The Cutthroat Read online

  “Thank you,” said Isaac Bell. He headed for the door. “Tell me one more thing, Commander.”

  That drew another elaborate sigh. “Now what?”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  An uncharacteristically bleak expression crossed over Abbington-Westlake’s face, and his poignant reply reminded Bell of a shaken Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney the day they found Anna Waterbury’s body in the actor’s flat on West 29th Street.

  “Because I have three daughters.”

  “I never thought of you as a family man.”

  “It sneaked up on me,” said Abbington-Westlake. “When I wasn’t looking.”

  “I thank you for your help,” said Bell, and headed for the door.

  “On the contrary,” Abbington-Westlake replied in cold, measured tones, “thank you, Mr. Bell, for spending more time with me while we sorted out what you are up to.”

  The door opened, swinging inward. The tall, thin shadow Bell had cornered in Whitechapel entered.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Bell.”

  Behind him were his heavyset partner in tweed, whom Bell had encountered outside the Electric movie theater, and another, who had the height and heft of a Marine sergeant out of uniform. They crowded into Abbington-Westlake’s office, blocking the door.

  Isaac Bell gave them a quick once-over and looked at Abbington-Westlake.

  The British spymaster said, “I do not like being hoodwinked nor made sport of.”

  “I would think by now you’ve gotten used to it,” said Bell. To the shadow and his men he said, “Gents, get out of my way.”

  They spread out, left and right, with the shadow in the middle.

  Bell looked the shadow over again, and admitted, “You surprise me. I hadn’t realized you’re more of a fighting man than a spy.”

  “I restrained my better instincts on orders. My new orders mesh with my instincts. Are you familiar with the Gurkha fighters’ kukri?” He took a leather sheath from his coat and pulled out of it a foot-long curved knife made of heavy steel. It looked like a boomerang with a razor’s edge.

  His men whipped service revolvers from their coats, cocked them, and aimed them at Bell’s head. Bell looked at Abbington-Westlake. “I seem to be the only one who doesn’t know his new orders. Care to fill me in, Commander?”

  “We’ll start with your accomplices. The agent who pretended to be a German, and the agent who pretended to be a police officer, and the agent driving your growler.”

  “I hailed the growler on Oxford Street. The bobby was an unemployed potboy. The German is a Dutch tulip salesman.”

  “Their names?”

  “Didn’t catch them.”

  “My offices,” said Abbington-Westlake, “are in the back of the building and encompass the rooms above, below, and next to this one. You may yell in outrage. You may scream in pain. You may weep with dismay. No one will hear you. And, frankly, if by a miracle they do, I will send them packing with a word. We will start with your accomplices and work our way slowly to what you are really up to. Enjoying a bit of vengeance on the way.”

  Isaac Bell opened his hands and addressed Abbington-Westlake. “I’m embarrassed. Not only did I fail to see that this fellow who’s been following me around is an actual fighting man, I also fell for your pomposity act. It never occurred you were vicious as well as unpleasant.”

  “Slashing with the Gurka kukri requires a very fine touch as its primary purpose is to sever bone and muscle.”

  “With a single blow,” said Bell. “I’m familiar with the kukri. It is the Nepalese weapon of choice for beheading people who annoy them.”

  “Reginald has that fine touch,” said Abbington-Westlake. “He can use it as a skinning knife. I’ve seen him flay a man’s arm from wrist to shoulder, removing a layer so thin you could read your morning paper through it. Name your accomplices.”

  “Now I’m really embarrassed. I completely forgot to ask.”

  “Hold his arms,” said the shadow.

  “Wait!” said Abbington-Westlake. “Take his gun.”

  Isaac Bell had been trying to distract the gunmen with bravado and sarcasm while weighing his chances of shooting both with a quick draw of his Browning before they shot him. As practiced as he was at clearing his holster and firing fast, the odds were abysmal. Even if he managed to shoot them both, the kukri knife would take his head off.

  “I am opening my coat slowly,” he said, “to hand you my automatic, butt first.”

  He did. Abbington-Westlake took it and swung it like a club. The heavy barrel raked Bell’s forehead and smashed his hat to the floor. Head ringing from the blow, Bell heard the spymaster say, “I’m informed he carries a derringer in his hat.”

  They fished it out.

  “Take his arms.”

  Isaac Bell stepped back and played his last card. “Do you know what makes a fighting man?”

  The man with the knife answered with cold certainty, “It takes fatal wounds to stop him.”

  “Then you’ll forgive me.” Bell dove to his left. For the barest fraction of a second, he caught all three off guard. He hit the floor rolling, tucked his knees, and got his fingers inside his boot and around his throwing knife. The gunmen were recovering, tracking him with their pistols, and the shadow was raising the kukri for a killing blow.

  A gun went off, thunderous in the small room, the slug throwing splinters from the floor into Bell’s face. He hurled his blade underhand. A flicker of steel and light disappeared in the shadow’s throat.

  Bell saw a gun sight-line up with his head. He was moving forward, reaching. The kukri fell from the shadow’s hand. Bell caught it and slashed with all his might.

  A hand grasping a pistol fell to the floor.

  The other gunman gaped, horrified, and when Bell lunged at him, he whirled out the door. Still moving, Bell whipped around with the knife drawn back to slash.

  Abbington-Westlake screamed, backpedaled as the blade whistled through the air, and dropped Bell’s Browning. Bell snatched it off the floor and sprang to his feet, breathing hard.

  “This is your mess. Clean it up, stay out of my way, and we are even.”

  “Even?” Abbington-Westlake gestured at his fallen men, one squeezing his tweed sleeve to his bloody stump, the other clutching his throat. “How are we even?”

  Isaac Bell picked up his derringer and his hat.

  “You still have two hands, don’t you?”

  26

  Isaac Bell stalked into the British Lock Museum with the thief-catcher strongbox under his arm. “I found this with a note attached that said return to Lost & Found care of keeper Roberts.”

  What happened to your face?”

  “Slipped shaving.”

  Nigel Roberts closed both arms around the heavy chest and lugged it to its spot beside the German chastity belt. “I’d have lent it to you.”

  “I would not have you lose your job and your home on my account.”

  “It’s the Ripper’s account.”

  “I thank you for all your help. Maybe I can pay you back. Abbington-Westlake has a theory that the Ripper was sending messages to, quote, ‘besmirch the Freemasons.’ What do you think?”

  Nigel Roberts’s eyes glittered. “I’ll look into it. But I will tell you right off, it would be far more complicated than the spy supposes. And much, much more interesting.”

  “I hope I haven’t sent you down a rabbit hole.”

  “I like rabbit holes.”

  Maybe it wasn’t as lunatic as it sounded, and Bell had a strong feeling that the old cop would devote the rest of his life to investigating the Freemason angle. No doubt that if there were such an angle, Nigel Roberts was the man to nail it down.

  Bell extended his hand. “I’ve got to catch the boat train.”

  “Are you convinced the
killer who murdered your Anna is Jack the Ripper?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s a man in his forties. I’m pretty sure he never stopped killing. I am pretty sure he is carving a message into these poor girls’ bodies that says who he is. But the only fact I know for sure is that until I decipher his message, he’s still on the loose.”

  Bell stopped at the Jermyn Street office on his way out of London.

  “What happened to your face?” Joel Wallace asked.

  “Ran into a door. I want you to see what you can turn up on Jack Spelvin.”

  “Who?”

  “The Wilton’s Music Hall callboy Emily remembered.”

  “Oh, yeah. But I thought she was confused.”

  “Just in case I’m the one confused, I’d like you to find out where Mr. Jack Spelvin was acting in 1889, ’ninety, and the first half of ’ninety-one. And where did he go from there?”

  “Tall order, Mr. Bell.”

  “Do you have any friends in the music halls?”

  “Couple of chorus gals, of course, but, uh—”

  “Start with them.”

  Joel Wallace shrugged dubiously. “Before their time.”

  Bell said, “Maybe their mothers remember him.”

  27

  Aboard the Jekyll & Hyde Special highballing to Toledo and Detroit, Jackson Barrett and John Buchanan were ensconced in their private cars, Buchanan closeted with the company treasurer, Barrett entertaining a clutch of newspaper reporters with a bottomless whiskey bottle and a font of theater stories.

  “Mr. Barrett?” asked an attractive woman representing a Chicago paper. “You alternate the roles of Jekyll and Hyde, seemingly at random. Do you ever forget which role you are playing?”

  The big baritone voice lowered conspiratorially: “Well, I’ll tell you. When in doubt, I glance into the wings and steal a look at Mr. Buchanan. If he’s made up like Hyde, I know I’m Jekyll.”

  The reporters laughed, and scribbled.

  The company publicist, standing guard, beamed.

  The Boys, as he called Barrett and Buchanan, had always been geniuses at booming a tour, but for Jekyll and Hyde they were outdoing themselves, and the bookings more than made up for the expense of freeloading journalists. On this leg of the tour, they had even attracted a wire-service writer, whose nationally published articles would boost ticket sales in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Denver, all the way to San Francisco.

  Barrett took a sip from his teacup, having apologized for not joining the drinkers with a solemn, “Duty calls at eight-thirty.” A second sip, and he added, “If Mr. Buchanan looks like Jekyll, I am almost certainly Hyde.”

  “But how do you slip so effortlessly from Jekyll into Hyde?”

  “Slip? One never slips from Jekyll into Hyde. One emerges from Jekyll into Hyde!”

  It was not all a bed of roses. One crotchety writer—a failed thespian, Barrett had no doubt—asked, “What, exactly, happened that stopped the show last Thursday in Columbus?”

  The publicist answered smoothly, without mentioning the dread Rick L. Cox by name. “A man in the audience suffered some sort of attack of agitation. He became so disturbed that he began shouting while the actors were performing. The theater’s house manager decided, cautiously but wisely, to lower the curtain while the ushers attempted to calm the man and until he could be escorted from the auditorium.”

  The crotchety writer checked his notebook, and asked, “What did the man mean by shouting, ‘Those are my words! I wrote that’?”

  Barrett stepped in. “Mr. Buchanan and I asked that very same question after the show. We were informed that the poor fellow was so confused that he literally didn’t know his own name. The doctors ordered him removed to an asylum, where they could examine him thoroughly. I’m afraid that is all we know at the moment.” He shook his head, and those nearest thought they saw his eyes mist with tears, an arresting sight in such a leonine head.

  “Isn’t it a sad reminder that the mask of tragedy is not worn only on the stage?”

  They were nodding reflectively when John Buchanan strode in from his car, bellowing, “Forgive me, lady and gentlemen of the press, forgive me. Mundane duty called. When our generous backers catch up in Toledo, they will expect an accounting of our production, accurate to the penny . . . Are you enjoying the Jekyll & Hyde Special?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “You run a mighty hospitable train.”

  “Can I ask you, Mr. Buchanan? Examining your tour schedule, I note that after one week each in Toledo and Detroit, you will play a full extra week in Cincinnati, which is longer than you’re scheduled for St. Louis and Denver. Are you at all nervous about committing to such a long run in Cincinnati?”

  “Not in the slightest. We’ve always encountered the most astute audiences in Cincinnati. And it’s good for the company to settle in now and then for a longer run.”

  Jackson Barrett stole a look at the Chicago lady’s notebook and winked at the publicist. Her opening sentence would practically pay for the train.

  Two of the handsomest actors that ever graced the modern stage are heading for Chicago with hope in their hearts and charm to burn.

  The wily old publicist nodded a clear signal that The Boys better toss a coin to choose who would thank her at an intimate supper after the show.

  Buchanan finished his answer.

  Barrett picked up the cudgel.

  “Cincinnati is a splendid omen for the continued success of Jekyll and Hyde. The Civil War general who commanded the troops that saved Cincinnati from Confederate invasion was named Lew Wallace. I am sure that each and every one of you remembers that when he retired in peacetime, Lew Wallace wrote a famous novel called . . . Lady? Gentlemen?”

  “Ben-Hur,” they chorused.

  “The novel that inspired the play Ben-Hur.”

  “The most successful play in the history of the American theater.”

  “Which,” Barrett fired back, “launched the most lucrative road show ever!”

  “At least,” said Buchanan, “until the good people of Toledo, Detroit, and Cincinnati buy their tickets.”

  More scribbling, more grins from their publicist.

  The clock struck the hour, and things got even better.

  Isabella Cook breezed into the car in a diaphanous tea gown. Two qualities struck anyone who had only seen her on the stage. Up close, she was tiny. And, seen in person, her big, round eyes were bigger, her bow lips more sensual, and her aquiline nose straighter than seemed possible on a mortal.

  “I hope I am not interrupting.”

  The male reporters leaped to their feet. The lady from Chicago wrote,

  Isabella Cook’s melodious contralto voice sounds as if Our Maker had chosen it to harmonize with each and every one of her beautiful features. The winsome blonde wears her hair in the modern style of the heiress Gabriella Utterson, who is key to the terrifying plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  Barrett and Buchanan had risen with a flourish, exchanging a private glance. Say what they could about their leading lady—and they could say plenty—the “Great and Beloved” never missed an entrance nor any opportunity to boom a show in which she had negotiated a percentage of the take. Another glance said, Worth every penny.

  “My dear, how good of you to stop in.”

  “Come sit between us.”

  And she did, prompting the first question, which started, of course, with condolences.

  “With the greatest sympathy for the recent loss of your husband, Miss Cook, may I ask you, as a recent widow, do you find it terribly difficult having to perform night after night in such an arduous role?”

  Isabella smiled bravely. “It would be much harder, if not impossible, without the firm shoulders of Jackson Barrett and John Buchanan to rely on, and to lean on, and, I am grateful to say, occasion
ally weep on.”

  The lady from Chicago wondered how to couch the big question in her readers’ hearts. “Would it be fair to say they make you feel a little less lonely?”

  Isabella Cook smiled at one, then the other. “More than a little.”

  Now—how to ask?—which of the handsomest actors that ever graced the modern stage made the widow feel the most less lonely? But the male reporters were growing restive, and whiskey had made one cocky.

  “Jekyll or Hyde?”

  Isabella obliterated him with an innocent, “My favorite Jekyll and my favorite Hyde do everything necessary to make the show go on.”

  Their stage manager entered on cue. “Excuse me, Miss Cook. Excuse me, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Buchanan . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Young?”

  “You scheduled a principals’ rehearsal.”

  The actors rose as one. “Duty calls, gentlemen and lady. Mr. Young will see you back to the dining car.”

  But before the reporters could drain their glasses and close their notebooks, it suddenly all went to blazes. “Just one more question, please?”

  The wire-service reporter, an old man reeking of whiskey and nickel cigars, had yet to speak. He had come aboard at Columbus. The publicist didn’t know him, and they had assumed he had been put out to pasture, covering theater news. He had put a dent in the whiskey, and had nodded amiably at the actors’ jokes. Now, just as they were wrapping things up, he had a question.

  “Have you run into any difficulty selling tickets owing to the reports of murdered women?”

  28

  Jekyll and Hyde’s publicist stood, wild-eyed and speechless, in the swaying car.

  John Buchanan said, “What?”

  Jackson Barrett asked, “What do you mean?”