Read Online The Thief by Clive Cussler, Justin Scott - Free Book Online

laughter died.
    Professor Beiderbecke had been squeezed into the trunk. His legs were bent sharply to his chest, his arms pressed about his head. His eyes were wide open. His face was rigid with pain and fear. His skin was blue.
    Without a word, an elderly dining saloon steward passed Isaac Bell a gleaming fish knife. Bell held it to Beiderbecke’s nostrils. He did not expect that the poor man’s breath would cloud the silver, but it did.
    “He’s alive!” A dozen hands helped Bell pull Beiderbecke out of the trunk. They laid him on the rubber-tile floor and gently straightened his limbs. Beiderbecke groaned, gasped, and inhaled fitfully.
    “Doctor!”
    “Get the surgeon.”
    Bell leaned closer, searching for a spark in his wide-open eyes. They seemed to focus on him. “You’ll be fine,” said Bell. “The doctor’s coming.”
    Beiderbecke’s body convulsed. “My heart,” he whispered. Racked with pain, he clutched his chest. “Bell!” he gasped.
    “I’m right here, Professor.”
    “Bell. My… protégé…”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll look out for Clyde.”
    “Protect him, please.”
    “I will.”
    “Protect him from the akkk…”
    “From what?” Bell put his ear to Beiderbecke’s lips, for the man was surely dying. “From what?”
    “Akrobat .”
    The ship’s surgeon arrived, shooing people from his path. Bell stood up to make room for him, then watched as the surgeon parted vest and shirt with sure hands and pressed a stethoscope to Beiderbecke’s chest. He listened for a long time, shaking his head, and finally removed the instrument.
    “What did Beiderbecke say? Archie asked Bell.
    “Made me promise to protect Clyde.”
    “From Krieg?”
    “I suppose,” Bell answered. “But that wasn’t all he said.”
    “What else did he say?”
    “A name or a word that sounded like ‘acrobat.’ How do you say it in German?”
    “The same, except spelled with a ‘k,’ said Archie. “But what did Beiderbecke mean by ‘acrobat’?”
    “A man,” Isaac Bell mused thoughtfully, “who can fly.”
    “Like the one who jumped overboard.”
    “And somehow flew back.”
    Archie said, “But acrobats can’t really fly.”
    “Maybe not. But the best of them can do a darned good imitation…” Isaac Bell thought hard. “ Mauretania ’s carrying three thousand people, passengers and crew. Whoever killed Beiderbecke is hiding among them.”
    “That’s like hiding in a city.”
    “We need a witness. Let’s ask this steward if he got a look at who knocked him down.”
    The steward, who was sitting up blearily, shook his head. “Sorry, guv. Jumped me from behind, he did, when I walked in the pantry.”
    Bell helped him to his feet. “Not even a glimpse as you fell? Did you see how big he was or what he was wearing?”
    “Not a peep, guv.” He looked at his tunic sleeve, then down at the trousers. “Blimey, am I a sight. Better get out of these before the boss sees me.”
    Bell noticed brown grease stains on his trousers from the pantry floor. But the smudges on his sleeve looked like soot. He ran his finger on one.
    “Coal dust,” he told Archie. “Let’s go visit the black gang.”

    B LOCK, THE SWINDLER, SWORE up and down, again, that he had not seen the face of the black gang crewman who had taken the silver trunk from the baggage room, but Isaac Bell brought him along anyway, intending to watch his face for signs of lying as they scrutinized the men who stoked the furnaces. He brought the saloon steward, too, on the theory that the man who knocked him down could not know beyond a doubt that the steward hadn’t seen his face. The sight of two witnesses might set off a case of nerves. Or so he thought until he clapped eyes on the stokers and the hellish place where they worked.

    “T HREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY passers, trimmers and firemen, mostly Irish from Liverpool,” said the Mauretania ’s chief engineer, a compact, no-nonsense Scot with a walrus mustache and four gold stripes on