The Thief Read online

  “It was touch and go,” Bell admitted. “He has a low opinion of First Class passengers and asked straight off why would we want a ‘bunch of bloomin’ monkeys’ at our wedding. I assured him that some of our best friends were monkeys. He didn’t crack a smile. Just said that having been divorced, he was not, as he put it, ‘much of a hand in the wedding line.’”

  “How did you change his mind? Show him your gun?”

  “I was about to. But he caught sight of you running aboard from the boat train and was suddenly all smiles. Practically fell in the drink leaning over the rail to watch your progress. I said, ‘That is my fianceé.’ Captain Turner said, ‘By Jove, I’ll wear my full dress uniform. The whole bloomin’ rig!’”

  “I would not call my dress ‘full dress.’ It’s not quite white. It is rather creamy, though more an evening dress than a traditional wedding dress.” She gave her eyes one last dab of his handkerchief and handed it back. “Speaking of tradition, Isaac, isn’t it traditional for a man to kiss the woman he’s asked to marry when she says yes?”

  Isaac Bell swept Marion back into his arms. “I couldn’t recall whether it’s bad luck or good luck to kiss the bride before the wedding.”

  “It is required,” said Marion.

  “The very night before?”

  “All night.”

  “THIRD CLASS PASSENGERS ARE NEVER ADmitted to First Class sections of the ship,” Isaac Bell was informed by Mauretania’s chief purser when they met to arrange the wedding. “Not even briefly to celebrate your marriage, I’m sorry to say. Not even ‘moving picture people’ known to your fiancée. You may invite a few from Second Class, provided they come properly attired, but we draw the line at Third mingling with the superior classes for one simple reason.”

  “And what is that?” Bell inquired with a dangerous glint in his eye. He could not abide bigotry. That Marion’s acquaintances were traveling on the cheap was no reason to exclude them.

  “A reason that even the most ardent ‘democrat’ will sympathize with. Were Third Class to mingle with the superior classes and one of their lot were to arrive in New York exhibiting symptoms of measles or mumps or some other of the infectious diseases spread by immigrants, the entire vessel and all who sail in her would be held at Quarantine. No one—not even you and your fellow First Class passengers—would be permitted ashore until the doctors could guarantee no outbreak of infectious disease, which would take weeks. Weeks! Imagine, Mr. Bell, confined to the ship anchored offshore, staring helplessly at New York City, so near but so far.”

  “My fiancée’s acquaintances are not immigrants. They’re artists saving on expenses, trying to make ends meet.”

  “Infectious diseases do not distinguish between motives. I am sorry, but surely you understand.”

  “What’s tomorrow’s dinner menu in steerage?” asked Bell, using the popular term for Third Class.

  “A nourishing soup with bits of beef in it.”

  “May I see tomorrow’s First Class dinner menu?”

  The purser produced a tall menu card beautifully illustrated with a color print of the immensely tall and narrow four-stack Mauretania framed by pink roses. Bell read it from top to bottom.

  “I see nothing here that displeases. For our wedding feast, my bride and I will have prime sirloin and ribs o’ beef, roast turkey poulet, quarters of lamb, smoked ox tongue, and Rouen ducklings sent down to steerage.”

  “Excellent! Give me your acquaintances’ names, and I will see—”

  “To everyone in steerage.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone will enjoy our wedding feast.”

  “Most generous, sir,” the chief purser said drily. “May I remind you that we have one thousand one hundred and thirty-five passengers in steer—Third Class.”

  “What’s for dessert in steerage?”

  “On Sunday they’ll get some marmalade.”

  Bell referred back to the First Class menu. “We’ll send down apple tart, petits fours, French ice cream, and rum cake.”

  The chief purser looked around his office, confirming they were alone and the door was closed. “I don’t presume to ask what a private detective earns, sir, but the cost of feeding First Class fare to over a thousand souls will be considerable.”

  “Fortunately,” Isaac Bell smiled, “I had a kindly grandfather. He blessed me with a legacy. Which reminds me, how many children are in steerage?”

  “Many.”

  “Better lay on extra ice cream.”

  “MARCONIGRAM FOR MR. BELL,” piped a twelve-year-old call boy in a blue uniform.

  “Don’t move, nervous groom,” said Archie. “I’ll get it.”

  The normally nimble-fingered Isaac Bell was having trouble knotting his tie, so best man Archibald Angell Abbott IV was attempting to tie it for him. Archie tossed the boy a coin that made his eyes widen and handed Bell the orange Marconi Wireless envelope.

  Bell tore it open, unfolded the buff-colored marconigram, noted the date and the notation “Handed in at S.S. Adriatic,” indicating the White Star liner had relayed the radio signal from a shore station, and then began to decipher its handwritten contents while Archie started over again on his tie.

  “This is odd.”

  “Hold still! What’s odd?”

  “Art Curtis says that Professor Beiderbecke is not a munitions inventor.”

  “What does he invent?”

  “Hang on, I’m still trying to figure…” Ordinarily as quick with figures as he was nimble-fingered, he was having trouble reading the familiar Van Dorn code.

  “I have never seen a more jittery groom,” said Archie.

  “You were walking into walls at your wedding. Here we go! Professor Beiderbecke is an electro-acoustic scientist at Vienna’s Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute.”

  “What the heck is an electro-acoustic scientist?”

  “Art says he holds patents for recording and amplifying speech and music.”

  “Gramophones?”

  The two detectives looked at each other. “What does a munitions outfit care about gramophones?”

  Archie laughed. “If Krieg Rüstungswerk challenges Mr. Thomas Edison’s phonograph patents they’ll see what war really is.” He saw expressions of puzzlement and intense curiosity cross Isaac Bell’s face. “What else?”

  “Clyde Lynds is an honors graduate of the Polytechnic Institute.”

  “Like they told you.”

  “But they didn’t tell me he’s taken it on the lam.”

  “Who’s chasing him?”

  “The Imperial German Army issued an arrest warrant for desertion—that makes no sense at all. The kid’s no soldier.”

  “Maybe that’s why he deserted.”

  Bell nodded. “But he grew up in the United States, and he’s been studying in Austria. You’d think he wasn’t subject to the German draft.”

  “Maybe they drafted him anyway and he didn’t show up.”

  “Art speaks fluent German, and he always chooses his words precisely. He writes ‘desertion.’ Meaning Clyde Lynds was already in the Army—come on, let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m going to ask Beiderbecke why a munitions outfit is trying to steal his gramophone.”

  As Bell yanked open the door, a page boy came along banging a Chinese gong.

  “There goes the dressing gong. You don’t have time. The captain’s tying your knot in half an hour.”

  “And I’m going to keep asking until he gives me an answer.”

  “But your wedding—”

  Bell was already out the door. “When we get up there, peel Lynds away from Beiderbecke so I can talk to the Professor alone.”

  Dozens of guests had arrived early in the First Class saloon lounge, the men in white tie, the ladies in gowns, and all wearing the tentatively relieved expressions of people whose seasickness was fading into memory. As Clyde Lynds put it when Bell and Archie approached him and Beiderbecke, “Getting over seasickness
is like being let out of jail.”

  Archie took Lynds’s elbow. “You must tell me about your jail experiences.”

  Bell steered Beiderbecke into the small bar at the front end of the lounge. “I’ve got a case of groom’s jumps. I hope you’ll join me in a drink?”

  “I am not quite over my seasickness.”

  “A ‘stabilizer’ for the gentleman,” Bell told the barman. “A dash and a splash for me, please.” “The stabilizer is half brandy, half port,” he explained to Beiderbecke.

  Beiderbecke shuddered.

  “Trust me, it works.”

  “It is gracious of you to invite us to your wedding.” The Viennese professor flourished his invitation, a thick sheet of parchment paper that had been embossed in Mauretania’s print shop, and marveled, “With this document in hand, barriers between Second and First Class tumbled like the walls of Jericho. Young Clyde slept with his under his pillow, lest villains steal it.”

  Bell raised his whiskey and soda to the Viennese. “Continued smoother sailing.”

  “And to your bride’s happiness.”

  Beiderbecke sipped doubtfully and looked surprised. “The effect is immediate.”

  “I told you you can trust me,” said Bell. “Now, can you tell me what exactly does an electro-acoustic scientist do?”

  Franz Beiderbecke looked guilelessly at the tall detective. “I experiment how sounds might be recorded faithfully by employing electricity instead of mechanical means.”

  “Can that be done?”

  “That is my hope. In theory, it is a simple matter of amplifying and regenerating weak electrical signals. Though the actual doing of it is not so simple. But wait—” He blinked, perplexedly. “Wait! How do you know that? I did not discuss my field with you.”

  “I was curious,” said Bell. “I marconigraphed a colleague in Berlin, who informed me that you are a famous scientist in the field of electro-acoustics.”

  “Marconigrams are dear. You went to considerable expense to inquire about me.”

  “I don’t often meet inventors of so-called secret inventions.”

  “Can you blame my protégé for being cautious?”

  “I blame Clyde for risking your lives,” Bell said bluntly. “He may be smart, but he’s not smart enough to distinguish friend from foe. You know that I won’t betray you to the people I stopped from kidnapping you.”

  Beiderbecke touched the stabilizer to his lips. “Don’t you find protégés are more interesting that one’s own children?”

  “Don’t talk circles around a deadly subject, Professor. You and Clyde are in danger. What if they have accomplices on the ship? If you do make it to New York intact, what makes you think that a powerful trust like Krieg Rüstungswerk can’t grab you in America?”

  “I think of Prussians as pathologically insular.”

  “You have invented something that those Prussians regard as unique. What sort of a weapon is it?”

  “Weapon? Sprechendlichtspieltheater is not a weapon.”

  “Sprechend-what?”

  Beiderbecke put his glass down and repeated staunchly, “It is not a weapon. And I will say no more of it. I gave Clyde my word.”

  “If it’s not a weapon why does a munitions trust want it?”

  “I do not know. It is not for war. It is for education. It is for science. For communication. Industrial improvement. Even public amusement. It is—”

  Clyde Lynds was approaching, trailed closely by Archie, who gave Bell a look that said he had diverted him as long as he could. Beiderbecke appeared deeply relieved by the interruption. “Ah, Clyde. I was just giving Mr. Bell an older man’s advice on how to survive marriage.”

  “Wha’d he tell you, Mr. Bell?”

  Bell said, “Say it again, Professor. I could never put it so eloquently.”

  “I shall attempt to repeat it,” said Beiderbecke, shooting Bell a grateful look for going along with his dodge. “Since men and women are such different types of creatures, their only hope of getting along with each other is to love each other.”

  “In other words,” said Isaac Bell, “The love they have in common is all they need in common.”

  Archie Abbott opened his watch. “Assuming Miss Marion Morgan has not jumped ship, it’s time to test that theory.”

  “SHIPMATES!” ROARED CAPTAIN WILLIAM Turner, a short, square-jawed, squint-eyed man in his fifties with a great ship’s prow of a nose and enormous ears. His hearty seaman’s voice carried to every corner of the Mauretania’s Saloon Lounge, where hundreds of First Class passengers had come dressed in their best to celebrate the novelty of a wedding at sea.

  None were disappointed.

  The bride was bewitchingly beautiful in a daring, close-fitting cream-colored dress with a high waistline that suited her erect carriage and a sash of diaphanous silk that promised, discreetly, an enchanting décolletage. Her blond hair was swept up high on her head, circled by an abbreviated veil that graced her high brow, and capped with a tiara made of rosebuds instead of diamonds. Diamonds, all agreed, would have paled beside her dazzling eyes.

  Her golden-haired groom stood proudly at her side in a tailcoat. He was tall and straight-backed as a cavalry officer. Beneath his gold mustache, his lips parted in a smile that twitched repeatedly into a broad grin.

  The beautiful matron of honor and handsome best man wore expressions of sheer delight for their friends. The Mauretania’s famously standoffish captain was a vision of cordiality, aglitter in the dress uniform of the Royal Naval Reserve, with buttons, belt, braid, and epaulets of gold, a sword at his side, and a hat cocked fore and aft on his head.

  “We are gathered together in the sight of God and in the face of Mauretania’s passengers and ship’s company to join this man and this woman in matrimony, which is an honorable estate…”

  WITH THE ATTENTION OF THE ENTIRE ship riveted by the wedding, Professor Beiderbecke calculated it would be safe to visit the baggage hold, deep below and far to the back, to check on the well-being of his machines and instruments. He retreated before the ceremony began, pleading that his seasickness was worse, even though the sea had calmed and most passengers were moving about with color restored to their faces.

  Clyde had barely noticed. The young man was in a high state of excitement, put there initially by gaining entrance to the sumptuous First Class lounge, then by being seated next to an exotic Russian woman of Marion’s acquaintance. Dark-eyed Mademoiselle Viorets was no exception to Beiderbecke’s experience that Russian women were intoxicating. Poor Clyde was panting like a Austrian Brandlbracke puppy.

  Fearing that the way into the bowels of the gigantic ship would be a confusing labyrinth of stairs and passageways, the Professor had studied builders’ drawings in the library and committed them to memory just as he would schematics for arcane electrical circuits or the latest triode vacuum tubes.

  Rich carpets and runners in the corridors of passenger quarters gave way to plebeian rubber tiling. Wide staircases narrowed into steel-shrouded companionways. He dodged crew when he saw them in time, and directed at those he could not avoid a haughty stare: Make way for Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke in his old-fashioned frock coat and silver-headed walking stick.

  Suddenly he had a strange feeling that someone was watching him. His first terrible thought was that the Akrobat—as he had dubbed the long-armed, agile thief who had tried twice to steal his Sprechendlichtspieltheater machine—was stalking him again.

  Impossible. Beiderbecke had seen with his own eyes the mysterious Akrobat jump off the Mauretania into the sea. Nonetheless, he stopped in his tracks and cast a fearful glance up the stairs. No one. He craned his neck to peer down another flight. No one. He poked his head into a corridor, saw no one, and continued down into a crew section, past rudimentary sleeping quarters and lavatories, storage rooms, and pantries. The air grew oppressive.

  The engines made their presence felt, resonating in the steel around him, ever more strongly the deeper he descended, a
muted roar that grew louder and louder. Beiderbecke stopped again and looked back, cocking his ears for footfalls. Silliness! What could he hear over the thunder of the furnaces and the whine of the turbines? Besides, despite Isaac Bell’s efforts to frighten him into revealing his secret, the Akrobat no longer existed.

  Real as it was, the sense of being watched was an irrational feeling, he told himself. A shadow flew near. Beiderbecke shrank into a shallow alcove formed by massive steel ribs. He pressed against the steel, which vibrated and felt hot, as if the fires that powered the behemoth ship were burning right behind him. The shadow, cast by electric bulbs caged in the low ceiling, crept along the corridor toward where he cowered. A crewman hurried by, cap and face and clothing black with coal dust.

  Beiderbecke waited until he had gone, then darted along the corridor and down a flight of steps to the orlop deck, where he found himself yards from the stern of the ship in an area shared with sleeping barracks for three dozen cooks and stewards. The noise was deafening. Picturing the builders’ drawings, he realized that he was standing below the waterline. Just outside the hull’s shell plating, the propellers pounded a relentless din as they churned the sea at one hundred and eighty revolutions per minute.

  He saw another shadow coming toward him and ducked through a door and down a companionway. At last he reached a door that should open—if he had not blundered himself utterly lost—into the corridor to the baggage room where the wooden crate that held his machine was concealed in a shipment of a dozen similar crates. All were addressed to a warehouse on New York City’s 14th Street—a short walk, Clyde had assured him, from the Cunard Line pier where the Mauretania would land.

  He opened the door and bumped into a broad-shouldered seaman who was just leaving the baggage room. “Begging your pardon, sir?”

  Beiderbecke said, “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for my shipment of crates.”