The Cutthroat

“Have you business here, sir?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing?”

The sixth pin finally let Bell lift it. He increased pressure on his turning tool and the Yale clicked open. He palmed his picks, turned the doorknob, and faced the constable. “I am a guest.”

“Seems a late hour for a visit to a dark house.”

“I am staying the night,” said Bell. “The British Lock Museum hopes to acquire my father’s collection. They’ve put me up in the director’s suite.”

He stepped inside the front hall.

“As I was dining late at my club, they lent me a key. Good night, Constable.”

“Good night, sir.”

Bell closed the door on the officer’s salute, locked it, and glided silently from the front hall. The collection room was lit dimly by the gleam of a streetlamp that penetrated the curtains. Bell went straight to the German chastity belt, guided by reflections off its glass case.

The thief-catcher strongbox was next to it. He closed the lid carefully, pocketed the key, and slung the heavy box under his arm. He counted a full two minutes and then glided to the front window to check the street.

He could not see the constable.

Joel Wallace’s hansom cab rounded the corner at a quick trot. Bell had no choice but to ease out the door, hoping the constable had moved on, close it behind him, and hurry down the steps. He crossed to the garden side of the street, let the cab overtake him, and passed the strongbox into Joel Wallace’s hands.

“Where did the constable go?”

Joel Wallace pointed.

Bell went the other way.

* * *

“And then the Frenchman said to me…”

Commander Abbington-Westlake was holding forth at the long and raucous members’ table in the dining room of the Savile Club in Mayfair. A wine bottle stood beside each of the dozen men at lunch. When its contents drained low, a white-coated steward replaced it from the member’s personal stock.

Formed by wealthy writers and artists, and currently occupying a pleasant house on Piccadilly, the Savile prided itself on a distinct absence of stodginess. This would have surprised the many who had fallen for Commander Abbington-Westlake’s pomposity act, proof that, as espionage masquerades went, stuffed shirts were as likely to be underestimated as drunkards. He was a large, round man, with fleshy cheeks, an officer’s mustache, and hooded eyes. His plum-toned voice carried.

“So the Frenchman said to me, ‘I’ve learned enough about you English to know that one is in deep trouble when a gentleman addresses one as “sir.”’”

He paused for a significant glance up and down the table and twitched a bushy eyebrow. “I replied, ‘You are correct, sir.’”

The dining room echoed with laughter, cries for new bottles.

After lunch, he joined the others for cigars and bustled into the bar, calling, “A very large brandy, my good man.”

“Make it a double,” said Isaac Bell, materializing from a dark corner. “The commander is buying.”

Abbington-Westlake covered his surprise. “How the devil did you get in here, Bell?”

“My introduction from the Yale Club of New York City was greeted hospitably.”

“Standards are falling everywhere.”

“Especially in the quality of shadows.”

“All right!” said Abbington-Westlake. The bar was crowded with after-lunch cigar smokers. “Perhaps we should—”

“Find a quiet place to talk about why you’re having me followed?” asked Bell.

“I said, ‘All right!’”

The club had a little patch of garden in the back. They sat there and smoked.

“Why have you tackled me here in my own club?” Abbington-Westlake asked aggrievedly. “It’s not done, Bell. Not at lunch. What is it you want?”

“In addition to calling off your shadows?”

“They’re off. What do you want?”

Bell said, “I told you years ago, that behind a scrim of amiable bumbling, upper-crust, above-it-all mannerisms, and a witty tongue, you are extremely well informed about your fellow spies.”

“Competitors,” said Abbington-Westlake. “Not fellows.”

“Then what made you leap to the absurd conclusion that I am spying for the United States?”

“Or freelancing for German Kaiser Wilhelm’s intelligence service,” Abbington-Westlake shot back. “Can you blame me for being suspicious in a dangerous world? Why wouldn’t the Van Dorn Detective Agency go into the spy business? Pinkertons spied for your President Lincoln.”

“Don’t tar me with the Pinkerton brush,” Bell said coldly. “Van Dorns are not company cops and strikebreakers. Nor are we spies.”

“Bell, England is staring down gun barrels. The Hun is on the march. He’s building dreadnoughts faster than we are. Why wouldn’t I expect the worst?”

“Why didn’t you just ask what I was up to?”

“Would you have admitted it?”

“Of course. We’re on the same side.”

“What side? Your government is maddeningly neutral.”

“The United States steers clear of Europe’s squabbles. But when push comes to shove, we stand against tyrants. The British Empire is greedy, but the king of England is not a tyrant. The Russian tzar is a tyrant. So is the German kaiser.”

“Then tell me what you’re doing in London. And spare me your masquerade about Jack the Ripper. Really, Bell, it seems below you.”