“Information from Art Curtis and his Berlin apprentice, expanded upon by Archie Abbott and the Research department, proves that the murderer we called the Acrobat, the drummer Fritz Wunderlich, and German Imperial Army General Major Christian Semmler are all one and the same. In addition, Mr. Van Dorn has established that General Major Christian Semmler is not only Krieg Rüstungswerk’s agent, but also a principal. To put it bluntly, he married the boss’s daughter.

“Semmler’s alias, Fritz Wunderlich, flew the coop when he caught wind of our visits to his shops and my calling on his hotel in Denver. Before we congratulate ourselves on Wunderlich’s loss of a string of shops that gave him and his accomplices safe passage around the continent, remember that the German consulates offer General Major Semmler even safer places to hide, get money, rest, eat, and sleep. Tracking Semmler will not be like tracking an ordinary criminal to his hideout. As much as we might enjoy it, we cannot smash open the doors of a sovereign nation’s consulates.

“I had already expressed copies of this ‘Wunderlich’ picture to every field office covering a German consulate in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and the vice-consul’s office here in Los Angeles. Now I’ve informed them it’s a likeness of Semmler.”

“ISAAC BELL’S VOICE RESONATES with confidence,” said Christian Semmler. “Listen!”

He thrust the telephone earpiece at Hermann Wagner.

Wagner, sick with fear, took it with a trembling hand. The Berlin banker had seen the Donar leader’s face for the first time tonight. He had speculated that the mysterious leader might be Semmler, mainly because of rumors about the kaiser’s affection for the officer they called the Monkey. The heavy browridges, the massive protruding jaw, and the gangly arms were frightening confirmation. The leader was indeed the kaiser’s favorite, General Major Christian Semmler. For some reason Semmler had allowed him to see his face, and Wagner feared that Semmler intended to kill him when he was done.

“Listen to him!”

Wagner pressed the telephone to his ear.

He and Semmler were hunched across from each other over a table in the cellar of Germany’s Los Angeles vice-consul’s mansion. The vice-consul was upstairs, aware in only the most general terms of the use they were putting his building to, and probably deeply relieved that he had been forbidden entry to his own cellar.

The telephone was one that Christian Semmler had had connected via the vice-consul’s private line to a microphone he had stolen from Clyde Lynds and had paid an electrician to hide in the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Like an innkeeper tapping a keg of lager, Semmler had laughed as he explained the eavesdropping system to the disbelieving Hermann Wagner.