The Thief

The lion cage sat near the front. As Bell and Archie pushed through the door, they saw that their Van Dorn Protective Services operative had fallen asleep beside the cage and that their swindler, a lanky, middle-aged sharper with a matinee idol’s leonine mane of hair and a choirboy’s trustworthy smile, was straining to reach through the bars for the keys.

“Lawrence Block?” asked Archie, using the alias under which he had conducted his stock manipulations. “Even if you got the door open, where do you think you would go on a steamer in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?”

“For a walk,” said the swindler. “Maybe even find someone to talk to. This fellow and I have run out of subjects of interest to either of us. Failing that, maybe I’d bust into one of those brandy casks and get drunk.”

The guard woke with a start and jumped to his feet. “Sorry, Mr. Bell. The boat keeps moving up and down, and there’s a smell in the air that makes me tired.”

Archie said, “Next time hide your keys.”

Bell said, “We’re looking for a middle-aged Vie

“No, sir.”

“Has anyone at all come in here while you were awake?”

“Just a young feller looking for the same guy you’re looking for. Ran in, ran out.”

That would be Clyde. “No one else?”

“Nope.”

Swindler Block called, “What about the guy who took a trunk?”

“What guy?” asked Bell.

“Just a crewman,” said the PS guard.

“What did he want?”

“Took a trunk. They’re in and out all the time. They get sent down for trunks when folks in First Class want something they forgot.”

“He wasn’t crew,” said the swindler.

“What?” Bell looked at him gripping the bars of the lion cage, glad as any prisoner of a break in his empty routine. “What are you talking about, Mr. Block?”

“He wasn’t crew.”

“He was so crew,” protested the Protective Services man. “I saw him with my own eyes.”

Bell ignored him and asked Block, “Why do you say the fellow you saw was not a member of the ship’s company?”

Block said, “The food down here is lousy. I want a good meal.”

“You’ll get one if you tell me what you mean.”

“He was pretending he was crew.”

“The hell he was,” said the Protective Services man.

“The hell he wasn’t,” said the swindler.

“Archie!”

Archie marched the Protective Services man out the door. Bell asked Block, “How do you know that the man who took the trunk was not a member of the ship’s company?”

“Do I get a meal?”

“Prime sirloin and ribs o’ beef, roast turkey poulet, quarters of lamb, smoked ox tongue, and Rouen ducklings. If you help me. How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“You better know more than ‘just know’ or you’ll be dining on bread and water.”

“I’m not dodging you, Mr. Bell. I’m telling you that it takes one to know one. I smoked right off that the fellow was an imposter. For one thing, he was covered in coal dust. Like a stoker. Well, do they send a stoker to retrieve a rich man’s shiny clean steamer trunk? Of course they don’t. They send a shiny clean bedroom steward. You get my meaning?”

“And for another thing?”

“The stewards usually come in pairs, help each other carry. He was alone.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like I just told you. Like a stoker. Hard as nails tough from the black gang.”

“Big man?”

“Not so big. Powerful build, though. Long arms. Like an ape. Like I said, what you’d expect shoveling coal.”

“Long arms? Did you see his face?”

“Black with soot.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why not?” Bell demanded.

The swindler answered, “Cap pulled down over his eyes, collar up round his ears. All that soot on his face, for all I saw he could have been dancing in a minstrel show.”

Bell looked at him with a wintry eye. Block was a very intelligent crook.

“What color was the trunk?”

“Silver.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Hour? Little more.”

“Enjoy your di

“First.”

“Lawrence Block, you’ve earned your first honest meal since you graduated reform school.”

Bell sent the PS man back in with a stern warning to stay on his toes. Then he told Archie, “A coal stoker, or someone who looked like a coal stoker, lifted a silver-colored steamer trunk with a First Class sticker. Question is, why?”

“Assuming the Professor’s been kidnapped, I’d say they stashed him inside it so they could smuggle him into a cabin they booked somewhere in First Class.”

“So would I.”

“But,” Archie said, “we found his glasses down here. How would they know he was coming down here? Maybe they have someone in the crew watching him.”

“Or a passenger,” said Isaac Bell. “We better get Captain Turner to rustle up a search party.”

9

“Isaac! They found the trunk on the promenade deck!”

Bell passed Archie at a dead run, climbing the grand staircase. There was a mob at the top of the stairs. The corridors converging outside a service pantry were jammed with the junior officers: saloon, deck, and bedroom stewards and seamen who had been pressed into the search. Bell saw a saloon steward sprawled on his back, his normally immaculate tunic filthy, and beside him the silver trunk. A husky seaman stood over it, aiming a fire ax at the lock.

“I’ll open it,” said Bell, shouldering him aside. He knelt by the trunk and felt with his hands that it was heavy. “Would there be a wine screw handy?”

The sommelier’s assistant produced a corkscrew. Bell twisted it into the lock, manipulated for a moment while gazing into the middle distance, and the lock clicked open. To the murmur of acclaim, and before anyone asked how an insurance executive happened to know the fine art of lock picking, he said, “Parlor trick my great-aunt Isabel taught me. She was a regular whiz.”

Stewards and seamen laughed.

“Never would say where she learned it,” Bell added, and the officers laughed, too.

He hinged the hasp up and lifted the lid. The laughter died.

Professor Beiderbecke had been squeezed into the trunk. His legs were bent sharply to his chest, his arms pressed about his head. His eyes were wide open. His face was rigid with pain and fear. His skin was blue.

Without a word, an elderly dining saloon steward passed Isaac Bell a gleaming fish knife. Bell held it to Beiderbecke’s nostrils. He did not expect that the poor man’s breath would cloud the silver, but it did.

“He’s alive!” A dozen hands helped Bell pull Beiderbecke out of the trunk. They laid him on the rubber-tile floor and gently straightened his limbs. Beiderbecke groaned, gasped, and inhaled fitfully.

“Doctor!”

“Get the surgeon.”

Bell leaned closer, searching for a spark in his wide-open eyes. They seemed to focus on him. “You’ll be fine,” said Bell. “The doctor’s coming.”

Beiderbecke’s body convulsed. “My heart,” he whispered. Racked with pain, he clutched his chest. “Bell!” he gasped.

“I’m right here, Professor.”

“Bell. My… protégé…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll look out for Clyde.”

“Protect him, please.”

“I will.”

“Protect him from the akkk…”

“From what?” Bell put his ear to Beiderbecke’s lips, for the man was surely dying. “From what?”

“Akrobat.”

The ship’s surgeon arrived, shooing people from his path. Bell stood up to make room for him, then watched as the surgeon parted vest and shirt with sure hands and pressed a stethoscope to Beiderbecke’s chest. He listened for a long time, shaking his head, and finally removed the instrument.