The Thief Read online

The attacker kept running.

  Isaac Bell waited coolly for him to reach the light spill from the library in order to get a clear shot to shoot the man’s legs out from under him. His highly accurate Browning No. 2 semi-automatic firing .380 caliber cartridges could not miss. Just before reaching the lights, the running man clapped both hands on the rail, flipped high in the air like a circus acrobat, and tumbled into the dark.

  Bell ran to the spot the man had jumped from and looked over the side of the ship.

  The water was black, bearded white where the Mauretania’s hull raced through. Bell could not see whether the man was swimming or had sunk beneath the waves. In either event, unless the motorboat returned and its crew was extraordinarily lucky in their search, it was highly unlikely they would pull him out before the bitter-cold Irish Sea sucked the life from his body.

  Bell holstered his pistol and buttoned his coat over it. What he had just seen was singular in his experience. What would possess the man to throw his unconscious accomplice overboard to certain death, then hurl himself to the same fate?

  “Thank you, sir, thank you so very much,” spoke a voice in the accent and baroque cadence of a cultured Viennese. “Surely we owe our lives to your swift and courageous action.”

  Bell peered down at a compact shadow. Another voice, a voice that sounded American, groaned, “Wish you’d saved us before he socked me in the breadbasket. Feels like I got run over by a streetcar.”

  “Are you all right, Clyde?” asked the Viennese.

  “Nothing a month of nursing by a qualified blonde won’t cure.” Clyde climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Thanks, mister. You saved our bacon.”

  Isaac Bell asked, “Were they trying to kill you or kidnap you?”

  “Kidnap.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got all night,” said Isaac Bell in a tone that demanded answers. “Did you know those men?”

  “By their actions and their reputation,” said the Viennese. “But thanks to you, sir, we were never formally introduced.”

  Gripping each man firmly by the arm, Bell walked them inside the ship and back to the smoking room, sat them in adjoining armchairs, and took a good look at their faces. The American was young, a tousle-headed, mustachioed dandy in his early twenties who was going to wake up with a black eye as well as a sore belly.

  The Viennese was middle-aged, a kindly-looking, dignified gentleman with pink-tinted pince-nez eyeglasses that had stayed miraculously clipped to his nose, a high forehead and intelligent eyes. His suit of clothes was of good quality. He wore a dark necktie and a round-collar shirt. In contrast to his sober outfit, he had an elaborate mustache that curled up at the tips. Bell pegged him for an academic, which proved to be not far off. He, too, was going to have a shiner. And blood was oozing from a split lip.

  “We should not be here,” the Viennese said, gazing in wonder at the richly carved wood paneling and elaborate plaster ceiling of the enormous lounge, which was decorated in the manner of the Italian Renaissance. “This is the First Class smoking room. We voyage in Second Class.”

  “You’re my guests,” Bell said tersely. “What was all that about?”

  The smoking room steward appeared, cast a chilly eye on the Second Class passengers, and told Bell as solicitously as such an announcement could be uttered that the bar was closed.

  “I want towels and ice for these gentlemen’s bruises,” Isaac Bell said, “an immediate visit from the ship’s surgeon, and stiff scotch whiskeys all around. We’ll start with the whiskeys, please. Bring the bottle.”

  “No need, no need.”

  The American concurred hastily. “We’re fine, mister. You’ve gone to plenty trouble already. We oughta just go to bed.”

  “My name is Bell. Isaac Bell. What are yours?”

  “Forgive my ill manners,” said the Viennese, bowing and pawing at his vest with shaking fingers, muttering distractedly, “I appear to have lost my cards in the struggle.” He stopped searching and said, “I am Beiderbecke, Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke.”

  Beiderbecke offered his hand, and Bell took it.

  “May I present my young associate, Clyde Lynds?”

  Clyde Lynds threw Bell a mock salute. Bell reached for his hand and looked him in the face, gauging his worth. Lynds stopped clowning and met his gaze, and Bell saw a steadiness not immediately apparent.

  “Why did they try to kidnap you?”

  The two exchanged wary looks. Beiderbecke spoke first. “We can only presume they were agents of a munitions trust.”

  “What munitions trust?”

  “A German outfit,” said Lynds. “Krieg Rüstungswerk GmbH.”

  Bell took note of Lynds’s fluent pronunciation. “Where did you learn to speak German, Mr. Lynds?”

  “My mother was German, but she married a lot. I spent some of my childhood on my Swedish-immigrant father’s North Dakota wheat farm, some in Chicago, and a bunch of time backstage in New York City theaters. ‘Mutter’ finally hooked a Viennese, which she wanted all along only didn’t know it, and I landed in Vienna, where the good Professor here took me in.”

  “Fortunate Professor, is the truth of the matter, Mr. Bell. Clyde is a brilliant scientist. My colleagues are still gnashing their teeth that he chose to work in my laboratory.”

  “That’s because I came cheap,” Clyde Lynds grinned.

  Bell asked, “Why would agents of a munitions company kidnap you?”

  “To steal our invention,” said Beiderbecke.

  “What sort of invention?” asked Bell.

  “Our secret invention,” Lynds answered before the Professor could speak. He turned to the older man and said, “Sir, we did agree that secrecy was all.”

  “Yes, of course, of course, but Mr. Bell has so kindly treated us. He saved our lives, at no small risk to his own.”

  “Mr. Bell is a handy fellow with his fists. What else do we know about him? I recommend we stick to our deal to keep quiet about it, like we agreed.”

  “Of course, of course. You’re right, of course.” Professor Beiderbecke turned embarrassedly to Bell. “Forgive me, sir. Despite my age, I am not a man of the world. My brilliant young protégé has persuaded me that I am too trusting. Obviously, you’re a gentleman. Obviously, you sprang to our defense while never pausing to consider your own safety. On the other hand, it behooves me to remember that we have been sorely used by others who appeared to be gentlemen.”

  “And who tried to yank the fillings from our teeth,” grinned Lynds. “Sorry, Mr. Bell. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Not that we’re not grateful for you charging to the rescue.”

  Isaac Bell returned what could be judged a friendly smile.

  “Your gratitude does not have to take the form of giving away an important secret.” His mild answer disguised curiosity that would be best satisfied by biding his time. As Archie had noted, for the next four and half days on the high seas no one was going anywhere. “But I am concerned for your safety,” he added. “These munitions people mounted an audacious campaign with military precision to kidnap you from a British liner putting to sea. What makes you think they won’t try again?”

  “Not on a British liner,” Lynds fired back. “On a German ship we’d worry about the crew. That’s why we took a British ship.”

  “You mean they tried before?”

  “In Bremen.”

  “How did you happen to give them the slip?”

  “Got lucky,” said Lynds. “We saw them coming, so we made a big show of booking passage on the Prinz Wilhelm. Then we ran like heck the other way, to Rotterdam, and caught a steamer to Hull. By the time they figured out we hadn’t sailed on the Wilhelm, we were on the train to London.”

  Bell had many more questions, but they were forestalled by the arrival of the ship’s doctor. When the chief officer bustled in right behind the doctor, Bell emptied his whiskey glass into a spittoon before the officer could see and conspic
uously poured another from the bottle.

  The chief officer listened with an increasingly skeptical expression as the Professor and Lynds described an attack by three men who subsequently fell overboard. Then, while the doctor examined Beiderbecke’s cut lip and Lynds’s swelling eye, the officer said quietly to Bell, with a significant glance at the whiskey in his hand, “One cannot help but wonder whether those two gentlemen had a falling out and covered it up with a tall tale of, shall we say, ‘piracy in Liverpool Bay’?”

  Isaac Bell sipped his whiskey. He intended to get to the bottom of the bizarre attack, as well as the nature of Beiderbecke and Lynds’s self-described secret invention, which had provoked it. But the kidnappers had drowned in the night, miles behind the ship. The Austrian and the American-raised German-Swede were the only sources of information available. And the Mauretania’s officers were even less qualified than a small town police force to investigate the motive for the attack. They would only get in his way.

  “I say…” the chief officer went on. He had begun politely, almost diffidently, the model of the smooth company man unfazed by the peccadillos of wealthy passengers. Now he fixed Bell with a flinty eye practiced at terrorizing junior officers: “As no one jumped, fell, or was thrown overboard, I am curious how they induced you, Mr. Bell, to embroider their story.”

  “Sympathy,” Isaac Bell smiled. He touched the whiskey to his lips. “Poor chaps were so embarrassed by their behavior… and I had had a drink or two.” He peered into his glass. “Seemed like a good idea at the time…” He looked the officer full in the face and grinned sheepishly. “It felt jolly good to be a hero, even for a moment…”

  “I appreciate your candor, Mr. Bell. I am sure that you will agree that as soon as the surgeon has done his work it will be best if we all turn in for the night and let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “KRIEG RüSTUNGSWERK GMBH?” echoed Archie Abbott, who had traveled regularly back and forth to Europe his whole life. Most recently, in the course of an extended honeymoon, he had laid the groundwork for overseas Van Dorn field offices. “They’re a private munitions outfit with strong Army connections. As you’d expect of a cannon manufacturer gearing up for a European war.”

  Isaac Bell had joined him in the dining saloon moments after the breakfast bugle had blown. The Mauretania was steaming past Malin Head on the northern tip of Ireland, and as she left the Irish Sea in her wake, the liner had begun lifting her bow into unusually tall Atlantic swells, churning rumors in the elevators and vestibules of rough weather ahead.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Do you recall the motorboat you could not hear last night?”

  “If I couldn’t hear it, how could I recall it?”

  Bell told him what had happened. Archie was crestfallen. “Of all the darned times to go to bed early. All three overboard?”

  “The one who tried to stab me, the one who got tossed by his boss. And the boss under his own steam.”

  “You have all the fun, Isaac.”

  “What sort of lunatic drowns himself?”

  Archie smiled. “Is it possible he was afraid of a fellow who had already floored two of his gang and was suddenly waving a gun?”

  Bell shook his head. “A man afraid would not have taken the time to throw his accomplice overboard. No, he made sure there was no one left to confess. Not even himself. Lunacy.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t jump into a lifeboat?”

  “Positive. I went back and looked later. He was along that open stretch in the middle where there aren’t any boats. Ten yards at least from the nearest one.”

  Archie forked down several bites of kippered herring. “I’d say less lunatic than fanatic. Krieg Rüstungswerk operates hand in glove with the Imperial German Army. So if Krieg Rüstungswerk wants the Professor’s ‘secret invention’ it must be some sort of war machine, right?”

  “Undoubtedly a war machine.”

  “Then Krieg might well recruit German Army officers to snatch it. They’re fanatical on the subject of ‘Der Tag’—‘the Day’—to kick off Kaiser Wilhelm’s ‘Will to deeds.’ And we all know what ‘Will to deeds’ means.”

  “Shorthand for ‘Start a war,’” said Bell. “Though I keep hoping that the European war talk is just talk.”

  “So do I,” said Archie. “But Great Britain is paranoid about German dreadnoughts, and Imperial Germany is ambitious. The kaiser loves his Army, and the Army rules society—just like in old Prussia. Everyone’s drafted for three years, and the bourgeoisie are so nuts for uniforms they take reserve commissions just so they can dress up like soldiers.”

  “Soldiers didn’t build German industry. Civilians did.”

  “No doubt millions of hardworking Germans would rather get rich and send their kids to school than fight a war. The question is, can the kaiser stampede them into battle— But enough small talk about war and secret weapons! Dare I ask—has Marion said yes again?”

  “Haven’t braced her yet.”

  “Too busy tossing miscreants overboard? Hey, where are you going? You haven’t finished your breakfast.”

  “I am marconigraphing the Berlin office before we steam out of range. Get Art Curtis cracking on Lynds, Beiderbecke, and Krieg Rüstungswerk.”

  “Good luck. Art’s only a one-man office, and he just got there.”

  “Art Curtis is quicker than a mongoose and smart as a whip—plus he speaks fluent German. Why do you think Mr. Van Dorn gave him Berlin?”

  “I’ll meet you in the smoking room. We have to talk about you taking your beautiful bull by her horns— Say, Isaac? What happened to the rope he threw at you?”

  “The rope was gone when I went back to look.”

  “A crewman must have scooped it up.”

  “Or an accomplice.”

  BELL PICKED UP A BLANK from the purser’s desk and filled out his message. Rather than pass it before inquiring eyes, he carried the form directly to the Marconi house on the top deck of the ship between Funnels 2 and 3.

  A window curtain, gray with coal smoke, flapped in the wind as Bell walked into the radio room extending a British pound sterling note—five dollars, two days’ pay—to derail ahead of time any suggestion that he send his message through the purser. Nor did the operator, who was not a member of the Mauretania’s crew but employed by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, remark that Bell’s message looked like gibberish, as it was written out in cipher.

  Bell stood by as the operator dispatched his message by Morse code to a shore station at Malin Head. From there it would be relayed overland by telegraph and under the Irish Sea and English Channel by cable and back onto telegraph wires across the continent to the Van Dorn field office in Berlin. Depending how far at sea the Mauretania had preceded, Arthur Curtis’s reply would be transmitted from Ireland or relayed by other ships.

  “JUST IN TIME FOR THE BLOVIATING,” Archie greeted Isaac Bell when the tall detective joined him in the smoking saloon. Midmorning, the male haven was crowded with gents smoking cigars, pipes, and cigarettes, playing chess and solitaire, and reading the ship’s newspaper. Thin northern daylight, filtered through stained glass and tobacco smoke, shone upon settees, tables, and armchairs grouped on a pale green carpet. Two ruddy-faced middle-aged men were arguing in raised voices. Bell cocked an ear. In smokers and club cars, even the judicious sank to braggadocio, spilling priceless information by the boatload.

  “Who’s the large gent in tents of tweed?” he asked Archie.

  “Earl of Strone, retired British Army.”

  “Who’s that Strone’s squaring off against?”

  “Karl Schultz, a Pan-Germanist coal-mining magnate known not so affectionately by the Ruhr Valley laboring classes as the ‘Chimney Baron.’ Before they get any louder, let me imbue you with courage. I implore you, my friend, moor the fair Marion before she drifts off.”

  “Midnight tonight,” said Isaac Bell. “Every detail lined up. Champagne and music for the kickoff.”

  “You
can’t go wrong with champagne. But where will you get an orchestra at midnight? Even the steward who bugles goes to bed after he blows ‘Sunset.’”

  “I’m going to surprise her with a gramophone.”

  “Won’t a gramophone horn flaring from your dinner jacket spoil the surprise?”

  “The horn is made of cardboard. The whole thing folds flat in a little box no bigger than a camera case.”

  Archie looked at him with genuine admiration. “You are relentlessly strategic, Isaac.”

  “Lillian’s pacing outside the door. You can give her the thumbs-up. It’s in the bag.”

  “Is it too early in the morning to drink to your success?”

  Bell had already caught the steward’s eye. “Two McEwan’s Exports, please.”

  “I’ll be darned,” said Archie, rising to his feet and waving. “That’s Hermann Wagner, the banker. He hosted a dinner for us on our honeymoon in Berlin. Herr Wagner!”

  Wagner came over, smiling. Bell noticed the air of the sophisticated Berliner about him, the elegant inverse of his coarse-grained countryman Chimney Baron Karl Schultz. While exchanging passenger chitchat about the rumored rough weather and agreeing that the Mauretania was already pitching heavily for such a long vessel, they were suddenly interrupted by the Earl of Strone heard across the saloon.

  “What possible need has Germany for more dreadnoughts?”

  “Because now strikes the hour of Germany’s rising power,” replied Schultz, as loudly.

  Conversation ceased. Every man in the smoker waited for Lord Strone’s response.

  The Briton tugged a watch from his vest. He thumbed it open, peered at the face, and announced to laughter, “The hour, by my timepiece, appears to be half-eleven.”

  “I refer to Germany’s achievements,” Karl Schultz replied proudly. “We have surpassed England in the production of coal and steel, and our scientists are dominant in chemicals and electricity. We produce half the world’s electrical equipment. And we have a superior culture of music, poetry, and philosophy.”

  Archie’s friend Hermann Wagner interrupted in a gentle voice. “‘Superior’ is perhaps a strong word among shipmates. From strength comes humility.”