The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

“He looks like Isaac Bell.”

34

“How can you tell under those goggles?”

“The way he straddles the machine.”

“But Isaac Bell is a Connecticut insurance executive. It can’t be Bell.”

“Of course not,” Semmler mused. “I can’t imagine an insurance man pursuing such a dangerous line of work.”

The picture ended happily with the eloping couple married in a Lutheran church and boarding a Hamburg-America ocean liner for a honeymoon in Germany.

“Irina, I want you to engage Marion Bell.”

“Bell’s wife?”

“How soon can you get her here?”

“Tomorrow, if she’s willing. She’s visiting her father in San Francisco.”

“She should make our history of the western railroads.”

“Why her?”

“I’m betting she’s ready to make something big.”

Irina Viorets looked at Semmler sitting in the shadows. The German general was a strange one up to stranger things, but he often had good ideas. He knew what he was up to in the moving picture business. The Iron Horse, Imperial’s history of the western railroads, would be an ambitious two- or three-reeler. Marion Morgan would bring a topical filmmaker’s sensibility to the story and all the skills necessary to take pictures of real events out-of-doors.

“I’ll telephone her long-distance. I just hope she hasn’t engaged with Preston Whiteway already.”

“Tell her if she’ll leave Whiteway she can have a fleet of locomotives at her disposal. Promise her you’ll put Theda Bara, King Baggot, and Florence Lawrence under contract.”

“She’s not the type to walk out on her contract.”

“Tell her she can tie Billy Bitzer and his camera to the front of a locomotive if that will make her happy. Just get her here! Immediately.”

“I’ll telephone San Francisco.”

“And then you get busy writing a scenario that features handsome German-Americans working on the railroad.”

“That much,” said Viorets, “I had already figured out.”

Semmler barred the door when she left.

For a man who was supposed to be a wealthy insurance executive, Isaac Bell had, too many times, appeared at exactly the wrong moment with a gun in his hand. Now he was pretending to be a movie extra — in an Imperial film, no less.

Semmler had already wondered about Bell. Transmitting on the Los Angeles German vice-consul’s private wire, he had ordered the New York consul general to investigate Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock. The Hartford insurance company was genuine, the consul general had reported back, and Isaac Bell was listed as a partner.

Semmler was not convinced. The Leipzig Organ & Piano Company appeared genuine, too. And who was more “one of the boys” than Leipzig’s well-liked American sales representative, Fritz Wunderlich?

Isaac Bell had stopped him from kidnapping Lynds and Professor Beiderbecke from the Mauretania. Isaac Bell had stopped him from taking Lynds off the Golden State Limited. And now a man who looked very much like Isaac Bell was pretending to be a moving picture stunt performer. He would find out whether it was Bell.

But until he knew for sure, General Major Christian Semmler wanted Isaac Bell’s wife in easy reach.

* * *

At the sound of the Brakemen unlocking their caboose door, Pauline snatched a blanket and scrambled up the ladder, out the hatch, and onto the roof just as they burst in complaining about the cold. The wind of the speeding train’s passage hit her like a fist. It smelled of coal smoke and rain. Across the forests and farmland, black clouds blacker than the locomotive’s smoke filled the sky. She crouched behind the cupola, seeking shelter.