The Thief - Страница 3

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Bell had many more questions, but they were forestalled by the arrival of the ship’s doctor. When the chief officer bustled in right behind the doctor, Bell emptied his whiskey glass into a spittoon before the officer could see and conspicuously poured another from the bottle.

The chief officer listened with an increasingly skeptical expression as the Professor and Lynds described an attack by three men who subsequently fell overboard. Then, while the doctor examined Beiderbecke’s cut lip and Lynds’s swelling eye, the officer said quietly to Bell, with a significant glance at the whiskey in his hand, “One cannot help but wonder whether those two gentlemen had a falling out and covered it up with a tall tale of, shall we say, ‘piracy in Liverpool Bay’?”

Isaac Bell sipped his whiskey. He intended to get to the bottom of the bizarre attack, as well as the nature of Beiderbecke and Lynds’s self-described secret invention, which had provoked it. But the kidnappers had drowned in the night, miles behind the ship. The Austrian and the American-raised German-Swede were the only sources of information available. And the Mauretania’s officers were even less qualified than a small town police force to investigate the motive for the attack. They would only get in his way.

“I say…” the chief officer went on. He had begun politely, almost diffidently, the model of the smooth company man unfazed by the peccadillos of wealthy passengers. Now he fixed Bell with a flinty eye practiced at terrorizing junior officers: “As no one jumped, fell, or was thrown overboard, I am curious how they induced you, Mr. Bell, to embroider their story.”

“Sympathy,” Isaac Bell smiled. He touched the whiskey to his lips. “Poor chaps were so embarrassed by their behavior… and I had had a drink or two.” He peered into his glass. “Seemed like a good idea at the time…” He looked the officer full in the face and grinned sheepishly. “It felt jolly good to be a hero, even for a moment…”

“I appreciate your candor, Mr. Bell. I am sure that you will agree that as soon as the surgeon has done his work it will be best if we all turn in for the night and let sleeping dogs lie.”

* * *

“Krieg Rüstungswerk GMBH?” echoed Archie Abbott, who had traveled regularly back and forth to Europe his whole life. Most recently, in the course of an extended honeymoon, he had laid the groundwork for overseas Van Dorn field offices. “They’re a private munitions outfit with strong Army connections. As you’d expect of a cannon manufacturer gearing up for a European war.”

Isaac Bell had joined him in the dining saloon moments after the breakfast bugle had blown. The Mauretania was steaming past Malin Head on the northern tip of Ireland, and as she left the Irish Sea in her wake, the liner had begun lifting her bow into unusually tall Atlantic swells, churning rumors in the elevators and vestibules of rough weather ahead.

“Why do you ask?”

“Do you recall the motorboat you could not hear last night?”

“If I couldn’t hear it, how could I recall it?”

Bell told him what had happened. Archie was crestfallen. “Of all the darned times to go to bed early. All three overboard?”

“The one who tried to stab me, the one who got tossed by his boss. And the boss under his own steam.”

“You have all the fun, Isaac.”

“What sort of lunatic drowns himself?”

Archie smiled. “Is it possible he was afraid of a fellow who had already floored two of his gang and was suddenly waving a gun?”

Bell shook his head. “A man afraid would not have taken the time to throw his accomplice overboard. No, he made sure there was no one left to confess. Not even himself. Lunacy.”

“Are you sure he didn’t jump into a lifeboat?”

“Positive. I went back and looked later. He was along that open stretch in the middle where there aren’t any boats. Ten yards at least from the nearest one.”

Archie forked down several bites of kippered herring. “I’d say less lunatic than fanatic. Krieg Rüstungswerk operates hand in glove with the Imperial German Army. So if Krieg Rüstungswerk wants the Professor’s ‘secret invention’ it must be some sort of war machine, right?”

“Undoubtedly a war machine.”

“Then Krieg might well recruit German Army officers to snatch it. They’re fanatical on the subject of ‘Der Tag’—‘the Day’—to kick off Kaiser Wilhelm’s ‘Will to deeds.’ And we all know what ‘Will to deeds’ means.”

“Shorthand for ‘Start a war,’” said Bell. “Though I keep hoping that the European war talk is just talk.”

“So do I,” said Archie. “But Great Britain is paranoid about German dreadnoughts, and Imperial Germany is ambitious. The kaiser loves his Army, and the Army rules society — just like in old Prussia. Everyone’s drafted for three years, and the bourgeoisie are so nuts for uniforms they take reserve commissions just so they can dress up like soldiers.”

“Soldiers didn’t build German industry. Civilians did.”

“No doubt millions of hardworking Germans would rather get rich and send their kids to school than fight a war. The question is, can the kaiser stampede them into battle— But enough small talk about war and secret weapons! Dare I ask — has Marion said yes again?”

“Haven’t braced her yet.”

“Too busy tossing miscreants overboard? Hey, where are you going? You haven’t finished your breakfast.”

“I am marconigraphing the Berlin office before we steam out of range. Get Art Curtis cracking on Lynds, Beiderbecke, and Krieg Rüstungswerk.”

“Good luck. Art’s only a one-man office, and he just got there.”

“Art Curtis is quicker than a mongoose and smart as a whip — plus he speaks fluent German. Why do you think Mr. Van Dorn gave him Berlin?”

“I’ll meet you in the smoking room. We have to talk about you taking your beautiful bull by her horns— Say, Isaac? What happened to the rope he threw at you?”

“The rope was gone when I went back to look.”

“A crewman must have scooped it up.”

“Or an accomplice.”

* * *

Bell picked up a blank from the purser’s desk and filled out his message. Rather than pass it before inquiring eyes, he carried the form directly to the Marconi house on the top deck of the ship between Funnels 2 and 3.

A window curtain, gray with coal smoke, flapped in the wind as Bell walked into the radio room extending a British pound sterling note — five dollars, two days’ pay — to derail ahead of time any suggestion that he send his message through the purser. Nor did the operator, who was not a member of the Mauretania’s crew but employed by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, remark that Bell’s message looked like gibberish, as it was written out in cipher.

Bell stood by as the operator dispatched his message by Morse code to a shore station at Malin Head. From there it would be relayed overland by telegraph and under the Irish Sea and English Channel by cable and back onto telegraph wires across the continent to the Van Dorn field office in Berlin. Depending how far at sea the Mauretania had preceded, Arthur Curtis’s reply would be transmitted from Ireland or relayed by other ships.

* * *

“Just in time for the bloviating,” Archie greeted Isaac Bell when the tall detective joined him in the smoking saloon. Midmorning, the male haven was crowded with gents smoking cigars, pipes, and cigarettes, playing chess and solitaire, and reading the ship’s newspaper. Thin northern daylight, filtered through stained glass and tobacco smoke, shone upon settees, tables, and armchairs grouped on a pale green carpet. Two ruddy-faced middle-aged men were arguing in raised voices. Bell cocked an ear. In smokers and club cars, even the judicious sank to braggadocio, spilling priceless information by the boatload.

“Who’s the large gent in tents of tweed?” he asked Archie.

“Earl of Strone, retired British Army.”

“Who’s that Strone’s squaring off against?”

“Karl Schultz, a Pan-Germanist coal-mining magnate known not so affectionately by the Ruhr Valley laboring classes as the ‘Chimney Baron.’ Before they get any louder, let me imbue you with courage. I implore you, my friend, moor the fair Marion before she drifts off.”

“Midnight tonight,” said Isaac Bell. “Every detail lined up. Champagne and music for the kickoff.”

“You can’t go wrong with champagne. But where will you get an orchestra at midnight? Even the steward who bugles goes to bed after he blows ‘Sunset.’”

“I’m going to surprise her with a gramophone.”

“Won’t a gramophone horn flaring from your dinner jacket spoil the surprise?”

“The horn is made of cardboard. The whole thing folds flat in a little box no bigger than a camera case.”

Archie looked at him with genuine admiration. “You are relentlessly strategic, Isaac.”

“Lillian’s pacing outside the door. You can give her the thumbs-up. It’s in the bag.”

“Is it too early in the morning to drink to your success?”

Bell had already caught the steward’s eye. “Two McEwan’s Exports, please.”

“I’ll be darned,” said Archie, rising to his feet and waving. “That’s Hermann Wagner, the banker. He hosted a dinner for us on our honeymoon in Berlin. Herr Wagner!”

Wagner came over, smiling. Bell noticed the air of the sophisticated Berliner about him, the elegant inverse of his coarse-grained countryman Chimney Baron Karl Schultz. While exchanging passenger chitchat about the rumored rough weather and agreeing that the Mauretania was already pitching heavily for such a long vessel, they were suddenly interrupted by the Earl of Strone heard across the saloon.