The Thief - Страница 2

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Bell’s target moved with superhuman speed. He slipped the punch so it missed his head and smashed his shoulder. It still connected with sufficient power to drive the man to the deck. But he was carrying a heavy rope looped over his shoulder, and the springy Manila coils absorbed the shock.

A counterpunch exploded from the dark with the concentrated violence of a pile driver. Isaac Bell rolled with it, sloughing off some of the impact, but the momentum pinwheeled him into the railing and so far over it that he found himself gazing down at the motorboat pressed against the hull directly under him. The man who had unleashed the blow that sent Isaac Bell flying dragged his two victims to the rail. At a grunted command, his accomplice jumped over the body of their fallen comrade and charged Bell to finish him off.

Bell saw a knife flash in the light from the library.

He twisted off the rail, regained his feet, and tried to sidestep a vicious thrust. The blade passed an inch from his face. Bell kicked hard. His boot landed solidly. The man hit the railing and tumbled over it. A shriek of pain and fear ended abruptly with the sickening thud of his body smashing on the motor-boat sixty feet below.

The boat sped away with a roar of throttles opened wide.

Isaac Bell whipped a Browning automatic from his coat.

“Elevate!” he commanded the astonishingly quick and powerful man with the rope, whom he could see only as a shadow. “Hands in the air.”

But again the leader of the attack moved like lightning. He threw the coiled rope. Loops of it entangled Bell’s gun hand. In the instant it took to untangle himself, Bell was astonished to see the attacker scoop his unconscious accomplice off the deck and throw him over the railing into the sea. Then he ran.

Bell threw off the rope and leveled his pistol: “Halt!”

The attacker kept running.

Isaac Bell waited coolly for him to reach the light spill from the library in order to get a clear shot to shoot the man’s legs out from under him. His highly accurate Browning No. 2 semi-automatic firing.380 caliber cartridges could not miss. Just before reaching the lights, the running man clapped both hands on the rail, flipped high in the air like a circus acrobat, and tumbled into the dark.

Bell ran to the spot the man had jumped from and looked over the side of the ship.

The water was black, bearded white where the Mauretania’s hull raced through. Bell could not see whether the man was swimming or had sunk beneath the waves. In either event, unless the motorboat returned and its crew was extraordinarily lucky in their search, it was highly unlikely they would pull him out before the bitter-cold Irish Sea sucked the life from his body.

Bell holstered his pistol and buttoned his coat over it. What he had just seen was singular in his experience. What would possess the man to throw his unconscious accomplice overboard to certain death, then hurl himself to the same fate?

“Thank you, sir, thank you so very much,” spoke a voice in the accent and baroque cadence of a cultured Viennese. “Surely we owe our lives to your swift and courageous action.”

Bell peered down at a compact shadow. Another voice, a voice that sounded American, groaned, “Wish you’d saved us before he socked me in the breadbasket. Feels like I got run over by a streetcar.”

“Are you all right, Clyde?” asked the Viennese.

“Nothing a month of nursing by a qualified blonde won’t cure.” Clyde climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Thanks, mister. You saved our bacon.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Were they trying to kill you or kidnap you?”

“Kidnap.”

“Why?”

“That’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night,” said Isaac Bell in a tone that demanded answers. “Did you know those men?”

“By their actions and their reputation,” said the Viennese. “But thanks to you, sir, we were never formally introduced.”

Gripping each man firmly by the arm, Bell walked them inside the ship and back to the smoking room, sat them in adjoining armchairs, and took a good look at their faces. The American was young, a tousle-headed, mustachioed dandy in his early twenties who was going to wake up with a black eye as well as a sore belly.

The Viennese was middle-aged, a kindly-looking, dignified gentleman with pink-tinted pince-nez eyeglasses that had stayed miraculously clipped to his nose, a high forehead and intelligent eyes. His suit of clothes was of good quality. He wore a dark necktie and a round-collar shirt. In contrast to his sober outfit, he had an elaborate mustache that curled up at the tips. Bell pegged him for an academic, which proved to be not far off. He, too, was going to have a shiner. And blood was oozing from a split lip.

“We should not be here,” the Viennese said, gazing in wonder at the richly carved wood paneling and elaborate plaster ceiling of the enormous lounge, which was decorated in the manner of the Italian Renaissance. “This is the First Class smoking room. We voyage in Second Class.”

“You’re my guests,” Bell said tersely. “What was all that about?”

The smoking room steward appeared, cast a chilly eye on the Second Class passengers, and told Bell as solicitously as such an announcement could be uttered that the bar was closed.

“I want towels and ice for these gentlemen’s bruises,” Isaac Bell said, “an immediate visit from the ship’s surgeon, and stiff scotch whiskeys all around. We’ll start with the whiskeys, please. Bring the bottle.”

“No need, no need.”

The American concurred hastily. “We’re fine, mister. You’ve gone to plenty trouble already. We oughta just go to bed.”

“My name is Bell. Isaac Bell. What are yours?”

“Forgive my ill manners,” said the Viennese, bowing and pawing at his vest with shaking fingers, muttering distractedly, “I appear to have lost my cards in the struggle.” He stopped searching and said, “I am Beiderbecke, Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke.”

Beiderbecke offered his hand, and Bell took it.

“May I present my young associate, Clyde Lynds?”

Clyde Lynds threw Bell a mock salute. Bell reached for his hand and looked him in the face, gauging his worth. Lynds stopped clowning and met his gaze, and Bell saw a steadiness not immediately apparent.

“Why did they try to kidnap you?”

The two exchanged wary looks. Beiderbecke spoke first. “We can only presume they were agents of a munitions trust.”

“What munitions trust?”

“A German outfit,” said Lynds. “Krieg Rüstungswerk GmbH.”

Bell took note of Lynds’s fluent pronunciation. “Where did you learn to speak German, Mr. Lynds?”

“My mother was German, but she married a lot. I spent some of my childhood on my Swedish-immigrant father’s North Dakota wheat farm, some in Chicago, and a bunch of time backstage in New York City theaters. ‘Mutter’ finally hooked a Viennese, which she wanted all along only didn’t know it, and I landed in Vienna, where the good Professor here took me in.”

“Fortunate Professor, is the truth of the matter, Mr. Bell. Clyde is a brilliant scientist. My colleagues are still gnashing their teeth that he chose to work in my laboratory.”

“That’s because I came cheap,” Clyde Lynds grinned.

Bell asked, “Why would agents of a munitions company kidnap you?”

“To steal our invention,” said Beiderbecke.

“What sort of invention?” asked Bell.

“Our secret invention,” Lynds answered before the Professor could speak. He turned to the older man and said, “Sir, we did agree that secrecy was all.”

“Yes, of course, of course, but Mr. Bell has so kindly treated us. He saved our lives, at no small risk to his own.”

“Mr. Bell is a handy fellow with his fists. What else do we know about him? I recommend we stick to our deal to keep quiet about it, like we agreed.”

“Of course, of course. You’re right, of course.” Professor Beiderbecke turned embarrassedly to Bell. “Forgive me, sir. Despite my age, I am not a man of the world. My brilliant young protégé has persuaded me that I am too trusting. Obviously, you’re a gentleman. Obviously, you sprang to our defense while never pausing to consider your own safety. On the other hand, it behooves me to remember that we have been sorely used by others who appeared to be gentlemen.”

“And who tried to yank the fillings from our teeth,” grinned Lynds. “Sorry, Mr. Bell. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Not that we’re not grateful for you charging to the rescue.”

Isaac Bell returned what could be judged a friendly smile.

“Your gratitude does not have to take the form of giving away an important secret.” His mild answer disguised curiosity that would be best satisfied by biding his time. As Archie had noted, for the next four and half days on the high seas no one was going anywhere. “But I am concerned for your safety,” he added. “These munitions people mounted an audacious campaign with military precision to kidnap you from a British liner putting to sea. What makes you think they won’t try again?”

“Not on a British liner,” Lynds fired back. “On a German ship we’d worry about the crew. That’s why we took a British ship.”

“You mean they tried before?”

“In Bremen.”

“How did you happen to give them the slip?”

“Got lucky,” said Lynds. “We saw them coming, so we made a big show of booking passage on the Prinz Wilhelm. Then we ran like heck the other way, to Rotterdam, and caught a steamer to Hull. By the time they figured out we hadn’t sailed on the Wilhelm, we were on the train to London.”