The Thief

“Leipzig wouldn’t be owned by Krieg, by any chance?”

“I doubt they’d borrow money from Hamburg if they were. They’d have access to better rates of interest through Krieg.”

Bell pondered his next move.

“Uncle Andy, tell me about pianos.”

The Leipzig Organ & Piano Company’s plate-glass front window was sparkling clean, Isaac Bell noted as he hurried along the sidewalk. Sheet music shortcomings aside, from the sidewalk at least the shop had nothing to apologize for. He stopped, peered through the glass, pulled his watch from his pocket by its heavy gold chain, pretended to check whether he had time to spare, and went inside.

Sturdy upright pianos lined the walls, each bearing the name Leipzig in gold leaf. Revolving mahogany racks of music flanked a glass-topped counter displaying metronomes and hymnals.

A salesman got up from his desk by the back door. He was a middle-aged German with a military bearing and a cold ma

“I am shopping for a piano for my niece, who has impressed her teacher.”

“Ve have vaiting list for new orders.”

“How long will that be?”

“It is difficult to tell.”

“A month? Two months?”

“More like six months to a year, sir. Our pianos are made carefully. Very carefully.”

“Are they strung with music wire made by Stahl and Drahtwerk?”

The salesman’s jaw tightened.

“Or,” asked Bell, “are the strings from Moritz Poehlma

The saleman stared straight ahead, his gaze locked on the knot of Isaac Bell’s four-in-hand necktie. At last he said, “I do not know that. But our plates are of cast iron.”

“I would hope so,” said Bell. “Would you play a few of them for me? Let me hear the difference.”

“You may play them, sir.”

“Ah, but sadly I do not. So if you would play for me…”

Again, the tight jaw. Finally, he said, “It is not possible.”

“A man who sells pianos can’t play them?”

“I have injured my hand.”

“I’m so sorry. Could I trouble you to telephone your sales representative.”

“Vat for?”

“I would like to ask whether I could buy an instrument sooner than six months.”

“He is not near.”

“Well, perhaps your head office could help me.”

“No.”

“Then I wonder could I have your representative’s address that I might write him myself.”

“He is traveling.”

Bell stepped to the windows and stood there for a long moment.

Suddenly a stylish crowd of free-spirited young men and women came along the sidewalk and burst in the door. Gaily hailing the salesman, all talking at once, they took a long time to explain they needed to rent a piano for a party tonight. Informed that the shop did not rent pianos, they laughed.

“Then we’ll buy one.”

“We’ll pool our cash.”

“I’ve got Dad’s check. I’ll buy it.”

“How about that one?” a girl cried, and they gathered around it, two of them plopping down on the bench, throwing open the key lid, and pounding out a ragtime duet.

The salesman kept saying, “Not for sale. Not for sale,” and when he had at last showed the buoyant mob out the door, he discovered that the tall golden-haired gentleman hoping to buy a piano for his niece had slipped away in the confusion.

Good riddance, he thought, and locked the door.

“Nicely done,” Isaac Bell told the Los Angeles field office apprentices and secretaries and their girlfriends and boyfriends. “You were thoroughly authentic ‘gilded youth’ on a lark. That poor salesman never knew what hit him.”

“Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Bell?”

All eyes locked on the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s legendary chief investigator.

“With your help, I found a letter in his desk and a business card. The Leipzig Organ and Piano Company is represented by a traveling man named Fritz Wunderlich who collects his mail in Denver at the Brown Palace Hotel.”

Isaac Bell telegraphed Van Dorn field offices around the country to cover Leipzig’s other piano shops to see what they could pick up. Those large enough to maintain apprentices would instruct them to pretend to be shopping on behalf of their school or church. Agents in smaller one-and two-man outfits would shop, as Bell had, for nieces and daughters.

Bell himself boarded the flyer to Salt Lake City, changed trains a day later to the Overland Limited, arrived in Denver early the next morning, and walked the short distance up Broadway to the Brown Palace Hotel, a favorite haunt. He knocked on a door just inside the main entrance. Omar P. Armstrong, the Brown Palace’s managing partner, invited him to breakfast.

As they walked across a vast marble and cast-iron atrium lobby where tier upon tier of balconies soared to a skylight one hundred feet above the carpet, Bell asked, “Have you ever met a salesman named Fritz Wunderlich?”

“Fritz? Of course.”

Bell had journeyed to Denver expecting no less. Omar P. Armstrong knew everyone worth knowing west of the Mississippi. “Have you seen him lately?”

“He’s here every two or three weeks.”

“What’s he like?”

“Pleasant enough fellow,” Armstrong replied with a neutral smile.

Isaac Bell was fully aware that any man who managed a grand hotel had to be as observant as a whale-ship lookout and as discreet as the madam of a first-class bordello. Omar’s studiedly disinterested expression said that if Isaac Bell wished to inquire about Brown Palace guests but still be known as an i

“Have you known him long?”

“If you are interested in Herr Wunderlich, why not ask his friends?”

They paused in the entrance to the dining room. The Brown Palace’s guests were breakfasting at tables set with snowy linen, gleaming silver, and fine china. Omar nodded in the direction that Bell suspected he would. At a table placed in the alcove of a tall window, three well-dressed, barbershop-pinked salesmen were in animated conversation.

“If you like, I can introduce you.”

Bell gri

He walked straight to the salesmen’s table. “Morning, gents. Isaac Bell. Insurance. May I join you?”

They took in his hand-tailored suit, polished boots, and confident smile.

“Sit down, brother. Sit down. Waiter! Coffee for Mr. Bell — or something a mite stronger, if you’re so inclined.”

“Coffee will be fine. Long day ahead.”

They shook hands around and introduced themselves, a rep for the Gillette Safety Razor Company, a Locomobile salesman, and a traveler in the cereal line. The Locomobile man said, “Mr. Bell, stop me if I’m wrong, but don’t you drive a Locomobile?”

“I thought I recognized you, Jake,” said Bell. “We met in Bridgeport when I was picking her up at the factory.”

“Red one, if I recall?”

“Red as fire.”

“How’s she ru

“Like a top. Small world, isn’t it? I ran into a traveling man the other day. We got to talking about autos, and when I told him about mine he mentioned he knew a fellow who handled the line. That could have been you.”

“Probably was me. What’s his name?”

“German fellow. Fritz Wunderlich.”

“Fritz! Yes, we just saw him in— Where’d we see him?”

“Chicago?”

“Chicago it was. Isn’t he a character? ‘Mit schlag’!”

“‘Time is money.’”

“‘Eight days in the veek.’”

“Pretty good salesman, I gather,” said Bell.

“Valuable man. No question. Valuable man.”

“Lucky for him he’s got that smile,” the cereal salesman chortled.

“What do you mean?” asked Bell.

“Well, you know… Fritz is a heck of a worker, but he sort of looks like a monkey.”

“Sort of?” snickered Jake. “I’ll say he looks like an ape in the jungle.”