The Cutthroat

Closing night in Denver, while Marion roamed the Princess Theatre backstage scouting angles for her cameras, Isaac Bell watched Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from an eighth-row house seat on the aisle. The fans and critics who raved about the famous Dream Duel when Jekyll’s potion triggered hallucinations had not been exaggerated. Bell was impressed.

He had fenced for Yale and still practiced religiously. At the Fencers Club on 45th Street, his best opponent was U.S. Navy saber champion Lieutenant Kenneth Ash, whenever both men found themselves in New York. Together, the detective and the naval attaché were developing a new attack — the “back shot”—which had judges scratching their heads and opponents bewildered.

In Jekyll and Hyde, the actors’ swordsmanship was miles above swordplay taught in drama schools. They were saber fighters of the first rank, Buchanan quick and powerful, Barrett possibly his superior, but not by much.

* * *

Where did I see you, Mrs. Bell?

The Cutthroat watched Marion Morgan Bell while she was deep in conversation with the head carpenter and the head rigger. The tall blonde was as beautiful as any actress yet seemed oblivious to the effect she had on the seasoned backstage hands. The men were following her around like a pair of puppies and vying with each other to capture her attention with the intricacies of moving the subway car and biplane out of the Princess Theatre and back on the train.

Where did I see you?

44

SAN FRANCISCO

The Jekyll & Hyde Special was racing on the Nevada flats, whipping past telegraph poles at seventy miles per hour. But thanks to improvements in Thomas Edison’s electrostatic induction, Isaac Bell did not have to climb them to tap the lines. Edison’s “grasshopper telegraphy” did the job for him, jumping Bell’s orders from his private car to the wires beside the railroad tracks the instant he touched the key.

He sent three last-ditch messages in a swift hand.

Dashwood — whom Bell had ordered back to St. Louis to sit in on the postmortem examination of Rick Cox — received

CLEVELAND

BANKER’S WIFE

DISAPPEARING ACT GIRLFRIEND?

Joseph Van Dorn was glad-handing Justice Department prosecutors in the agency’s Washington, D.C., field office in the New Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue when he received

LEND A HAND NEW YORK

FIRE ESCAPE

YACHT

Van Dorn sent blistering wires to his men, who had turned up nothing but goose eggs in either of those investigations. Then he caught the B&O’s Royal Blue to New York, read the goose-egg reports word for word, and headed into the theater districts.

Joe Wallace’s message from Isaac Bell read

SPELVIN

FULL SPEED

* * *

The Cutthroat was still on the train to San Francisco when he finally remembered where he had seen the woman.

Columbus, Ohio.

Last month, before Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit.

An evening performance.

The house manager was delaying the curtain, and he had peeked out at the audience to see why it was being held. Typically, a couple were taking their own sweet time strolling to their seats on the aisle — local luminaries, the usual richest man in town who had married the prettiest girl — an ordinary occurrence of which he had thought nothing at the time as he ducked back from the curtain to take his place. In fact, he had barely noticed them, for what had caught his eye was a woman directly behind them. She was walking alone, as poised as a duchess escorted by cavalry, into the theater to see him again onstage. Blond and perfect. His heart had soared. Emily.

No, not Emily, Mrs. Isaac Bell. Why were you in Columbus?

And who are you, Mr. Bell?

Are you the leader of the new faces?

I think you are. I think you command them. I think you are hunting me.

I don’t know why. I doubt you’re a copper. But I don’t care who you are, Mr. Bell. No dead man can lock me up.

You first. Then your lovely wife. Back-to-back.

A vital murder.

A joyous slaughter.

* * *

“May I join you?” Isaac Bell asked Henry Young, who was sitting with a cup of coffee in the dining car. The train was crawling up the Sierra Nevada pushed by two extra engines. The mountains, deep in spring snow, looked as remote as the far side of the moon, but soon the special would crest at Donner Pass — only five short hours from San Francisco.

“Of course, Mr. Bell.”

“It occurs to me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sitting down before.”

Young smiled. He looked ten years younger, and the twitch in his cheek had vanished.

“And you look very happy.”

“I am,” said the stage manager. “I had my best night’s sleep in a year.”

“You’re not troubled that the tour is almost over?”

“I am thrilled. I let The Boys talk me into this one against my better judgment. Touring is a young man’s game. Give me a Broadway play I load once instead of fifty times. Mind you, every stage manager should learn his trade on the road. Earn the right to stay home and then stay home.”