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Marion smiled. “Walt may not be a deadly gunfighter much longer. Movie people are all talking about ‘the tall Texan’ playing cowboy parts. Some people think he could be a star.”
“Please don’t turn his head until we’re sure you’re safe and sound.”
38
Pauline Grandzau had been memorizing the St. Germain section of her Baedeker on the train when suddenly she had to run from a gendarme who demanded her papers at a station stop. The last few miles of what should have been a twelve-hour train ride stretched to another full day clinging to the underside of a slow-moving coal car that finally dumped her near an open-air market in Paris in the rain. Thanks to the tourist guidebook and the foldout map, she found the Rue du Bac as night fell, climbed a steep flight of stairs, and staggered into the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s Paris field office, exhausted, wet, and hungry.
An enormous man seated next to a bright light asked, “What do you want here, miss?”
At least that’s what it sounded like. He spoke French. She did not. But she saw in his eyes what he assumed: a street urchin with dirty hands and face and stringy braids and a
snuffling nose had sneaked into the building either begging for money or running from the police.
He asked her again. The light was so bright it was blinding her. He stood up, and the entire room, which had a linoleum floor and a desk and a chair and an interior door that led somewhere, started spinning.
“Is this the Van Dorn Detective Agency Paris field office?” she asked.
He looked surprised she spoke English.
“Yes, it is,” he replied with an accent like Detective Curtis’s. “What can I do for you, little lady?”
“Are you Detective Horace Bronson?”
“I’m Bronson. Who are you?”
Pauline Grandzau pulled herself up to her full five feet two inches. “Apprentice Van Dorn detective Pauline Grandzau reporting from Berlin.”
She tried to salute, but her arm was heavy, and her legs were rubbery. She saw the linoleum rushing at her face. Bronson moved with surprising speed and caught her.
* * *
“Cable from the Paris field office, Mr. Bell.”
It was from Bronson.
It was long and detailed.
Isaac Bell read it twice.
A hunter’s gleam began burning in his eyes. A smile of grim satisfaction lighted his stern face like the sun glancing off a frozen river, and he vowed to Fritz Wunderlich, to Krieg Rüstungswerk, to Kaiser Wilhelm II, and especially to Imperial Army General Major Christian Semmler that Van Dorn Detective Arthur Curtis had not died in vain.
Book Four: Lights! Camera! Speed!
39
“Telegrapher! On the jump!” Isaac Bell summoned the man who sent and received Morse code on the field office’s private telegraph.
“Wire Mr. Joseph Van Dorn: ‘Inquire U.S. Army and State Department German General Major Christian Semmler. Show them Wunderlich sketch.’
“Wire Research Chief Grady Forrer, New York: ‘Who is German General Major Christian Semmler? Obtain photograph or newspaper sketch.’
“Cable Horace Bronson, Paris Office: ‘Who is German General Major Christian Semmler? Obtain photograph or newspaper sketch.’
“Wire Detective Archie Abbott, New York: ‘Ask Lord Strone about German General Major Christian Semmler. Show Wunderlich sketch.’
“Send them. On the jump!”
* * *
