Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

10 of the house, two to guard the front, and Iwo to guard the road. With the rest he and the sergeant entered the building, and in the living-room he drew his own service revolver. "Do you think he'll shoot, sir?" in- quired the sergeant. "Wouldn't you?' said David. "You 11 find a padre in the school-room, all trussed up. Cut him loose and hold him till I come. He'll be rather annoyed." He went out to the stairs and climbed them to Hardt's room, unlocked the door with his left hand and stood back, holdmg the gun. , ™, . . •' Captain Hardt!" he shouted. ' This is Commander Blacklock of the Royal Navy. If you'll throw your gun out of the window, open the door, and surrender, you'll be treated as a prisoner of war. Otherwise you'll be shot!" ^ ^ Not a sound came from the room, but the silence was broken by the voice of the sergeant from the foot of the stairs. "Nobody in the school-room, sir!" "What?" The sergeant ran up the stairs, and then David turned the handle of the door and kicked the door open. There was no sign of any officer in the room, but the Reverend John Harris was on' the bed in his underclothes, bound hand and foot, with a handkerchief fastened over hi* mouth. , ,,.,.,•, "Untie the poor devil," barked David, and he went flying down the stairs and out from the house. , , v, ^ Away in the harbour, a gangplank had just been removed from the side of the steamship St. Magnus, and a sailor was replacing the deck-rail, when the captain caught sight of a tall figure in a heavy black cloak and a clerical hat rushing along the pier. "Hold on for'ard!" bellowed the cap- tain. 'There's another passenger coming!" ^ . • Bob Bratt was on the pier, and he in- tercepted the supposed curate. "Mr. Harris?" he questioned. He received a nod. " Commander Blacklock was looking for you sir. I'll tell him you caught the boat. ' Captain Hardt, in the cloak and hat and collar of the Reverend John Harris, scrambled aboard and descended to the saloon. The siren hooted, and the vessel began to move away from the pier. Across the harbour, the Reverent Hector Matthews was sitting in the office of the vice-admiral at naval headquarters. He had made the call in his ministerial capacity, but he voiced a grievance. "What I ask myself," he said, "is why, if everything is as it should be, I have been prevented from seeing the Reverend Harris." The vice-admiral smiled. "Well, I can tell vou," he stated aston- ishingly. "Mr. Harris was tied up in the school-room because he was a nuisance. You were very lucky not to have suffered the same fate. If you'd met Commander Blacklock you would have done." "I—I can't pretend to understand," stammered the minister. "Well. I'll help you." The vice-admiral lit a cigar and leant back in his chair. "An attempt was made by enemy spies to murder the real Miss Burnett and put one of their women agents in her place. For- tunately it failed. They dropped her over a cliff, but by a hundred to one chance a patrol boat picked her up. "She was able to tell them enough for our chaps to grab this agent the moment she showed her nose in Thurso. Then someone had the bright idea of re- placing her with a counter spy. It was short notice, but we were lucky enough to find someone brave enough to volunteer. The young woman you have met was not Miss Burnett." ^ The bald-headed minister did his best to grasp all this. "Th-then who is she?" he stuttered. "That, my dear sir," the vice-admiral informed him, "comes under the heading of Official Secrets." Oct,'jlicr 21. St. 11139. BOY'S CINEMA David Blacklock burst into the office, closed the door behind him, and saluted. The vice-admiral asked him what was the matter. "Hardt, sir," was the reply. "Made a break for it and got away! Locked Harris in his room and took his clothes. Excuse me, sir." A wireless operator at his in- struments in a comer of the big room was addressed: "Signals, general call to all units and police posts on the islands." "Aye, aye, sir," responded the operator. " He can't get away with it, sir," David assured the frowning vice-admiral. "He can't do any harm." When the St. Magnus put in at the pier In Stromness Harbour, seaport of the island of Pomona, Captain Hardt was at a porthole in the saloon and the girl was leaning against the starboard rail. Pas- sengers embarked and disembarked, and then a corporal of Marines marched eight dejected-looking foreign sailors up the gangplank. An armed Marine followed, and the prisoners were lined up on the deck. Hardt opened the porthole, and he heard a Customs officer inform the captain that the men were from an enemy submarine blown up off Stronshay by one of their own mines. " Give them some coffee, poor devils," said the captain compassionately; and then the old engineer called him over to the engine-room hatch. "I don't like it, Walter," he growled. "I'm no a superstitious man, but I don't like it." "Mind your engines, James," retorted the captain, "and I'll mind my ship." "They're Jonahs—pure Jonahs," con- tended the engineer. "Why can't they take 'em on the St. Ninian? All the prisoners of war go on her." "They'll give no trouble. Four in the fo'c'sle and four in the saloon, with a sentry to each four." The sullen prisoners were disposed of in this fashion, and soon afterwards the St. Magnus was on its way to Dingwall. The girl was back in the captain's cabin when Hardt went out from the lounge and made his way to the fo'c'sle. The corporal of Marines was in there, playing cards with the four captives in his charge, when the door was opened. He looked up at Hardt, and he took him to be a parson. " I'm sorry, Father," he said with a grin, "but they only speak their own lingo." Hardt's right hand came out from under the cloak he was wearing, and the long- barrelled revolver covered the corporal's heart. " Quiet, or you die!" snarled Hardt. He spoke rapidly in his own language to the astounded prisoners, and the cor- poral was seized and disarmed. Then from the foc's'le he and his four fellow- countrymen crept to the saloon, where frightened passengers looked on while the sentry in charge of the other prisoners shared the fate of the corporal. Passen- gers and Marines were locked in the saloon, and Hardt climbed the ladder to the bridge. The captain saw him coming, saw the formidable six-shooter in his hand. "Give me the rocket pistol!' he bawled at the sailor with him, and grasping that ineffectual weapon he faced the intruder. "Get off my bridge, whoever you are!" he roared. "Drop that pistol, captain!" com- manded Hardt. "You're my prisoner." " Get off my bridge, or I'll fill your belly with green and yellow lights!" "Your ship is in my hands, captain." Hardt snatched at the rocket pistol and flung it away. "Where is your wireless cabin?" "There isn't any," the captain snapped at him. "No wireless!" Hardt's dismay was written on his face. By this time Bob Bratt had visited naval headquarters, at Long Hope, and it was known that Hardt had boarded the St. Every Tuesday Magnus in the guise of a clergyman. A destroyer had been dispatched in pursuit of the steamship, and wireless messages had been sent to Scrabster and to Thurso. Hardt, quite well aware that some such things would happen, imprisoned the cap- tain and his crew in the saloon with the passengers and the Marines, and the men he had set free took over the ship under his orders. The girl was sitting on the bunk in the captain's cabin when one of the foreigners entered it with a suitcase, and Captain Hardt followed. "How did you escape?" she cried, jump- ing to her feet. Hardt motioned to the man to go, and then he flung off the clerical hat and the cloak and opened the suitcase. "That I must thank you for," he told her jeeringly, divesting himself of the Reverend John Harris' collar and coat. "Sentiment has always stopped women from being first-class fighters, Fraulein Thiel—or should I say Miss Burnett—or "Mrs. Blacklock," she completed for him. "So?" He took his own uniform and cap from the suit-case. "Well, that's one secret you kept from me." He proceeded to put on the uniform, and for a while there was silence in the cabin. "You hiay have captured the ship," she said, looking out through the porthole at the sea, "but what good will it do you?" "1 shall lay a course for the submarine rendezvous at Sandwick," he replied calmly. "But you can't!" she cried, turning about and catching hold of his arm. " You mustn't!" " I'm no longer under your orders." "But the whole channel is full of mines!" "We shall both take our chance." "But this doesn't mean only you and me. There are women and children on this ship-^ld people " "Their deaths will be at your door, npt mine," he retorted grimly. "We are at war! Perhaps you forget that—as I did for a while. We are enemies." "I like that better," she flamed at him. "And I," said he. "It simplifies every- thing. Come!" He made her precede him to the bridge, where he gave instioictions to the man he had appointed helmsman, and then he went with her to the crowded saloon. "Attention all!" he commanded, rais- ing his hands for silence. "You're being held as prisoners of war. I want no noise, no panic. Anybody who disobeys orders will be shot." A baby in a woman's arms cried piteously, and he added: "With one exception." CAPTURE! MESSAGES received at naval head- quarters, in Long Hope, i-eported from time to time that the St. Magnus had been sighted and was still on her right course; but David Blacklock's self- control almost gave way when a wireless message from A.17 stated that she was overdue and not sighted. The vice-admiral went to a map on the wall of his office, and David went with him. "She shaped a different couree between A.7 and A17," said the vice-admiral, trac- ing a finger down the map. "Sandw4ck Bav" "My wife's on that ship!" blurted David hoarsely. "I'm sorry, Blacklock, but I'm afraid you'll have to forget personal affairs." An orderly was sent for the officer com- manding the destroyer flotilla, and to that officer, when he arrived, the vice-admiral said: "We believe the St. Magnus to have been captured by enemy prisoners on board her and is making a rush for Sand- wick. Commander Blacklock will go with you to advise you of the course likely to i