The Thief

  Bell thought fleetingly that Holian had to be one of the luckiest men alive to survive a fusillade of gunfire with only flesh wounds.

  “Where’s Saunders?”

  “Dead. All dead.”

  Bell pounded up the stairs. At the fourth flight, the wall had disappeared, having been slid aside into a pocket. He stepped through the opening and stared in horror. The recording studio was a slaughterhouse.

  Larry Saunders lay dead on the floor. Two men Bell didn’t know lay dead, revolvers locked in their fists, slouch hats fallen beside them. A third man had been strangled and bore the bloody gouge around the throat that was the Acrobat’s signature. Then he saw Clyde Lynds sprawled on his back, his chest covered in blood, his face drained of color.

  “Clyde?” Pistol in hand, Isaac Bell knelt beside him. He saw immediately that the brash young scientist was not long for this world, and he had a horrible feeling that he had let him down.

  Clyde opened his eyes. “Say, Isaac,” he whispered. “You didn’t make the rescue this time.”

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” said Isaac Bell. “I wish I had insisted you take your chances with Edison.”

  “At least Edison wouldn’t kill me.”

  “Did they take your machine?”

  Clyde answered slowly, in a whisper so faint that Bell had to move within inches to hear him. “They took a jury-rigged contraption I slapped together with baling wire. It will drive their scientists nuts. Joke’s on the Acrobat. I fooled him again. And I kept the new plans— Isaac!”

  “What?”

  “You have to take care of the plans.”

  “I will.”

  “You have to promise.”

  “I promise. Where are they?” Bell asked.

  “Right here.”

  “Where?”

  Clyde raised his hand as if to point at his head as Bell remembered he had on the Mauretania, claiming he held it in his mind and only needed time and money to finish Talking Pictures. A lot of good that would do. They would die with him this time. But instead Clyde was reaching to pat his chest, then hastily to cover his mouth. He coughed, a harsh sound that wracked his body head to toe. The cough ended abruptly with a sudden intake of breath and a long sigh, and before Clyde Lynds could tell Isaac Bell where he had put his plans, the young scientist was dead.

  Bell closed Clyde’s eyelids and spread a handkerchief over his face. Mindful of his promise, he searched Clyde’s clothing.

  “Looking for something, Detective?”

  THE ACROBAT WAS SPEAKING DIRECTLY BEhind him. His English was fluent, his accent light.

  “Place your pistol on his chest.”

  Isaac Bell laid the Browning on Clyde’s chest and raised both hands. As his right hand passed his head, he whipped his derringer from his hat, spun around, and fired both barrels in the direction of Semmler’s voice. The slugs clanged through a tin acoustical horn.

  The Acrobat laughed.

  Now Bell saw him on the far side of the room, a man with hair as gold as his and green eyes bright as emeralds. He was standing behind a disc microphone mounted on a wooden box, smiling the “Fritz Wunderlich” smile that the drummers had raved about. The sketch had failed to capture the magnetic power of his presence. Nor were his thick brow and massive jaw monkey-like. Isaac Bell thought that Semmler, the Acrobat, looked like the work of a brilliant sculptor more enchanted by the structure within his stone than by the surface. The word “mighty” sprang to Bell’s mind. There was a quality to the man of power that made him seem larger than life.

  Semmler returned Bell’s inquiring gaze, and his smile broadened and his eyes brightened. Bell was reminded of Art Curtis—though six inches shorter than Semmler and round instead of rangy, Art had possessed a similarly compelling smile. Art had been a fighting man, too, and his eyes could turn cold. But Semmler’s eyes were of a different order, as cold and empty as the stars.

  His hands were hidden behind the box.

  Bell could not see if he was holding a weapon.

  “Clyde’s microphone is quite effective, don’t you think? You thought I sounded real.”

  “You sounded like a murderer.”

  “I am not a murderer,” Semmler replied, with such conviction that Bell knew he was confronting a madman. “I am a soldier for my country and my kaiser.”

  Bell gathered his legs to spring. “That insults every soldier who ever served. You murdered eight men starting with your own accomplice on the Mauretania.”

  “None would have died if you had not interfered,” Semmler shot back. “Every death is on your head.”

  Bell surged to his feet and rushed the Acrobat in a burst of fluid motion.

  Semmler raised a Webley automatic pistol and leveled it at Bell’s chest. “I load hollow-point .455s. I’m told that your friend Abbott will never fully recover from his encounter with a ‘manstopper.’”

  Bell stopped, reluctantly.

  “We will leave the building,” Semmler said. “Walk ahead of me. Lead the way downstairs.”

  Bell had no choice but to do as the Acrobat demanded. But at least with every step down the stairs, he was drawing Semmler farther away from Marion. They descended four flights to the lobby and another to the cellar. Semmler indicated the narrow hall and switched positions when they reached the ladder to the trapdoor.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, backing agilely up the ladder, covering Bell until, crouched under the life net, he beckoned with the Webley for Bell to come up next.

  When the detective climbed out, Semmler said, “Feel around at the foot of the wall. There’s some loose bricks. Pick one up.”

  Bell stepped from under the canvas life net and two paces to the wall of the building, crouched down and felt in the dark until he found a brick. Glad of another weapon, he stood with it in his left hand. His right was reserved for his throwing knife, which he would draw from his boot the instant he saw a chance.

  Semmler said, “Your interference ruined years of meticulous planning. It cost me time and treasure and dimmed my star. Promises made to my kaiser, my army, and my family have all been broken. I will redeem them now that I have Talking Pictures in hand. But it did not have to take so long.”

  He gestured with his pistol. “Before you get any silly ideas about braining me with that brick, throw it through that window.”

  Bell raised the brick, watching Semmler’s posture for signs of the split second of distraction he needed to go for his knife. But Semmler was watching closely and with sublime confidence in his mastery of the situation. Bell tried another tack. “Meticulous planning for what? I am mystified. What is it you want?”

  “I want to save Germany from well-meaning fools. Throw the brick.”

  Bell tried again. “What—”

  Semmler trained his gun at Bell’s chest. “Throw the brick or convalesce with Abbott.”

  Bell threw the brick at the lighted window. The glass shattered, and shards fell from the frame, widening a jagged hole.

  “Here’s your next choice: either keep dogging my steps or try to save what is dear to you.”

  Christian Semmler raised his free hand for Bell to see. Between his thumb and forefinger he held a book of safety matches. Beneath the matches, cupped in his big palm, was a dark cylinder, which looked to Bell in the uncertain light from the broken window to be a small chunk sawed off a stick of dynamite and fitted with a fuse and detonator. Semmler manipulated his fingers with the dexterity of a magician. He lighted a match and touched the flame to the fuse.

  It caught with a shower of sparks. Semmler lobbed the dynamite through the broken window. Bell heard it hit the floor. There was a moment of silence, then a loud explosion. Bright white-orange flame suddenly lit the spot outside the window where they were standing, making it bright as day.

  Christian Semmler looked Isaac Bell in the face.

  “I could have simply shot you. But I prefer revenge. So it is up to you to choose, Chief Investigator Bell. Shadow me like a good d
etective or jump down that trapdoor like a good husband and climb to the roof in hopes of leading your lovely wife out of the fire before she burns to death. If the stairs are too thick with smoke, you can always jump from the roof in hopes of landing on this life net. We’ve yet to persuade the actors to try it, and I regret that I don’t have time to watch your landing. Go ahead. Choose!”

  Isaac Bell spun on his heel, dove under the life net that concealed the trapdoor, and vaulted himself feetfirst through the opening. As his foot grazed the top rungs of the ladder, he pulled his throwing knife from his boot and, without wasting a step of his swift descent, flung it overarm at Christian Semmler’s throat.

  ISAAC BELL’S BLADE STREAKED through the air like a silver bolt of electricity.

  Superhuman speed saved the Acrobat from instant death.

  But no power on earth could save his face.

  Bell’s knife pierced his cheek and his tongue and rasped against his teeth.

  DESPERATE TO REACH MARION IN TIME, Bell had not lingered to watch.

  But as he dropped off the bottom rung of the ladder and whirled toward the narrow hall that led to the stairs, he heard Semmler scream. Loud with dismay, shrill with pain, and sharp as a clarinet, the sound suddenly thickened, gurgling hollowly, drowned in blood.

  DELICATELY, BUT SHAKING WITH THE EFFORT, Christian Semmler pulled the smooth blade from his flesh. The pain threatened to knock him off his feet. He staggered to the life net, propped an elbow on it to keep his balance, and spewed a mouthful of blood. Then he slashed his coat sleeve with the razor-sharp knife. Spitting more blood, he wadded the cloth, stuffed it in his mouth, and bit down hard to staunch the wound.

  He had to get moving. He had to get away. Fire engines were coming. He was afraid he would pass out. But a second explosion blowing glass from more windows galvanized him with the realization that the fire was spreading so fast that if Isaac Bell somehow did manage to reach the roof ahead of the flames, he and his bride’s only way down was to jump to the life net.

  The Acrobat’s sudden laughter lanced pain through his face, but he couldn’t help it. It was such perfect justice for all Bell had done to him. With Bell’s own knife, he slashed the ropes that held the net.

  WHITE SMOKE SEEPED INTO THE secret stairwell. The acrid, tarry stink of nitrate gas clawed at Bell’s lungs. As he raced by the film exchange, a judas hole cover blew open and hot flame shot through the spy hole like a fiery arrow. Bell ducked it and kept climbing, bounding three steps at once, pursued by smoke and fire. He passed the opening to the recording studio. The fire was there ahead of him, licking the bodies, having leaped up an elevator shaft or another stairway, and he prayed that Marion had not left the temporary safety of the rooftop studio in a doomed attempt to descend.

  At the fifth-floor landing, when he was halfway to the top of the building, the flames feeding on the hundreds of reels in the film exchange far below breached a vault and detonated tons of film stock stored inside. The explosion shook the stairs under Bell’s feet. A shock wave traveled up the shaft and lofted him off the rubber treads.

  He tumbled down half a flight of stairs, clambered to his feet, and ran harder, climbing past Irina’s office on the seventh floor, Clyde’s laboratory on the eighth, and Semmler’s lair on the ninth. After one more flight he was at the top, gasping for breath and stymied by walls on every side. He yanked open a judas door and saw a studio stage in semidarkness, with a looming shadow of a ship and towers bearing Cooper-Hewitt light banks. Silhouetted against a lurid sky, Marion was stepping through the door in the northern glass wall, climbing out on the terrace that overlooked the life net.

  Bell shouted. The wall was thick, and she could not hear him.

  Remembering the sliding fourth-floor wall, he spotted the bulge where the wall thickened to make room for the pocket. He looked for a lever but saw none. He flattened his palms against it and tried to slide it, which had no effect. Then he saw what looked like an ordinary electric light switch on the floor molding. He moved it and the wall glided aside.

  “Marion!”

  A second explosion rocked the building.

  Bell ran the length of the studio stage, dodging wires and camera tracks, and tripped over a sandbag counterbalancing a fly lift. He rolled to his feet and pulled open the door in the glass wall. Marion was climbing the steps that had been built in hopes of one day convincing an extra to try the life net.

  “Marion!”

  “Isaac? Oh my God, it’s you. Hurry! All the stairs are blocked. The elevators won’t come. We have to jump.”

  Bell bounded up beside her and held her close, overwhelmed with the relief of finding her alive. The net appeared even smaller than it had when he last saw it from here. Flames leaping from many windows were lighting it clearly. There were dark splotches on the white canvas that he hadn’t noticed before.

  “They built it strong enough for two,” said Marion. “Irina wanted a ‘Lovers’ Leap.’”

  “We have to hold each other tight, or we’ll smash into each other when we bounce.”

  “Thank God, you’re here. I didn’t know if I had the courage to jump.”

  “What is that dark color? Those splotches?”

  “They shine,” said Marion. “Like liquid.”

  A third explosion shook the building. It felt as if it were swaying in an earthquake. Bell, staring down at the net, puzzling over the splotches, saw great torrents of fire thrusting from windows on the sixth floor. They had moments to jump before the building collapsed. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t leave without me.”

  “WE CAN’T STAY HERE, GENERAL Major,” Herman Wagner pleaded with Christian Semmler.

  A fire engine thundered up the street, pulled by two bay horses, and from the opposite direction came police on

  bicycles.

  Wagner’s chauffeur, who kept turning around to stare anxiously, opened the glass that separated the passenger compartment. “We’re blocking the gate. We have to move.”

  “Wait!” said Semmler, his voice muffled by the blood-soaked coat sleeve he pressed to his face. “Do not move this auto.”

  “But they will see that you were wounded, General Major.”

  Semmler did not deign to reply to the obvious, saying instead, “Wounds and war march in lockstep. That is the reason I ordered you to stand by. Don’t disappoint me— Look!” Semmler pointed at the parapet of the Imperial Building. The flames, fanned by a stiffening wind, were shooting higher than the roof. Suddenly something moved in front of them. A man in white teetered on the parapet. “See! There he goes!”

  Smoke obscured the figure. Then he separated from the parapet, as if he were pushing off with all his strength to clear the building, and fell through the air.

  “I think it’s both of them.”

  “My God, it is.” Hermann Wagner held his breath. It seemed that it took them forever to plunge past the burning windows. How afraid they must be that they would miss the tiny net. What would they do if they saw that they were falling off course? To Wagner’s immense relief, the poor couple did not miss the net. They landed dead center. But instead of bouncing back up in the air, they smashed through it to the ground.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said Christian Semmler.

  “The net collapsed,” cried Wagner. “It didn’t hold.” He stared at the wreckage, but, of course, no one moved from it. How could they? A moment later a section of the building’s wall gave way and thundered down, burying their remains under tumbled bricks.

  The first team of fire horses clattered alongside the auto.

  “Drive!”

  Wagner’s chauffeur almost stalled the motor in his haste to get away.

  “Where now, General Major?” asked Wagner, staring back over his shoulder at the burning building, and grateful that the wooden fence blocked his view of where Bell and his wife had died. “To the freight yard?”

  “Take me to a doctor. While he sutures this, charter a special to New York. We are done in Los Ang
eles. For now.”

  Christian Semmler sounded remarkably pleased, Wagner thought, for a man who had seen his entire enterprise go up in smoke. And he displayed a God-like indifference to his grievous wounds. God-like, or machine-like—it was as if he didn’t feel pain.

  Semmler noticed him staring. “Of course it hurts,” he said, spitting blood so he could speak. “You should pray you never feel anything like it.”

  “WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF ROPE. Hang on! I’ll see what I can do.”

  Isaac Bell let go of the last inches of a seventy-foot-long string of Cooper-Hewitt light cables and stage fly ropes he had knotted together, and dropped ten feet to the roof of the Imperial Moving Picture Palace marquee that sheltered the sidewalk in front of the building. He landed on stinging soles and looked up. Flames were gushing from windows they had descended past moments ago.

  “Let go. I’ve got you.”

  Marion slid down to the end of the rope, shredding the little that remained of her gloves, and opened her hands. Bell caught her in his arms, swooped her to a gentle landing, and held her tightly for a grateful moment.

  The clatter of hoofs and the throb of steam pumps heralded the arrival of the fire department. “Firemen!” Bell called down to them. “Did you boys happen to bring a ladder?”

  “ISTILL CAN’T SLEEP,” MARION whispered, “I keep seeing that sandbag burst on the ground. That could have been us.”

  Bell held her close. “But it wasn’t us. Don’t worry, we’re fine.”

  Marion laughed. “I’m not worried. And I know why I can’t sleep. It feels so wonderful to be awake—Isaac, thank God you saw his blood on the net. But what made you think he cut the ropes? I’d have thought he would have run for his life, particularly if he was so badly wounded as to be bleeding like that.”

  “He’s a killer. He calls himself a soldier, but he is first a killer. In fact, I’ll bet he waited to watch us hit bottom.”