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CHAPTER XVI
AWAITING ORDERS
While awaiting orders, which the wireless had told the St. Mark’s captain were not ready for transmission, the big liner stood “off and on” at the mouth of the channel. It was wearing work, and all looked forward eagerly to the day when their destination would be settled and they could proceed.
Jack felt the monotony of it no less than anyone else on board, but he spent a good many busy hours perfecting an attachment for a wireless coherer which he hoped would prove of great value in the future, and possibly prove as profitable as the Universal Detector, to which allusion has already been made in “The Ocean Wireless Boys” and “The Naval Code.” One night, after working for some time at some rather abstruse calculations in this connection, he decided to abandon the work for the night and take a stroll on deck before turning in.
Raynor, he knew, was finishing up the last of a series of match games of checkers, so he did not bother to look up his friend. Knowing that Bill was busily engaged, Jack was rather surprised when, at his fourth or fifth turn up and down the deck, which was almost deserted, a steward stepped up to him with a note.
It proved to be from Raynor and read as follows:
“Dear Jack:
“Meet me at once in the stern where we can talk without being spied on. The steward will show you where. I have something important to tell you about Radwig.
“Bill.”
“This is very peculiar,” mused Jack, and then, turning to the steward he asked:
“Did Mr. Raynor give you this?”
“Yes, sir, and he told me to bring you to where he was waiting, sir,” was the obsequious response.
“All right, lead on,” said Jack and then to himself he added: “I can’t in the least make out why old Bill should be so secretive. I might just as well have met him in his cabin. But maybe he is being watched, and thinks the place he has appointed would be better.”
The steward led the way aft through a maze of corridors and passages. At last they arrived far in the stern of the ship where the unlighted passages showed no cabins were occupied. The twenty first-class passengers had all been booked amidships, thus the hundreds of cabins opening on the stern passages were unoccupied and nobody went near them.
“You’ve no idea why Mr. Raynor selected this part of the ship to meet me?” said Jack, as he followed the man who lighted the way with an electric torch.
“No, sir,” he replied, with a shake of his head. “I suppose he had his reasons, sir.”
“No doubt, but this is an odd part of the ship to keep an appointment,” said Jack. “We must be far away from the occupied cabins.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Almost a tenth of a mile. Wonderful, ain’t it, sir, the size of these big ships? A fellow could yell his lungs out in this part of the vessel, sir, and things, being as they are, and the cabins empty and all, nobody could hear him.”
“I suppose not,” said Jack idly. “Are we nearly there?”
“Yes, sir. Just turn down this passage, sir. Right to the left, sir, mind that step and – ” Crash!
A great burst of light, as if a sudden explosion had occurred in front of him blinded Jack, and at the same instant he felt a violent blow on the back of the head. Then the bright light vanished with a loud report and he seemed to swim for an instant, in blackness. Everything went out, as if a light had been switched off, and the lad pitched heavily forward on his face.
“Good, that will settle his hash for a while,” muttered a voice, and Radwig, a short, wicked-looking bludgeon in his hand, bent over the senseless boy. By the German’s side was another man, a short, thick-set, clean-shaven fellow with a projecting jaw, known on the passenger list as Mr. Duncan Ewing, of Chicago.
The light of the steward’s torch illumined their faces as they stood above the recumbent young wireless boy.
“I say, sir,” muttered the man, “I know you’ve paid me well and all, sir, but I didn’t bargain for no murdering business, sir. I – ”
“Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Radwig impatiently. “We haven’t hurt him. See, he’s beginning to stir. Now then, Schultz – ”
Radwig bent and took up the limp body by the head while Mr. Duncan Ewing, who answered with alacrity to the name of Schultz, laid hold of poor Jack by the feet.
“Now, steward,” said Radwig, as they carried their burden into an empty cabin, “keep a stiff upper lip till we dock, and then I don’t care what happens. You’ll be well taken care of. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes, sir, I know, sir,” said the man, whose hand was trembling as he held the torch; “but I don’t like the business, sir. If it wasn’t for my poor wife being sick and needing the money, and all – ”
“That will do. Go get us the lamp you promised. In the meantime we’ll revive this young fellow and show you that he’s not dead.”
From a carafe of stale water that stood on the washstand, Radwig dashed a liberal application in Jack’s face. He loosened the lad’s collar and chafed his wrists. Jack moaned, stirred, and opened his eyes. For a moment his swimming senses refused to rally to his call. Then, with a flash, he realized what had happened.
“Radwig, you scoundrel!” he exclaimed, “what is the meaning of this outrage?”
“Just a delicate little way of reminding you that it is not well to thwart the wishes of Herr Professor Radwig,” was the reply. “Schultz, my dear fellow, shut that door. No, wait a moment, here comes our man with the lamp. That’s better.”
He took the lamp from the steward, and set it in a frame on the wall provided for it in case the electric light failed from any cause. The steward, still pale and shaky, hurried away after one glance at Jack.
“And now,” said Radwig, “we will leave you to your reflections, my young friend. It will do you no good to shout. Under present conditions this part of the ship is uninhabited. No one comes near it. As for trying to force the door after we have gone, it would be wasted labor. I have taken the pains to affix bolts to the outside of it. Bread you will find, and some water, under the bunk. I advise you to be sparing of it, for you will not get any more and now —auf wiedersehn.”
He opened the door, motioned Schultz out, and turned a malevolent smile on the boy. With a shout, Jack flung himself forward, but the door slammed in his face.
He heard a laugh from outside, a laugh that made his blood boil and his fists clench. He fell against the door and wrenched at it furiously. But already the bolts outside had been shot into place and the portal held firmly.
“Now don’t lose your temper,” begged Radwig mockingly from without; “it’s very bad, very bad for the digestion. I would recommend you to spend your time mediating over the manifest advantages of being obliging. Good-night.”
Jack, listening at the bolted door, heard their footsteps die away down the deserted passageway.
CHAPTER XVII
WHAT BEFELL IN THE AFTER CABIN
“Man overboard!”
Bill, making his way along the deck to the wireless room companionway, heard the thrilling cry and joined the rush of passengers to the stern rail from whence the shout had come. Radwig and Schultz stood there with every expression of alarm on their faces.
The captain came hurrying up.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“Somebody fell overboard,” declared Radwig; “we heard a splash and hastened here at once to cut loose a life belt.”
“Lower a boat at once,” commanded the captain; “slow down the engines.”
The petty officer to whom the command had been given, hurried off at top speed to the bridge while the captain asked more questions of Radwig and his companion. But they could tell nothing more definite than that they had heard a splash and a cry and that was all. They had not seen who was the victim of the accident.
The captain decided to call a roll of passengers and crew at once. While the boat was lowered, and was rowed to and fro, on the dark waters, this work went on. When it was over, there was only one person on board found to be missing. This was, of course, Jack Ready. The cunning of Radwig had evolved this clever plan to obviate the search that would be surely made on the ship for the imprisoned young wireless lad when his absence from duty was discovered. If the lad was believed to be drowned, of course, no effort would be made to find him on board and he and Schultz would be safe from the results of their rascality. It was a clever though simple scheme and it worked to perfection, for after an hour of investigation the captain was forced to conclude that Jack had, in some inexplicable manner, fallen overboard and had perished.
But there was one person on board who did not accept this theory, and that was Bill Raynor. By no figuring could he bring himself to believe that Jack had fallen into the sea. In the first place, the rail was almost breast high, and in the second, Jack was too good a sailor to have lost his head and toppled from the ship.
“I am convinced he’ll turn up,” he told Mullen in the wireless room.
“Yes, but a thorough search was made for him without result,” objected the other.
“Never mind, something seems to tell me that he is all right,” protested Bill.
“I’m afraid you are deluding yourself,” said Mullen, shaking his head. “When he fell overboard – ”
“You mean if he fell overboard,” interrupted Bill.
“Why, you surely don’t doubt that!” exclaimed Mullen; “a splash is heard and following that a canvass of the ship shows that Jack Ready is missing. If he wasn’t drowned, where is he?”
“I admit that it sounds like a poser,” said Bill. “See here, I’m not absolutely certain that he did go overboard at all.”
“What?” Mullen stared at Raynor as if he thought he had suddenly been bereft of his senses.
“I mean what I say,” repeated Bill slowly. “I’m not sure that he did go overboard.”
“In that case he must be on board the ship.”
“Exactly.”
“But why should he be hiding?”
“He’s not hiding.”
“Then why doesn’t he show up?”
“Because he’s been hidden,” replied Bill.
“Oh, that’s too fantastic an idea,” cried Mullen.
“I know it sounds wild – almost crazy, in fact, but I simply cannot help feeling it.”
“I wish I could think the same way,” said Mullen, and the tone of his voice left no room to doubt that he meant what he said.
In the meantime, how was it with Jack? Confined in the stuffy cabin, lighted only by the smoky lamp, his head ached intolerably from the cruel blow that had been dealt him. In fact, it was not till the following morning that he felt himself again.
Neither of the men who had made him a prisoner came near the cabin in which he was confined, and although he tried shouting for aid till his throat was sore, nobody appeared to hear him. The boy began to be seriously alarmed over his predicament.
Radwig had told him in so many words, that neither he nor Schultz intended to return to the cabin. The water and bread left him would not suffice for more than a few hours. By the time the cabin was entered by some employee of the ship, it was entirely probable that the aid would come too late. Luckily for him, his mental anguish was not increased by knowledge of the story of his death by drowning that had circulated through the ship. Had he known of this, it is likely that, plucky as the lad was, he would have given way entirely to despair.
The cabin was an inside one, so that there was no porthole through which he could project his head and call for aid. Examination of the small chamber, even to the length of pulling up the carpet, showed that there was no means of escape short of forcing open the door and that Jack, strong as he was, was unable to accomplish, although he wore out his muscles trying it.
The hours passed by with dragging feet until it seemed to the boy that he must have been in the bolted cabin for years instead of hours. The lamp guttered and went out, leaving him plunged in pitchy darkness. It was the last straw. Jack flung himself on the bunk and buried his head in his hands. How long he lay thus he did not know, but he was aroused and his heart set suddenly in a wild flutter by the sound of approaching footsteps and voices.
He shouted aloud:
“Help, for heaven’s sake, help!”
Then he sat silent, hardly daring to believe that there was a possibility of his rescue. More probably the voices and footsteps were those of Radwig and his rascally accomplice.
In an agony of apprehension, Jack sat in the darkness waiting for the answer to his cry for aid.
CHAPTER XVIII
A RASCAL BROUGHT TO BOOK
We must now go back to an occurrence that happened earlier in the evening. The ship had finally received orders to dock at Southampton and was proceeding at a fast clip up the Channel when the telephone in the wireless room rang and a voice inquired for Bill Raynor. Summoned to the wire by Mullen, Bill, who had just entered the station after a miserable day of anxiety for Jack, replied and found that he had been called by the ship’s surgeon, Dr. Moore.
“There has been an accident,” said the doctor; “one of the men has been badly injured. He says he wants to see you without delay.”
“But I know none of the crew,” said Bill.
“This man evidently knows you, however,” returned the doctor, “and I wish you would come as soon as possible. He appears to be worrying over something and says he cannot rest till he has seen you.”
Greatly mystified, Bill obeyed the summons. On entering the doctor’s cabin he saw, stretched on the lower bunk, and swathed in bandages, the figure of a man who turned a pair of sunken eyes on him.
“One of the stewards,” whispered the doctor. “Poor fellow. Badly scalded in the galley.”
He turned to the sufferer.
“This is Mr. Raynor, whom you wanted to see,” he said.
“Let him come here,” said the man feebly.
Bill approached the man’s side.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I want to ease my conscience of a great burden. Bend low so that you can hear me. It hurts when I talk loud.”
Bill bent over the pitiable, bandaged form.
“What do you want to tell me?” he said.
“That your friend, Mr. Ready, is a prisoner on this steamer,” was the reply that brought an exclamation of amazement from Bill.
He was half-inclined to believe the man was delirious for an instant, but a moment later revised this opinion.
“How do you know this?” he asked, when he had recovered from his astonishment.
“I helped the plotters who put him there,” moaned the man. “They were Germans, like myself, and they told me that if he was not shut up he would betray them to the English authorities as soon as the ship docked. They gave me money and I let them have the key to a cabin far in the stern of the vessel. They forged a note to him and trapped him when, in answer to it, I led him to where they were waiting.”
“And he is there now?” cried Bill.
The man nodded slowly.
“So far as I know. They had screwed bolts on the door.”
“He was not hurt?” demanded Bill.
“Not seriously; but they struck him on the head.”
“The brutes,” cried Bill.
“You know who they were, then?”
“I can guess – a man named Radwig and another named Schultz.”
The bandaged man nodded again.
“You have named them correctly.”
“Doctor!” exclaimed Bill, “you have heard what this man has said. Can you leave him long enough to go with me to Captain Jameson?”
“Gladly, my boy. But of all extraordinary tales – ”
“It is true, upon my word of honor,” groaned the injured man. “The number of the cabin is 14. The chief steward has the keys. I stole them from his desk to open the stateroom and placed them back again without his knowledge.”
“And just to think,” muttered Bill, as he and the doctor hastened from the injured man’s side, “that if it had not been for that accident we’d never have known a thing about poor old Jack’s plight till too late. After all, that feeling I had was correct.”
Captain Jameson summoned the chief steward as soon as he had heard Bill’s story and together the commander, and the others, hastened through the maze of corridors leading to stateroom 14. Theirs were the voices the boy had heard, and in ten minutes’ time he was wringing Bill’s hand and telling, to an indignant group, the story of Radwig’s outrage.
The captain’s indignation knew no bounds.
“I’ll have those rascals in irons before we drop anchor!” he exclaimed. “We are nearing Southampton now and if that man had not met with his accident they might have landed and escaped scot free.”
Jack was weakened by his trying experience, but he was not too exhausted not to be able to accompany the officer to Radwig’s cabin. A knock on the door brought an immediate answer:
“Come in.”
“Keep back,” whispered the captain to Jack, “I want to see how far these rascals will incriminate themselves.”
Accordingly, Jack and the others kept out of sight as the door was opened and Captain Jameson stepped inside, but as the portal was left ajar, they could hear what went on within.
“You know my friend, Mr. Ewing,” said Radwig, in oily tones, indicating Schultz, who, it will be recalled, had adopted that alias, and who was seated in Radwig’s cabin engaged over a valise full of papers.
The captain bowed his acknowledgment of the introduction.
“And to what am I to attribute the honor of this visit?” said Radwig. “Possibly something connected with the formalities of landing? I am informed we shall be in harbor in a short time now.”
“That is correct,” said the captain bruskly, “and we shall land minus one of the ship’s company.”
“You mean poor young Ready, the wireless operator,” said Radwig. “It was too bad about that unfortunate lad. If my friend and myself had been a few seconds earlier we might have saved him before he went overboard.”
“Well, of all the precious hypocrites,” gasped Bill under his breath.
“He takes the grand trophy,” breathed Jack, who had been told of the cleverly arranged story of his death that had been circulated.
“There is not a question but that he is drowned, I’m afraid,” came from Schultz the next minute. Then was heard the captain’s voice.
“Why, yes, gentlemen, there is,” he said; “in fact, there is every question for here he is!”
As if he had been an actor answering his “cue,” Jack stepped into the lighted doorway. At the sight of him, the two miscreants shrank back as if they had seen a ghost.
“Oh, I’m real enough, Messrs. Radwig and Schultz,” smiled Jack, as the others crowded in behind him.
“And it will be my duty to hand you both over to the British authorities,” snapped the captain to the speechless pair.
Radwig made a sudden dart for the valise full of documents. His move was so unexpected that before they could stop him he had hurled it out through the open porthole. Then, with a snarl of rage, he flung himself at Jack. But the captain’s erect figure interposed.
“Stand where you are,” he ordered, and Radwig found himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver.
“Hold out your hands,” he ordered and cringing, the two miscreants obeyed.
“Jones,” he added, addressing the chief steward, “oblige me by slipping those handcuffs on the men.”
The click of the steel bracelets appeared to arouse Radwig to speech.
“You – you – young whelp,” he shouted, shaking his manacled fists at Jack. “Whatever may be my fate, I’ll remember you and see that you are attended to if it takes every penny and every resource I have.”
“Violence won’t do you any good,” commented the captain quietly, “and if I know anything of the English law you are apt to spend quite some time in Great Britain. Jones, march the prisoners to the smoking room and detain them there till the ship docks.”
Sullenly, the two prisoners shuffled out of the cabin and were marched past wondering passengers to their place of detention. Three hours later, when the ship docked, the boys saw them being taken ashore by British officials. A thorough ransacking of their cabin had failed to reveal any incriminating documents, although the valise which Radwig had hurled out of the porthole undoubtedly had contained such papers.
At Southampton they learned that the St. Mark was likely to be tied up for some time. Rumors of mines and torpedoes made the owners unwilling to risk her loss. The two lads, therefore, left the vessel, and proceeded to London, where their instructions were to visit agents of the line and learn if anything had been heard of Tom Jukes. They found the city thronged with marching soldiers and territorials, while everywhere proclamations calling on the men of England to enlist were posted. Otherwise, however, everything appeared to be going on as if there were no war.
Inquiry at the agents resulted in a meagre clue to the whereabouts of the lad of whom they were in search. He had wired for funds from Malines, a Belgian town, a few days before war was declared and the Germans invaded Belgium. Since then nothing had been heard of him.
The magnitude of their task appeared greater than ever to the two lads now that they had actually started the work. But Jack was not the sort of lad to give up at the first difficulty.
“We’ll go to Belgium,” he announced, but right here a stumbling block appeared.
There were no longer regular steamers running to Belgian ports, and the small and infrequent craft that did venture had been warned by the Admiralty that the North Sea was thickly sown with mines. It was a journey full of peril but, nothing daunted, Jack and Bill journeyed to Grimsby, a town on the east coast, where they were told they might be able to engage passage on a trawler, provided they could find a captain adventurous enough to take them across.
All this took up valuable time, for in the confusion and turmoil of war time, business was harder to transact than in normal times. Two days were consumed in London, but on the evening of the second they started for Grimsby. As they took their seats in the train, a newsboy came along shouting “War Extras.” They bought some of his papers and settled back to read them.
“Well, here’s an encouraging item,” said Bill ironically, as the train moved out. He pointed to a despatch headed:
“Trawler destroyed by mines in the North Sea.”
“We’ll have to take our chances,” decided Jack, “but, hullo – what’s this?” he exclaimed suddenly; “listen here, Bill.”
He read excitedly from his paper:
“The two prisoners arrested as German military agents on the arrival of the American liner St. Mark at Southampton two days ago have, in some mysterious manner, escaped. Four of their guards are under arrest. It is hinted that bribery was used to effect the Germans’ liberty.”
