The Thief

by Clive Cussler

  Semmler reached across the table and laid a powerful hand on Hermann Wagner’s arm. “Relax, Herr Wagner, you look terrified.”

  “I am terrified,” the banker admitted. “You warned me on the Mauretania never to look on your face. Tonight you show me your face. What am I to think but the worst?”

  “Do not worry. You are valuable alive. I still need you. I need you more than ever. There is much to be done.”

  “What can be done? Bell is onto you. And he’s closing in on Imperial Film.”

  Semmler snatched the telephone from the banker’s hand and listened. A brilliant smile filled his strange face. It brightened his eyes and spread his lips, but bright as it was, Wagner thought, it looked cold as distant lightning.

  “Bell,” said the leader of the Donar Plan, “would sound less confident if he knew we could hear him.”

  “MR. BELL, COULD ISEE THAT PICTURE again?”

  Isaac Bell handed the Wunderlich sketch to a Los Angeles Van Dorn disguised in the patched clothing and dark glasses of a blind newspaper seller. The detective took off the glasses and studied the sketch.

  “You know, he didn’t look quite like this. But it could have been him.”

  “When?”

  The blind newsie opened his notebook and read deadpan: “Individual possibly resembling Mr. Bell’s sketch of Fritz Wunderlich entered German vice-consul’s residence Saturday at ten past eight. Detective Balant decided it wasn’t him.”

  “Ten past eight this evening?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When did he come out?”

  “Didn’t.”

  Every detective in the room reached for his hat. Bell was already at the door. “He never came out? Are you sure?”

  “I covered the front door, right across the street from my newsstand. When I needed relief to come here, Patrolman Joe Thomas, who lends us a hand, promised to cover till I got back.”

  “Come on, boys, let’s have a look.”

  They piled into two Ford autos and raced across town.

  Larry Saunders asked Bell, “Is there any way we can get inside the consulate?”

  “Not without setting off an international hullabaloo.”

  Bell ordered the cars stopped a block from the residence of the German vice-consul, who had been recently appointed by the San Francisco consul general. “Wait here. I don’t want them looking out their window at half the detectives in California.”

  He walked down the block and stopped at the “blind newsie’s” newspaper stand. The cop, Patrolman Joe Thomas, was seated inside, yawning. “Van Dorn,” said Bell, picking up the evening edition of the Los Angeles Times to shield the act of showing the sketch. “Have you seen this fellow come out of the consulate?”

  “You just missed him,” said the cop. “Lit out of there like the house was on fire.”

  “ISAAC BELL WILL CONFRONT YOU,” Christian Semmler warned Irina Viorets. “Be prepared.”

  “I am prepared.”

  “I would recommend that you act both disbelieving and fiercely defiant.”

  “I said I am prepared.”

  “I would play the J. P. Morgan card if I were you.”

  “I intend to.”

  “It would not be an exaggeration,” Semmler smiled, “to say that the life of your ‘prince’ hangs in the balance.”

  She did not have long to wait. The lobby guards telephoned on the Imperial Building’s Kellogg system.

  “Of course,” she said. “Send Mr. Bell straight up.”

  She told her secretaries, “No interruptions.”

  Bell came in briskly, tall and lanky and handsome as ever, even with his face so stern.

  “Isaac,” she teased, smiling as she rose from her desk to greet him, “you look as if you exited your bed from the wrong side this morning.”

  “Irina, your ‘investors’ are Hamburg merchant bankers funneling money from the Imperial German Army.”

  “That is not true.”

  “The bank goes by the name Hamburg Bankhaus.”

  “Isaac, please. You’re being silly.”

  “The operation is run by your boss, a German general major named Christian Semmler.”

  She looked him boldly in the eye. “I know no Christian Semmler. Imperial Film is a going concern. We are building a great national enterprise to produce, distribute, and exhibit moving pictures.”

  Bell did not give an inch. “If you don’t know Christian Semmler, then to whom do you report?”

  “I report to the head of the Artists Syndicate.”

  “There is no Artists Syndicate. It’s a sham.”

  Irina Viorets let the silence build between them. Then she sat behind her desk and picked up a long silver letter opener and twirled it slowly in her fingers, pointing it first at Bell, then back at herself, then again at Bell.

  He broke the silence. “The Artists Syndicate is a sham. It does not exist.”

  “That will come as a surprise to the man who heads it.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Singleton Brooks.”

  She saw that Isaac Bell was puzzled and thrown off. It was almost as if he knew the name, which was the one thing she had not expected. But that appeared to be precisely the case. Bell actually knew the man. All the better, she thought, relief flooding through her. A good plan—a plan to derail Bell’s suspicions—had unexpectedly gotten even better. Her prince’s luck had turned. She could feel it in her soul.

  THE NAME SINGLETON BROOKS was familiar to Isaac Bell, but he couldn’t recall why. Then it struck him. He remembered an unpleasant interview on Wall Street in the course of the Wrecker investigation.

  “Singleton Brooks works for J. P. Morgan.”

  Irina staggered him with a beautiful smile and a smug, “I believe that Mr. Morgan is not a sham.”

  “I will have people in New York check on Mr. Brooks.”

  “No need. Mr. Brooks arrives on the Golden State Limited tomorrow night. You can meet him at the station and ask him face-to-face… Is there anything else, Isaac? If not, please convey my warmest regards to Marion.”

  Isaac Bell recovered with a smile, shook Irina’s hand, and left the building. It appeared that Christian Semmler has laid his groundwork even more thoroughly than he had imagined.

  He went straight to Bunker Hill, rode up on the Angels Flight, and burst into Andrew Rubenoff’s mansion. Rubenoff was at the piano, singing “That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune.”

  “This Berlin fellow has a knack.”

  “Does Singleton Brooks still work for J. P. Morgan?”

  “Last I heard. And I would have heard if he had left.”

  “Irina Viorets claims that Brooks represents Artists Syndicate, which you said didn’t exist.”

  “I never said it would never exist. It did not exist when I inquired. Perhaps it exists now.”

  “What the heck is going on?”

  “Morgan’s shipping combine is taking a bath. International Mercantile Marine has been sorely used by the British government and the American Congress. Perhaps he sees an opportunity in Imperial Film. However it was financed aside, Imperial is poised to seize a controlling interest in much of independent film manufacturing, distribution, and exhibition. That’s the sort of meat Morgan feasts on.”

  “But Krieg and the German Army—”

  “Things change, Isaac. Events do not always unfold as first planned.”

  THE BOOKCASE IN IRINA VIORET’S office slid open on silent, ball-bearing tracks. Christian Semmler emerged from his stairwell. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “after the Iron Horse company returns from taking pictures, I want you to ask Mrs. Bell to do you a favor.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “I overheard our bloody director upstairs threatening to quit—just when they finished building the ship and pier.”

  “Why?”

  “He says the scenario won’t work. Something about the searchlights in the dark. I want him fired tomorrow. Then I want you to ask Mrs. Bell t
o help you by staying late to take pictures for his immigrant arrival scenario so the carpenters can clear the ship and a pier and build her Iron Horse stage set.”

  “What if she says no?”

  “You know as well as I do that Marion Bell will not say no to anything that would help her production. Nor would she miss an opportunity to take pictures in the dark by the glare of searchlights. She will rise to the challenge. Particularly when you can tell her that the original director quit because he wasn’t up to it.”

  Irina Vioret’s dark eyes filled with anxious foreboding. “What are you going to do to her?”

  “Nothing! Gott im Himmel, what are you thinking, woman? I promise you I will do nothing to derail the success of The Iron Horse. Just make sure that damned cowboy has gone before you ask her.”

  MINUTES BEFORE ISAAC BELL WENT TO LA Grande Station to meet Singleton Brooks’s train, Los Angeles field office chief Larry Saunders reported that the city records clerk, who Saunders had hoped would admit to the existence of a secret set of blueprints for the Imperial Building, had been crushed to death under an Angels Flight funicular railway car.

  “The cops say he got oiled and tried to walk up the tracks. But being they are so steep, I’d expect that stunt more of a drunken sailor than an overweight, middle-aged file clerk. I’m sorry, Mr. Bell, he was my best shot, but I’ll keep trying.”

  Bell thought hard. Then he said, “Larry, I want you to take personal charge of the Van Dorn Protective Service men guarding Clyde Lynds starting right now.”

  The dandified Saunders asked why.

  Isaac Bell replied in a manner that left no latitude for debate: “Because I have a very strong feeling about tonight.”

  Then Bell switched tactics at La Grande Station.

  Singleton Brooks’s Limited was due in at nine. Instead of simply walking up to Brooks and challenging him, Bell decided to have the J. P. Morgan executive followed first. Where he went might reveal a lot. He believed that Brooks might lead him to Christian Semmler—or did he merely hope? Regardless, Brooks would likely recognize Bell. Even if Bell disguised himself in his black motorcycle costume, the odds were Irina had alerted him to Bell’s suspicions.

  So Bell had ordered Texas Walt Hatfield to do the primary tracking, and Texas Walt was ensconced in a saloon just outside the station’s main entrance. Bell would point out Singleton to him. Bell had another Van Dorn standing by in an Oldsmobile taxicab in the event that Singleton was picked up in an auto, while Balant, the blind newsie, transformed tonight into a gawking tourist, would follow the New York banker if he boarded a streetcar.

  VAN DORN DETECTIVE CHUCK SHIPLEY, a young, eager-to-prove-himself transfer from the Kansas City office, sat inside the blind newsie’s stand wearing a cap rented from a rooming house neighbor who made a living hawking newspapers on the street. Mr. Saunders had encouraged Shipley to get a nickel-plated changemaker to hook over his belt, enhancing his disguise. But Detective Balant had forbidden him to wear dark glasses, explaining, testily, that even if the Germans inside the vice-consul’s mansion were stupid—and there was no evidence they were—they would still wonder why the recently installed newsstand on their corner employed only blind men.

  “In other words, Chuck, get your own disguise.”

  Along with the cap and the changemaker, Shipley affected a severe limp, but seated behind the counter it was hard to show it off, as the only time he got to step out was when the trucks arrived with fresh editions. But here came one now, bearing bundles of the Los Angeles Examiner. The driver stayed behind the wheel. The helper slung a bundle under his arm and brought it around to the side, blocking the door so Chuck Shipley couldn’t get out to strut his limp.

  “Where’s the blind guy?”

  “He’s off tonight. His old man got sick.”

  “Here, I got something for him. You give it to him.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look here.” The helper was holding something below his knees. Chuck looked. He saw nothing but the helper’s hand, which suddenly formed a fist encased in brass knuckles that traveled at his jaw like a rocket. Caught flat-footed, Chuck saw fireballs of different colors and then nothing but night.

  The helper stretched Shipley out on the floor and grabbed more bundles from the truck to cover the body.

  Then the Examiner truck pulled across the street and stopped in front of the German vice-consul’s mansion. Six powerful men in a variety of slouch hats and loose-fitting suits of clothes exited the mansion by a basement door. Most wore short beards; all had the blue-eyed, strong-jawed features of the South African Dutch. They piled into the truck, which drove straight to the Imperial Building. The six entered the lobby by the side entrance. The doormen greeted them warmly, like old comrades-in-arms.

  THE GOLDEN STATE LIMITED RUMBLED into La Grande Station on time.

  From a distance, Bell spotted a familiar short, compact figure jump impatiently from the stateroom car that Research had determined was Brooks’s. Brooks pushed through the crowd on the platform and through the arrival hall to the front of the station.

  Bell gave Texas Walt the nod. Brooks hopped into a taxi. Walt eased into the Oldsmobile, and the Van Dorn driver trailed Brooks’s taxi away from the station. Balant, waiting by the streetcar track, hailed another taxi and tore after them.

  “Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell.”

  Bell recognized the out-of-breath Van Dorn messenger running up to him.

  “Best to keep your voice low, son, while engaging a colleague on duty,” Bell cautioned, mildly. He took the messenger’s arm. “Walk along with me while we try to notice who took notice… What do you make of that fellow in the straw hat? Is he watching us?… Oh, there he goes with that lady kissing him. Otherwise, we’re clear. What’s the message?”

  “Telephone Mr. Clyde Lynds soon as you can.”

  Bell hurried inside the train station and telephoned the laboratory. Clyde Lynds sounded even more excited than the messenger. “Come see. I’ve synchronized sound and pictures.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  But as Bell exited the station to race to the Imperial Building, he bumped into Texas Walt.

  “What are you doing here? Did you lose Brooks?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Stopped in Levy’s Café for supper. Balant’s watching him.”

  “Cover him closely. I’ll be at the Imperial Building.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Guess who he’s eating supper with?”

  “Irina Viorets.”

  “Nope. He’s eating with a fellow who’ll spot me in a second.”

  “Who?”

  “The feller who directed me in those Western dramas, the Pirate King himself, Jay Tarses.”

  Bell shook his head in disbelief. “I figured Brooks would meet Irina first thing. And I hoped he would lead us to Semmler. What’s he doing with Tarses?”

  “Balant took a table near ’em. We met up in the alley outside the facilities and Balant told me that Tarses mumbles too quiet to hear, but he heard Brooks jawing up a storm.”

  “About Imperial?”

  “No. J. P. Morgan is fixing to start a moving picture factory, and he wants Tarses to run it for him. Brooks is troweling it on thick about how much they need Tarses. Tarses is watching him like a snake. So it don’t sound to me like Brooks came to Los Angeles to visit Imperial. He’s come out here to grubstake a new outfit.”

  “Maybe he’s meeting Irina tomorrow,” Bell said with little confidence.

  “Hell, Isaac, why don’t I just walk in and ask him straight off?”

  “I’ll do it. I know Brooks slightly, and I want to watch to see if he’s lying.”

  “You want me to back you up?”

  “I think between Balant and me,” Bell answered drily, “we can handle one back-East banker… Walt, would you do me a favor?”

  “Shore, Isaac. What do you need?”

  “Get an
auto and park outside the house we took up on Bunker Hill.”

  “Keep an eye on Marion?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You want me to go in the house?”

  “No, she’s up so early, she’s probably sleeping by now. Just watch from outside.”

  Bell hurried to Levy’s Café. Many of the tables were empty as the late second seating was finishing up. Boot heels clicking on the tile floor, he strode straight to the table where Tarses was listening to the Morgan banker with an expression of unconcealed suspicion. Bell pulled up a chair. Tarses looked up, remembering Bell but not quite sure why. Singleton Brooks, too, recognized Bell, and the banker turned out to have a very fine memory.

  “Detective Bell. What are you doing here?”

  “My question exactly,” said Isaac Bell. “Why are you dining with Mr. Tarses instead of Mademoiselle Irina Viorets?”

  Jay Tarses’s face darkened, as if his suspicions had all been confirmed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were talking to Imperial, too?”

  “I am not talking to Imperial. I told you, I came all the way out here specially to talk to you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why are you meeting Irina Viorets, who happens to run Imperial?”

  “I’m not,” Brooks protested. “I don’t know the woman.”

  “You know who she is.”

  “Of course I know who she is.”

  Tarses looked at Isaac Bell. “Mr. Bell, what is it about moving pictures that rewards the worst and punishes the best?”

  “What, sir, are you implying?” demanded Brooks.

  Isaac Bell said, “Hold on, gentlemen, I owe you an apology. Answer one more question, Mr. Brooks, and I will be able to assure Mr. Tarses that you are on the level. Do you represent the Artists Syndicate?”

  “I don’t even know what the Artists Syndicate is. And whatever it is I certainly don’t represent it.”

  “And you don’t know Mademoiselle Viorets?”

  “I know who she is. I do not recall ever meeting her.”