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

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 is something I must get from one.”
    “There’s no crates in here, sir. Just