The Navy Spy Murders by C.K.M. Scanlon

Book Details

The Asiatic League has been remarkably successful in ferreting out the war plans of the United States Navy. A Japanese spymaster has left a trail of bodies in his quest to uncover the Navy’s secrets and Special Agent Dan Fowler of the F.B.I. has been called in to stop the deaths as well as the flood of stolen secrets. A thrilling tale by George Fielding Eliot writing as C.K.M. Scanlon.

The Navy Spy Murders (1937)
Sinister Undercover Foes of America Plot a Mighty Campaign of Espionage and Slaughter! Crime Follows Crime as the F.B.I. Fights Courageously to Stem the Tide of Lawlessness that Threatens to Engulf Our Nation!
Chapter I – Bloodstained Web
Chapter II – Hell Over Panama
Chapter III – Dulce et Decorum Est—
Chapter IV – Dan Fowler—U. S. N.
Chapter V – The Enemy Moves
Chapter VI – The Cipher
Chapter VII – Message of Death
Chapter VIII – Two Girls in Distress
Chapter IX – Check-Up
Chapter X – The Countess Ermengarde
Chapter XI – The Spy Nest
Chapter XII – Death in the Garden
Chapter XIII – Nancy Jourdan
Chapter XIV – Before the Storm
Chapter XV – The Danger Point
Chapter XVI – The Storm Breaks
Chapter XVII – The Death Trap

C. K. M. Scanlon was a “house name” that Standard Publications used on their Dan Fowler stories as well as others. The Navy Spy Murders  was written by George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971).

George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971) was born in Brooklyn, New York. His family moved to Australia when he was eight years old. When World War I began, Fielding became a second lieutenant in the Australian infantry, and fought in the Gallipoli Campaign from May to August 1915. In 1916 he was transferred to the European theatre, and fought at the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Arras, and Amiens. He was wounded twice and was an acting major at war’s end.

He wrote pulp fiction starting in 1926 as well as crime novels. The movie Federal Bullets (1937) was based on his novels of the same name.

The Navy Spy Murders contains 27 illustrations.

Files:

1. Scanlon-NavySpyMurders.epub

Excerpt: The Navy Spy Murders

Chapter I

Bloodstained Web

HE WAS a pitiful sight— bruised, salt-encrusted, his face covered with blood, his outstretched hands reaching as though striving to drag his body a little farther from the relentless surf.

Private O’Neill of the U. S. Marine Corps, on beach patrol, found him just as the sun lifted its crimson disc above the horizon’s rim, marking the end of the short Northern night.

On the rocks, farther out, the broken mast of a wrecked fishing boat told how this man had come to a forbidden shore. The others? For surely there had been others — Private O’Neill’s sharp young eyes swept along the beach. An oar—a bit of deck planking—a spar with a tingle of rigging attached to it—nothing else.

Private O’Neill lifted rifle to shoulder; three shots echoed against the steep pine-clad slope above; then he bent over the man who lay so still on the sand.

“Tough guy—he’s okay,” thought O’Neill. “Squarehead, by his blond hair.”

The thud of feet on the hard sand announced the approach of the corporal of the guard and two privates.

“Castaway,” said O’Neill. “Storm last night musta wrecked his boat.”

“This’ll make trouble, I betcha,” grunted the corporal, sourly. “Splash some water in his face.”

The blond man stirred, opened blue eyes.

“That’s a bad knock on the head you got,” said the corporal. “What happened?”

“Come great storm—my ship— rocks—” He spoke with a strong Scandinavian accent. “What iss dis place?” he asked. “You ban soldiers?”‘ His eyes looked stupid, beaten.

“Marines,” corrected the corporal. “And never you mind what this place is. People don’t ask questions around here; it ain’t healthy. Parry, you help me get this fellow back to camp.”

THE castaway stumbled along between the two Marines, aided by their hands under his armpits. The sound of busy hammers, the whine of machine-tools, the clatter of riveters came louder and louder through the pines, until they cut through a corner of the forest and emerged on a wide plain where men were busily at work. Beyond were neat rows of brown tents; an anti-aircraft gun lifted its slender snout skyward beneath a camouflage net. In the harbor a destroyer and two huge patrol planes rode at anchor.

A Marine officer, very trim and smart in his well cut greenish uniform, was striding toward them.

“Castaway, sir,” the corporal reported. “Found him on the beach.”

“Hm. What’s your name?” The officer’s tone was crisp.

“Hans Trygvasson, mate of fish-schooner Harald,” the castaway answered.

“What was your last port of call, Trygvasson?” he asked.

“Petropavlovsk, in Kamchatka. We lef’ dere tolv day ‘go.”

“Twelve days ago. Petropavlovsk. You’re Danish?”

“Yes. Danish.”

“Since when,” asked the officer, “did the Soviet authorities allow foreign fishing vessels to operate out of their ports?”

“I dunno.”

“Bring him along to headquarters, Corporal. Commander Franklin will want to see him.”

When the castaway reached the long, one-story headquarters building of unpainted pine planks he was ushered into a bare little office where an officer in the blue uniform of a commander in the United States Navy sat behind a rude desk. The marine officer whispered a word or two in the commander’s ear.

“How did you happen to be in these waters, Trygvasson?” the commander asked. “Not much fishing hereabouts.” The blond man said nothing.

“Your ship was from Denmark? Danish-built?” the commander asked him.

“Yes.”

“Hm. You—” The telephone at his elbow interrupted. The commander spoke a few words, listened. He hung up.

“When was your ship last overhauled, Trygvasson?” he snapped.

“Last summer, I t’ank. In Vancouver.”

“Then how does it happen that a block of Asiatic manufacture is in the wreckage washed up from her?” the commander queried. “Built in Denmark—last overhauled in Canada—but with Asiatic running rigging. Very odd, that.”

A young chief yeoman came in, laid a manila folder at the commander’s elbow, went silently out again. The commander glanced at the contents of the folder, nodded.

“You tried hard, Rompert,” he said in a grave voice. “Unfortunately you have come in contact with our Naval Intelligence agents before. I have your dossier here—just as I have in my files data on every known agent who might be employed by our Asiatic friends. You are the third within three weeks to try to penetrate this island. Sorry, Rompert.”

The castaway smiled and shrugged.

“You’ll be held for trial,” the commander said. The castaway was led out of the little office. Commander Franklin, U. S. N., sat staring before him at the pine wall.

“Three in as many weeks,” he muttered to himself. “How do they know? How have they guessed that on this island— Damn! There’s a leak somewhere, a damned bad leak.”

He drew toward him a pad and began scribbling a report.

“They’ll have to act,” he said softly. “They can’t ignore this situation any longer. That leak must be found and plugged. Permanently plugged. Or else—God help the United States!”

TWO thousand miles away, at that moment, another officer of the United States Navy sat at a somewhat more pretentious desk, also busily writing. It was night; the officer’s brows wore a tired frown. His pen raced over the paper:

In conclusion, it is desired to emphasize again the conviction which I have formed— the Asiatic League means to strike at its own chosen moment, and from the present state of their naval, air and military preparations that moment cannot be far distant. They are almost openly boasting that they mean to make the Pacific Ocean an Asiatic lake, to end forever what they are pleased to call the American menace to their ambitions. They are but waiting until they are fully informed of the details of our new plans to meet such an emergency; and since it is increasingly apparent that they have some means of access to our most secret archives, I cannot believe that this delay will be a long one. It is in their advance knowledge of our war plans that their real strength lies; without that knowledge “I do not believe that they would take the risk of attacking a power so superior to them in military resources as the United States. I cannot put this too strongly—that the issues of peace and war, or if war comes, of victory or defeat, hinge on our immediate discovery and destruction of the means by which they are enabled to know of changes in our secret war plans here almost as soon as these are decided upon in Washington.

A gentle knock, twice repeated, sounded on the door. The officer swept the sheets of his report into a drawer of the desk.

“Come in.”

A slight, stoop-shouldered little man, with iron-bowed spectacle’s half hiding his slanting eyes, glided into the room. He wore a cheap American suit, a dirty collar, a wisp of a tie.

“Well, Ki Poo?”

“I failed yesterday,” said Ki Poo. “I took two messages over the confidential wire. In each case I used two sheets of carbon paper, giving up one to be destroyed, according to regulations, but retaining the other. I had hoped to be able to bring you those messages, intact. But I was suddenly transferred to another desk, and I had barely time to slip the used carbons into the box with other similar sheets. I did not dare to take them with me. That devil Nakuma was watching me with the eyes of a hawk.

“Now I go back. I report for work at dawn. Perhaps I will be returned to my own desk; In which case I may well hope to find those carbon sheets still there. Are there any other orders?”

“None, Ki Poo. But—will it be safe for you to return? If Nakuma suspects you he may have examined his desk, he may have found those carbon sheets; and if so, you are doomed if you go back.”

Ki Poo was Michaels’ best agent. Oriental himself, he had wormed his way into a trusted post in the confidential cable office of the Imperial Admiralty. Here were received the messages from hundreds of agents and spies all over the world. And if now, at last, the spy chief Nakuma suspected Ki Poo—Michaels could not sacrifice the life of his faithful aide.

KI POO was smiling a little.

“Perhaps, Captain,” he said, “but maybe I read in the eyes of Nakuma only that suspicion which is natural to him. Those messages, Captain, were from America. They were routed instantly by the cipher chief to Commander Yayeyatsu, who is chief of the American section of their intelligence service.”

Captain Michaels rose, gripped the bony fingers of Ki Poo warmly. “You are a brave man, Ki Poo,” said he. “I pray to see you safe back to this room tonight.”

Ki Poo bowed, turned and left the room without another word.

Captain Michaels set to work to encode the report he had just finished.

Going to the safe, he worked the secret combination. The heavy door swung open; a key unlocked a compartment of tempered steel, and he took out a small box. He pressed his fingers gently against one end of it; it was apparently a solid piece of metal, but under the pressure it slid away, revealing a recess in which reposed a small brass cylinder. This Captain Michaels shook out in his palm and placed with great caution on his desk pad.

“Blow my arm off, that would,” he reflected, “if I’d tried to open the box without removing it.”

He turned the key in the lock—a bright spark snapped in the compartment where the brass cylinder had been—and lifted back the hinged top. He took out a book bound in black leather, put it on the desk, drew toward him a pad of paper and went to work.

The book was Secret Code F of the United States Navy, and there were but seventeen, such books in existence in all the world.

Michaels began setting out his long report in parallel lines of letters and transposing these into the groups required by the code.

Hour after hour went by. Outside was daylight and a warm sun; inside, the electric light still burned and Captain Michaels labored in the atmosphere of an oven. He continued until, toward noon, he was able to draw in a satisfied sigh of accomplishment. It was done.

He arranged the sheets of his coded message, checked them over one by one, folded them together and placed them in an envelope, which he sealed with wax in five places. He returned the code book to its box, locked the box, replaced the cylinder, put the box into its place in the safe, and locked the safe, reconnecting the thermite device. Then he picked up all his work sheets, carried them to a copper brazier in one corner and burned them to ashes. When the last was consumed he stirred the ashes till they were only black dust.

HE unlocked and lifted the steel window shutter, throwing open the casement behind it which looked out over the Embassy gardens.

Steps sounded in the corridor—the guard appeared in the door, carrying a cubical package about a foot square.

“The pouch is ready, sir,” he said, “and this package was just delivered for you by messenger.”

Captain Michaels looked at the superscription. There was nothing by which the sender could be identified.

The burly guard eyed the package uneasily. “You ain’t goin’ to open that thing, sir? Not at least without duckin’ it in a bucket o’ water?”

Captain Michaels grinned. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “They wouldn’t try anything as crude as sending me an infernal machine.”

Michaels took a knife from his pocket, slit the gummed tape which secured the wrapping of the package and folded back the paper. This revealed a tin box, something like a cracker box in appearance. It bore no markings of any kind.

He reached a hand to lift the lid, hesitated, bent over and put an ear to the lid. He heard nothing; but there was certainly a peculiar odor about that box. He grabbed the lid, flung it back. Nothing happened. There was nothing in the box but a roundish object about the size of a football,

As his fingers touched the top of that mysterious enclosure he experienced something very much like an electric shock. A thrill of horror ran through his body; he jerked back his hand with a sharp exclamation, had to force himself to lift the thing out and unwrap it.

He was looking at the severed head of Kl Poo.

Excerpt From: C.K.M. Scanlon. “The Navy Spy Murders.”