The Thief

“This plethora of decks — upper, lower, orlop, shelter — appear designed to breed confusion,” said Beiderbecke, taking out his wallet. “Could I possibly prevail upon you to show me the way?”

“Bless you, sir, I wish I could. But passengers really oughtn’t to be down here.”

“I’m afraid I’m lost,” Beiderbecke said, extracting a pound note.

The seaman stared at the money, wet his lips, then sadly shook his head. “I’m afraid that the best I can do for you, sir, is lead you up to the shelter deck. There I’ll point you forward on the Third Class promenade. When you have walked all the way to the bow, go down three decks to the lower deck and perhaps someone can show you the baggage room.”

Franz Bismark Beiderbecke trudged up narrow stairs after the seaman. Then he walked forward over six hundred feet along the Third Class promenade, which was crowded with immigrants — Croats, Bohemians, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, and Czechs, as if half the Austro-Hungary Empire had decided to regroup in America. The promenade ended at the Third Class smoking room near the front of the ship. He found the way down blocked by a scissors gate and climbed upstairs to go around. His pound sterling note persuaded a rough-looking steward to let him around a barrier.

Beyond that barrier, he looked out a porthole down onto the open foredeck and saw, between the mast and an enormous anchor, a cargo hatch. There! That must cover the hole through which the cranes had lowered his crates. He headed downstairs for several decks. Racking his memory of the builders’ plans, he finally opened a door on what could be, hopefully, the forward baggage room.

His heart froze.

The Akrobat, whom Beiderbecke had seen leap into the sea, was loping sure- footedly along the passageway, peering into every nook and cranny. Slung over his back was an enormous silver- colored steamer trunk. Judging by how effortlessly the Akrobat carried it, the trunk was empty.

7

Isaac Bell promised Marion “… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

When Marion promised to love and cherish him, she added in a strong voice, “with all my heart, forever and ever and ever,” and Bell’s blue-violet eyes swam with emotion as he placed beside their lucky emerald a plain gold wedding ring he had purchased long ago in San Francisco. Then Captain Turner repeated their vows in seamen’s terms, commanding them to “sail in company, in fair winds or foul, on calm seas or rough, in vessels great and small,” and concluded in a mighty voice, “By the powers I hold as master of Mauretania I pronounce you man and wife.”

Hastily, he added, “You may kiss the bride.”

Isaac Bell was already doing that.

* * *

Flanked by Archie and Lillian and Captain Turner, the newly wed Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Bell greeted their guests on a receiving line.

Mademoiselle Viorets and Clyde Lynds brought up the rear.

“In Russia we do everything backwards,” she proclaimed dramatically. “Instead of gentlemen kissing bride, in Russia is the custom for ladies to kiss the groom. Firmly on the lips.”

“Irina,” Marion Bell warned with a steely gaze, “we are not in Russia. If you must kiss someone firmly on the lips, start with that handsome boy trailing you with adoring eyes. Isaac, I want you to meet my very good friend Irina Viorets. It was Irina who told me about this dress.”

“A pleasure.” Bell shook the dark-eyed beauty’s hand. “From what Marion’s told me you two had more fun in London than is usual at royal funerals.”

“We are kindred spirits. Marion, I have arranged for you and your handsome husband a special wedding gift to wish you happiness in your marriage.”

“What is it?”

“An entertainment.” She snapped her fingers and took command of a phalanx of saloon stewards, who marched into the crowded lounge carrying an Edison film projector and a screen improvised from a square of sailcloth.

“That is one energetic woman,” Bell whispered to Marion.

“A bit too energetic. She escaped Russia one step ahead of the secret police.”

“How did she annoy the Okhrana?”

“By making a film that the czarina deemed ‘risque.’ I didn’t get the whole story, and it changed a little with each glass of wine, but she’s hoping to start over again in the movie business in New York.”

“Taking pictures?”

“Manufacturing. She told me, ‘Dis time I vill be boss.’”

“Have I told you that you look absolutely gorgeous in that dress?”

“Only twice since we were married.” She stepped closer to press her lips to his. “Isn’t it wonderful? Now people expect us to kiss in public— Oh my, Irina is giving us a Talking Pictures play.”

The stewards suspended the sailcloth beside the piano. Actors, two men and a woman, positioned themselves behind the cloth with an array of gongs, triangles, drumsticks, whistles, and washboards.

“Where did she find a Humanova Troupe in the middle of the ocean?” marveled Marion.

“I say, what is a Humanova Troupe?” asked Lord Strone. The British colonel had been hovering near Mademoiselle Viorets.

“Humanovas make sound for the movies,” Marion told Strone.

“Sound? In the cinema? Do you mean like the orchestra?”

“Much more than an orchestra. The actors speak lines of dialogue. And make effects.”

“Effects?”

“Gunshots, whistles, bells. Surely you’ve heard Humanovas in London. Or Actologues?”

“Rarely get to town anymore, m’dear. Retired, don’t you know?”

Bell concealed a smile at the sight of Archie’s red eyebrow cocked toward the skylight. Strone was laying it on with a trowel, but a flurry of marconigrams from Van Dorn informants in England had repeated, in guarded language, rumors that His Lordship was, as Bell suspected, attached to Great Britain’s newly formed Secret Service Bureau with offices at Whitehall in the center of London. He left London only to undermine England’s enemies abroad.

Urged on by Irina Viorets, the stewards arranged chairs facing the improvised screen, and within minutes the lounge had been transformed into a moving picture theater. Members of the ship’s orchestra gathered around the piano with violins and a trumpet. They struck a clarion chord.

The wedding guests took their seats. The lamps were lowered. The projector clattered and light flickered on the screen. From behind the screen, an actor read aloud the movie’s title card.

“Is This Seat Taken?”

“It’s a Biograph comic,” Marion whispered to Bell. “Florence Lawrence is in it.”

The scene was laid in a ten-cent moving picture theater just as the movie ended. A well-dressed audience applauded when a woman with a pistol arrested a villain, who was marched off by a policeman. The actors behind the sailcloth clapped their hands as the movie audience applauded. The next film on the ten-cent theater screen showed a conductor and piano player auditioning singers and dancers.

The actors behind the sailcloth sang and shuffled their feet on the washboards, and the ship’s piano played ragtime.

A lady looking very much like the woman with the pistol walked into the ten-cent theater wearing an enormous hat and looked for a seat. An actress called, repeatedly, “Is this seat taken?” Theater patrons refused to move, protesting that her hat would block their view of the screen.

The lady in the big hat was followed by a man in a top hat, who looked very much like the villain just