The Thief

by Clive Cussler

  NONE YET.

  Isaac Bell telephoned Andrew Rubenoff, filled him in on Research’s suspicions, and asked, “Is the Bank of Hamburg a real bank or a sham?”

  “Where did you hear about Bank of Hamburg, if I may ask?”

  “Van Dorn Research.”

  “I am impressed,” Rubenoff answered. “I doff my hat to them. Hamburg Bankhaus is not widely known outside professional circles.”

  “I’ll pass on the compliment. Is it real or a sham?”

  “It’s real. They’re very active in German enterprises doing business in America. First among their enterprises, they’re the principal lender to the Leipzig Organ and Piano Company.”

  “The piano shops?”

  “You’ve seen them. Leipzig Organ has expanded hugely in America—opening all sorts of branches to sell parlor pianos. Funny you should ask, though.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I was just in one of their shops the other day trying to buy sheet music. But they were sold out of ‘Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life.’”

  “It’s very popular.”

  “When a music shop is sold out of a brand-new Victor Herbert song, something is terribly wrong with the shop.”

  “Or the publisher.”

  “The publisher will blame the shop, of course. Either for not ordering enough or not paying their bills. Though in this instance they may be right. The shop had a very poor selection. The most recent I could find was ‘I Love My Wife; But, Oh, You Kid!’ That’s been around so long the paper was turning yellow.”

  “How were their pianos?”

  “Decent enough, for uprights. Good German quality.”

  Bell asked. “Where is Leipzig’s headquarters?”

  “Leipzig. As their name would suggest.”

  “I mean here in America.”

  “They’d have a sales rep.”

  “How do they conduct business?”

  “The representative will be a top man on commission. He’ll conduct any business that has to be done here. The rest will be handled in Leipzig.”

  “Leipzig wouldn’t be owned by Krieg, by any chance?”

  “I doubt they’d borrow money from Hamburg if they were. They’d have access to better rates of interest through Krieg.”

  Bell pondered his next move.

  “Uncle Andy, tell me about pianos.”

  THE LEIPZIG ORGAN & PIANO Company’s plate-glass front window was sparkling clean, Isaac Bell noted as he hurried along the sidewalk. Sheet music shortcomings aside, from the sidewalk at least the shop had nothing to apologize for. He stopped, peered through the glass, pulled his watch from his pocket by its heavy gold chain, pretended to check whether he had time to spare, and went inside.

  Sturdy upright pianos lined the walls, each bearing the name Leipzig in gold leaf. Revolving mahogany racks of music flanked a glass-topped counter displaying metronomes and hymnals.

  A salesman got up from his desk by the back door. He was a middle-aged German with a military bearing and a cold manner. “Yes?” he demanded.

  “I am shopping for a piano for my niece, who has impressed her teacher.”

  “Ve have vaiting list for new orders.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “It is difficult to tell.”

  “A month? Two months?”

  “More like six months to a year, sir. Our pianos are made carefully. Very carefully.”

  “Are they strung with music wire made by Stahl and Drahtwerk?”

  The salesman’s jaw tightened.

  “Or,” asked Bell, “are the strings from Moritz Poehlmann of Nuremberg?”

  The saleman stared straight ahead, his gaze locked on the knot of Isaac Bell’s four-in-hand necktie. At last he said, “I do not know that. But our plates are of cast iron.”

  “I would hope so,” said Bell. “Would you play a few of them for me? Let me hear the difference.”

  “You may play them, sir.”

  “Ah, but sadly I do not. So if you would play for me…”

  Again, the tight jaw. Finally, he said, “It is not possible.”

  “A man who sells pianos can’t play them?”

  “I have injured my hand.”

  “I’m so sorry. Could I trouble you to telephone your sales representative.”

  “Vat for?”

  “I would like to ask whether I could buy an instrument sooner than six months.”

  “He is not near.”

  “Well, perhaps your head office could help me.”

  “No.”

  “Then I wonder could I have your representative’s address that I might write him myself.”

  “He is traveling.”

  Bell stepped to the windows and stood there for a long moment.

  Suddenly a stylish crowd of free-spirited young men and women came along the sidewalk and burst in the door. Gaily hailing the salesman, all talking at once, they took a long time to explain they needed to rent a piano for a party tonight. Informed that the shop did not rent pianos, they laughed.

  “Then we’ll buy one.”

  “We’ll pool our cash.”

  “I’ve got Dad’s check. I’ll buy it.”

  “How about that one?” a girl cried, and they gathered around it, two of them plopping down on the bench, throwing open the key lid, and pounding out a ragtime duet.

  The salesman kept saying, “Not for sale. Not for sale,” and when he had at last showed the buoyant mob out the door, he discovered that the tall golden-haired gentleman hoping to buy a piano for his niece had slipped away in the confusion.

  Good riddance, he thought, and locked the door.

  “NICELY DONE,” ISAAC BELL TOLD the Los Angeles field office apprentices and secretaries and their girlfriends and boyfriends. “You were thoroughly authentic ‘gilded youth’ on a lark. That poor salesman never knew what hit him.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Bell?”

  All eyes locked on the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s legendary chief investigator.

  “With your help, I found a letter in his desk and a business card. The Leipzig Organ and Piano Company is represented by a traveling man named Fritz Wunderlich who collects his mail in Denver at the Brown Palace Hotel.”

  ISAAC BELL TELEGRAPHED VAN DORN field offices around the country to cover Leipzig’s other piano shops to see what they could pick up. Those large enough to maintain apprentices would instruct them to pretend to be shopping on behalf of their school or church. Agents in smaller one-and two-man outfits would shop, as Bell had, for nieces and daughters.

  Bell himself boarded the flyer to Salt Lake City, changed trains a day later to the Overland Limited, arrived in Denver early the next morning, and walked the short distance up Broadway to the Brown Palace Hotel, a favorite haunt. He knocked on a door just inside the main entrance. Omar P. Armstrong, the Brown Palace’s managing partner, invited him to breakfast.

  As they walked across a vast marble and cast-iron atrium lobby where tier upon tier of balconies soared to a skylight one hundred feet above the carpet, Bell asked, “Have you ever met a salesman named Fritz Wunderlich?”

  “Fritz? Of course.”

  Bell had journeyed to Denver expecting no less. Omar P. Armstrong knew everyone worth knowing west of the Mississippi. “Have you seen him lately?”

  “He’s here every two or three weeks.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Pleasant enough fellow,” Armstrong replied with a neutral smile.

  Isaac Bell was fully aware that any man who managed a grand hotel had to be as observant as a whale-ship lookout and as discreet as the madam of a first-class bordello. Omar’s studiedly disinterested expression said that if Isaac Bell wished to inquire about Brown Palace guests but still be known as an innocent insurance executive, that was Bell’s business but Omar P. Armstrong wasn’t born yesterday.

  “Have you known him long?”

  “If you are interested in Herr Wunderlich, why not ask his frien
ds?”

  They paused in the entrance to the dining room. The Brown Palace’s guests were breakfasting at tables set with snowy linen, gleaming silver, and fine china. Omar nodded in the direction that Bell suspected he would. At a table placed in the alcove of a tall window, three well-dressed, barbershop-pinked salesmen were in animated conversation.

  “If you like, I can introduce you.”

  Bell grinned. “Did you ever meet a drummer who needed an introduction?”

  He walked straight to the salesmen’s table. “Morning, gents. Isaac Bell. Insurance. May I join you?”

  They took in his hand-tailored suit, polished boots, and confident smile.

  “Sit down, brother. Sit down. Waiter! Coffee for Mr. Bell—or something a mite stronger, if you’re so inclined.”

  “Coffee will be fine. Long day ahead.”

  They shook hands around and introduced themselves, a rep for the Gillette Safety Razor Company, a Locomobile salesman, and a traveler in the cereal line. The Locomobile man said, “Mr. Bell, stop me if I’m wrong, but don’t you drive a Locomobile?”

  “I thought I recognized you, Jake,” said Bell. “We met in Bridgeport when I was picking her up at the factory.”

  “Red one, if I recall?”

  “Red as fire.”

  “How’s she running?”

  “Like a top. Small world, isn’t it? I ran into a traveling man the other day. We got to talking about autos, and when I told him about mine he mentioned he knew a fellow who handled the line. That could have been you.”

  “Probably was me. What’s his name?”

  “German fellow. Fritz Wunderlich.”

  “Fritz! Yes, we just saw him in— Where’d we see him?”

  “Chicago?”

  “Chicago it was. Isn’t he a character? ‘Mit schlag’!”

  “‘Time is money.’”

  “‘Eight days in the veek.’”

  “Pretty good salesman, I gather,” said Bell.

  “Valuable man. No question. Valuable man.”

  “Lucky for him he’s got that smile,” the cereal salesman chortled.

  “What do you mean?” asked Bell.

  “Well, you know… Fritz is a heck of a worker, but he sort of looks like a monkey.”

  “Sort of?” snickered Jake. “I’ll say he looks like an ape in the jungle.”

  “You mean his long arms?” asked Bell.

  “Arms like a monkey. Face like one, too.”

  “He didn’t really look like a monkey,” Bell protested, mildly.

  “He does to me.”

  Isaac Bell drew his notebook from his pocket and opened his Waterman fountain pen. “No. Fritz looks more like this.” He tried to draw a man’s face with a prominent brow. “Sort of like this. I’m not much of a hand at drawing.”

  The cereal salesman took out his order book and his pen. “No, more like this.”

  “Neither of you can draw worth a darn,” laughed the Gillette man. He opened his order book and moved his pen over it, laboriously. “He looks like this.”

  The cereal salesman disagreed vehemently, and Bell said, “Not one bit like that. How about you, Jake?”

  Jake, the Locomobile man from Bridgeport, took out his book. Isaac Bell watched, holding his breath. Jake was his last chance to get a sketch that resembled Fritz Wunderlich. Surely one of the men at the table could draw. Jake, it turned out, possessed a modicum of artistic talent.

  “Like this,” said Jake. He drew in a few quick lines a simian face with long cheeks and deep-set eyes. Then he turned his pencil on the side and shaded in a heavy brow.

  The others stared. “You got him just about right, Jake,” one marveled. “That’s Fritz. Darned near.”

  “I think you’re right,” Bell ventured, looking to the cereal salesman for confirmation.

  “He sure does.”

  “Well, I’ll be, Jake’s an artist.”

  Jake beamed.

  “Could I see that?” asked Bell, picking it up and studying it by the light of the window. “Yes, I believe that’s what he looks like. You’re a real artist, Jake.”

  Jake flushed with embarrassment. “Naw, not really. I just started out in the design shop, before I started selling. You really think it’s good?”

  “Sure do. Mind if I keep it?”

  “You ought to pay for it,” laughed the man from Chicago. “It’s a piece of artwork.”

  “You’re right,” said Isaac Bell, reaching for his wallet. “How much?”

  “No, no, no.” said Jake. “Go on, you take it.”

  “O.K. But when I need a new auto, I’ll know who to come to.”

  “Just don’t show it to Fritz,” the cereal man laughed.

  “It don’t matter he looks like that,” said Jake. “Fritz’s got that smile, and folks just buy anything he sells.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the man from Gillette.

  “What do you mean?” asked Bell.

  “Eh, you’re always going on about that,” the cereal sales rep protested. “Fritz is a valuable man.”

  “About what?” asked Bell.

  “Those shops his firm supplies. I just don’t see them selling that many pianos or sheets of music, for that matter. It’s not a well-run business. From what I’ve seen.”

  “They’ve got a fancy-looking shop in Los Angeles,” said Bell.

  “Well, you just try buying a piano, you’ll find a waiting list as long as your arm.”

  “Or Fritz’s arm,” Jake said, and the table roared.

  “Where’s Fritz now?” asked Bell.

  “Hope he’s not at the next table listening to this,” said Jake, and the others looked around uncomfortably.

  “I’m trying to remember when I saw him,” Bell persisted. “Must have been two weeks, maybe more. Time flies. Anyone seen him lately?”

  “I thought in Chicago, he said he was going to Los

  Angeles.”

  Isaac Bell took Jake’s drawing of Fritz Wunderlich to the Denver Post Building and paid a newspaper sketch artist to make him copies. He took them to the train stations. The Van Dorn Detective Agency had warm relations with the express companies, as the detectives often cadged rides on express cars, whose messengers were glad of another dependable gun. By noon the copies were headed around the continent, courtesy of Adams Express, American Express, and Wells Fargo, to the field offices covering German consulates in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Francisco, and the vice-consul’s mansion in Los Angeles.

  IN JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY, a short, round Van Dorn apprentice from the New York field office named Nelson Mills found himself wishing he had broken the agency rule that forbade apprentice detectives to carry guns. The baby-faced Mills had just finished his first “solo” assignment, an investigation of the Leipzig Organ & Piano shop in the Heights neighborhood. Scanning his notes as he hurried to catch the Hudson Tube back to Manhattan, he composed in his mind the first sentence of his report—“A yearlong waiting list for pianos, no organs, and sheet music from 1905, conspire to indicate that the Leipzig Organ and Piano Company is a false front for a nefarious business as yet unidentified.”

  Suddenly he remembered that Detective Harry Warren had advised him that using one word instead of three was the best way to get the bosses to read his reports. Mills drew mental Xs through “conspired to indicate,” to be replaced with “suggest,” and was debating deleting “nefarious” when he bumped into a big fellow on the sidewalk.

  “Excuse me. Sorry.”

  Nelson Mills got a fist in his face for his apology.

  The young man fell on his back on the pavement with blood pouring from his nose. He was shocked by the speed of the attack. The pain was ferocious. His eyes were blinded by tears. He sensed more, then saw the man who punched him looming over him, and he started to ask “Why?”

  The man snatched Nelson’s notebook out of his hand and ripped apart the pages, scattering the pieces on his bloody shirt. “Hey, that�
�s my—”

  A heavy boot smashed into his side. Pain seared his ribs, and Nelson realized too late to save himself that there were two of them. They kicked him repeatedly.

  ISAAC BELL FOUND A STACK OF ANGRY TELE grams waiting for him in the Los Angeles field office. Van Dorns in Cincinnati, Chicago, Ohio, and Jersey City reported their apprentices were beaten up on their way back from investigating Leipzig Organ & Piano shops. Two young men were in the hospital, and one boy in Jersey City had already been given last rites while his family sat vigil at his bedside.

  Enraged detectives demanded permission to arrest the shop clerks. But in rapid exchanges of wires, it became clear to Isaac Bell that there was no proof to charge the clerks. The attacks had occurred in streets and alleys far from their shops.

  As chief investigator, the best Bell could do was wire a reminder of Van Dorn’s standing orders regarding thugs and hoodlums who assaulted private detectives, when they had been positively identified beyond any doubt:

  DISCOURAGE PERPETRATORS FROM

  REPEATING ATTACKS.

  LARRY SAUNDERS STUCK HIS HEAD in Bell’s office door. He had blueprints rolled under his arm. “How was Denver?”

  Bell handed him the Locomobile salesman’s sketch. “Give this to the boys covering the vice-consul’s mansion. Wunderlich is real. No one’s seen him lately. What did Holian learn at City Hall?”

  Saunders unrolled blueprints on Bell’s desk. They anchored them with sidearms. “Fourth floor. Eighth floor. Penthouse. I don’t see where you’d put a judas hole. Public rooms and open stairways. Maybe this storage closet on the eighth.”

  Bell studied the blueprints and agreed that spy holes weren’t likely.

  Saunders said, “Thing is, Holian thought the clerk he borrowed these from was acting a little jumpy.”

  “What did Holian make of that?”

  “Maybe the clerk knew something more he didn’t want to say. Holian wants to nose around a little. I told him I’d take over.”

  Bell looked at Saunders, inquiringly.

  Saunders said, “The clerks know that Holian is a Van Dorn. They don’t know me from Adam.”