The Trojan Horse (25 page)

Not desiring to be picked out as a possible witness, I turned and climbed down to the well deck, where I mingled with the crowd, which was now lining the starboard bulwarks and peering down at the wharf. A few minutes later Alf Higgins was brought on board by two policemen. The captain was summoned and he went aft to make inquiries. In a minute he was back again to say that it was quite correct, one of the cameramen had fainted. ‘He is in the fo'c'sle,' he told the police. ‘The ship's doctor, he is attending to him.'

This, however, did not content Alf Higgins, who swore that he had seen the man struck by one of the
crew. Whereupon, one of the policemen, a sergeant, went aft to investigate. A few minutes later he returned to announce that he had seen the gent and that he was suffering from a slight stroke. When the old man insisted that he had seen the fellow assaulted, the policemen gently took him by the arms and marched him down the gangway, the sergeant suggesting that he had been on the booze.

‘It was Shiel, wasn't it?' said a voice at my elbow.

I started, and turned to find the journalist, MacPherson, just behind me. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘How did you know?'

‘He used to do a certain amount of photographic work for the
Globe,'
was the reply. Then the fellow added, ‘Seems funny that he should have a stroke. I shouldn't have thought Shiel was the sort of man to suffer from strokes.'

‘He isn't,' I said. ‘He was knocked out by one of these volunteers.'

‘But what the hell for?'

‘Ah,' I said. ‘If I told you, I don't think you'd believe me.'

‘You could try me,' he suggested with a grin.

‘I will, on one condition,' I said.

‘What's that?'

‘That you go straight from here to Sir Geoffrey Carr of the Home Office. David Shiel is his godson. Explain what has happened and tell him that David is a prisoner on board the
Thirlmere
. Only if you're to do any good you must run Carr to earth within
three hours – that is before the ship sails. Will you do that?'

‘Yes, I'll do that. Now what's the story that I won't believe if told?'

I hesitated, wondering how he would take it. I had no desire to make him incredulous. If he found Carr before the
Thirlmere
sailed it was just possible that the ship might be delayed whilst the police searched it. ‘This ship isn't going to Finland,' I said. ‘As soon as it is in Norwegian territorial waters and no longer has a British naval escort watching over it, the volunteers will take control and the ship will alter course for Germany.'

MacPherson was staring at me. ‘But why?' he demanded.

‘Because the volunteers are all Nazis. Because that fellow Sedel is a Nazi. Because Marburg himself is a Nazi. But above all, because inside that torpedo boat is not a Calboyd Dragon engine, but an engine made of a new alloy which is being spirited out of this country to Germany.'

‘It's fantastic,' he said.

I laughed. I must have sounded a trifle bitter. ‘I told you you wouldn't believe me,' I said.

He looked straight at me for a moment, his eyes meeting and holding mine. Suddenly he said, ‘On the contrary I do believe you. The whole thing is much too fantastic not to be true. Can I have any more details?'

‘Well, I don't know,' I said, suddenly remembering that the
Globe
was the
Record's
great rival. ‘You see,
I've been working on the matter for Fisher of the
Record
. I think I've said enough. I'll give you a tip, though. The
Record
will be running this tomorrow. I've told you what I have because my desire for Government action to prevent this ship reaching Germany comes before my desire to get a scoop for the
Record.'

‘Okay, pal. Thanks for the tip. And I'll see that Carr hears about David Shiel.'

I watched him disappear down the gangway with a feeling that at least I was maintaining the initiative. That pleased me, for in other respects the outlook was grim enough. The crowd was beginning to drift away now that there was nothing of interest to hold them. I hesitated. If I remained on board much longer I should become conspicuous. On the other hand, once I passed out through the gates of the wharf, I should never get back to the
Thirlmere
unless it was with a squad of police and a search warrant. And there was David unconscious in the poop and Freya somewhere else on board. I could not just walk off the ship and leave them to their fate. It wasn't as though I could do anything, either in Whitehall or at the Yard. I had to leave that to Fisher and Keif in any case.

It did not take me long to make up my mind. I must maintain the initiative and I decided to tackle Marburg. Looking back on it, I cannot imagine what I expected to achieve. I had not prepared my brief. I was going to face him and leave it to the inspiration of the moment to decide what I was going to say.
With this intention, I climbed the iron deck ladder to the fo'c'sle. I then crossed to the port side, which seemed the easiest approach to the bridge. In doing so I passed the trapdoor leading to the hold. It was open, a small square hole in the deck plates, with barely room for a man to squeeze through. A rifle stood against the superstructure of the bridge. Presumably one of the volunteers guarding this entrance to the hold had found it necessary to go down. I hesitated, peering down it. All I could see was the top of an iron ladder. The rest was blackness.

I glanced quickly about me. No one appeared to be overlooking the fo'c'sle. Quickly I dropped to the deck and lowered my feet into the opening. A second later they found the rungs of the ladder and I had disappeared below the level of the deck. I paused for a moment, to discover whether my movements had been noticed. But there was no outcry, and I began to clamber quietly down. Somewhere below, no doubt, was the guard. As I clambered down dirty rung after dirty rung, I kept on peering below, expecting to see the light of a torch. But all was dark, and the smell of stale oil was very strong.

Suddenly a light flashed below me. Then the framework of the ladder began to shake as someone began to climb. The guard! My heart leapt to my throat. For a second I was in a panic. The man had only to glance upward to see me in silhouette against the square light of the trapdoor. If I climbed back to the deck, he was sure to see me and I remembered what had happened to David. If I faced him, the odds
were about even – he probably had a revolver, but I had the advantage of being uppermost on the ladder. But even if I were able to kick him from his hold before he fired, his absence would be noticed. All these thoughts raced through my mind in an instant, and at the same moment I leant away from the ladder and thrust out my hand. There was wood there, cases by the feel of it. Ammunition cases probably.

At that thought I began to climb quietly upwards, one hand outstretched, feeling the cases. The ship was supposed to be carrying more tanks than those I had seen on the well deck of the wharf. If they were stowed in the hold on top of the ammunition … I had climbed to the height of five cases when suddenly my hand encountered a void. I felt about. There was nothing within reach. I had been right. The hold was not stowed to the deck plates with ammunition boxes. I turned, put my hands on the last of the cases and drew my feet from the ladder.

A second later the guard climbed past where I lay on top of the cases. Then the trapdoor closed with a clang and I was in complete darkness. I felt about me with my hands. The cases presented a level surface running back from the ladder. I rose to my feet, and though I had moved carefully, I nearly brained myself on a piece of jutting metal. For a moment I crouched on my knees, nursing my head in agony. Then I pulled out a small torch I had borrowed from Fisher.

No wonder I had hurt my head. I had struck it
on the caterpillar tractors of a large tank. In the pale light of the torch the monstrous machine reared above me to the deckplates. Next to it was another, and beyond that I made out a third. I crawled between them and then rose to my feet. The clumsy-looking monsters were ranged five abreast across the hold and attached by steel hawsers to girders which ran below the deck plates. There were ten of them altogether, and behind them were Spitfires with their wings stacked against the side of the hold.

Freya had been brought aboard in a tank. She might have been left in it. It was the safest place to hide a prisoner. I remembered my own experience of being trussed up in a steel container and made haste to locate her. It took me some time to visit each one, tapping against its steel plates and calling out her name.

When I had contacted every one without result, I came to the conclusion that either she was not there, or else she was bound and gagged so firmly that she could not even tap in reply. Perhaps she was unconscious. At the thought I felt a sudden surge of anger through my veins – not at Marburg, but at Sedel. The man was a fiend, and I could well believe the pleasure it would give him to hurt a woman.

I realised then that if Freya were in one of those tanks, the only way I could discover her was by getting into each one. That was a lengthy job, and before starting on it, I decided to go down the ladder and see what was at the bottom of it. The guard must have had some reason for going down there. As I
swung myself on to the ladder, there was a sudden tremendous noise overhead. It grew louder until it was pounding on the deck plates above my head. It continued for a moment and then ceased. It was some moments before I realised what it was. They were bringing tanks from the wharf on board.

I began to descend the ladder just as the next one came on board. The ladder was set in a kind of recess in the bulkhead, so that with the munition cases flush with the bulkhead proper, it descended what was virtually a small square well. At the bottom I found a massive steel door. It required all my strength to slide this back. When at length I got through, I found myself facing more munition cases. Presumably this was No. I hold. There was no ladder here, but a rope hung down the wall of cases that faced me. I glanced up. The cases were stacked to within little more than a foot of the deck plates.

I went back into the main hold and, after closing the bulkhead door, climbed back up the ladder. I felt certain there was no hold aft. The space beyond the after bulkhead would be taken up by the engine-room. There was only one thing to do. I should have to search each of those tanks, and the planes, if necessary.

By the time I had finished examining those tanks the
Thirlmere
was under way. It was past eight now and I was hungry, dirty and dispirited. I had found no trace of Freya. Presumably she had been removed to another hiding place. It had not been easy to make the search thorough, for in some cases the hatches were difficult to open and some were tucked under steel girders so that I had scarcely been able to squeeze myself inside. However, I had managed to search thoroughly every tank, and now I sat on the back of one nearest the ladder and wondered what the next move was.

The hold was very hot and everything seemed to pulse to the rhythmic throb of the engines. Shortly after eight-thirty we hove to for a while. The silence seemed uncanny. But it only lasted for about a quarter of an hour. I did not know it at the time, but the
Thirlmere
had stopped for the River Police. MacPherson of the
Globe
had kept his word, and off Gravesend
the police made a hurried search of the ship for David Shiel. On Baron Marburg's assurance that David had left as soon as he had recovered – an assurance that was corroborated by the evidence of three of the volunteers, who swore they had seen him go down the gangway – the police left.

The next stop was at about nine-thirty off the Nore. This was for the purpose of picking up our escort, a destroyer of the Dover patrol. Thereafter the engines pounded away unceasingly, the whole ship vibrating as she forged ahead at her full ten knots.

I had made up my mind to wait until the early hours of the morning, and then to go up on deck and try to contact Schmidt. Events, however, were rather taken out of my hands. Shortly after ten the trapdoor was opened and a man with a flashlight descended. In one hand he carried what looked like a mess tin. I was certain of this when the light of his torch suddenly flashed full on it and showed me the handle of a spoon or fork sticking out of it.

He climbed down to the bottom of the ladder and, peering from the top of the munition cases, I saw him pass through the door into No. I hold. He was gone about ten minutes. When he returned, he still had the mess tin, but by the way the spoon in it rattled, I gathered it was now empty. As he passed me, I saw he wore the armlet of a volunteer. It was with a beating heart that I swung myself on to the ladder as soon as the trapdoor was shut. At the bottom I pulled open the bulkhead door and passed into the for'ard hold. The rope, I noticed, was not hanging in quite
the same position as I had seen it before. After closing the bulkhead door behind me and fixing my torch to one of the buttons of my jacket, I swung myself up on the rope.

The gap between the top of the munitions cases and the deck plates was bigger than it had seemed from the bottom of the hold. In all there must have been the better part of three feet clearance. I went forward on hands and knees. Every now and then I had to duck for a steel girder. At last the beam of my torch showed me the for'ard end of the hold. There was no sign of Freya or of any case that might contain her. Yet I was certain that she was here somewhere. Well, there was only one place she could be and that was in one of the cases across which I was crawling. I examined the one I was kneeling on. It was iron-bound, and fitted flush to the next. The probability was that when I found the right one I should only have to lift the lid. A lock would have showed.

I must have spent the better part of an hour crawling over those cases, and at length I lay down on my back from sheer exhaustion. My shoulders ached with crouching in that cramped position and my knees were sore. I had tapped and pulled at the tops of countless cases. I had called her name. All in vain. And now I had only about ten feet to go to the for'ard end of the hold. And I had a feeling that those ten feet would yield no more than the rest. I was conscious, too, of the fact that I should by now be thinking of how to contact Schmidt and David, and what
we were going to do to prevent the ship reaching Germany.