San Francisco when the ship vanished, had all the earmarks of an alibi.

Next was the question of the j.a.panese.

Why had they been at the pier, trying to keep under cover, at the very time when the Barracuda had left?

There was a good answer to that one. The j.a.panese were anxious to buy the Z-boat; they had, perhaps, completed a deal with Prew. Naturally enough, they would be on hand to cover up when the Barracuda departed.

Prew, of course, was not on hand to deny any charges made against him. But the j.a.panese, as usual, had representatives in Washington who were polite, as well as emphatic, in their denials that they knew anything about the Barracuda.

That, from the newspaper's standpoint, was merely the same old effort to bluff the American public. One whole page cited instances of j.a.panese diplomacy dating from the year 1853, when Commodore Perry had sailed into the Bay of Yeddo to show the shoguns what a modern fleet looked like. Since that year, the newspaper insisted, the j.a.panese had always been overinterested in acquiring exclusive rights to new types of war vessels, and that applied to the Z-boat Barracuda.

Those points settled, what about the ship itself? Why had the Barracuda gone in for piracy?

Who was its commander, identified only as a man with a harsh voice and a jaw that looked like iron?

The newspaper did not mention the name of Felix Sergon, which indicated that it had not been learned. But Sergon's part in the scheme was quite neatly covered. The theory was that Commander Prew had paid him to run off with the Barracuda and turn it over to the j.a.panese. The subsequent deed of piracy was simply a Nipponese ruse to obscure the real facts.

The unknown commander of the Z-boat had probably received word by radio that j.a.panese agents had been spotted near the pier. Following prearranged orders, he had pretended to go in for piracy, to make it look as though he had started the venture on his own.

Into this medley, the newspaper had injected the feminine question, bringing up the name of Claudette Marchand. She, like Commander Prew, had disappeared, but she had not been seen after the Barracuda had been reported strayed or stolen. So it seemed that the fate of Claudette Marchand was the real mystery in the case.

She might have disappeared either with the Barracuda, or with Commander Prew. It was possible that she had met with foul play. One thing alone was certain: that the missing girl knew much that had happened and could tell a great deal, if found and questioned.

With that, The Shadow agreed.

FOLDING the newspaper, The Shadow laid it aside, with the stock-market reports on display. In Cranston's style, he strolled to the elevator and rode up to his room on the fifth floor. The bellboy was still waiting there with the suitcase, for he had expected Cranston to bring the key.

Unlocking the door, The Shadow turned on the lights. He pointed to a trunk rack; the bellboy placed the suitcase there and received a generous tip. Closing the door, The Shadow strolled about the room in a fashion that still suited Cranston.

First, he ran his forefinger along the crack of a bureau drawer. Next, he stopped at a closet, to give the k.n.o.b of the door a slight tug. He inserted a key in the lock of a trunk that stood in a corner and gave it a double twist.

The laugh that whispered from Cranston's fixed lips was the echoed mockery of The Shadow.

Supposedly, no one knew that The Shadow was in San Francisco. There were certain persons, however, who could have learned of his presence last night. Those parties, by all ordinary calculations, should never have identified The Shadow as Lamont Cranston.

Nevertheless, that very identification had been accomplished.

Before leaving the hotel room, The Shadow had waxed an almost invisible hair across the crack of the bureau drawer. That telltale object was gone, sure proof that the drawer had been opened during his absence.

He had left the closet door closed only to a point where it would normally remain shut, but he had not let the latch spring into place. His careful pull on the doork.n.o.b should have broughtthe door open. It had failed to do so. Someone else had opened that door, and closed it afterward but had let it latch.

As for the trunk, it had a double lock. Some person had finally opened it with a special key, but in relocking it, had been satisfied with a single turn. The Shadow's own experiment with the lock proved that it was not set as he had left it.

Persons unknown had entered this room and searched it thoroughly. In light of recent incidents, they could have had but one purpose: to find out facts pertaining to The Shadow.

Not only were they crafty, they had penetrated the Cranston disguise-which proved them extraordinarily clever.

But whatever they had found could not have mattered. The Shadow had left nothing in this room that could have proven their suspicion.

That, however, did not settle the matter for The Shadow. Instead, it gave him an immediate question-one quite as close to the mystery of the Barracuda as it was to his own personal security, since the two had become identified.

Whatever else The Shadow had in mind could wait until he had interviewed the man who had instigated the search of the hotel room. That man, The Shadow felt sure, would not be difficult to find.