The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

Isaac Bell was sure that the intention of the attack was to kidnap Clyde Lynds, not injure him. But it had come close to succeeding, and Clyde was terrified. The bravado and smart-aleck talk had been frightened out of him. His eyes were darting everywhere, seeking solace, finding fear.

Bell had no intention of walking away from the Kri

eg investigation. But the detective felt honor bound to ask the young scientist whether he would rather take the safe course and sell his machine to Thomas Edison so the Germans would stop plaguing him. “You’d be free of this mess in a flash.”

Clyde asked if Bell was abandoning him.

“Absolutely not. But I am saying that the attack came close, and the next might succeed, even though the Van Dorn Agency — and I in particular — will lay our lives on the line to protect you.”

“Why? What do you care? It could be years before Van Dorn sees any money out of Talking Pictures.”

To Isaac Bell, the innocent were sacred and must always be protected. But to answer Clyde, he only laughed. “I already told you. Marion hopes that your invention will help her make ever-better moving pictures. That’s good enough for me.”

“If you say so,” Clyde said, his eyes still darting, “I guess it’s good enough for me, too.”

“Are you sure, Clyde? I can’t guarantee your safety. I can only guarantee that I will do whatever is required to keep you alive, but I can’t guarantee we will succeed. The Acrobat is no slouch.”

Clyde conjured a brave smile. “What about Van Dorn’s motto, ‘We never give up. Never!’”

“Oh, we’ll get him in the end,” Bell smiled back.

“Lot of good that will do me if he gets me first.”

“That’s why I’m asking if you’re sure.”

Clyde took a deep breath. “I’m sure.”

“Good man.”

* * *

In Berlin, Arthur Curtis wandered in and out of the Tiergarten, passing through the park’s huge Egyptian gates twice in twenty minutes. The skittish Hans Reuter had failed to show up for a meeting. Curtis had hoped that his greed, if not his hatred of his employer, had made him brave again. The nattily dressed, potbellied Van Dorn started to enter the park a third time, but gave it up when he noticed a plainclothes policeman noticing him.

Seeing his jaunty stride, no one would guess that Arthur Curtis had shifted into a state of high alert and was employing every trick he knew to determine, before he returned to his office, whether he was being followed. The contact could have turned on him. It was a remote possibility, but not impossible, that he had confessed to his employer that he was selling Krieg company secrets. He might even have gone to the police; guilty men were prone to panic, and panic made fools.

Curtis worked his way cautiously through the diplomatic quarter adjoining the park, taking his time on the handsome streets that served the mansions of the ambassadors. There were Army officers aplenty in the neighborhood. It seemed every second German was wearing a uniform. By sheer coincidence, he bumped into an acquaintance, a minor British embassy official with a taste for French brandy, who said, “You’re looking all spiffed today, Arthur, what? Did you win the lottery?”

Curtis winked, “I was just visiting a friend,” which drew a lewd grin and the expected, “Might she have a sister?”

“I’ll inquire next time,” said Curtis, and they parted on a laugh.

When he reached a commercial district, he watched for reflections in the shop windows. All seemed well until a fellow in a fine gabardine coat appeared on the sidewalk ahead, twenty minutes after Curtis had first noticed him.

The man was richly dressed for a detective or a secret policeman. But Krieg and the German Army could afford the best, couldn’t they? When he noticed a uniformed mounted police officer signal someone with a nod, Arthur Curtis hopped onto a tram, partly to think things over and partly to watch who got on next. A portly fellow in an expensive homburg boarded at the next stop, perspiring from a hard run, and Curtis knew that he was either paranoid or in trouble and had to act as if it were the latter.

On the other hand, he thought with a smile that broadcast innocence, he’d been working the private detective game for fifteen years — nearly twenty if he counted his apprenticeship with a Denver-based bullion-escort outfit ramrodded by a couple of old Indian fighters — and since arriving in Germany, he’d devoted every spare moment to learning the ins and outs of the Berlin neighborhoods. He jumped off the tram and onto another.

The street traffic changed from autos to bicyclists and horsecarts, and he hopped down in a workers’ district of five-story tenements interspersed with coal yards where homburgs and gabardine coats would stand out like sore thumbs. He walked purposefully, like a man headed home — or, considering the quality of his clothing, come to collect the rent. He continued down several streets, fingering the money clip in his pocket. He rounded a corner, flashed marks at a teenager on a bicycle, and bought the bike for double its value. Then he pedaled away at three times the speed a shadow could run, hoping no cop behind him had flashed a badge at another bike rider.

It felt like a clean getaway. But getting away was not the same as getting the job done. Isaac Bell was pressing him hard, and Arthur Curtis wanted to deliver the goods. But if he couldn’t corral his man inside Krieg, how could he ask whether a former Army officer now held a high position in the company?

25

Isaac Bell was first off the limited in Los Angeles.

Boots to the platform while the train was still rolling into La Grande Station, guiding Clyde Lynds firmly by the elbow and trading discreet nods with a Van Dorn detective attired as a porter, Bell burst from the station into the fierce morning sun. He looked for an olive green Santa Monica trolley with the dash sign “Hollywood,” and they jumped off thirty minutes later at a brick depot that served the farm village.

While the electric sped out of town, Bell scrutinized the tourists who had gotten off with them and confirmed the all-clear from a Van Dorn buying picture postcards. He entered the nearest of the hotels and guesthouses clustered around the depot and asked the front-desk clerk, “Where is Mr. D. W. Griffith taking pictures?”