The Cutthroat Read online

  TITLES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  DIRK PITT® ADVENTURES

  Odessa Sea (with Dirk Cussler)

  Havana Storm (with Dirk Cussler)

  Poseidon’s Arrow (with Dirk Cussler)

  Crescent Dawn (with Dirk Cussler)

  Arctic Drift (with Dirk Cussler)

  Treasure of Khan (with Dirk Cussler)

  Black Wind (with Dirk Cussler)

  Trojan Odyssey

  Valhalla Rising

  Atlantis Found

  Flood Tide

  Shock Wave

  Inca Gold

  Sahara

  Dragon

  Treasure

  Cyclops

  Deep Six

  Pacific Vortex!

  Night Probe!

  Vixen 03

  Raise the Titanic!

  Iceberg

  The Mediterranean Caper

  SAM AND REMI FARGO ADVENTURES

  Pirate (with Robin Burcell)

  The Solomon Curse (with Russell Blake)

  The Eye of Heaven (with Russell Blake)

  The Mayan Secrets (with Thomas Perry)

  The Tombs (with Thomas Perry)

  The Kingdom (with Grant Blackwood)

  Lost Empire (with Grant Blackwood)

  Spartan Gold (with Grant Blackwood)

  ISAAC BELL ADVENTURES

  The Cutthroat (with Justin Scott)

  The Gangster (with Justin Scott)

  The Assassin (with Justin Scott)

  The Bootlegger (with Justin Scott)

  The Striker (with Justin Scott)

  The Thief (with Justin Scott)

  The Race (with Justin Scott)

  The Spy (with Justin Scott)

  The Wrecker (with Justin Scott)

  The Chase

  KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES

  Novels from The NUMA® Files

  Nighthawk (with Graham Brown)

  The Pharaoh’s Secret (with Graham Brown)

  Ghost Ship (with Graham Brown)

  Zero Hour (with Graham Brown)

  The Storm (with Graham Brown)

  Devil’s Gate (with Graham Brown)

  Medusa (with Paul Kemprecos)

  The Navigator (with Paul Kemprecos)

  Polar Shift (with Paul Kemprecos)

  Lost City (with Paul Kemprecos)

  White Death (with Paul Kemprecos)

  Fire Ice (with Paul Kemprecos)

  Blue Gold (with Paul Kemprecos)

  Serpent (with Paul Kemprecos)

  OREGON® FILES

  The Emperor’s Revenge (with Boyd Morrison)

  Piranha (with Boyd Morrison)

  Mirage (with Jack Du Brul)

  The Jungle (with Jack Du Brul)

  The Silent Sea (with Jack Du Brul)

  Corsair (with Jack Du Brul)

  Plague Ship (with Jack Du Brul)

  Skeleton Coast (with Jack Du Brul)

  Dark Watch (with Jack Du Brul)

  Sacred Stone (with Craig Dirgo)

  Golden Buddha (with Craig Dirgo)

  NONFICTION

  Built for Adventure: The Classic Automobiles of Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt

  Built to Thrill: More Classic Automobiles from Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt

  The Sea Hunters (with Craig Dirgo)

  The Sea Hunters II (with Craig Dirgo)

  Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed (with Craig Dirgo)

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  Copyright © 2017 by Sandecker, RLLLP

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cussler, Clive, author. | Scott, Justin, author.

  Title: The cutthroat / Clive Cussler and Justin Scott.

  Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017. | Series: An Isaac Bell Adventure ; 10

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017002791 (print) | LCCN 2017003022 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399575600 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399575617 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735215702 (international edition)

  Subjects: LCSH: Bell, Isaac (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Private investigators—Fiction. | Serial murders—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3553.U75 C88 2017 (print) | LCC PS3553.U75 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002791

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Titles by Clive Cussler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Cast of Characters

  PROLOGUE

  ACT ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  ACT TWO Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  ACT THREE Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  ACT FOUR Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  EPILOGUE

  About the Authors

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  THE VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY

  Isaac Bell — Chief Investigator.

  Joseph Van Dorn — The “Boss.”

  Harry Warren — Chief of Van Dorn Gang Squad, born Salvatore Guaragna, alias Broadway theater sceneshifter Quinn, Isaac Bell confidant.

&n
bsp; Grady Forrer — Head of Research.

  Archibald Angell Abbott IV — New York blue blood, former actor, Isaac Bell’s best friend since they fought a college boxing match.

  Helen Mills — Isaac Bell’s protégée, daughter of U.S. Army Brigadier G. Tannenbaum Mills, first woman detective in the agency.

  James Dashwood — Sharpshooter, Isaac Bell protégé.

  “Kansas City” Eddie Edwards — Railroad protection specialist.

  Texas Walt Hatfield — Former Texas Ranger and Van Dorn private detective turned Western movie cowboy.

  Scudder Smith — Former newspaperman masquerading as inebriated New York Evening Sun reporter.

  Eddie Tobin — Gang Squad harbor pirate specialist.

  VAN DORN FIELD OFFICE CHIEFS

  Horace Bronson — San Francisco.

  Tim Holian — Los Angeles.

  Charlie Post — Denver.

  Jerry Sedgwick — Cincinnati.

  NEW YORKERS

  Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney — Commands New York Police Department 19th Precinct serving the Tenderloin and the Theater District.

  Nick Sayers — Handsome proprietor of Grove Mansion, a bordello known as the “Ritz of the Tenderloin.”

  Skinner — Two-hundred-and-fifty-pound doorman of the “Ritz of the Tenderloin.”

  Neil Nyren — Bordello procurer, twinkly-eyed proprietor of perfume shop in Grand Central Terminal.

  Gophers — West Side gangsters.

  Adolph Klauber — New York Times drama critic.

  Mrs. Shine — Proprietress of Mrs. Shine’s Boarding House for Actors, Anna Waterbury’s landlady.

  Heather and Lou — Dancers residing at Mrs. Shine’s.

  DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE COMPANY

  Jackson Barrett — Actor-impresario, matinee idol, and writer who trades the title roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in his modernized version of the melodrama based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella.

  John Buchanan — Actor-impresario, matinee idol, and the business brains of the Barrett & Buchanan Theater Company, trades Jekyll and Hyde title roles with Jackson Barrett, his near twin.

  Isabella Cook — “Great and Beloved” leading-lady Broadway actress, plays beautiful heiress Gabriella Utterson.

  Henry Booker Young — Barrett & Buchanan’s long-serving, long-suffering stage manager.

  The publicist

  Jeff and Joe Deaver — Wealthy brothers, “angels” who invest in Broadway shows.

  Miss Gold — General businesswoman-actress, ticket shill.

  Rick L. Cox — Playwright, embittered ghostwriter.

  ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE COMPANY

  Mr. Vietor — Star.

  Douglas Lockwood — Plays Detective Doyle.

  Lucy Balant — General businesswoman-actress, Anna Waterbury’s roommate in Mrs. Shine’s Boarding House for Actors.

  Ned Stewart — Head carpenter.

  Stage Manager

  ENGLAND

  Joel Wallace — Chief of Van Dorn London field office.

  Scotland Yard inspector

  Scotland Yard detectives and constables — Active and retired.

  Nigel Roberts — Retired Scotland Yard detective, curator of the British Lock Museum.

  Davy Collins — Tonsorial practitioner with barbershop in Whitechapel.

  Wayne Barlowe — London newspaper illustrator and artist.

  London Emily — Manchester laudanum addict, crucial witness.

  Lord Strone — British Military Intelligence, Secret Service Bureau.

  Abbington-Westlake — British Admiralty, Naval Intelligence, Foreign Division.

  Reginald — Espionage shadow.

  James Mapes — Actor, Garrick Club member.

  Granger — Cruel critic.

  Dolly — West End chorus girl, Detective Joel Wallace’s new friend.

  Dolly’s mother — Former dancer in Tra-la-la Tosca.

  MOVIE MAKERS

  Marion Morgan Bell — Isaac Bell’s bride of one year, his beloved confidante, well-known filmmaker.

  Mrs. Rennegal — Rough-and-ready Cooper Hewitt lighting designer and operator.

  Mr. Davidson — Camera operator.

  Kellan — Davidson’s assistant.

  Mr. Blitzer — Camera operator.

  WALK-ONS

  Medick — Actor-impresario, owned previous tour of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  Rufus S. Oppenheim — Theatrical Syndicate boss, Isabella Cook’s husband.

  Preston Whiteway — San Francisco newspaper publisher and Marion Morgan Bell’s boss for Picture World News Reels.

  Kux — Isaac Bell’s taciturn private car conductor.

  Uncle Andy Rubenoff — Wall Street banker gone to Hollywood.

  Hazel Bradford — “Billboard in the sky” airplane pilot.

  Jimmy Richards, Marvyn Gordon, and Molly —Staten Island wharf rats.

  Coroners, assistant coroners, stage door tenders, theater callboys, stagehands, newspapermen and -women, company cops, locomotive engineer and fireman, apprentice Van Dorn detectives

  THE INNOCENTS

  Anna Genevieve Pape — Stagestruck eighteen-year-old who ran away from home to be an actress. Stage name: Anna Waterbury.

  William Lathrop Pape — Anna’s father, a Waterbury industrialist.

  Lillian Lent — Boston prostitute.

  Mary Beth Winthrop — Springfield, Massachusetts, Christ Church choir soprano.

  Beatrice Edmond — Cincinnati continuous vaudeville dancer.

  Countless women — Actresses, girls of the street, factory workers, Western dance hall girls, a doctor’s wife, a banker’s wife, a librarian, and others.

  PROLOGUE

  NEW YORK, AUTUMN 1910

  “Medick is dead!”

  Jackson Barrett crashed through John Buchanan’s dressing room door, waving the Cognac bottle they kept for opening nights and bankable reviews.

  Buchanan was blacking his face for tonight’s Othello—his Moor, opposite Barrett’s Iago. He tossed his greasepaint stick with a jubilant, “Best news we’ve had in a year!”

  Nothing personal against Medick. That workman-like actor had struck it rich playing the dual title roles in the old Mansfield–Sullivan dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But his sudden death left the gold mine up for grabs, and they had a scheme to grab it with an all-new, modernized Jekyll and Hyde that would clean up on Broadway and launch the richest cross-country tour since Ben-Hur.

  They banged glasses and thundered toasts.

  “Barrett and Buchanan . . .”

  “Present . . .”

  “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!”

  The brandy barely wet their lips. They worked too hard managing the Barrett & Buchanan Theater Company to be drinking men, and their temperate habits kept them ruggedly youthful. Tall and broad-shouldered—“Lofty of stature,” in the words of the New York Sun critic pinned above Buchanan’s mirror—they bounded onstage like athletes a decade younger than their forties. Jackson Barrett was fair, John Buchanan, his near twin, was slightly darker, his hair more sandy than Barrett’s golden locks. Both shimmered with the glow of stardom, and their intense blue eyes famously pierced women’s hearts in the back row of the highest balcony. The ladies’ husbands rated Jackson Barrett and John Buchanan as hearty men’s men—fellows they could trust.

  “I’ve been thinking . . .” said Barrett.

  “Never a good sign,” said Buchanan.

  “What do you say we switch our roles back and forth—keep ’em guessing who’s who. First night, I’m Jekyll, and—”

  “Next night, you’re Hyde. Sells tickets, and might even keep you from getting stale.”

  “Sells even more if we can talk Isabella Cook back on the stage.”

 
“Rufus Oppenheim will never allow her.”

  Isabella Cook’s husband held the controlling interest in the Theatrical Syndicate, a booking trust with an iron-claw grip on seven hundred top theaters around the country. You could not tour first class without Rufus Oppenheim’s syndicate, and you paid through the nose for the privilege.

  “Why did the most beautiful actress on Broadway marry the spitting image of a bald bear smoking a cigar?”

  “Money.”

  “She would never go with us even if Oppenheim let her,” said Buchanan. “There’s no Jekyll and Hyde role big enough for the ‘Great and Beloved Isabella.’”

  “Actually,” said Barrett, “I’ve been tinkering with the manuscript.”

  “How?” Buchanan asked sharply, not pleased.

  “I wrote a new role for Miss Great and Beloved—the beautiful heiress Gabriella Utterson—which makes her central to the plot. Gabriella sets her cap for our handsome young Jekyll. The audience sees the evil Hyde through her eyes and fears for her.”

  Buchanan understood immediately. His partner had gone off half cocked, per usual, but rewriting Robert Louis Stevenson’s stuffed-shirt narrator into a beautiful leading lady was a crackerjacks scheme.

  “Any other changes I should know about?”

  “Added some biff-bang stuff,” said Barrett.

  “Like what?”

  “An airplane.”

  “Airplane? What will an airplane cost?” They had warred over money since they opened their first theater down on 29th Street.

  Barrett said, “Stage manager at the Casino says they’re closing He Came from Milwaukee. They’ll practically give us their biplane if we pay for removing it from the theater. Meantime, you better bone up on your swordplay. We’ll give them a duel they’ll never forget.”

  “An airplane makes the play too modern for sword fights.”

  “The transformation potion makes Dr. Jekyll hallucinate. Jekyll and Hyde fight a Dream Duel.”

  “Jekyll and Hyde onstage together?”

  “Brilliant, isn’t it?” said Barrett. “Good and evil battle for each other’s soul.”