The Thief by Clive Cussler (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📕

Archie Abbott opened his watch. “Assuming Miss Marion Morgan has not jumped ship, it’s time to test that theory.”

“SHIPMATES!” ROARED CAPTAIN WILLIAM Turner, a short, square-jawed, squint-eyed man in his fifties with a great ship’s prow of a nose and enormous ears. His hearty seaman’s voice carried to every corner of the Mauretania’s Saloon Lounge, where hundreds of First Class passengers had come dressed in their best to celebrate the novelty of a wedding at sea.

None were disappointed.

The bride was bewitchingly beautiful in a daring, close-fitting cream-colored dress with a high waistline that suited her erect carriage and a sash of diaphanous silk that promised, discreetly, an enchanting décolletage. Her blond hair was swept up high on her head, circled by an abbreviated veil that graced her high brow, and capped with a tiara made of rosebuds instead of diamonds. Diamonds, all agreed, would have paled beside her dazzling eyes.

Her golden-haired groom stood proudly at her side in a tailcoat. He was tall and straight-backed as a cavalry officer. Beneath his gold mustache, his lips parted in a smile that twitched repeatedly into a broad grin.

The beautiful matron of honor and handsome best man wore expressions of sheer delight for their friends. The Mauretania’s famously standoffish captain was a vision of cordiality, aglitter in the dress uniform of the Royal Naval Reserve, with buttons, belt, braid, and epaulets of gold, a sword at his side, and a hat cocked fore and aft on his head.

“We are gathered together in the sight of God and in the face of Mauretania’s passengers and ship’s company to join this man and this woman in matrimony, which is an honorable estate…”

WITH THE ATTENTION OF THE ENTIRE ship riveted by the wedding, Professor Beiderbecke calculated it would be safe to visit the baggage hold, deep below and far to the back, to check on the well-being of his machines and instruments. He retreated before the ceremony began, pleading that his seasickness was worse, even though the sea had calmed and most passengers were moving about with color restored to their faces.

Clyde had barely noticed. The young man was in a high state of excitement, put there initially by gaining entrance to the sumptuous First Class lounge, then by being seated next to an exotic Russian woman of Marion’s acquaintance. Dark-eyed Mademoiselle Viorets was no exception to Beiderbecke’s experience that Russian women were intoxicating. Poor Clyde was panting like a Austrian Brandlbracke puppy.

Fearing that the way into the bowels of the gigantic ship would be a confusing labyrinth of stairs and passageways, the Professor had studied builders’ drawings in the library and committed them to memory just as he would schematics for arcane electrical circuits or the latest triode vacuum tubes.

Rich carpets and runners in the corridors of passenger quarters gave way to plebeian rubber tiling. Wide staircases narrowed into steel-shrouded companionways. He dodged crew when he saw them in time, and directed at those he could not avoid a haughty stare: Make way for Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke in his old-fashioned frock coat and silver-headed walking stick.

Suddenly he had a strange feeling that someone was watching him. His first terrible thought was that the Akrobat—as he had dubbed the long-armed, agile thief who had tried twice to steal his Sprechendlichtspieltheater machine—was stalking him again.

Impossible. Beiderbecke had seen with his own eyes the mysterious Akrobat jump off the Mauretania into the sea. Nonetheless, he stopped in his tracks and cast a fearful glance up the stairs. No one. He craned his neck to peer down another flight. No one. He poked his head into a corridor, saw no one, and continued down into a crew section, past rudimentary sleeping quarters and lavatories, storage rooms, and pantries. The air grew oppressive.

The engines made their presence felt, resonating in the steel around him, ever more strongly the deeper he descended, a muted roar that grew louder and louder. Beiderbecke stopped again and looked back, cocking his ears for footfalls. Silliness! What could he hear over the thunder of the furnaces and the whine of the turbines? Besides, despite Isaac Bell’s efforts to frighten him into revealing his secret, the Akrobat no longer existed.

Real as it was, the sense of being watched was an irrational feeling, he told himself. A shadow flew near. Beiderbecke shrank into a shallow alcove formed by massive steel ribs. He pressed against the steel, which vibrated and felt hot, as if the fires that powered the behemoth ship were burning right behind him. The shadow, cast by electric bulbs caged in the low ceiling, crept along the corridor toward where he cowered. A crewman hurried by, cap and face and clothing black with coal dust.

Beiderbecke waited until he had gone, then darted along the corridor and down a flight of steps to the orlop deck, where he found himself yards from the stern of the ship in an area shared with sleeping barracks for three dozen cooks and stewards. The noise was deafening. Picturing the builders’ drawings, he realized that he was standing below the waterline. Just outside the hull’s shell plating, the propellers pounded a relentless din as they churned the sea at one hundred and eighty revolutions per minute.

He saw another shadow coming toward him and ducked through a door and down a companionway. At last he reached a door that should open—if he had not blundered himself utterly lost—into the corridor to the baggage room where the wooden crate that held his machine was concealed in a shipment of a dozen similar crates. All were addressed to a warehouse on New York City’s 14th Street—a short walk, Clyde had assured him, from the Cunard Line pier where the Mauretania would land.

He opened the door and bumped into a broad-shouldered seaman who was just leaving the baggage room. “Begging your pardon, sir?”

Beiderbecke said, “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for my shipment of crates.”

“Crates, sir?”

“Wooden crates. There