The Thief Read online

  “When he finds out you tested the net with a sandbag, he’s going to be badly disappointed.”

  “He’s going to be more than disappointed,” Bell promised grimly, climbing out of bed and kissing her good night. “Sleep tight.”

  “Where are you going?’

  “New York.”

  “Why New York?”

  “Christian Semmler’s got what he came for. He’s going back to Germany.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He asked me, mockingly, ‘Looking for something?’ I was searching Clyde’s body because Clyde told me as he died that he had kept the real plans. Doesn’t ‘Looking for something?’ sound like Christian Semmler already found them?”

  Marion sat up. “And since he asked when he saw you searching Clyde, that means he found them in Clyde’s clothing.”

  “Meaning he can carry them in his clothing.”

  Bell dressed hastily. He filled his pockets, holstered his spare Browning in his coat and a fresh throwing knife in his boot, and reloaded the empty derringer he had managed to palm without the Acrobat noticing.

  “From the sound of his scream, I’d say he’s sporting a good-sized bandage. In fact, I’m hoping he needed stitches. Lots of them.”

  “But how do you know he’s going to New York?”

  “I don’t for sure, but it’s a good bet. If Clyde’s plans were on his person, then Semmler’s traveling light. And if he’s traveling light, the fastest way home to Germany is a train across the continent and a boat from New York.”

  JOSEPH VAN DORN WELCOMED ISAAC BELL TO the New York headquarters with words that Bell could have construed as compliments were it not for the thunderclouds on the boss’s face.

  “Excellent reasoning,” said Van Dorn. “Downright intriguing, even: traveling light, swathed in bandages, a murderer responsible for the deaths of two of my best agents races fleet-footedly across the continent, having stolen the plans to a revolutionary machine in which I have invested heavily, and boards a steamship for Germany. Our investigative agency pulls out all stops; we cover every Limited train station between Los Angeles and New York; we pull every wire we have in the government to obtain passenger manifests from eastbound German and French liners; we shake hands with the devil—currently masquerading as a British earl and military intelligence officer—to obtain the passenger lists of British ships; we canvas shipping clerks to watch for a man who fits Semmler’s description booking passage to Europe; we pay enormous sums of money to policemen and customs officers to help watch those ships when our forces are stretched to the breaking point. And who do we find?”

  “No one, yet,” answered Bell.

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might have gone the other way and boarded a ship in San Pedro, in which case he is now steaming hell-for-leather toward the Panama Canal?”

  “A Talking Pictures machine is doing just that,” replied Isaac Bell, “aboard a German freighter, which will reach the canal in ten days. After they traverse it they will likely load the machine onto a warship. The Imperial German Navy has a squadron stationed off Venezuela.”

  “What?” exploded Van Dorn. “He has the machine? How do you know that?”

  “Tim Holian and his boys traced it and a gang of gunmen from the Los Angeles Southern Pacific freight yard to San Pedro and onto the ship. Holian is positive that Semmler wasn’t with them.”

  “I was told that Holian was shot four times.”

  “Apparently it didn’t take. Flesh wounds.”

  “Well, he had flesh to spare, last time I saw him. So they have the machine?” Van Dorn smiled and stroked his beard. “I think I can pull a wire or two in the Canal Zone and have that freighter held up.”

  “No, sir,” said Bell.

  “What do you mean, ‘No, sir’? Why not?”

  “Clyde switched machines. He gave Semmler a contraption that will cause them no end of confusion. Better to let them take it to Germany.”

  “Where’s the right one?”

  “Burned up in the fire.”

  “Destroyed,” Van Dorn said, gloomily.

  “Except for the plans.”

  “Which General Major Semmler has.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Van Dorn sighed. “What about that Russian woman, Isaac? Might she not be helping him?”

  “She vanished. The Los Angeles office is hunting, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

  “So she could be with him.”

  “Highly unlikely. She betrayed him, hoping I would kill him.”

  “A sentiment echoed warmly in this office, Isaac. Unfortunately, first you have to find him. I saw in the wires you exchanged at your train’s station stops that you think Semmler may have chartered a special.”

  “So far nothing’s turned up,” said Bell. “The difficulty is, even though we’re watching the German consulates like hawks, his private contacts, German businessmen or commercial travelers, could have chartered it for him.”

  “So the long and short is that General Major Christian Semmler, Imperial German Army, Military Intelligence, could be sleeping upstairs in one of the Knickerbocker’s palatial suites directly over our heads.”

  “I would not rule that out,” Bell admitted. “He is a guerrilla fighter—a behind-the-lines operator. But we can hardly roust every guest in the hotel without management taking notice and terminating our lease.”

  “You are remarkably flippant for a detective who has no idea where his quarry is.”

  “He is either in New York or still on his way to New York, and he’s going to board a ship to Europe.”

  “You sound awfully sure for a detective with no facts.”

  “I have more irons in the fire.”

  “Other than the obvious advice to keep an eye peeled for doctors, I saw no talk about ‘more irons’ when I read your wires.”

  “Not everyone talks by electricity,” said Bell. He reached for his hat.

  “What does that mean? Isaac, where in hell are you going?”

  “Harlem.”

  THE MONARCH LODGE OF THE IMPROVED Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks offered a home away from home on West 135th Street to Pullman porters laying over in New York. A man could get a decent meal and sleep on a clean cot. Or he could smoke in a comfortable chair in a big parlor and swap tales, both true and fanciful, with friends from all across the United States who served on the trains. It was true that the white Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was suing the Negro Elks to stop them from using a similar name, but the Monarch Lodge remained, for the moment, a sanctuary. No one there would shout “George” to demand service, as if a black man didn’t have his own name. In fact, a white man crossing the Negro Elks’ threshold was extremely unlikely, which was why everyone looked up when a tall white man in a white suit knocked at the door, took his hat off as he stepped inside, and said, politely, “Excuse me for interrupting, gentlemen. I’m Isaac Bell.”

  Heads swiveled. Many stood to get a better view of him. They knew the name. Who didn’t? One dark night—the story went—when the Overland Limited was highballing across Wyoming at eighty miles per hour, a passenger named Isaac Bell who had won a big hand in a poker game had tipped a porter one thousand dollars. The Pullman porter might be the highest-paid man in his neighborhood, but he still had to work two years for a thousand dollars, and few in the Elks parlor had believed the tale until they saw him standing there.

  Bell said, “I wonder if I might speak with Mr. Clement Price— Oh, there you are, Mr. Price,” and when Clem stepped forward, Bell thrust out his hand and said, “Good to see you again. Did you have any luck?”

  “Just walked in myself,” said Price, a fit young fellow with an eye for the ladies, whom the others were a little wary of. Clem kept talking about how everybody would be better off forming a labor union, which leveler heads feared would provoke the Pullman Company to fire every last one of them, as it had done numerous times in the past.

  Price addressed the room. “
Mr. Bell has his eye out for a yellow-haired, green-eyed gentleman riding to New York wearing a fresh bandage on his head or neck. Such a gentleman was seen in Denver and someone similar-looking might have passed through Kansas City, but no one I saw in Chicago had seen him when Mr. Bell asked me yesterday.”

  “Bandage?” echoed a sharp-eyed older man, who looked Bell over carefully and asked with a smile, “Like he ran into something?”

  “Me,” said Bell, to knowing winks and laughter.

  “Is he riding in the open section or a stateroom?”

  “Stateroom, almost certainly,” said Bell.

  The men exchanged glances, shook heads, shrugged.

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “I just got off from D.C. Didn’t see him.”

  “He’s traveling from the west,” said Bell. “Though he could be plying a circuitous route.”

  “I just come in from Pittsburgh. Didn’t see him. Didn’t hear anyone mention him, either.”

  “He would have stood out, aside from the bandage,” Bell answered. “He has unusually long arms. I was really hoping his appearance would have caused some talk. Long arms, heavy brow. And a bright smile that could sell you ice in Alaska. Here. Here’s a sketch.”

  They passed it around, shaking their heads.

  “Would have stood out, if folks had seen him,” the porter in from Pittsburgh ventured.

  Bell said, “It is possible that he’s traveling with someone else. Possibly a doctor.”

  “Doctor?”

  “For his injury.”

  “Well, funny you should say doctor, Mr. Bell.”

  “How’s that?’ Bell asked, eagerly.

  “I saw two men like you’re saying, but they weren’t on a Pullman. Least not a scheduled one.”

  “He could have chartered a special.”

  “It was a special I saw. Out in New Jersey, in the Elizabeth yards. They were walking by a special that had just pulled in. I thought they were tramps, but they could have got off the special. And the other fellow was carrying a little bag, that could have been a doctor’s bag.”

  “Was he wearing a bandage?”

  “I don’t know. But when you ask, I realize he had his collar turned up and his hat pulled low.”

  “Yellow hair?”

  “Hard to tell under that hat—big old slouch with a wide brim pulled down low.”

  “Did you notice whose special it was?”

  “I think she was private. I just wasn’t paying much mind.”

  “I don’t suppose you saw the engine number?” said Bell.

  “Sorry, Mr. Bell. Wish I had. Mr. Locomotive was pointed the other way.”

  “IT IS STRANGE,” BELL TOLD ARCHIE, “to think it was Semmler whom the porter saw in the Elizabeth yards. If he crossed the continent on a special, why did he get off way out in Elizabeth?”

  Archie agreed. “You would think he would take his train closer to the steamship docks. Step from the privacy of a special train to the privacy of a First Class stateroom.”

  “Once on the boat, he takes his meals in his room. No one sees him till he lands in England or France or Germany—First Class and private all the way from Los Angeles to Berlin.”

  “So why did he get off in the Elizabeth yards?”

  Bell pulled a regional map down from the ceiling of the Van Dorn library. “He could go anywhere from Elizabeth. Newark has a German community. The German steamers dock at Hoboken. Or he could catch the train or the tubes into Manhattan. Lots of choices.”

  “But not so private and not First Class.”

  Bell raised the map, spun on his heel, and stared at Archie, his eyes alight with sudden realization. “But Christian Semmler did not arrive in America in First Class.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He did not disembark from the Mauretania with the First Class passengers at Pier 54.”

  “He wasn’t a passenger,” said Archie. “He did not intend to sail on the Mauretania. He would have taken Clyde and Beiderbecke off the ship in Liverpool Bay if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  “He crossed the ocean in the Mauretania’s stokehold and landed on a coal barge without leaving a trace of his arrival. What if he goes back the same route? No one in the black gang is going to question a knife wound. I’ll bet half the trimmers who return to ship are bunged up from bar fights and saloon brawls. So while we’re canvassing ship lines, ticket clerks, and customs agents, Semmler will leave the United States the same way he came.”

  Bell grabbed the Kellogg’s mouthpiece. “Get me Detective Eddie Tobin. On the jump!”

  VAN DORN DETECTIVE EDDIE TOBIN, WHOSE lopsided face and drooping left eye were the result of a brutal beating inflicted by the Gophers when he apprenticed with the gang squad, was from Staten Island, a faraway, isolated borough of the city. His family, an extended clan of Tobins, Darbees, Richardses, and Gordons, ran oyster boats out of St. George on the northeast tip of the island. Many of the small, flat, innocent-looking vessels were used to tong oysters. But hidden below the decks of some were powerful gasoline engines enabling them to outrun the harbor squad while smuggling taxable goods, ferrying fugitives away from the police, pirating coal, and retrieving items of cargo that fell from the docks. Young Eddie was honest, despite the childhood spent roving with opportunistic uncles and felonious cousins, which made him an invaluable guide to the immense and sprawling Port of New York.

  Isaac Bell asked Eddie where the coal barges that bunkered the Cunard liners at the Chelsea Piers might come from.

  “Perth Amboy, Joisey, down where the Arthur Kill and the Raritan enter the Bay.”

  “Do you know anyone in the coal yards?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s our fastest way down there?”

  “Boat.”

  “Is your Uncle Donny out of jail?”

  “He’d be glad of the job. Poor old guy’s got his boat tuned up but nothing to do, seeing as how the harbor squad is shadowing him.”

  Eddie Tobin telephoned a Tomkinsville saloon, where a boy was sent running to the docks. Bell and Eddie caught the Ninth Avenue El down to the Battery. They waited at Pier A, at the tip of Manhattan Island, trading gossip with New York Police Department harbor squad roundsman O’Riordan, whose steam launch was bouncing alongside on the chop stirred by the wind and passing boats.

  Eying the waterborne traffic, Bell was struck by the near impossibility of their task. The Acrobat had his pick of seagoing ships getting ready to sail—American and British liners and freighters up the west side of Manhattan, German and French boats across the river in Hoboken, and hundreds across the Lower Bay in Brooklyn—all attended by hundreds of barges and lighters. Every few minutes, the thunder of a steam whistle announced another ship putting to sea.

  Roundsman O’Riordan’s eyes suddenly narrowed warily. Donald Darbee’s square-nosed oyster scow was closing on his pier. “Our ride,” Bell explained, slipping the cop a couple of bucks. “Good to see you again, Roundsman. Say hello to the captain.”

  Six months of regular hours, square meals, and no booze had done Uncle Donny a world of good. “You look ten years younger, sir,” Bell greeted the scraggly old waterman. “I’ll bet the girls are chasing you with a net.”

  “Where you want to go?” Donald Darbee growled.

  It was fourteen miles down the Upper Bay, through the Narrows, and down the Lower Bay. Hugging the Staten Island shore, passing string after string of tugboat-drawn barges—southbound empties riding high, full ones with decks awash northbound—they rounded Ward Point below Tottenville, crossed the Arthur Kill, and landed in an immense, windswept coal yard where Lehigh Valley hopper trains from the Pennsylvania mines unloaded into the barges that supplied the steamship piers.

  A black coal dumper made of steel girders towered over the water and dominated the sky, and Isaac Bell saw that, unlike the backbreaking process of bunkering the ships and stoking their furnaces by hand, here the coal was moved by modern machines. A sloping pier rose
to the dumper. On the pier were tracks for the hopper cars. A cable-driven “pig” between the rails clanked tight to a car’s coupler and pushed it up the incline onto a platform on top of the dumper. Positioned beside a gigantic funnel, the entire railroad car was then tilted on its side. Tons of coal spilled out of the car and thundered into the funnel, which directed it through a huge nozzle into a waiting barge. As soon as the barge was full, tugboats whisked it away and nudged an empty into its place. The only handwork was performed by the barge’s trimmers, who leveled the load, spreading the coal with shovels and rakes.

  A trimmer suddenly fell off a barge and splashed into the

  water.

  Ropes were thrown and ladders lowered, and within minutes the worker was hauled out, soaking wet and retching on the dock.

  The foreman showing Bell and Eddie Tobin around groaned, “They’re usually drunk, but not this drunk. But Pete Lampack suddenly struck it rich. He’s been buying drinks for the house for two days.”

  Bell and Eddie Tobin exchanged a glance. “Who is Lampack?”

  “Damned fool trimmer on the boats.”

  “How did he strike it rich?” asked Bell.

  “Who knows? Picked the right horse, aunt died, or some undeserved thing.”

  Eddie asked, “Where’s Lampack? Still at the saloon?”

  “Naw, he finally ran out of dough. It’s back to work for him. He ought to be on one of those empties.” The foreman indicated the barges lined along the pier awaiting fresh loads.

  “I want to speak with this fellow,” said Bell.

  Money had already passed between the Van Dorns and the coal yard foreman. From a grimy sheet of paper pulled from inside his derby, the foreman determined that the barge being trimmed by Pete Lampack was next in line to be refilled. “Just back from our best customer. She burns a thousand tons a day.”

  “Mauretania?” asked Bell.

  “We love the Maury. Gobbles coal like it’s going out of style, and you could set your watch by her: six thousand tons every two weeks.”

  “Is Lampack’s barge going back to the Mauretania?”