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

British embassy official with a taste for French brandy, who said, “You’re looking all spiffed today, Arthur, what? Did you win the lottery?”

Curtis winked, “I was just visiting a friend,” which drew a lewd grin and the expected, “Might she have a sister?”

“I’ll inquire next time,” said Curtis, and they parted on a laugh.

When he reached a commercial district, he watched for reflections in the shop windows. All seemed well until a fellow in a fine gabardine coat appeared on the sidewalk ahead, twenty minutes after Curtis had first noticed him.

The man was richly dressed for a detective or a secret policeman. But Krieg and the German Army could afford the best, couldn’t they? When he noticed a uniformed mounted police officer signal someone with a nod, Arthur Curtis hopped onto a tram, partly to think things over and partly to watch who got on next. A portly fellow in an expensive homburg boarded at the next stop, perspiring from a hard run, and Curtis knew that he was either paranoid or in trouble and had to act as if it were the latter.

On the other hand, he thought with a smile that broadcast innocence, he’d been working the private detective game for fifteen years—nearly twenty if he counted his apprenticeship with a Denver-based bullion-escort outfit ramrodded by a couple of old Indian fighters—and since arriving in Germany, he’d devoted every spare moment to learning the ins and outs of the Berlin neighborhoods. He jumped off the tram and onto another.

The street traffic changed from autos to bicyclists and horsecarts, and he hopped down in a workers’ district of five-story tenements interspersed with coal yards where homburgs and gabardine coats would stand out like sore thumbs. He walked purposefully, like a man headed home—or, considering the quality of his clothing, come to collect the rent. He continued down several streets, fingering the money clip in his pocket. He rounded a corner, flashed marks at a teenager on a bicycle, and bought the bike for double its value. Then he pedaled away at three times the speed a shadow could run, hoping no cop behind him had flashed a badge at another bike rider.

It felt like a clean getaway. But getting away was not the same as getting the job done. Isaac Bell was pressing him hard, and Arthur Curtis wanted to deliver the goods. But if he couldn’t corral his man inside Krieg, how could he ask whether a former Army officer now held a high position in the company?

ISAAC BELL WAS FIRST OFF THE LIMITED IN Los Angeles.

Boots to the platform while the train was still rolling into La Grande Station, guiding Clyde Lynds firmly by the elbow and trading discreet nods with a Van Dorn detective attired as a porter, Bell burst from the station into the fierce morning sun. He looked for an olive green Santa Monica trolley with the dash sign “Hollywood,” and they jumped off thirty minutes later at a brick depot that served the farm village.

While the electric sped out of town, Bell scrutinized the tourists who had gotten off with them and confirmed the all-clear from a Van Dorn buying picture postcards. He entered the nearest of the hotels and guesthouses clustered around the depot and asked the front-desk clerk, “Where is Mr. D. W. Griffith taking pictures?”

“Right around the corner. It’s a two-reeler called In Old California. But you won’t find work. There’s fourteen players lined up ahead of you. I’m number twelve.”

“Thanks for the warning—come along,” Bell said to Clyde.

Clyde had recovered from his scare on the train. “Who the heck cares about old California? Griffith could use a snappier title. Like The Girls of Old California.”

“Stick close,” said Bell.

He traced the Griffith movie by the growl of a dynamo powering the lights. It was a big outside operation in a vacant lot with a distant view of majestic mountains. Bell counted more than fifty people engaged—horse wranglers, mechanicians, actors, and scene shifters, and a camera operator he recognized as a valuable man named Bitzer who had worked for Marion and was known as the best in the business.

Griffith, a lanky man of thirty-five or so, was directing from a chair, his face shaded by an enormous, floppy straw hat. He had a soft Kentucky accent and a revolver tucked in his waistband.

“Now, young lady,” he told an actress dressed in an old-fashioned Spanish señorita gown and shawl, “you will try again to walk from where you are currently standing to that tree.”

“Yes, Mr. Griffith.”

Griffith raised a two-foot megaphone to his lips. “Lights!”

The Cooper-Hewitts flared, doubling the effect of the brilliant sun.

“Camera!”

Bitzer focused and started cranking.

“Speed!”

Bitzer cranked to a speed that sent the film past the camera lens at a rate of a thousand feet in twelve and a half minutes.

“Action!”

The señorita pointed at the tree.

“Stop!”

The camera operator stopped cranking. Griffith slumped a little lower under his hat and drawled, politely but firmly, “Billy’s camera will present you as a close-up figure. In return for that honor Ah would appreciate a certain restraint of expression.”

“I have to point out to the audience where I’m heading next.”

“The least patient among them will soon see where you are headed next. Don’t point. And stop looking at the camera.”

“Yes, Mr. Griffith.”

“Speed!”

THE SEÑORITA HAVING REACHED the tree at last and lunch finally announced, Griffith retreated under the shade of an umbrella and removed his floppy hat, revealing jet-black hair, an incipient widow’s peak, a strong hawk nose, and the deeply set, soulful eyes of a matinee idol. A smile warmed them when Bell was introduced.

“May I congratulate you, sir, on your marriage to a wonderful lady and a fine director.”

“Thank you, Mr. Griffith. We had the pleasure of seeing Is This Seat Taken? shown by a Humanova troupe at our wedding feast on Mauretania.”

Griffith rolled his eyes. “With the director putting words in my actors’ mouths?”

“I’m afraid so. That’s what we’ve come to talk to you about. This is Mr. Clyde Lynds. He has