Clive Cussler - The Thief

“Here, Mike, use mine.” Bell lent him his pencil and gave him a sheet of paper from the desk he had commandeered.

Apprentice Adams wrote the message, read it back, and ran.

Isaac Bell turned to the window and stared down at busy First Street, barely seeing the parade of streetcars, autos, trucks, wagons, and a squad of helmeted police on bicycles.

Joe Van Dorn pushed into the office without knocking.

“I just heard. I’m sorry, Isaac. I know you liked him.”

Bell said, “The evidence of the Acrobat’s ruthlessness was right before my eyes. I saw him throw his own man into the sea to conceal his identity. What made me think he wouldn’t murder Art Curtis for the same reason?”

Joseph Van Dorn shook his head emphatically. “I saw Art once in a gunfight. Most men lose perspective when the lead starts flying. Not Art.”

“I appreciate the thought, Joe. I know Art could handle himself. Nonetheless, he was working for me.”

Van Dorn said, “You are, of course, authorized to pull out all stops until we get who did it.”

“Thank you.”

“Until Bronson learns otherwise in Berlin, we have to presume he was gunned down by Krieg.”

“Or the German Army.”

“Don’t you wonder what he learned that got him killed?” Bronson marveled.

“He learned a name,” said Bell.

“How do you know?”

“He cabled me the day before yesterday asking for more money. He said we’d have the money back — or a name — in two days.”

“What did you cable back?”

“‘Blank check.’”

“Well, if he got the name, he took it to his grave.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Bell.

“Now what?” asked Van Dorn.

“Short of a lucky break walking in that door,” said Isaac Bell, “I’m starting from scratch.”

There was a knock at the door. The front-desk man, wearing a scarlet vest and matching shoulder holster, called, “Mr. Bell — Oh, there you are, Mr. Van Dorn. Police chief’s phoning from Levy’s Cafe, wondering what happened to you?”

Van Dorn tugged out his watch. “Telephone the restaurant I’ll be there in ten minutes. Lunch with the chief,” he explained to Bell and rushed out, saying, “Then I’m on the Limited to Chicago. Keep me posted.”

“Mr. Bell, there’s a fellow to see you. Hebrew gent. Has one of those funny caps on his head.”

“It’s called a yarmulke. Send him in.”

Andrew Rubenoff marched in smiling, but when he saw Bell standing by the window, his smile faded. “You do not look well, Isaac.”

“Lost a friend,” Bell answered tersely. “What have you learned?”

The newly minted film-manufacturing banker went straight to the purpose of his visit.

“To my great relief,” he said, “the so-called Artists Syndicate does not exist.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that a syndicate that I knew nothing about, but thought I should, is a sham. It exists only on paper. Its supposed Wall Street investors are ghosts.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Then who paid for Imperial Film’s ten-story building?”

“I don’t know yet. But it was not the Artists Syndicate.”

“Someone funneled a lot of money into Imperial.”

“To be sure. But so far Wall Street has greeted my questions about who that someone might be with a wall of silence.”

“Are the Wall Streeters protecting Imperial?”

“No, no, no. Imperial’s money almost certainly comes from someplace other than Wall Street. Abroad, I suspect.”

“Germany?”

“Perhaps. But English bankers are our biggest source of foreign funds. They invest in American railroads and ranches and ore mines. Why not moving pictures?”

“And the Germans?”

“Obviously, your first interest in this is the Germans. We shall see. Not to worry, I’m just getting started.”

“I’ll have our Research people nose around that, too.”

Rubenoff smiled modestly. “I’m sure that the Van Dorn Research department will be… helpful.”

“How did you find out so quickly that there’s no Wall Street interests in the Artists Syndicate?”

“Isaac! You are talking to Andrew Rubenoff. When the Messiah comes, he’ll ask me to recommend a stockbroker.” He sobered quickly. “I don’t mean to offer false hope. Wall Street was easy. Abroad is much more complicated. I’ve already started, but I can’t deliver such fast results.”

Bell heard the clatter of a troop of horsemen in the street, not a usual sound in downtown Los Angeles. He looked down from the window again. Twenty actors dressed as cowboys in white hats and bare-chested, war-painted Indians were trotting by, bound, it appeared, for picture taking in nearby Elysian Park. He watched them pass, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he picked up the Kellogg intercommunicating telephone.

“Send an apprentice.”

One came instantly. It was the kid wearing the lavender bow tie. “Mike, transmit a wire on the private line to Texas Walt Hatfield. The Houston office will know where to find him.”

The kid whipped out pad and pencil. “Yes, sir, Mr. Bell. What’s the message?”

COME LA.

SEEK EMPLOYMENT WITH IMPERIAL FILM AS COWBOY PLAYER.

“Go on, Mike. That’s all.”

“Should I sign it ‘BELL’?”

“Sign it ‘ISAAC.’”

Mike Adams ran out.

Andrew Rubenoff raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Bell said, “Walt Hatfield rode with the Texas Rangers before he joined Van Dorn. He’ll make a believable cowboy looking for work as an extra in Wild West dramas. Heck, they might make him a Western star. He looks like he was carved from cactus.”

“I presume that Texas Walt is an old friend?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Sometimes we need an old friend on the premises.”

“Maybe so. But what I need most is a crackerjack detective inside Imperial Film.”

“What can one detective do? Imperial is an enormous company with four hundred hands.”

“He won’t be the only one.”

Bell wired Grady Forrer on the Van Dorn private telegraph, inquiring what progress he had made with Imperial’s bankers.

The redoubtable head of the Research department wired back:

MY BOYS ARE DIGGING DEEP.

REMEMBER BANKS LIKE SECRETS.

HOPEFUL MORE SOON.

SORRY ABOUT ART. GOOD MAN.

Isaac Bell replied:

CONCENTRATE GERMAN OVERSEAS

MERCHANT BANKS WITH ARMY TIES.

LOOK FOR KRIEG-IMPERIAL

CONNECTION.

Pauline Grandzau woke up in a haystack with four tines of a pitchfork inches from her face. The steel was shiny from use and recently sharpened. Three of the tines tapered to a needle point. The fourth was bent as if the farmer had accidently hit a rock shortly before finding her in his hay.

She asked herself, What is the best thing possible at this moment?

The best thing was that her disguise worked. She didn’t look like a girl. She looked like a boy, a tough Berlin factory boy in a cloth cap and a rough woolen jacket and trousers. She had traded her dress, her coat, and her beautiful hat last night with her friend Hilda for Hilda’s brother’s things. Five groschen from the marks Detective Curtis gave her had bought the brother’s rucksack. It held dry socks, a wool jumper, an apple and biscuits (which she had already eaten), a Strand magazine, a map of France and Baedeker’s Paris and Its Environs purchased in a railroad station, and Detective Curtis’s gun.

Best of all, her disguise worked so well that the farmer was frightened. The haystack was behind his barn. There was a dense wood across the field, and beyond the wood were the railroad tracks, which brought tramps and gypsies and troublemakers from Berlin.