The Thief

“I need your help,” said Bell. “How would you like to be a detective?”

“I would rather play piano in a Barbary Coast bordello.”

“You’ve already done that, Uncle Andy. I am offering a new experience.”

Andrew Rubenoff gestured out the windows of his hilltop mansion, indicating his pleasure with the views of the mountains to the north and east, the flat coastal plain stretching to the blue Pacific Ocean, and the hazy outline of Catalina Island. Within his lavish office, fine furniture shared the space with oil paintings by the radical artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan and his beloved Mason & Hamlin grand piano, which had traveled with him from New York. “I am enjoying this experience, thank you very much. Will you have tea, Isaac?”

A handsome male secretary brought tea in tall glasses. In New York, Bell recalled, the secetary had been matronly. Rubenoff sipped his tea through a cube of sugar. Bell followed suit, burning his tongue as usual.

“What have you heard about the Imperial Film Manufacturing Company?”

“I heard this morning that Imperial is dropping the word ‘Manufacturing’ from its name. All the picture firms are doing it. It’s dawned on them that movies are more interesting than anvil foundries. And far more complicated.”

“Before this morning, what had you heard about Imperial?”

“Big and rich.”

“But they just got started. They built an expensive building but have just begun distributing films. How did they get so big and rich?”

“Artists Syndicate.”

“Who are Artists Syndicate’s investors?”

“Finally, you ask an interesting question. But a hard one.”

“You’re the man to answer hard questions,” Bell said bluntly.

“Do you know anything about the movies?” Rubenoff asked. “Other than being married to a woman who makes them.”

“She’s taught me a lot,” said Bell. “And by the way, thank you again for the silver service. Next time we have thirty-six to di

Rubenoff waved his thanks aside. “Ah, the least — you see, Isaac, I find this disturbing. I don’t know who invests in Artists Syndicate and Imperial Film.”

“Disturbing?”

“I should know. They’re potentially my competitors — if not, one day, partners. I should know if I am up against a bunch of furriers from Manhattan, a combine of distributors from Springfield, or a furniture magnate from Ohio who knows a young lady who should be a star, clothiers from Philadelphia, or glovers from Gloversville, or Frenchmen fronting for Pathé. Or English lords snapping up yet another American enterprise. Why is Artists Syndicate so anxious to remain private?”

Bell nodded uncomfortably. The banker was confirming his own worry that he had he steered Clyde Lynds in a potentially dangerous direction. While Grady Forrer had found State Department people who confirmed Irina Viorets’s story of spending her childhood with American embassy children, Van Dorn Research had made no headway on the question of who paid the bills for Imperial Film.

Nor could he forget that Arthur Curtis had cabled early on that Krieg Rüstungswerk had an “appetite” for unrelated businesses.

“Seriously, Andrew. Can I persuade you to play detective for me?”

Rubenoff returned a puckish smile. “Will I have to bear sidearms?”

“Not unless you’re frightened by the sight of a beautiful woman.”

Arthur Curtis opened an envelope containing an enciphered cablegram from Isaac Bell. Pauline read it aloud over his shoulder, decoding it faster than he could. It was apparent by now that she had a true photographic memory for both sights and sounds.

NEED MORE ON KRIEG RUSTUNGSWERK.

NEED KRIEG MAN IN AMERICA.

BOSS AUTHORIZES PAY ANY PRICE.

ON THE JUMP!

“What is the meaning of ‘On the jump’? Like it sounds?”

“Exactly like it sounds. Get moving without delay. Immediately.”

“What are you going to do on the jump, Detective Curtis?”

“Send you home and go to work.”

Curtis climbed into his coat and felt in the pockets for a couple of apples he had bought earlier.

“Should I come with you?” she asked.

“Go home. It’s bedtime. Here.” He handed her the apples. “Give one to your mother.” He ushered her out and locked the door. Then he turned off the light and watched from the window until she disappeared around the corner. No one else was out at this hour, and no one was watching the office. He went out the back window and down the fire ladder and hurried to a neighborhood Kintopp, hoping to get lucky.

A groschen bought him a pint Topp of beer and entry to the Kino which showed moving pictures in a long, narrow space formed by three apartment flats strung together. The films on the screen this evening would have not passed the test for a police license. Arthur Curtis had been a detective long enough to have only a passing interest in what in his boyhood would have been called “dirty pictures.” But Hans Reuter, his man inside Krieg’s Berlin office, liked them, and this working-class moving picture theater was a sufficiently long walk from Reuter’s expensive neighborhood that he felt safe frequenting it without the locals telling his wife. So Arthur Curtis sipped his beer and pretended to be engrossed in the goings-on flickering on the screen while he kept an eye on the men drifting in from the beer bar.

Curtis sat for two hours in the dark. The place had emptied out a bit, and he was having trouble staying awake, when, all of a sudden, in walked his man from Krieg, hugging his beer and looking for an empty place on the bench that he favored in the back row. Curtis moved over. Herr Reuter sat, sipped, and stared.

The short, round Van Dorn detective remained as silent as the film until the waiters finally interrupted with loud offers of “Beer?” During the storm of affirmative replies, he leaned closer to Reuter and whispered, “Triple.”

“What?” Reuter turned. His mouth tightened when he realized that the man who had been sitting next to him all along was Arthur Curtis. “I said, no more.”

“I can now pay triple,” whispered Curtis. “Three times as much. If you’re interested, meet me in the bar.”

Reuter kept him waiting, but not for long. Greed, in the immortal words of Chief Investigator Isaac Bell, worked wonders.

“Triple?” Reuter echoed in disbelief.

Arthur Curtis passed him the fresh Topp he had ordered and took a sip from his own. “Triple. But only for something special.”

“Like what?”

“Something unique. You know the situation at your employer. You’re best qualified to suggest something that I would really need. Aren’t you?”

Hans Reuter looked worried. “But how am I to guess?”

Curtis shrugged. “Let me guess for you. How many Krieg company executives and directors are former Army officers?”

“Very few.”

“Do you know any?”

“Not personally. I mean, there are none in the Berlin office.”

“Can you find their names?”

“I would have to think about that.”

“While you’re thinking,” Curtis shot back, “think which of those company directors might travel abroad.”

Reuter looked uncomfortable, and Curtis thought he was touching some sort of a nerve here, as if the man had thought of a name he feared.

“One of your responsibilities is to dispense funds overseas, correct?”

“How do you know?”

Curtis’s casual, “I asked around” did not make Reuter look any more comfortable.

Curtis went for broke. “I need a name.”

“A name?”

“The name of the recipient.” Push! Arthur Curtis thought. Push him hard. Don’t give him time to change his mind. “Two days,” he said. “Meet me here. Seven o’clock.”

“It is risky.”

“Don’t worry, it will be the last time I ask.”

“No more?” Hans asked, partly with relief, partly with disappointment that the money would stop. Curtis said, “In addition to triple, I will seek authorization for a separation bonus. A thank-you.”