The Thief (39 page)

The telephone was one that Christian Semmler had had connected via the vice-consul’s private line to a microphone he had stolen from Clyde Lynds and had paid an electrician to hide in the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Like an innkeeper tapping a keg of lager, Semmler had laughed as he explained the eavesdropping system to the disbelieving Hermann Wagner.

It seemed like a miracle. More than a miracle, it seemed impossible. But Wagner could actually hear Isaac Bell speaking to his private investigators even though a full two miles separated the Van Dorn Detective Agency from the German consulate.

“You hear?”

“A little. Not very well.”

“I know that!” snapped Semmler. “Lynds’s microphone is not thoroughly perfected yet. But he’s on the right track, and if you listen closely, you can hear the confidence in Bell’s voice. Why shouldn’t he sound assured? He’s learned so much these past several days.”

“Yes, he has,” Wagner agreed nervously.

“Events do not always unfold as we plan them,” said Semmler. “It is the nature of plans, and events.” He looked up and his green eyes sparkled with amusement. “I recall one night on the high veldt, when three British Tommies cornered me, my escape went according to plan. But no sooner had I killed them than I was seized by my arm and dragged to the ground. I could hardly believe it. I was attacked out of nowhere by a lion! A lion! The beast was attracted by the scent of the Tommies’ blood.”

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.”

“M
R.
B
ELL, COULD
I
SEE 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.”

“I
SAAC
B
ELL 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.

T
HE NAME
S
INGLETON
B
ROOKS
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.”

T
HE BOOKCASE IN
I
RINA
V
IORET’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 to 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.”