The Thief (7 page)

“I think of Prussians as pathologically insular.”

“You have invented something that those Prussians regard as unique. What sort of a weapon is it?”

“Weapon?
Sprechendlichtspieltheater
is not a weapon.”

“
Sprechend
-what?”

Beiderbecke put his glass down and repeated staunchly, “It is not a weapon. And I will say no more of it. I gave Clyde my word.”

“If it’s not a weapon why does a munitions trust want it?”

“I do not know. It is not for war. It is for education. It is for science. For communication. Industrial improvement. Even public amusement. It is—”

Clyde Lynds was approaching, trailed closely by Archie, who gave Bell a look that said he had diverted him as long as he could. Beiderbecke appeared deeply relieved by the interruption. “Ah, Clyde. I was just giving Mr. Bell an older man’s advice on how to survive marriage.”

“Wha’d he tell you, Mr. Bell?”

Bell said, “Say it again, Professor. I could never put it so eloquently.”

“I shall attempt to repeat it,” said Beiderbecke, shooting Bell a grateful look for going along with his dodge. “Since men and women are such different types of creatures, their only hope of getting along with each other is to love each other.”

“In other words,” said Isaac Bell, “The love they have in common is all they need in common.”

Archie Abbott opened his watch. “Assuming Miss Marion Morgan has not jumped ship, it’s time to test that theory.”

“S
HIPMATES!” ROARED
C
APTAIN
W
ILLIAM
Turner, a short, square-jawed, squint-eyed man in his fifties with a great ship’s prow of a nose and enormous ears. His hearty seaman’s voice carried to every corner of the
Mauretania
’s Saloon Lounge, where hundreds of First Class passengers had come dressed in their best to celebrate the novelty of a wedding at sea.

None were disappointed.

The bride was bewitchingly beautiful in a daring, close-fitting cream-colored dress with a high waistline that suited her erect carriage and a sash of diaphanous silk that promised, discreetly, an enchanting décolletage. Her blond hair was swept up high on her head, circled by an abbreviated veil that graced her high brow, and capped with a tiara made of rosebuds instead of diamonds. Diamonds, all agreed, would have paled beside her dazzling eyes.

Her golden-haired groom stood proudly at her side in a tailcoat. He was tall and straight-backed as a cavalry officer. Beneath his gold mustache, his lips parted in a smile that twitched repeatedly into a broad grin.

The beautiful matron of honor and handsome best man wore expressions of sheer delight for their friends. The
Mauretania
’s famously standoffish captain was a vision of cordiality, aglitter in the dress uniform of the Royal Naval Reserve, with buttons, belt, braid, and epaulets of gold, a sword at his side, and a hat cocked fore and aft on his head.

“We are gathered together in the sight of God and in the face of
Mauretania
’s passengers and ship’s company to join this man and this woman in matrimony, which is an honorable estate…”

W
ITH THE ATTENTION OF THE ENTIRE
ship riveted by the wedding, Professor Beiderbecke calculated it would be safe to visit the baggage hold, deep below and far to the back, to check on the well-being of his machines and instruments. He retreated before the ceremony began, pleading that his seasickness was worse, even though the sea had calmed and most passengers were moving about with color restored to their faces.

Clyde had barely noticed. The young man was in a high state of excitement, put there initially by gaining entrance to the sumptuous First Class lounge, then by being seated next to an exotic Russian woman of Marion’s acquaintance. Dark-eyed Mademoiselle Viorets was no exception to Beiderbecke’s experience that Russian women were intoxicating. Poor Clyde was panting like a Austrian Brandlbracke puppy.

Fearing that the way into the bowels of the gigantic ship would be a confusing labyrinth of stairs and passageways, the Professor had studied builders’ drawings in the library and committed them to memory just as he would schematics for arcane electrical circuits or the latest triode vacuum tubes.

Rich carpets and runners in the corridors of passenger quarters gave way to plebeian rubber tiling. Wide staircases narrowed into steel-shrouded companionways. He dodged crew when he saw them in time, and directed at those he could not avoid a haughty stare: Make way for Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke in his old-fashioned frock coat and silver-headed walking stick.

Suddenly he had a strange feeling that someone was watching him. His first terrible thought was that the
Akrobat—
as he had dubbed the long-armed, agile thief who had tried twice to steal his
Sprechendlichtspieltheater
machine—was stalking him again.

Impossible. Beiderbecke had seen with his own eyes the mysterious
Akrobat
jump off the
Mauretania
into the sea. Nonetheless, he stopped in his tracks and cast a fearful glance up the stairs. No one. He craned his neck to peer down another flight. No one. He poked his head into a corridor, saw no one, and continued down into a crew section, past rudimentary sleeping quarters and lavatories, storage rooms, and pantries. The air grew oppressive.

The engines made their presence felt, resonating in the steel around him, ever more strongly the deeper he descended, a muted roar that grew louder and louder. Beiderbecke stopped again and looked back, cocking his ears for footfalls. Silliness! What could he hear over the thunder of the furnaces and the whine of the turbines? Besides, despite Isaac Bell’s efforts to frighten him into revealing his secret, the
Akrobat
no longer existed.

Real as it was, the sense of being watched was an irrational feeling, he told himself. A shadow flew near. Beiderbecke shrank into a shallow alcove formed by massive steel ribs. He pressed against the steel, which vibrated and felt hot, as if the fires that powered the behemoth ship were burning right behind him. The shadow, cast by electric bulbs caged in the low ceiling, crept along the corridor toward where he cowered. A crewman hurried by, cap and face and clothing black with coal dust.

Beiderbecke waited until he had gone, then darted along the corridor and down a flight of steps to the orlop deck, where he found himself yards from the stern of the ship in an area shared with sleeping barracks for three dozen cooks and stewards. The noise was deafening. Picturing the builders’ drawings, he realized that he was standing below the waterline. Just outside the hull’s shell plating, the propellers pounded a relentless din as they churned the sea at one hundred and eighty revolutions per minute.

He saw another shadow coming toward him and ducked through a door and down a companionway. At last he reached a door that should open—if he had not blundered himself utterly lost—into the corridor to the baggage room where the wooden crate that held his machine was concealed in a shipment of a dozen similar crates. All were addressed to a warehouse on New York City’s 14th Street—a short walk, Clyde had assured him, from the Cunard Line pier where the
Mauretania
would land.

He opened the door and bumped into a broad-shouldered seaman who was just leaving the baggage room. “Begging your pardon, sir?”

Beiderbecke said, “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for my shipment of crates.”

“Crates, sir?”

“Wooden crates. There is something I must get from one.”

“There’s no crates in here, sir. Just luggage.”

“No crates?” he echoed, aghast. Had Krieg Rüstungswerk stolen them? “But they were loaded down here.”

“No, no, no, bless you, sir. In the
forward
baggage room is where you’ll find crates. That’s where they stow crates, whip them down the cargo hatch into the forward baggage room, they do. In the bows, sir. The front.”

“On which deck will I find this room?”

“Lower deck, sir. Directly under the main deck.”

“This plethora of decks—upper, lower, orlop, shelter—appear designed to breed confusion,” said Beiderbecke, taking out his wallet. “Could I possibly prevail upon you to show me the way?”

“Bless you, sir, I wish I could. But passengers really oughtn’t to be down here.”

“I’m afraid I’m lost,” Beiderbecke said, extracting a pound note.

The seaman stared at the money, wet his lips, then sadly shook his head. “I’m afraid that the best I can do for you, sir, is lead you up to the shelter deck. There I’ll point you forward on the Third Class promenade. When you have walked all the way to the bow, go down three decks to the lower deck and perhaps someone can show you the baggage room.”

Franz Bismark Beiderbecke trudged up narrow stairs after the seaman. Then he walked forward over six hundred feet along the Third Class promenade, which was crowded with immigrants—Croats, Bohemians, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, and Czechs, as if half the Austro-Hungary Empire had decided to regroup in America. The promenade ended at the Third Class smoking room near the front of the ship. He found the way down blocked by a scissors gate and climbed upstairs to go around. His pound sterling note persuaded a rough-looking steward to let him around a barrier.

Beyond that barrier, he looked out a porthole down onto the open foredeck and saw, between the mast and an enormous anchor, a cargo hatch. There! That must cover the hole through which the cranes had lowered his crates. He headed downstairs for several decks. Racking his memory of the builders’ plans, he finally opened a door on what could be, hopefully, the forward baggage room.

His heart froze.

The
Akrobat
, whom Beiderbecke had seen leap into the sea, was loping sure-footedly along the passageway, peering into every nook and cranny. Slung over his back was an enormous silver-colored steamer trunk. Judging by how effortlessly the
Akrobat
carried it, the trunk was empty.

I
SAAC
B
ELL PROMISED
M
ARION “… TO HAVE
and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

When Marion promised to love and cherish him, she added in a strong voice, “with all my heart, forever and ever and ever,” and Bell’s blue-violet eyes swam with emotion as he placed beside their lucky emerald a plain gold wedding ring he had purchased long ago in San Francisco. Then Captain Turner repeated their vows in seamen’s terms, commanding them to “sail in company, in fair winds or foul, on calm seas or rough, in vessels great and small,” and concluded in a mighty voice, “By the powers I hold as master of
Mauretania
I pronounce you man and wife.”

Hastily, he added, “You may kiss the bride.”

Isaac Bell was already doing that.