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.”