The Thief

“We can’t stay here, General Major,” Herman Wagner pleaded with Christian Semmler.

A fire engine thundered up the street, pulled by two bay horses, and from the opposite direction came police on

bicycles.

Wagner’s chauffeur, who kept turning around to stare anxiously, opened the glass that separated the passenger compartment. “We’re blocking the gate. We have to move.”

“Wait!” said Semmler, his voice muffled by the blood-soaked coat sleeve he pressed to his face. “Do not move this auto.”

“But they will see that you were wounded, General Major.”

Semmler did not deign to reply to the obvious, saying instead, “Wounds and war march in lockstep. That is the reason I ordered you to stand by. Don’t disappoint me— Look!” Semmler pointed at the parapet of the Imperial Building. The flames, fa

Smoke obscured the figure. Then he separated from the parapet, as if he were pushing off with all his strength to clear the building, and fell through the air.

“I think it’s both of them.”

“My God, it is.” Herma

“Bull’s-eye,” said Christian Semmler.

“The net collapsed,” cried Wagner. “It didn’t hold.” He stared at the wreckage, but, of course, no one moved from it. How could they? A moment later a section of the building’s wall gave way and thundered down, burying their remains under tumbled bricks.

The first team of fire horses clattered alongside the auto.

“Drive!”

Wagner’s chauffeur almost stalled the motor in his haste to get away.

“Where now, General Major?” asked Wagner, staring back over his shoulder at the burning building, and grateful that the wooden fence blocked his view of where Bell and his wife had died. “To the freight yard?”

“Take me to a doctor. While he sutures this, charter a special to New York. We are done in Los Angeles. For now.”

Christian Semmler sounded remarkably pleased, Wagner thought, for a man who had seen his entire enterprise go up in smoke. And he displayed a God-like indifference to his grievous wounds. God-like, or machine-like — it was as if he didn’t feel pain.

Semmler noticed him staring. “Of course it hurts,” he said, spitting blood so he could speak. “You should pray you never feel anything like it.”

“We’re ru

Isaac Bell let go of the last inches of a seventy-foot-long string of Cooper-Hewitt light cables and stage fly ropes he had knotted together, and dropped ten feet to the roof of the Imperial Moving Picture Palace marquee that sheltered the sidewalk in front of the building. He landed on stinging soles and looked up. Flames were gushing from windows they had descended past moments ago.

“Let go. I’ve got you.”

Marion slid down to the end of the rope, shredding the little that remained of her gloves, and opened her hands. Bell caught her in his arms, swooped her to a gentle landing, and held her tightly for a grateful moment.

The clatter of hoofs and the throb of steam pumps heralded the arrival of the fire department. “Firemen!” Bell called down to them. “Did you boys happen to bring a ladder?”

“I still can’t sleep,” Marion whispered, “I keep seeing that sandbag burst on the ground. That could have been us.”

Bell held her close. “But it wasn’t us. Don’t worry, we’re fine.”

Marion laughed. “I’m not worried. And I know why I can’t sleep. It feels so wonderful to be awake — Isaac, thank God you saw his blood on the net. But what made you think he cut the ropes? I’d have thought he would have run for his life, particularly if he was so badly wounded as to be bleeding like that.”

“He’s a killer. He calls himself a soldier, but he is first a killer. In fact, I’ll bet he waited to watch us hit bottom.”

“When he finds out you tested the net with a sandbag, he’s going to be badly disappointed.”

“He’s going to be more than disappointed,” Bell promised grimly, climbing out of bed and kissing her good night. “Sleep tight.”

“Where are you going?’

“New York.”

“Why New York?”

“Christian Semmler’s got what he came for. He’s going back to Germany.”

“How do you know?”

“He asked me, mockingly, ‘Looking for something?’ I was searching Clyde’s body because Clyde told me as he died that he had kept the real plans. Doesn’t ‘Looking for something?’ sound like Christian Semmler already found them?”

Marion sat up. “And since he asked when he saw you searching Clyde, that means he found them in Clyde’s clothing.”

“Meaning he can carry them in his clothing.”

Bell dressed hastily. He filled his pockets, holstered his spare Browning in his coat and a fresh throwing knife in his boot, and reloaded the empty derringer he had managed to palm without the Acrobat noticing.

“From the sound of his scream, I’d say he’s sporting a good-sized bandage. In fact, I’m hoping he needed stitches. Lots of them.”

“But how do you know he’s going to New York?”

“I don’t for sure, but it’s a good bet. If Clyde’s plans were on his person, then Semmler’s traveling light. And if he’s traveling light, the fastest way home to Germany is a train across the continent and a boat from New York.”

46

Joseph Van Dorn welcomed Isaac Bell to the New York headquarters with words that Bell could have construed as compliments were it not for the thunderclouds on the boss’s face.

“Excellent reasoning,” said Van Dorn. “Downright intriguing, even: traveling light, swathed in bandages, a murderer responsible for the deaths of two of my best agents races fleet-footedly across the continent, having stolen the plans to a revolutionary machine in which I have invested heavily, and boards a steamship for Germany. Our investigative agency pulls out all stops; we cover every Limited train station between Los Angeles and New York; we pull every wire we have in the government to obtain passenger manifests from eastbound German and French liners; we shake hands with the devil — currently masquerading as a British earl and military intelligence officer — to obtain the passenger lists of British ships; we canvas shipping clerks to watch for a man who fits Semmler’s description booking passage to Europe; we pay enormous sums of money to policemen and customs officers to help watch those ships when our forces are stretched to the breaking point. And who do we find?”

“No one, yet,” answered Bell.

“Did it ever occur to you that he might have gone the other way and boarded a ship in San Pedro, in which case he is now steaming hell-for-leather toward the Panama Canal?”

“A Talking Pictures machine is doing just that,” replied Isaac Bell, “aboard a German freighter, which will reach the canal in ten days. After they traverse it they will likely load the machine onto a warship. The Imperial German Navy has a squadron stationed off Venezuela.”

“What?” exploded Van Dorn. “He has the machine? How do you know that?”

“Tim Holian and his boys traced it and a gang of gunmen from the Los Angeles Southern Pacific freight yard to San Pedro and onto the ship. Holian is positive that Semmler wasn’t with them.”