whipped his derringer from his hat, spun around, and fired both barrels in the direction of Semmler’s voice. The slugs clanged through a tin acoustical horn.
The Acrobat laughed.
Now Bell saw him on the far side of the room, a man with hair as gold as his and green eyes bright as emeralds. He was standing behind a disc microphone mounted on a wooden box, smiling the “Fritz Wunderlich” smile that the drummers had raved about. The sketch had failed to capture the magnetic power of his presence. Nor were his thick brow and massive jaw monkey-like. Isaac Bell thought that Semmler, the Acrobat, looked like the work of a brilliant sculptor more enchanted by the structure within his stone than by the surface. The word “mighty” sprang to Bell’s mind. There was a quality to the man of power that made him seem larger than life.
Semmler returned Bell’s inquiring gaze, and his smile broadened and his eyes brightened. Bell was reminded of Art Curtis — though six inches shorter than Semmler and round instead of rangy, Art had possessed a similarly compelling smile. Art had been a fighting man, too, and his eyes could turn cold. But Semmler’s eyes were of a different order, as cold and empty as the stars.
His hands were hidden behind the box.
Bell could not see if he was holding a weapon.
“Clyde’s microphone is quite effective, don’t you think? You thought I sounded real.”
“You sounded like a murderer.”
“I am not a murderer,” Semmler replied, with such conviction that Bell knew he was confronting a madman. “I am a soldier for my country and my kaiser.”
Bell gathered his legs to spring. “That insults every soldier who ever served. You murdered eight men starting with your own accomplice on the
“None would have died if you had not interfered,” Semmler shot back. “Every death is on your head.”
Bell surged to his feet and rushed the Acrobat in a burst of fluid motion.
Semmler raised a Webley automatic pistol and leveled it at Bell’s chest. “I load hollow-point.455s. I’m told that your friend Abbott will never fully recover from his encounter with a ‘manstopper.’”
Bell stopped, reluctantly.
“We will leave the building,” Semmler said. “Walk ahead of me. Lead the way downstairs.”
Bell had no choice but to do as the Acrobat demanded. But at least with every step down the stairs, he was drawing Semmler farther away from Marion. They descended four flights to the lobby and another to the cellar. Semmler indicated the narrow hall and switched positions when they reached the ladder to the trapdoor.
“I’ll go first,” he said, backing agilely up the ladder, covering Bell until, crouched under the life net, he beckoned with the Webley for Bell to come up next.
When the detective climbed out, Semmler said, “Feel around at the foot of the wall. There’s some loose bricks. Pick one up.”
Bell stepped from under the canvas life net and two paces to the wall of the building, crouched down and felt in the dark until he found a brick. Glad of another weapon, he stood with it in his left hand. His right was reserved for his throwing knife, which he would draw from his boot the instant he saw a chance.
Semmler said, “Your interference ruined years of meticulous planning. It cost me time and treasure and dimmed my star. Promises made to my kaiser, my army, and my family have all been broken. I will redeem them now that I have Talking Pictures in hand. But it did not have to take so long.”
He gestured with his pistol. “Before you get any silly ideas about braining me with that brick, throw it through that window.”
Bell raised the brick, watching Semmler’s posture for signs of the split second of distraction he needed to go for his knife. But Semmler was watching closely and with sublime confidence in his mastery of the situation. Bell tried another tack. “Meticulous planning for what? I am mystified. What is it you want?”
“I want to save Germany from well-meaning fools. Throw the brick.”
Bell tried again. “What—”
Semmler trained his gun at Bell’s chest. “Throw the brick or convalesce with Abbott.”
Bell threw the brick at the lighted window. The glass shattered, and shards fell from the frame, widening a jagged hole.
“Here’s your next choice: either keep dogging my steps or try to save what is dear to you.”
Christian Semmler raised his free hand for Bell to see. Between his thumb and forefinger he held a book of safety matches. Beneath the matches, cupped in his big palm, was a dark cylinder, which looked to Bell in the uncertain light from the broken window to be a small chunk sawed off a stick of dynamite and fitted with a fuse and detonator. Semmler manipulated his fingers with the dexterity of a magician. He lighted a match and touched the flame to the fuse.
It caught with a shower of sparks. Semmler lobbed the dynamite through the broken window. Bell heard it hit the floor. There was a moment of silence, then a loud explosion. Bright white-orange flame suddenly lit the spot outside the window where they were standing, making it bright as day.
Christian Semmler looked Isaac Bell in the face.
“I could have simply shot you. But I prefer revenge. So it is up to you to choose, Chief Investigator Bell. Shadow me like a good detective or jump down that trapdoor like a good husband and climb to the roof in hopes of leading your lovely wife out of the fire before she burns to death. If the stairs are too thick with smoke, you can always jump from the roof in hopes of landing on this life net. We’ve yet to persuade the actors to try it, and I regret that I don’t have time to watch your landing. Go ahead. Choose!”
Isaac Bell spun on his heel, dove under the life net that concealed the trapdoor, and vaulted himself feetfirst through the opening. As his foot grazed the top rungs of the ladder, he pulled his throwing knife from his boot and, without wasting a step of his swift descent, flung it overarm at Christian Semmler’s throat.
Isaac Bell’s blade streaked through the air like a silver bolt of electricity.
Superhuman speed saved the Acrobat from instant death.
But no power on earth could save his face.
Bell’s knife pierced his cheek and his tongue and rasped against his teeth.
Desperate to reach Marion in time, Bell had not lingered to watch.
But as he dropped off the bottom rung of the ladder and whirled toward the narrow hall that led to the stairs, he heard Semmler scream. Loud with dismay, shrill with pain, and sharp as a clarinet, the sound suddenly thickened, gurgling hollowly, drowned in blood.
45
Delicately, but shaking with the effort, Christian Semmler pulled the smooth blade from his flesh. The pain threatened to knock him off his feet. He staggered to the life net, propped an elbow on it to keep his balance, and spewed a mouthful of blood. Then he slashed his coat sleeve with the razor-sharp knife. Spitting more blood, he wadded the cloth, stuffed it in his mouth, and bit down hard to staunch the wound.
He had to get moving. He had to get away. Fire engines were coming. He was afraid he would pass out. But a second explosion blowing glass from more windows galvanized him with the realization that the fire was spreading so fast that if Isaac Bell somehow did manage to reach the roof ahead of the flames, he and his bride’s only way down was to jump to the life net.
The Acrobat’s sudden laughter lanced pain through his face, but he couldn’t help it. It was such perfect justice for all Bell had done to him. With Bell’s own knife, he slashed the ropes that held the net.
White smoke seeped into the secret stairwell. The acrid, tarry stink of nitrate gas clawed at Bell’s lungs. As he raced by the film exchange, a judas hole cover blew open and hot flame shot through the spy hole like a fiery arrow. Bell ducked it and kept climbing, bounding three steps at once, pursued by smoke and fire. He passed the opening to the recording studio. The fire was there ahead of him, licking the bodies, having leaped up an elevator
