The Thief

“Wire Detective Archie Abbott, New York: ‘Ask Lord Strone about German General Major Christian Semmler. Show Wunderlich sketch.’

“Send them. On the jump!”

Of the responses that flooded in over the next twenty-four hours, the one that intrigued Bell most came from the boss. Joe Van Dorn had discovered that General Major Semmler was married to Sophie Roth Semmler, the sole heiress of the Krieg Rüstungswerk fortune. Such wealth and power explained the lone operator’s ability to operate far more independently than a typical German Army officer.

But Joseph Van Dorn’s informants in the Army and diplomatic corps knew almost nothing else about Semmler. The general major did not seek the limelight. A U.S. Army observer in China had heard that Semmler had established an excellent war record in the Boxer Rebellion. A retired embassy attaché had repeated rumors of a fearsome reputation in the South African War, when Semmler had supposedly led rebel Boer commandos behind British lines. But as none of Van Dorn’s informants among the diplomats and soldiers had actually met Semmler, the sketch of Fritz Wunderlich proved useless in Washington.

Grady Forrer’s researchers had hunted in vain for photographs or newspaper sketches. Not unusual, Grady pointed out: only if Semmler had been a prominent member of a visiting German party or an attaché to the kaiser’s embassy would American newspapers have taken note of the soldier.

Bell hoped for more from Bronson in Paris as he would have access to European papers and magazines. But Bronson cabled of the same dearth of images. Even the new man in Berlin could find no photographs or sketches in the German press. Considering how military men were lionized in Germany, it seemed that Christian Semmler went out of his way not to court publicity.

Bell was disappointed, but hardly surprised. As a private detective who habitually avoided cameras, he expected no less of a soldier experienced at behind-the-lines guerrilla warfare. Nonetheless, he had learned that Semmler was rich. And he was independent, which Bell had already guessed. But if the thirty-five-year-old, powerfully built soldier and spy had green eyes, blond hair, and long arms “like a monkey,” no one had yet matched his face to the sketch of Fritz Wunderlich, so they were no closer to proving whether Semmler and Wunderlich were one and the same.

“That is an unfriendly gate,” said Lillian He

“I was told it would be,” said Archie.

Attached to tall stone pillars, the double gate that blocked the road into the Earl of Strone’s Greenwich estate was made of heavy wrought-iron bars painted black and looked, Archie Abbott thought, very much locked.

He stepped down from the big touring car in which they had driven up to Co

“Are you all right, Archie?”

“Tip-top.” He hinged out a blade of spring steel from what looked like an ordinary penknife and worked the lock open. He swung the two halves of the gate wide enough for the auto. Lillian drove through, and Archie locked it behind them.

“Drive on.”

A quarter mile along a curving driveway paved with crushed slate, they saw a sizable mansion of brick decorated with stone in a style that reminded Archie of Henry VIII’s palace at Hampton Court.

The thick, wooden front door had no knocker. To save his knuckles, Archie banged on it with the butt of the Navy Colt.45 automatic he had taken to carrying since being shot nearly to death. When he heard the door being opened, he smoothly holstered the weapon and drew a calling card from his vest.

A strapping butler — a retired sergeant major, by the look of him — who had been stuffed into a swallowtail coat peered out with an expression that was less than friendly.

Archie proffered his card. “Be so good as to inform His Lordship that Archibald Angel Abbott and Mrs. Abbott are here for tea.”

“I am not aware you’re expected, sir.”

“We sailed on the Mauretania with His Lordship. He invited my wife to drop in if we were ever in the neighborhood. We are in the neighborhood.”

The butler took in the sight of Lillian behind the wheel of the Thomas. She had removed her dust hat and veil. Her blond hair shone in the sun, and her eyes gleamed like sapphires. It occurred to the butler that the next time he clapped eyes on a smile like hers it would be on the far side of the Pearly Gates. “Please come in, sir. I will inform His Lordship.”

“I will collect my wife.”

As he helped Lillian out of her auto, Archie said, “I feel vaguely like a procurer.”

Lillian kissed him on the lips. “And you would be so good at it. Fortunately for me, you have other talents. Are you sure you’re all right?’

“I am alive and in love on a beautiful day in the country.”

Strone was in tweed. He had a shotgun draped over his arm. “Lovely to see you again, my dear,” he said to Lillian. To Archie he was brusque. “Just going out for a tramp about the marsh. Come along if you like.”

He put a deerstalker on his head and led the way at a quick pace down a garden path and over lawns, heading toward a vast marsh that disappeared in the haze of the Long Island Sound.

“I was under the impression that my front gate was locked.”

“We locked it on the way in,” said Archie.

Lillian said, “Let’s walk slowly. My husband is recovering from an accident.”

“Terribly sorry. Of course we’ll slow our pace. What sort of accident, Abbott?”

“I bumped into a Webley-Fosbery.”

Strone stopped walking and looked at Archie. “Hmmm. You never mentioned that on the boat.”

“Automatic revolvers never make for wedding small talk.”

“I say, are you in the insurance trade like your friend Bell?”

“Isaac Bell and I will remain in the insurance trade as long as you remain ‘retired.’”

A smile twitched Strone’s red cheeks and gray mustache.

“One does not step out of retirement willy-nilly.”

“What if I gave you a good reason?”

“I pride myself as a man open to reason. Though one man’s reason could be another man’s poison.”

“Then I won’t give you a reason. I’ll give you a name.”

“A name?”

“Semmler,” said Archie, who observed nothing on Strone’s face move except his pupils, which narrowed momentarily.

“Can’t say it rings a bell, old boy,” Strone lied.

“Christian Semmler.”

“No. I don’t believe—”

“Colonel Christian Semmler. The rank he held when you were stationed in South Africa.”

“Where did you get the notion that I was stationed in South Africa?”

“Oberst Christian Semmler, as our German friends addressed him.”

“I don’t have German friends.”

“Lately,” said Archie, “I’ve been dropping mine. Semmler has been promoted several times since the South African War. He is currently a general major.”

Strone abruptly dropped all pretense of ignorance. “Yes, I know.”

“He is plotting in America.”

“Plotting what?”

“We don’t know.”

Strone’s jaw tightened. “He is a slippery, nervy bastard. He was as cold-blooded an operator as any we encountered, harassing our columns, sniping our pickets. And God help the scouts he waylaid. He made the Boers seem sweet as schoolboys.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“I only saw him once. And only through a glass at a great distance.”

“Lillian?” said Archie.

Lillian pulled a notebook from her long duster and opened it to the sketch of Fritz Wunderlich.

“Did he look like this man?”