The Cutthroat

Actresses, actors, and stagehands stampeded into the wings, and James Dashwood found himself alone with Henry Young. He followed him onto the stage and froze, transfixed by the auditorium. It looked as if each of the thousand seats was an eye staring at him.

He edged sideways into the far wing and bumped into a table arrayed with knives, clubs, swords, and blackjacks. It looked like the aftermath of a police raid on a street gang. But when he picked up a gleaming dagger, he discovered it was made of rubber painted silver.

“Put that down!” shouted the stage manager, running full tilt from the opposite wing.

“Sorry, I—”

Young snatched the rubber dagger from his hand and placed it reverently where it had been. “This is a property table, young man. The props are laid out in the order the actors will pick them up. Never, ever, ever molest a property table. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Dashwood straightened his shoulders and stood taller. “I am Detective James Dashwood, Van Dorn Agency. May I ask you a question?”

“About what?”

“Do you recall a young actress named Anna Waterbury reading for a role before you left New York?”

“No.”

Dashwood showed him Anna’s picture. “Do you recall seeing her?”

“No.”

“Is it possible someone else heard her read for a role?”

“No one reads unless I conduct the reading.”

“So you are quite sure you didn’t see this actress?”

“I am positive. All character bits for actresses and actors were filled long before we left New York.”

“There was no reading in New York?”

“None! Excuse me, young man, I have an opening night in five and a half hours.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate the time you gave me.” Dashwood extended his hand, and when he had the stage manager’s clamped firmly in his, he said, “You know, sir. You look so familiar.”

Henry Young preened, and admitted, “I trod the boards years ago. Perhaps you saw me in a play.”

Insulting a subject was no way to get him to talk freely, so James Dashwood did not confess that he spent his small amounts of free time and money at the movies.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been to a play since high school.”

“I toured high schools— Now, young man, as I said, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde opens in Boston tonight — provided a hundred disasters are set straight in the next five hours. Good-bye.”

Dashwood wired New York.

ANNA NEVER READ JEKYLL

Then the detective burrowed into the file drawers that contained the Boston field office’s collection of wanted posters. Apprenticing for Isaac Bell, James Dashwood had learned the power that came from memorizing criminals’ faces. He was sure he recognized the Jekyll and Hyde stage manager, and he wondered whether he had seen Henry Booker Young pictured with a price on his head.

8

An old woman walking a dog found Lillian Lent’s body the second morning after she died.

The Cutthroat, who had murdered her, slipped among the morbid, who were watching the police detectives, cops, and reporters, and edged close. They had kicked aside his cape, with which he had so lovingly covered her, and had thrown over her instead a soup-stained tablecloth. That said all that had to be said about so-called human decency.

He moved away and edged toward the bench on which her life had become his before he suddenly had to drag her corpse deep into the bushes. A trysting couple had interrupted him before he could continue with his blade. This morning he had been unable to resist the impulse to attempt to recover the moment by inhaling the atmosphere.

The wind stirred the leaves under the bench. Suddenly he saw the white blur of a handkerchief. He patted his pocket, but even twenty paces away he knew it was his by the gleam of pure silk. White as snow, except for the red splash of his embroidered initials.

He searched his coat, found a half-empty packet of cigarettes, rubbed the wrapper against the inside of his pocket, then strode to the bench and knelt to retrieve his handkerchief.

“What have you got there?”

A sharp-eyed cop had followed him.

“What is that you’re holding?”

“I noticed something that could have been dropped by the man who killed the poor girl,” the Cutthroat answered.

“Hand that over!”

“I presume officers of the Boston Police Department read Mark Twain.”

“What?”

“Pudd’nhead Wilson? Twain’s plot turns on the science of fingerprint identification.”

He rose with the cigarette packet clasped in his handkerchief and held it before the cop. “Don’t touch it! Here, give me your helmet. I’ll drop this inside, and your detectives can retrieve it at the station house without smudging the fingerprints.”

The cop whipped off his helmet and turned it over like a bowl. The Cutthroat dropped the cigarettes inside.

“Thank you, sir.”

“The least a citizen can do,” said the Cutthroat. “Remember, don’t touch it. Leave that to the experts.”

He pocketed his handkerchief and sauntered off.

* * *

James Dashwood got a long-distance telephone call from Isaac Bell.

“Lillian Lent, the girl killed in the Common, was she cut up?”