The Thief

The other said, “If we let wear and tear go, the ship would be a bloomin’ embarrassment. Look at this gouge! Fairly tore the rail in half.” He stepped back to show Bell their repair of what was actually the minutest gouge in the teak, which only an eagle-eyed bosun would notice.

Oddly, the gouge traced the full twelve-inch curve of the wood from inboard to outboard as if something flexible had wrapped around it. “What do you suppose caused that?” Bell asked.

“Some bloomin’ swell, begging your pardon, sir, must have whacked it with his walking stick.”

“Or sword,” ventured his mate.

“Sword?” the first echoed derisively.

“The grain of the wood is cut.”

“It ain’t a cut. It’s a gouge.”

“You can call it a gouge if you like, mate, but I say he whacked it with a sword.”

“Where the bloomin’ hell would a First Cabin nob get his paws on a sword?”

“Concealed in his walking stick. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?” he added, enlisting support when he saw Isaac Bell studying the gouge intently.

“Wire,” Isaac Bell said.

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

“Wire. A thin braided-wire cable.”

“Well, yes, it could be braided cable, sir. On the other hand, you might ask where would the swell get a braided cable and why would he whack the rail with it? Unless he was an out-and-out vandal. Not that we don’t get the odd one or two of them aboard— You’ll recall, Jake, there was that Frenchman.”

“What do you expect?”

“An acrobat,” Bell said, half aloud. Had the Acrobat somehow grappled the railing with a flexible wire cable?

“Acrobat? No, sir, begging your pardon, that Frenchie was no acrobat.”

“A German acrobat.”

The seamen traded baffled looks.”Well, if you say so, sir.”

“An acrobat it is, sir.”

As Bell hurried away, he heard whispers behind him. “What the blazes was he rattlin’ on about?”

“Acrobats.”

“Next’ll be monkeys.”

Isaac Bell walked faster. He could imagine that a superb athlete, a muscular, lithe acrobat, could stop his fall by hooking a thin cable over the railing. But he could not imagine where the man could suddenly get the cable. Nor how he had secured it in the split second that he hurtled past the railing. Nor why the wire didn’t slip through his hands. Or cut him to the bone if he wrapped it around his wrist.

Bell passed a barrier into Second Class, said good morning to the seaman Captain Turner had assigned to stand guard outside Clyde Lynds’s cabin door, and knocked loudly. “It’s Isaac Bell, Clyde. Open up.”

Lynds let him into the cramped, windowless space he had shared with the Professor. He appeared to have slept in his shirt and trousers.

“You look a mess,” said Bell.

“Didn’t sleep a wink. The Professor was a good man. A kind man. He didn’t deserve dying that way.”

“You wouldn’t either,” said Bell.

“Am I next?”

“Make a clean breast of it, Clyde. Your life’s in danger. Who are they? What do they want?”

“I swear I don’t know them.”

“Does it have to do with you deserting the German Army?”

“I didn’t desert. I was never in the Army. I’ve never been a soldier.”

“Then why is the German Army after you?”

“I don’t know. They’re lying.”

“Why would the Army lie? If they are lying, why are they hunting you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I am not a deserter.”

“I know you’re not. That’s what makes it worse.”

“Worse?”

“The German Army is helping Krieg Rüstungswerk steal your invention.”

“I’ll be O.K. when I get to America.”

Isaac Bell asked the question he had come to Clyde’s cabin to ask. “Did you ever hear the Professor mention a name or a word that sounded like ‘acrobat’?”

Lynds turned pale. “Why do you ask?”

“When Professor Beiderbecke asked me to protect you, it was the last word he spoke. ‘Acrobat.’”

“Oh my Lord,” Clyde Lynds breathed. “Are you telling me the guy didn’t fall overboard?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Yes,” Clyde admitted. “He’s the one. Is he really on the ship?”

“I think the Professor saw him. I think this acrobat locked him in the trunk. If that’s true, then you’re being stalked not by his accomplices, but by the man himself, the same man who tried get you in Bremen and again the night we sailed from Liverpool. You were lucky that night that I just happened to be there. Last night the Professor’s luck ran out. Whoever killed Professor Beiderbecke is hiding among either the passengers or the crew. He will not be found before disembarking in New York, at which point he will disappear into the city — where he will find you easily, Clyde. A man who has hunted in the confines of a steamship with nearly a thousand crew to take notice is a formidable hunter. He will find you.”

Clyde Lynds puffed up. “What does an insurance man care about this?” he demanded, truculently.

“I don’t give a hang about this or you,” Isaac Bell shot back.

“You don’t?”

“If I hadn’t promised the Professor to look out for your prevaricating hide, I’d let you to swing it out with this murderer we’re calling the Acrobat. But I did promise. So you’re stuck with my help, like it or not.”

“Can you really protect me?”

“Only if you can tell me what I’m protecting you from. What is your ‘secret invention’? Why do they want it?”

“O.K. O.K. We’ll do it your way.”

Lynds sat silent for a long moment. Bell prompted him, saying, “Professor Beiderbecke started to name it when we had a drink before my wedding. He called it ‘Sprechchend-something’ before he clammed up.”

Clyde Lynds laughed.

“What the devil is fu

“Sprechendlichtspieltheater.”

“Sprechendlichtspieltheater? What is Sprechendlichtspieltheater?”

“A ridiculous name. I told him we needed an American name. So he came up with ‘Animatophone.’ I told him that was worse. So he said, ‘How about “Photokinema”?’ Which is a bad joke. I couldn’t get it through his head that we needed a snappy name we could sell.”

“But what is it?” demanded Bell.

“Professor Beiderbecke and I have invented a machine that reproduces sound perfectly.”

“What kind of war machine is that?”

“It’s not a weapon.”

“That’s what Beiderbecke told me. I thought he was lying.” Bell recalled Beiderbecke’s claims for education and science, communication, industrial improvement, even public amusement. It was quite a laundry list, but a better gramophone might fit that. “What is it, a gramophone?”

“It is much more than a gramophone. Much, much more than a gramophone. We perfected a way to add sounds to moving pictures. A machine to make talking pictures.”

“Talking pictures?”

“That’s what I named it. Talking Pictures. Snappy, eh?”

“Better than Sprechendlichtspieltheater,” Bell admitted with a smile.

Lynds shook his head ruefully and ran his fingers through his tousled hair.

“Word got out. We were approached immediately by the biggest film manufacturer in Germany. They wanted to make a deal. Invited us to Berlin, First Class, all expenses paid, put us up in the best hotel. But then we learned that the firm was owned by Krieg Rüstungswerk, and we knew they would steal it. The Professor knew a scientist whose invention they robbed. So we decided we would do much better taking it to America to sell it to Thomas Edison… Boy, were we babes in the woods. Never occurred to us they’d try to stop us from leaving Germany. Or that the munitions trust was so in cahoots with the German Army that the Army would help track us when we cut and ran. Blind luck, we got away. That phony warrant gave them the power to have me arrested for desertion and the Professor for harboring a draft dodger. We barely made it out of there with that Rotterdam hocus-pocus. But when we got aboard Mauretania we thought we were free to sell Talking Pictures in America. Then surprise, surprise…”