The False Faces Further Adventures from the History of the Lone Wolf by Vance, Louis Joseph, 1879-1933

"All foolishness, of course, but 'gets on one's nerves ... constant association with man like that.... 'Know what he's doing now, or was, when I came away? Sitting up with doors and windows locked and blinds drawn, drinking brandy neat. He can't sleep by night if sober, or without 'light in the room. If he does, he knows they will get him ... people he hears crawling up from the sea, slopping round the house, mumbling, whimpering in the dark--"

He broke off abruptly, with a whisper more dreadful than a shriek--"_God_!"--and jumped to his feet, whipping the automatic from his belt.

A footfall sounded in one of the after compartments. Others followed.

Someone was coming slowly down the alleyway, someone with dragging, heavy feet.

The lieutenant waited motionless, as one petrified with terror.

The bulkhead doorway framed the figure of the commander. He paused there, louring at his subaltern with haunted eyes ablaze in a face like parchment.

"So!" he said, nodding. "As I thought. It is thus I find you, fraternising with one who may be, for all we know, an enemy to the Fatherland. You drunken, babbling fool! Get ashore!" His angry foot thumped the grating. "Get ashore, and report yourself under arrest!"

With no more warning than a strangled snarl, the lieutenant shot him through the head.

XI

UNDER THE ROSE

Vague stupefaction replaced the scowl upon the countenance of the commander. He swayed, a hand faltering to his forehead, where dark blood was beginning to well from a cleanly drilled puncture. Then he collapsed completely, falling prone across the raised sill of the bulkhead opening. A convulsive tremor shook savagely his huge frame.

Thereafter he was quite still.

The report of that one shot had reverberated stunningly within those narrow walls of steel. Momentarily Lanyard looked to see the alarmed anchor watch appear; so too, apparently, the lieutenant, who remained immobile, pistol poised in a hand for the moment strangely steady, gaze fixed upon the mouth of the alleyway.

But through a long minute no other sounds were audible than that ceaseless dripping from frames and seams, with that muted, terrible mouthing of waters on the plates.

Unable either to fathom or forecast the workings of the drink-maddened mentality masked by that rat-like face, Lanyard waited with a hand covertly grasping the automatic in his pocket. There was no telling; at any moment that murderous mania might veer his way. And he was not content to die, not yet, not in any event by the hand of a decadent little beast of a Boche.

Slowly the arm of the lieutenant dropped, lowering the pistol till its muzzle chattered on the top of the table: a noise that broke the spell upon his senses. He looked down in dull brutish wonder, then roused and with a gesture of horror let the weapon fall clattering.

His glance shifting to the body of his commander, he started violently, backing up against the plates to put all possible distance between himself and his handiwork. His lips moved, framing phrases at first incoherent, presently articulate in part:

"... _done it at last!... Knew I must soon_...."

Abruptly he looked up at Lanyard.

"Bear witness," he cried: "I was provoked beyond human endurance. He insulted me in your presence ... me!... that scum!"