The Brass Chills Read online

  “Finish your breakfast, Chris. We’ve got a Cook’s tour ahead of us. Cleave’s orders.”

  I finished my coffee and went with him. Bill had already disappeared from the mess hall, and there was no sign of Jess. I assumed she would probably have her meals at the hospital, wherever that might be.

  We walked along a path which overlooked the ocean. There was a big, red splotch in the east as the sun peeked over the edge of the horizon. There was no sign of the Ship.

  “They’ve certainly managed to hide things here,” I said. “Place looks deserted.”

  “I told you we’d be working like ants, underground,” Bradley said. “The place is honeycombed with caves. The shops are all underground. Even the dry-dock. We’ve learned something from the Chinese.”

  I remembered reading about their moving whole factories into caves in the hills.

  Bradley stopped by a clump of bushes. “Here we are,” he said.

  I couldn’t see anything till he parted the bushes and I saw an opening in the ground, the edges concreted. There was an iron ladder leading down into the earth. Bradley went first.

  Before we reached the bottom we heard the compression drills. When I was on the ground again I turned. It was hard to believe unless you saw it yourself. It was a mammoth cave that must have run in a good four hundred feet from the sea. Its vaulted high ceiling made the sounds of voices and tools against metal echo and re-echo. There was a sort of coffer-dam arrangement at the mouth of the cavern, and the water had been pumped out. Resting on blocks, a scaffolding already built around her by a carpentry crew, was the long black hull of a submarine. Blue-white lights, fixed to the walls of the cave, blazed down on her. Every watt of electric power generated by the diesel turbines was to be used in the shops and here in the dry-dock. That’s why we had kerosene lamps in our living quarters.

  I saw Cleave and Ed Winthrop talking to a youngster in a khaki work uniform. I followed Bradley over to them and was introduced to Lieutenant Commander Wasdell, skipper of the U.S. submarine Seahorse.

  “How quickly can we be out of here, sir?” he said to Cleave.

  “It’ll take at least two, days for us to get our equipment in service,” Cleave said.

  “God, sir, the Japs are running troops and supplies through this area on a moving belt,” Wasdell said. “My own crew has been at work while we waited for you, sir. We could go to sea now, but we can’t fight without our port tubes. I suppose you’ll have to mould them, cast them, machine them?” This question was addressed to Ed Winthrop.

  “’Fraid so, sir,” he said.

  Wasdell winced. I got the impression of a hungry dog straining at the leash. Ed Winthrop saw the wince and smiled a little.

  “This isn’t peacetime, sir,” he said. “We’ll do a quick job for you. But we’ve got to get set up.”

  Wasdell gave him a strange, uncertain look. I was to see it often on the Island — that look. Ships put in for repairs, with the habits of the sea and the fleet still on them; they’re perfectionists when it comes to their ships; they trust no one. They look on the workmen with a kind of alien watchfulness that knows how to deal with enemy attack, but not with repair.

  Not that I blame them much. To skip ahead, I saw the Seahorse hours later. Hundreds of workmen were swarming over her, filling her deck with air hose, crouching in corners with oxyacetylene torches, hammering wiring, cutting; the ship and the edges alongside piled with grime and refuse. It looked to me like complete, utter, cockeyed confusion. Like destruction without rhyme or reason. I was to learn that in all this mess is extraordinary order; that every workman knows exactly where everything is, what to do with it, and when. And I was to see a lot of officers watching this demolition of their ship with that same suspicion. They were never entirely convinced it would be put back together.

  “If we could go up to the master shipwright’s office and out of this noise, sir,” Wasdell said to Cleave, “I’ve got my report for you and Mr. Winthrop of the exact repairs necessary. It might save time if you’d call in your foundry boss, since he’ll have to make most of the new stuff for us.”

  I saw Cleave and Ed Winthrop exchange a worried glance. Bill was the foundry boss. Was it safe to put him in charge of this important job? As we climbed up to the ground level I realized we were on the same old merry-go-round. Was it safe to put anyone in charge of any job? Could we move with any efficiency at all until this was cleared up?

  At ground level Bradley and I separated from the others. The technical problems involved in manufacturing tubes were not up our alley. We walked inland along a narrow path until we came to a small frame building which housed Cleave’s office, Bradley’s and mine.

  “When you look at Wasdell and his boys,” Bradley said, as he sat down behind his desk, “this thing gets under your skin. They’re crazy to get back into the fight, and right here in our own little group is someone determined to stop them.”

  “You pays your money and you takes your choice,” I said.

  “You and Cleave and me,” Bradley said, “and the six leadermen.”

  “And Ellen Lucas,” I said. “If you’re counting out Bill and Jess.”

  He turned his gray eyes on me, and they were glittering angrily. “We start all over again at scratch, Chris. Even the scene of the crime is gone, or will be after the Ship finishes unloading tonight. No concrete clues; not a scrap of substantial evidence.” He brought his fist down on the desk. “A firing squad is too good for the son of a bitch! Too, quick and merciful!”

  V

  Murder or no murder, there was a job to be done. I left Bradley sitting at his desk, chewing on his pipe stem and looking like a man trying to will the mountain into coming to Mohammed. I cornered one of O’Rourk’s men and got myself taken on a tour of the base. If it hadn’t been for all the other pressures on my mind, I’d have found myself gaping like a hick in Times Square. The ingenious camouflaging of the shops, the living quarters, the supply sheds, made me feel good down deep inside. We were supposed to be amateurs at war, but there was nothing amateurish about this. The engineers who’d fashioned this place had done a job that might have made even Hirohito do more than hiss with surprise.

  In the shops the same confusion I’d noticed at the dry-dock seemed to be the keynote of things. Material was piled haphazardly all over the place. Men were sweating over the installation of machines which looked to me as though they’d never be put together in one piece and made to operate. Yet already some machines were functioning. There were no night and day shifts organized yet. Men worked until they were exhausted and then took a couple of hours off for a bite of food and to snatch a few minutes’ rest and sleep. They came back on the job, grimy, hollow-eyed, but evidently ready to keep going at top speed.

  I went through Tubby Garms’s domain at one point. He was checking lists. His moon-shaped face was pale and wet with sweat. He gave me a wry grin, and his lips pursed in an off-key whistling of “Time on My Hands.” For a moment I had the same exhilarated feeling I’d had that day in the recruiting office. So America was soft, was it? So we couldn’t take a kick in the teeth and come back fighting? Those Jap rats ought to have a look at this gang!

  Then I remembered that perhaps the Japs were seeing it through a pair of eyes belonging to a murderous poisoner.

  All day long there was one thing on my mind which I tried to pretend wasn’t there at all. Jess. That little daydream had gone up in smoke, and yet I wanted to see her … just to look at her. I told myself it was crazy. I told myself that Jess had clearly indicated her choice; that in doing so a good deal of the gloss had been worn away from her. I’d thought of her as unapproachable, and yet she’d turned out to be a pushover for Bill. She wasn’t my type of girl after all. But she was in my blood, God damn it!

  I got around to the hospital about four in the afternoon. It was another underground job, a big carbarn of a place with a dome roof. Beds were lined up along both walls. One end of it had been partitioned off into a dispensary. Al
ec’s laboratory, and a sort of office.

  Alec, stripped to the waist, was supervising the unpacking of his supplies. Jess and Ellen Lucas were taking stuff out of the cases and putting them on shelves in the dispensary according to plan. Alec was glad to see me.

  “I hope to God you’re a man with a cigarette,” he said. I gave him one. Jess had picked up an armful of stuff and had gone off without even looking at me. It had been a mistake to come. Seeing her was hell.

  “Quite a place, this,” Alec said.

  “Weird and wonderful,” I said.

  He eyed me critically. “You looked pooped.”

  “Optical illusion,” I added. “I haven’t been doing anything except walking around watching other people work.”

  “And thinking,” he said.

  “Habit I can’t break,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well!” he said.

  “Oh, well … what?” I said.

  He grinned. “I get paid for my advice. Never give it gratis. People get so they underrate you.”

  Jess came back from the dispensary. She didn’t look at me. I couldn’t stand it. “Hello, Jess,” I said.

  She had to lift her eyes. “Hi,” she said, and bent down to pick up another armload of stuff. I wanted to go over to her and grab hold of her. I wanted to tell her there was no reason to act this way. I was in love with her, sure; blind, staggering in love with her. I knew Bill was her man. But there was no reason to put me in coventry. We could be friends. We could at least talk, and smile, and act like human beings.

  Or could we? Could I ever look at her without feeling electricity clear down to the tips of my fingers and toes? Could I ever be alone with her without pleading my case like a love-sick sophomore? Not yet, I guess. Maybe not ever.

  She went away. Alec inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “Get out of here, Chris, you’re breaking my heart,” he said, “and a man can’t work with a broken heart.”

  “Nuts to you,” I said.

  VI

  Along about five o’clock I went back to my quarters. There I found Bill stretched out in his bunk, his eyes closed, deep lines of exhaustion in his face. He opened his pale eyes to look at me, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll get out and let you sleep,” I said.

  “I’m not sleeping,” he said. “Everybody’s knocking off. Cleave’s orders. We’re going to have to go back to unloading the Ship as soon as it’s dark. All hands. The men would drop if they didn’t have a few hours’ rest before they start over again.”

  “Get the foundry organized?” I asked.

  “It’ll do,” he said. “We may be able to start our job tomorrow. Next day at the latest.”

  I took a shower and put on dry clothes. When I came back into the front room, Bill was still lying on the bunk, staring up at the ceiling.

  “The boys are holding a meeting,” he said.

  “What boys?”

  “Joe Adams and Company,” he said. “The leadermen. They’re trying to decide what to do about Jess and me.”

  “It’s not up to them to decide,” I said.

  His laugh wasn’t amused. “That’s what you think.”

  “Bradley thinks you’re innocent.”

  “That’s a comfort,” he said sourly. “It won’t matter what Bradley thinks if the boys make up their mind.”

  “The Ship will be gone tomorrow,” I said. “There’s nothing they can do about it then.”

  “That’s the reason they’re holding the meeting,” he said.

  I felt uneasy. I knew the men could force Bradley’s hand if they were sufficiently determined. I lit a cigarette and walked over to one of the open windows. O’Rourk’s man wouldn’t adjust the blackout fixtures for another couple of hours.

  Then I saw the men. All six leadermen, headed by Joe Adams, were coming toward our shack.

  “The committee is about to wait on us,” I said.

  Bill didn’t move. “Quicker than I expected,” he said in a flat voice.

  VII

  I opened the door of the shack to Big Joe’s sharp knocking. He didn’t look glad to see me.

  “We’d like to come in, Mr. Wells,” he said.

  I pushed the door wider and they trooped in. Ed Winthrop was the very last one across the threshold. He looked tired and troubled. He should have been leading this expedition, but he wasn’t.

  Adams, with Scotty Cameron and Lew Lewis standing beside him, looked down at Bill, who hadn’t moved from the bunk. Tubby and McCoy hovered behind them. Tubby gave me a forced grin.

  “The sewing circle can meet at my house next week,” he said.

  McCoy’s forehead was knotted in a concentrated frown. “This is serious, Tubby,” he said. Bill looked up at the silent Adams. The point of his cigarette glowed red. “What’s it to be, Joe? Test by fire? Boiling in oil?”

  “We want to search this place,” Adams said.

  “Bradley and O’Rourk have already searched it,” Bill said.

  “We don’t choose to trust anyone except ourselves,” Adams said.

  Bill got up from the bunk very quickly. I thought for a minute he was going to swing on Adams. His pale eyes were blazing. “You smug bastard,” he said. “I always hide my poison in my toothpaste tube.” He stalked over to the window and stood with his back to them.

  The men looked around awkwardly. They didn’t seem to know where to begin. Then Adams ripped the sheets off the bunk. Without saying anything, the rest of them, except Ed Winthrop, began an aimless sort of hunt.

  “I’m flat against this,” he said to me in a low voice. “It’s not our job, and I told ’em so.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I have to see a man about a dog.”

  Bradley should know about this.

  I found him in his office. It looked to me as if he hadn’t altered his position in the chair behind the desk since I’d left him hours ago. He looked up through a cloud of stale tobacco smoke and said:

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “The leadermen have taken this investigation into their own hands, Red,” I said. “They’re searching our quarters.”

  “They won’t find anything,” Bradley said.

  “Adams seems to have shouted Ed Winthrop down.”

  “God, how I hate these guys who think with their biceps,” Bradley said.

  “If they insist on shipping Bill and Jess home, what are you going to do?” I asked him.

  “What can I do?” he said. The same hard anger was in his voice that had been there when we found Quartermayne. “We’ve got a job to do, Chris. If the men aren’t going to function at a hundred per cent efficiency because Bill and Jess are here, then they have to go, no matter how unfair it is. We could refuse. We could issue orders. We could put marines over them with guns. That might he fairer to Bill and Jess. But our first job is to get the work done, at any cost.”

  “So they’ll go, if Adams says so?”

  “Unless I can find the real poisoner before the Ship sails.”

  “And the chances of that?”

  “Go away and don’t bother me,” he said grimly.

  I went out and stood for a moment, staring across the ocean. I thought, we are amateurs at war in one sense. Someone was playing tricks on us here and we were falling for it like an April Fool’s Day pocketbook on a string. They wanted us to fall apart, to suspect each other, to toss and turn on our beds; and that was exactly what we were doing. They had murdered one level head who might have kept the men under control. Now they were working to get rid of key workmen. It was so simple, so obvious, and yet we were all falling for it.

  I started slowly back along the narrow, overgrown path toward our shack. Adams and the boys must have finished turning the place upside-down by now. I had gone only a few steps when I heard someone running toward me along the path. It was Bill. His face was white and he was breathing hard. He grabbed me by the arms, so tightly I almost let out a yip.

  “For God sake get out of here
, Chris!” he said.

  “What’s eating you?” I said.

  “They found it!” he said.

  I just stared at him. I couldn’t believe it. For all that I’d been hating his guts because of Jess, I’d never suspected him. I remember struggling to keep my voice level.

  “The poison?” I asked him.

  “No, you damned idiot, the missing page.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The page from Dr. Walker’s medical encyclopedia. The page on botulism.”

  “You took it?” I couldn’t believe it.

  His eyes were coldly furious. “Will you, for Christ sake, stop stalling? Listen!”

  We stood still, scarcely breathing. I could hear loud angry voices up the path toward our shack.

  “They mean business,” Bill said.

  “The best thing for you to do is get straight to Bradley,” I said. “I don’t know the answers, Bill. But whatever they are Bradley’ll keep the boys from stringing you up to the nearest tree.”

  He shook me until my teeth rattled. “Will you stop it!” he shouted. “I’m the one who doesn’t know the answers. What were you doing with that page?”

  “What was I doing with it? Look here, Bill … ”

  “It was in the lining of your white jacket!”

  The voices up the path were growing louder. There was an angry, snarling note in them that made the pit of my stomach sag badly. My head was whirling. The missing page in the lining of my uniform jacket!

  “When did you put it there?” I asked Bill.

  “Listen!” he said. “Listen to those voices! If they get their hands on you, Chris, they’ll tear you up for shark meat. They aren’t fooling.”

  “There’s one thing I’d never have believed,” I said. “I’d never have believed you’d double cross me.”

  “I never saw the goddam page in my life!” he said. He sounded desperate. “I’ve never touched your belongings. I’ve never even been into your half of the shack. Listen to me. Somebody’s framed you just the way I was framed. Bradley and O’Rourk may save your life, but you’ll go back on that ship tonight. Nothing in God’s world can stop that. There’s just one thing for you to do, Chris.”