The Titanic Secret

by Clive Cussler

  “Are you saying . . . ?” This from the postal manager, Porter.

  “Sure am. Once I realized that this circus had either just played or was about to play the towns where the robberies took place, it all fell into place. I got lucky and caught up with the show in Fort Collins and managed to watch their final performance and stick around to observe them dismantling everything.”

  “And you were able to finger the perpetrators by just catching the act?” McCallister seemed incredulous.

  “Gentlemen, I have to go,” Jim Porter said. “I need to open the branch before the other employees show up for work.” He reached into his pocket for money to settle his bill, and since he’d eaten his normal breakfast, he knew the exact charge.

  Bell shook his hand once again. “Mr. Porter, all you need to do this morning is to act as though nothing unusual is happening. You needn’t tell your staff anything at all. Our mark will come in shortly, no doubt. We are going to watch for him here. We will enter afterward, looking like customers, and accost the thief red-handed.”

  The man was sweaty and appeared unwell, but Bell suspected that he habitually looked that way. Porter nodded gamely. “Okay.”

  Bell and Northrop, the man from Washington, moved to a window table once Porter had left. The two police detectives stayed in the back of the little dining room and would take their cue from Isaac Bell.

  As he suspected, the wait was a short one. Five minutes after the post office opened for the day, Bell watched a man in a black cape and high black hat make his way down the sidewalk. The day, like most of the month of November, was unseasonably warm, which was no doubt the reason the circus remained on tour this late in the year.

  A truck with a chain drive briefly obscured Bell’s line of sight, but when it rumbled down the street, trailing dark exhaust, he saw his man again. Like he’d observed at the circus, the man moved with silken ease, as though his joints were fluid. Bell had only really seen him at a distance, but he recognized the jet-black mustache.

  The man paused to talk to a drayman, who was feeding his horse stumps of carrots. His wagon was a simple flatbed. Bell surmised that the man had hired the horse and driver and they were setting a time to meet so the man could load up his three pieces of luggage and be on his way. If Bell’s guess was right, he wouldn’t bother rejoining the circus here in Denver. Bell believed that all the jobs leading up to this one had been practice runs, to hone the plan until it could be executed with military precision. Today was the big score, the one that would be such a payoff that only retirement afterward made sense.

  The two men parted company. The driver returned to feeding his draft horse while the man from the circus mounted the three granite steps to the post office. Bell gave it another minute, then waved to McCallister and Gaylord. Bell touched something under his left arm to make certain it was there and then left the restaurant, its little chime on the door tinkling, the D.C. postal inspector at his arm.

  Bell crossed the cobbled street, mounted the curb, and climbed the three steps. Through a decorative clear fringe on the otherwise-frosted glass door insert, Bell saw the man from the circus hand over his receipt for the three trunks. There was no sign of Porter, so Bell assumed he was in the back. The clerk who took the ticket acted as though this were any other transaction. The branch manager had kept mum on the impending arrest.

  Bell opened the door and started a conversation midpoint with Northrop. “. . . told me it was going to cost twenty-five dollars to fix it and I told him I could buy a new one for that price and left his shop.”

  “Good for you.” Northrop was a veteran of postal stings and played his part even though they hadn’t rehearsed anything.

  Like many who are forced to wait in a line, the two men let their conversation lapse. Bell smiled at a woman in line ahead of them and got a smile back. Their quarry hadn’t turned, instead waited a little way off for his trunks to be brought through from inside the iron-barred cage where they’d spent the night. Moments later, the two detectives also entered the big post office branch. Gaylord got into one of the three lines while McCallister busied himself at a counter filling out an address on an envelope.

  The handcart used to move larger items throughout the branch had a wheel badly in need of oil. Its squeak echoed off the tall coffered ceiling. Bell watched his man, sensing the anticipation coming off of him in waves, though outwardly he was the picture of studied nonchalance. Up close, he was handsome enough to star in one of Bell’s wife’s motion pictures. The clerk was struggling with the trolley because of its weight, and his shoes kept sliding on the polished floor, but eventually he got it through the gate separating postal employees from their customers.

  The circus performer was about to place a possessive hand on one of the smaller trunks when Bell said in a clear voice, “Stop.”

  Everyone in the branch turned to face him. The man cast a distrustful look Bell’s way.

  “Aren’t you Rudolfo Latang, the magician?”

  The man seemed to release a breath and let his shoulders relax. He smiled charmingly. “I am. Yes.” His accent was European but hard to pin down.

  He turned back to his luggage to forestall further conversation, but Bell plowed on, playing the act a while longer. “I caught your show in Cheyenne over the weekend. You are one amazing performer. Sawing a woman in half like that. Darnedest thing I ever saw. But I think I figured out how you did it.”

  Latang looked over his shoulder and said tersely, “I doubt that.”

  Bell dropped his hayseed persona and said. “Let’s just see. Detectives?” At that, McCallister and Gaylord held up their shields and moved in close to the magician, shooing a few customers back so they had control over the suspect and no potential hostages could be taken if he tried something desperate.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Latang blustered.

  “Depredation of the U.S. mail,” Bob Northrop said, holding up his badge and sweeping back his coat so Latang could see the Smith & Wesson .38 caliber six-shooter on his hip.

  A look of genuine confusion crossed the magician’s face. “Depredation?”

  “It means,” Bell said, “you’ve stolen mail from the United States Post Office.”

  “I’ve done nothing of the sort. I am here to pick up my trunks.”

  Bell gave a disappointed tsk. “I find it odd that as a man who travels with a circus, with its own train cars, as well as trucks and autos, that you would mail items to yourself at some expense, given the weight.”

  Latang had a ready answer. “I so happen to do this quite often, as I work as an advance man for the circus. I arrive at the towns a few days early and put on free demonstrations to build crowd interest for the main show.”

  “So you’ve got props and costumes and stuff like that in your trunks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I will do no such thing,” he said, raising his voice.

  “May I point out,” Northrop interjected, “that you have not taken physical control of your items, so they are technically still under the protective care of the U.S.P.S. and I am a postal inspector.” He let the implication hang in the air.

  Latang tried to stare down Northrop and then turned his attention to Bell. If anything, he could hold eye contact for even less time before capitulating. He pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to Northrop. “Fine. Go ahead and search.”

  The D.C. inspector used his left hand to fit the key into the big trunk’s brass lock and release it while his right hovered over the butt of his revolver. The two Denver detectives also looked tensed for the unexpected. Bell looked mildly bored.

  Inside the trunk were all manner of magic paraphernalia, like chains, a straitjacket, shiny swords, as well as many smaller boxes that Northrop laboriously removed. In them were macabre costumes, makeup, and smaller little trick items designed to separate the gull
ible from their money. In moments, the area around the trunk was littered like the floor of some Near Eastern pasha’s tent.

  Northrop looked to Bell, clearly confused, and more than a little angry that he’d crossed three-quarters of the country to be here and make the arrest and there was no evidence of a crime.

  “False bottom,” Billy McCallister suggested.

  Northrop tapped at the trunk in several places. A postal clerk handed him a wooden yardstick. The D.C. inspector measured the height of the trunk and then set the wooden ruler inside to check its depth. An exact match.

  He blew out a defeated breath, and his eyes shot daggers at Isaac Bell. “My apologies, Mr. Latang. We were clearly misinformed.”

  The magician began tossing his clothing and equipment back into the trunk with little thought of neatness. He too gave Bell a hard stare. “It is a small matter and only a moment’s delay.” He closed the lid, shoving hard to compress the contents and managing to latch the lock.

  Northrop glared at Isaac Bell, who regarded the D.C. man mildly. Northrop said, “I came all this way because of the reputation of the Van Dorn Agency, and quite frankly, Mr. Bell, I now see that the mystique some hold you in is rather misplaced, to put it mildly.”

  “Guess this is one time you don’t get your man,” Detective McCallister said, mocking how the Van Dorns supposedly always got their man and had coined their motto to emphasize that fact.

  Everyone in the room subconsciously turned a bit away from Bell. This was instinctive shunning behavior that followed mankind upon his descent from his primitive ape ancestors. Bell had expected it, so he had a moment’s privacy even in this crowded space.

  Rudolfo Latang was almost out the door, with the aid of a postal worker, when Bell barked his name in a commanding boom. Everyone turned.

  Bell stood with his arm outstretched, his long greatcoat askew from where he’d swept it open to reach for the shoulder holster under his left arm. The gun now in his steady fist was something new, something no one in the room had ever seen, a sleek and lethal amalgam of modern industrial design and brutal form following deadly function. The weapon was still in its development phase, but the Army was eager to begin deploying what they’d already designated as the M1911 automatic pistol but which those that had used it simply called the .45.

  Isaac Bell had total command of the room. “Mr. Latang, I am going to fire two shots. One into each of your smaller trunks. One bullet will blow a hole through a stack of cash that had been shipped here from the San Francisco Mint as pay for the mining companies for all the gold and silver they shipped west. The other round will perforate the tender flesh of your stage assistant’s twin—and, might I add, one-legged—sister.”

  “What the blazes are you talking about?” Detective McCallister groused. “Put down that weapon immediately.”

  “Good God, man, are you daft?” Northrop said. “Those cases are too small for even a child to fit into. Please, Mr. Latang, you are free to go.”

  Bell used his thumb to draw back the automatic’s hammer. The sound was one of finality and inevitability, like a line had just been drawn and a challenge offered. Bell and the magician locked eyes, neither man backing down.

  The gun’s barrel dropped fractionally and angled ever so slightly farther right. Bell didn’t flinch as just a few ounces of pressure against the weapon’s internal springs sent one of the big lead slugs roaring down the barrel in a flash of dazzling light and a flat crack of sound that left ears ringing.

  A woman’s scream, muffled but high-pitched and panicked, filled the silence that followed. A hidden catch inside the suitcase that Bell hadn’t shot through clicked open and a woman wearing a skintight black bodysuit of elastic chiffon climbed her way out like a spider. She’d folded herself so tightly that the mind rejected the very idea that someone could have hidden within the valise, so her emergence had a macabre, unsettling feeling. As Bell had mentioned, her left leg was missing from high up on the thigh. Had she not been an amputee, she never would have managed the contortions needed to stow away inside the bag.

  Latang made for the door while the police officers were distracted, but then he realized Bell wasn’t paying her the slightest attention. He had anticipated this and so was ever vigilant. The gun’s aim was centered between the magician’s eyes.

  The young woman was barely five feet tall and rail thin, with pretty blond hair and a pleasant face, though once she’d gathered her wits, anger flushed her cheeks. She suddenly leapt across the room with amazing speed and slapped Isaac Bell across the face.

  “You could have killed me,” she said in a thick Cockney accent. “You should be arrested for attempted murder.”

  She tried to slap him again, but Bell deflected the shot adroitly. And once the contortionist was off balance, her cramped muscles refused to hold her upright and she fell to the floor. She started sobbing.

  “How in the devil . . . ?”

  Bell holstered his .45. McCallister had moved to restrain Latang while his partner readied a pair of handcuffs.

  Bell said, “I figured early on that the thefts were done by someone hiding in the locked rooms, but since I didn’t get a look at any of the luggage that had been removed, I was forced to rely on clerks’ memories and estimates, which are generally unreliable. Still, it seemed there were few man-sized steamer trunks recalled, so I deduced it was an inside man”—he looked to the crying woman on the floor—“or lady, as it turns out, who was either a child or a contortionist. That is what prompted me to check if any circuses had been in the area of the crimes and, lo and behold, I discover the Fraunhofer & Fraunhofer Circus had been near them all.”

  The detective turned his attention to the seething mad magician, Latang. “When I watched your performance, I was particularly interested in any tricks you did involving boxes, placing someone in them atop a table. You had an illusion where you saw a lady in half, but your variation was to cut off a leg first. Your regular assistant was the woman who initially stepped into the coffin-sized box in front of the entire audience. All could plainly see she had the proper number of limbs. When you first raised that curtain for a moment, she slipped out the bottom and her twin”—he pointed to the woman on the floor—“crawled in, sticking a realistic-looking foot prosthesis through one hole in the bottom of the box and her own foot through the other.

  “Then you used your saw to hack off one leg and allow the box surrounding it to fall to the floor. I noted that the fake foot was kept pointed away from the audience while the woman continued to move her own leg to heighten the effect. While you were distracting the audience by flailing the saws around and shielding the bottom of the box from view, she withdrew her foot, plugged the hole with a second, fake leg, and curled her body into the top portion of the box with her head still exposed. You cut the box in half even higher up than the leg cut, and the audience believes you’ve just sawn a woman into three pieces.

  “Then it’s a simple matter of reversing everything, including the sisters switching places under the table, and, presto, you are Rudolfo the Magnificent.”

  “And you figured this all out by watching his act once?” Northrop was duly impressed.

  “I know how the standard illusion is played out. This variation was an intriguing one, but there was only one possible explanation for how it could be executed. Since Latang didn’t remove her limb and magically reattach it, it must not have been there in the first place. And since I saw the assistant step into the box on her own two shapely legs, there had to be a second person with only one leg. Confirmation came the next day when I saw the two women working together to help dismantle the circus venue. One walked perfectly normal, the other with a severe limp.

  “After that, I followed Latang. I was actually in line at another postal branch when he shipped these trunks here. I managed to chalk an X on the one he hadn’t double-checked that he had the key for. That’s how I knew to
shoot the other one.”

  “The money,” Northrop cried. Previously, he’d implied that he could open Latang’s trunks without a warrant, but that wasn’t true. Now, considering the circumstances, he felt justified, and he was sure he could square it with a judge. He glowered at the magician. “Give me the key.”

  “I don’t have it,” the man replied, his bravado waning with each passing moment. He knew he’d been beaten.

  “She has it,” Bell said. “She was shipped from the one branch to this one last night stowed away in the larger trunk. Even for her, hiding in the smaller one for more than a few minutes, a half hour tops, would be impossible. The big trunk, though, would be nice and cozy. After the branch closed yesterday afternoon, she let herself out and transferred all the clothes and props from the smaller two steamers into the larger one and relocked it. Then she had all night to find the payroll shipments from San Francisco, remove the cash, and reseal the packages. I suspect she had fake wads of bills to replace the cash with so the weights remained consistent and the robbery wouldn’t be discovered until the following payday.

  “Just before the post office reopens, she locks up the money trunk and folds herself into the other. I hadn’t noticed yesterday when I followed Latang, but I saw this morning that the lock mechanism on her trunk is fake. It can’t be locked from the outside, only latched shut from within.” Bell held his hand down to the contortionist. She pulled a leather thong up from under her tighter-than-tight body stocking and over her head. Dangling from it was a tiny steamer trunk key.

  Bell handed it to Northrop. The postal inspector shot Latang a look. Defeated, the magician merely nodded, and the D.C. inspector turned the key. Though the trunk seemed much too small to hold a person, it looked more than sufficiently large to store a million dollars in cash. The dull-green bills were still banded and packed as neatly as sardines in a tin. One stack, though, did have an ugly black hole shot through the middle of it.