Clive Cussler - The Thief

“Watched?” asked Hatfield.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“Shore did feel watched, now that you mention it. Didn’t pay it much mind at the moment, what with fellows cranking cameras.”

Bell’s eyes were suddenly burning.

“You, too, Isaac?”

“I had a feeling.”

“Where?”

“The recording room on the fourth floor.”

“How about in Clyde’s laboratory?”

“Possibly there, but not as strong a sensation.”

“Reckon someone’s peeping through a judas hole in the room next door?”

“One way to find out.”

Bell stepped across the hall to see Larry Saunders, the recently promoted head of the Los Angeles office. Saunders, a trim, stylish man, wore a white linen suit like Bell’s, for the warm city. But unlike Bell’s, which was artfully tailored to conceal a good-sized automatic and a spare magazine, with room for a sleeve gun and pocket pistols when the occasion called for it, Saunders’s suit was cut so tightly that the Los Angeles detective would be hard-pressed to hide a weapon larger than a stiletto. Saunders’s hat rack held a white derby and several silk scarves. The derby, Bell hoped, had room for a derringer. Saunders’s patent leather pumps certainly did not.

“Larry, who would you recommend I send over to City Hall to inspect the architect’s plans for the Imperial Building?”

“Holian.”

“I think I’ve met him. Big-in-the-belly fellow who looks like a saloonkeeper?”

“He’s the one, though I’ve seen Tim do a credible job of imitating a brothel bouncer, too.”

“I don’t want this getting back to the owner of the building.”

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Bell. Holian’s got the city clerks eating out of his hand. There isn’t a body buried in Los Angeles he couldn’t jab with a spade. They’ll do as he asks and do it with a smile.” Saunders rubbed his mustache, a pencil-thin affair that Texas Walt had likened, privately, to a “dance hall gal’s eyebrow,” and said, “It wouldn’t hurt if Holian could share a little wealth while he’s poking around.”

“Charge as much as he needs against the Talking Pictures account. Tell him I want layouts of the fourth floor, eighth floor, and penthouse — every room and every closet.”

Isaac Bell received a long, speculative report from Grady Forrer by telegraph, which was a hundred times faster than mail but lacked the subtlety and precision of a letter and offered little opportunity for the give-and-take of a conversation by telephone. Clyde Lynds had claimed that his electrical microphone would one day spawn devices for amplifying feeble electrical currents for long-distance telephones to span the continent. That day could not come soon enough for Isaac Bell.

Back and forth he and Grady Forrer transmitted on the Van Dorn private wire. The upshot was that Grady had turned up the name of a private German merchant bank— Hamburg Bankhaus —which the Research department suspected of funneling money to Imperial Film.

POSITIVE?

REASONABLY.

KRIEG-IMPERIAL CONNECTIONS?

NOT YET.

KRIEG-HAMBURG BANKHAUS CONNECTIONS?

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.”