The Cutthroat

The tramp reeked like death, the homeless man’s unwashed stench of months of filth accumulated deep in the fibers of his rain-drenched shirt and overalls. He had the long white beard of a Civil War veteran, which would make him a very old man in his seventies or eighties — as old as Bell’s father, whose Old Soldier beard was as white. Bell stepped out from under the tank, out of the shadows, and let the starlight fall on his face. The tramp did not acknowledge him but veered warily to avoid him, staggering across the siding and onto the main line. Starlight gleamed on steel; he had a hook for a left hand. One eye was covered by a patch. His slouch hat drooped, as soaked through as his clothes, and he had strapped his possessions around his shoulders in a ragged rucksack. Bell thought of his father, sleeping warm and dry in his Greek Revival town house on Louisburg Square.

Safe on the main line, the tramp resumed his song:

“Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor…”

Just before he reached the trestle, he stopped and faced the sea and stared as if mesmerized by the stars glistening on the wild water. He turned and gazed at the trestle. He looked back at the sea and down in the canyon. The wind carried another whiff of his deathly smell, and Bell suddenly realized this was no masquerade. It was the end of the line. The old man was staring at the sea as if to say good-bye to beauty before he jumped from the trestle.

“There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard times come again no more.”

Suddenly Bell heard a train. It was coming from the west, and in the starlight he saw a locomotive rounding the curve with a string of low-slung flatcars, another slow-moving freight. The old man saw it, too, and plodded onto the trestle.

Many would have let him seek the respite he would never find in life. Godspeed! But there was something stern and hopeful in Isaac Bell that would not give up hope on the most hopeless. A hot bath, clean clothes, and a square meal could change everything, and if the Ripper letter was a hoax, at least it had put him here on the railroad tracks at a moment that called for action.

“Hold on, old-timer!”

The veteran heard him. His head turned slightly, but instead of stopping, he pushed along with his staff to go faster. The locomotive’s dull headlight angled in from the curve, which made the beam bounce among the girders. No whistle. The engineer saw nothing amiss in the crazy leaping shadows. The old man opened his arms wide, embracing the end.

Bell ran full tilt after him, shouting over the rumble of the locomotive, “Hold on, sir! Let me help.”

He halved the distance between them, and halved it again. He thought he might make it — the engineer still didn’t see them, but the train had slowed for the curve. He put on a burst of speed and was reaching for the old man’s shoulder when he heard the sizzle of steel unsheathed.

47

Blade high, the Cutthroat whirled in a lightning pivot.

Isaac Bell’s right arm stretched forward and whipped the loose tail of his slicker at it. The Cutthroat’s blade sliced the oilcloth like tissue paper, and for one precious instant he had startled the Cutthroat, throwing the murderer off balance. His first blow missed Bell’s arm. The Cutthroat slashed again, slicing the slicker to shreds.

Bell pulled his gun and was yanking the slide to cock his first shot when the Cutthroat lunged. His blade leaped in a sudden rapier thrust. Bell parried it with his gun barrel, deflecting all but the lightest touch. It barely pierced his upper arm, but the needle point seemed to strike a nerve, and he felt his hand convulse as if jolted by an electric shock. It popped his fingers open. The pistol fell.

The Cutthroat whipped his blade high.

Bell, in a lightning move, caught the falling gun out of the air with his left hand, forced his right to close around the slide, and cocked it. The locomotive passed them in the instant he fired. Its main rod, which connected the piston to the drive wheels, brushed Bell’s shoulder like a steel fist. It banged him against a trestle girder. The girder kept him from falling into the canyon. But his shot went wild, his gun flew under the flatcars trundling past, and the Cutthroat slashed downward.

The killing blow plunged squarely into the crown of Isaac Bell’s hat.

* * *

The Cutthroat delivered his coup de grâce—a skin-flaying slash.

The tall detective was toppling backwards between two girders. He raised the shredded remains of his slicker as if it were a shield.

This time, the Cutthroat was ready. Nothing could distract him.