The Steel Duichman

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20360, 18 July 1934, Page 14

The Steel Duichman

A GREAT STORY OF ADVENTURB ON LAND AND 8E A j

(Author of "Paradise Orchid,” "The Green Hat,” etc.)

By

Vincent Cornier

CHAPTER XIX. The Lost Torpedo. The countryside around the great iron and steel centre of Hart borough was peculiarly untouched by the labours and the smokes of that place. It began abruptly, when outlying “garden city” plots ended, and then, for miles on rolling miles, it attractively merged into the moorlands and the wolds of northern Yorkshire.

Cleone Bainbridge had known the marshlands thoroughly, but had not suspected this bewildering territory could exist about Hartborough, a place she had always looked on as a kind of stepbrother to Gehenna. But finding the Roscoes were really huffy about her disparaging disbelief, she ventured out and explored it. Truly enough, it was all as inviting as they had made out. Thereafter Guy Merlincote and she walked miles across it every morning, taking a new route each day, and discovering each was satisfactory. It was during one of these excursions that a second contact with the mysterious Steel Dutchman’s forces was established.

The pair had gone along the hillside roads to fhe north of the town, and had descended to the dunes and sand swathes that began the great marsh of Hartness Slem. The sea broke brightly in purest white combers and in long, cream, running laces of water—quietly, in a November morning that was all as serene as one of early spring. And from the dunes to the beginning of the hard and curiously golden sands of the shore was not a' far cry. Cleone decided on a walk along these. Merlincote stopped to light his pipe and grinned. “I should liave thought you'd had sufficient of this shore-line to last you a life-time,” he chuckled. “Now think again, darling; we'll only get back to the Slem if we follow this way. Is it worth while?” “01i, come along and don’t be boring, Guy!” The sunny jollity of the seascape, and the peace of it, seemed to create a careless and impish mood for Cleone. “I wish you wouldn't be so stuffy. I’m neither going to mope nor worry, my dear.” “Very well, then, we’ll go on. But I warn you, Cleone, it’s not going to be altogether pleasant.” > “What isn’t?” “Why, seeing the ‘eye* again. You can’t miss doing that if we go this route. Van Klaus made a terrible mess of it with his fire-rasing and his shells. It’s desolate—depressing beyond mention.”

Cleone took hold of her fiance’s arm. She looked up at him and laughed. “Let’s do a bit of confessing, darling. D’you kpow, I’m heartily glad the Bainbridge ‘eye’ has been blown off tlje face of the map. It doesn't matter to me how much mischief Van Klaus does, if he never does more than that. If only you could realise, Guy, the awful and terror stricken nights and days I spent in that encampment, you’d feel exactly as I do. Glad—glad—glad.” Merlincote burned his fingers with a match. He was completely dumbfounded. Truly there was no knowing, for man, the ways and wantonings of a woman. He had thought of her as overwhelmed by the loss of all the ‘eye’ meant to her and her father. Now, to hear this! He shrugged his shoulders and stolidly went on with his pipe lighting. “All right. *Nuff said, Cleone.” He set off at last, walking at her side. “If that’s the way of it, carry on.” And. thinking over her point of view as they went down the narrow sands, he had to concede her the greater sense of the position. As things had panned out, it would have been for the best if Van Klaus had taken it in mind to obliterate the ‘eye’ and its secret workshops, months before he ditfts. It would have been better still, for civilisation as a whole, if never one of them had been founded.

They covered a distance of about a mile, talking of the wild fowl that were active in the freshness and the clear morning light. Merlincote pointed out a dozen differing species; birds that Cleone had never seen, with recognition, previously—birds she hardly knew existed. But Merlincote, the wild-fowler, was as familiar with them as she was with the pages of the latest novel. So, chatting in desultory manner about such things, they came to the first “owle” of Hartness Slem. This was one of those strange water lanes that Superintendent Ormeston had so warily allowed for during the travelling of the police launch to the Slem on the night of the sea-fight. Bearing the tidal overflow of the marsh, as well as constituting a drain from the far-off hillsides, the “owle” was a brackish river—no less—as wide and almost as deep as a south-country trout stream meandering through its shallow chalkbed.

Deep enough to demand that Merlincote picked Cleone up and carried her in his arms across its singing tide . . deep enough to have drenchced her thoroughly had she fallen —as she nearly did fall. For Merlincote caught sight of a long and ugly steel shape, half-embedded in the sand and under the rippling waters of the “owle.” Seeing it, his arms were momentarily powerless . . he had almost stepped on the distinctly nasty and busi-ness-like firing pin of a torpedo! Gasping, Cleone dropped from his hold and staggered back. She, no more than Guy Merlincote, could relish a nearer approach to that sinister length of high explosive material and delicate meclian-

“Phew!** He whistled and rubbed his hand across his eyes. “That was a narrow squeak, Cleone! Who the—who the devil would have thought of a—a thing like that being here ?” Cleone edged away from the missile. “If you hadn’t twisted to one side,” she breathed, “that might have been the end of the day for we two—what?” She smiled bleakly. “Guy, we’re fatedl It’s evident we simply can’t get away from the Dutchman and his wicked works!” Merlincote encircled her waist with his arm and drew her near.

“Do you think it really is one of those of your father’s pattern ?” “What else? Yes, it’s rigged up like the models I’ve seen on his laboratory table—without knowing precisely what they were intended to be. Those queer whiskery things”—she pointed’ to a cluster of spines on the nose-cap of the torpedo—“explode it. don’t they?” “I suppose they do. Only that’s not usual. An ordinary torpedo has just a firing-head. This thing’s fitted up like a mine; and, I should say, all as touchy.” “Then why didn't it burst when it hit the land, here V*

“It wouldn’t do that. More than likely it rode in on the full tide and beached here as gently as the falling of a feather —on its steel body; its bulk. Then the receding water would all as gently sift sand round it to hold it tight.” “I wonder if it was one of those Van Klaus fired at the destroyers—” “You can bet it is! Klaus wouldn’t have been so idoitic as to tip one overboard to see if it floated! It’ll doubtless be one he intended to down the Navy ' with—only, thank goodness, he didn't l succeed.” “I suppose we’ll have to report it?” “Yes! More police questioning!” Mer- , lincote laughed shortly. “Lord, how I’m getting sick of all that business!” Cleone seemed to be thinking. She walked a little distance away and then returned to Guy Merlincote’s side, and he saw that she was radiant about something. “Guy! I’ve had a brain wave! Don’t you think this discovery puts the nails in Van Klaus’ coffin? Don’t you see that this is the very nastiest piece of misfortune he’s likely to encounter . . . until daddy gets back his memory and tells all he knows.” “No—l don’t follow, Cleone. Why should it be? It’s Known that Klaus has an armament of these torpedoes as well as his quickfirer; what’s there novel Cleone shook him. “You haven’t forgotten that it’s pretty well agreed that the device which Van Klaus uses to propel the Fliegende Schaum at its uncanny speed ... is duplicated 'in each one of these torpedoes; even as it was in the coble you captured! Don’t you see—when an examination comes to be made of the internal machinery of this thing, and of the machine from the coble—Van Klaus will be done ? It’s, only because daddy hasn’t been able to tell anything, that he’s gone so far ahead as he has gone. Once the experts decide on the main principle and theory of daddy’s new invention, from an examination of these . . . the Steel Dutchman’s doomed, isn’t he ?”

Guy Merlincote was immediately caught in an excitement as great as her own. Instantly he saw that her supposition was founded on the hardest of common sense basis. Yes; granted that the newly-invented mechanism could be understsood, surely some method of countering its uncanny properties could be found.

“There’s a lot in that,” he granted “But it’d be a jolly sight more to the point if we were able to discover the hidden transmitters from which he gets his power broadcast.” Cleone moved, and spread her hands wide, irritated. “Goodness, Guy, you are so—so matter of fact! It might be years before that happens! He could have that transmitter operating from the wilds of Siberia, for all we know—or stuck away on some remote island where it’d talje an explorations’ expedition to find it. In the meantime, here’s something definite and concrete, although it’s at the other end o f the string; the receptive end.” “You are right, Cleone. Don’t think I'm merely cribbing for the sake of —” He broke off and the girl saw his fac<i going a sickly grey. She whipped about and glanced in the direction he. was gazing . . . and she shivered. While they had been so concerned with their find, and while they had talked, a party of Sloughstowe villagers had approached them from the great marsh., xhey had come along the mud flats an'i had gained the slight rises of the sand dunes without it being possible to sight them from the beach. Now, topping the rises, their shadows long in the morning sun—they looked down on Guy Merlincote and Cleone Bainbridge as animals might look on easy prey. Two of them carried salmoning nets—wide pockets of amazingly finely wrought but diabolically strong meshes—while all the remainder carried boat-hooks and fish spears that looked like tridents. The girl had a curious recollection pf having, somewhere, at some time, seen pictures of ancient Roman gladiators armed with nets and tridents, similar to these. And in a sickening rush of fear she knew that nothing her lover could do to aid her, should these men decide to attack them, would avail against those terribly effective weapon^ Merlincote’s thoughts must have gone along similar lines. He growled and said something in Latin . . . then laughed. . That these fellows had known the location of that torpedo and had come from Sloughstowe to salvage it, there was not much doubt. That here, in Cleone and Guy Merlincote, they recognised the major enemies of their lavish and dominant paymaster —Mynheer Rvjer van Klaus, the Steel Dutchman — there was also no doubt. It could be read in their bestial faces. The triumph of the situation was limned in their attitudes. . . Klaus had sworn to have Cleone Bainbridge and had sworn to capture Merlincote as well. . . Merlincote remembered those icy words of the pirate —“and when next we meet, I shall kill!” Mynheer Rvjer van Klaus had the reputation of being a man who never broke his word. “They’re supposed to keep in Slo’stowe, aren’t they, Guy?” Cleone quaveringly asked, hoping maybe to gain some quality of confidence out of an affirmative answer to the question. “Didn’t the police tell you they’d be watched night and day—” “And so they are,” Merlincote returned, never taking his eyes off the menacing group. “But there’s surely nothing to stop a party of salmon fishers or plaicespearers going out with their nets and spikes, is there? Stiff with officers, as Slo’stowe is, still they’ll not have aroused suspicions.” He paused and watched them even more intently. “Now are they going to start something? I I would like to know what exactly their game is. They look ugly—” His voice failed in his throat. A guttural interchange of comments had gone among the men. Then there was a grumbling laughter . . . and, with their fish spears and boat-hooks held out. they formed a crescent and made for the barrister and Cleone—encircling them with gleaming steel prongs. In absolute silence, now, that circle narrowed, until the barbs were almost penetrating their flesh . . . and Merlincote knew that Van Klaus, out of his unholy alii ance with these semi-brutes of Slough stowe, had won another round in his game of devilry and vengeful arrogance (To be continued daily.)