The Cutthroat

  “Like I say, spies don’t trust nobody.”

  “The thing is,” Bell mused, “he is such an insider . . . If anyone knows what the Yard won’t tell me about the Ripper, it’s Abbington-Westlake.”

  “Will he talk to you?”

  “Not unless he sees a payoff.”

  “What can you offer him?”

  Bell thought hard for a full minute. “We need a German.”

  “Where do we get a German?” asked Wallace.

  “I’ll get the German. You find out which of Abbington-Westlake’s London clubs he’ll eat lunch at tomorrow. Can you do that by midnight?”

  Wallace nodded. “Bank on it.”

  “Report to me in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

  “At midnight?”

  “I’ll need you to stand lookout.”

  “What’ll I be looking out for?”

  “The cops.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it won’t do me or you any good if Metropolitan Police constables arrest the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s Chief Investigator.”

  “For what?”

  “Burglary.”

  “Fact-based truth,” Joel Wallace agreed. But he blinked like a man whose head was spinning. “Mind me asking what’re you planning to break into?”

  “The Lock Museum.”

  22

  At seven o’clock, the bar at the Garrick Club emptied out as actors hurried off to the West End theaters to dress for the evening shows. The few who remained nursed their drinks with an eye to keeping them going until some prosperous soul offered to buy a round for a player “at liberty.”

  The obvious candidate was a tall, amiable American in an expensive white suit. He was a guest, the barman confided to the members, who had presented a letter of introduction from The Players, an actors’ and writers’ club in New York that had a reciprocal membership arrangement with the Garrick.

  Sadly, the guest was already buying whiskeys for James Mapes, a handsome leading man whose great mane of wavy hair was laced with silver. Despite his years, Mapes, whose mane might once have been as golden as Isaac Bell’s, still cut a commanding figure. Only his frayed cuffs suggested that he had been refusing to play character roles for longer than he should.

  “‘Reckless,’ the critics call me,” he told Bell. “‘Deluded.’ Granger—the cruelest of those scribblers—actually wrote of my last Count of Monte Cristo, and this I quote from memory, ‘Mapes ought to have switched to character parts whilst Queen Victoria reigned.’”

  “Why would the critics pile on like that?” asked Bell sympathetically.

  “Because they’re right! Who wants to see an old warhorse making love to a filly?”

  “Half the men in the audience.”

  Mapes laughed. “Ah, you’re a generous soul, Bell. Yes, sir. Generous.” He peered into the diminished contents of his glass.

  “Would you join me in another?” asked Bell. “Not to worry, it’s on the firm.”

  “Then I thank you, and I thank the firm.”

  Bell signaled the barman, who poured fresh doubles.

  “Cheers! . . . Mr. Mapes, have you ever played a German?”

  “Not in donkey’s years. Way back when I was too young to carry leads.”

  “What sort of Germans did you play?”

  “Villains. Heavies. Vhut utter Shermans ah zere?”

  They took their drinks and wandered through the handsome club, which was hung with oil paintings of members, present and deceased, in famous roles, and decorated with costumes and stage props. Bell pointed out an empty space. “Waiting for you, perhaps?”

  “More likely, my friend Vietor. He’s made a ‘sudden smash sensation’ in Alias Jimmy Valentine.”

  “O. Henry’s safecracker story. My wife and I saw it on Broadway.”

  “What did you think of Vietor’s reformed criminal?”

  “I believed Jimmy Valentine intended to go straight. Even though I knew the short story, he had me worried for his fate.”

  “He asked me to coach him in the role,” said Mapes. “Subduing the dark side of Vietor’s character was like pulling teeth. Now he’s touring your provinces, raking it in hand over fist. Hope for us all! When last I last saw him in New York, he was cadging drinks at the Waldorf-Astoria. Now he’s ready to return to England, equal parts rich and famous.”

  In the well-appointed library, Bell found the privacy he was seeking. He had spent an hour in it earlier, poring through a collection of old programs, but had had no luck finding any from Wilton’s Music Hall. “Do you know anyone in the theater named Jack Spelvin?”

  “No.”

  “He was a callboy at Wilton’s back in the eighties.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mean George Spelvin?”

  “Jack.”

  Bell wondered whether Emily could have confused the name of the boy she fell for. It seemed unlikely. “Did you know George Spelvin?”

  “There is no George Spelvin. It’s a pseudonym, a nom de guerre, when we don’t want the audience aware we’re on the stage. Rather more commonly used in America.”

  “Is it used in London?”

  “Occasionally. The language volleys of back and forth; actors who tour across the pond end up speaking almost similar English. Here, we’re more likely to bill ourselves as Walter Plinge instead of George Spelvin.”

  “But not Jack?”

  “Never heard of a Jack Spelvin.”

  Bell had to wonder. The Ripper loved his games. Maybe Emily’s callboy actually was the same man who tried to kill her, a murderer with a sense of humor.

  “I gather,” said Bell, “he was a sort of boy-of-all-work.”

  “Excellent means for an apprentice seeking a toehold on the stage,” said Mapes. “Callboy, prompter, assistant stage manager, a walk-on, and up you go. Or if he discovers he’s got a head for business, he’ll shift to the front of the house—sell souvenir programs, rent opera glasses, assist the treasurer in the box office. By now, Jack Spelvin could own a bloody theater—though you can be sure he’d have changed his name from Spelvin.”

  Mapes gazed mournfully into his glass, which was empty again, and Bell realized he had better get to business before any more whiskey went down the hatch. “Mr. Mapes,” he said, “it is my honor to offer you a job. It’s only a one-night stand, but it will pay equal to a full month on the West End.”

  “May I presume wardrobe is included?”

  “My tailor will fit you for whatever suit of clothes, shirts, ties, hat, and coat you decide that you need for the role. The costume, of course, is yours to keep.”

  “Railway tickets?”

  “It will be right here in London. We will go by cab,” said Bell, keeping to himself that the entire job would likely take place inside a cab.

  “Why me?”

  “The role demands a charismatic actor with nerves of steel.”

  Mapes considered the prospect. “‘Nerves of steel’ implies some possibility of danger.”

  Isaac Bell looked him in the eye, and the actor saw the American’s amiable expression harden perceptibly as he reassured him with a promise. “You will never be out of my sight.”

  “When will the curtain rise?”

  “You’ve got a busy morning with my tailor. Curtain rises tomorrow evening at eight.”

  “Do you remember Nellie Bly?” asked the Cutthroat.

  The girl—her name was Dorothy—was silent.

  “Famous newspaperwoman? . . . No?”

  Dorothy lay on her back beside an empty steel oil drum in the warehouse of a Cleveland refinery. She was wrapped head to toe in his cape. He had left her face showing. Her blue eyes had popped open, staring at a sky she would never see.

  “What am I saying? Nellie Bly was famous before you were born.” He glanced agai
n at the girl. Still staring, still silent.

  “Beautiful girl. Nellie had a lot of nerve. She got herself locked up in a lunatic asylum once just to report on what it was like to be locked up in a lunatic asylum. She wrote a book about it: Ten Days in a Mad-House. I always wondered—did Nellie worry that her editor would forget to get her out? What if he fell off a train or died in a fire while she was still locked up? . . . But the reason I ask is, Nellie went on to be a wealthy businesswoman. Not only that, she became an inventor. In fact, she invented this astonishing new kind of barrel.”

  He slapped the steel drum and it gave a melodious boom.

  “That’s right—an easily sealed fifty-five-gallon oil barrel that never rots or leaks and is strong enough to hoist onto ships and railcars and be transported anywhere in the world. John D. Rockefeller is forever in her debt. And so am I. For another ‘perfect crime.’”

  He scooped Dorothy into his arms and lowered her into the barrel. He banged on the head and sealed it tight with a simple wrench.

  “See, Dorothy? All gone.”

  Clocks were striking midnight in London.

  Across the street from the wrought-iron-fenced lawns of Lincoln’s Inn, the windows were dark in all three stories of the Lock Museum. Lights out except for a garret dormer in the roof, which told Isaac Bell he had assumed correctly that there would be no hall porter guarding the front door at this late hour. If the porter lived in a servant’s room in the cellar, he had gone to bed, since no lights showed in the tradesman’s entrance under the front steps. But the light in the window garret indicated that Nigel Roberts was home, either awake in his room or, hopefully, falling asleep reading in bed.

  Isaac Bell hurried up the front steps and pretended to knock at the door. He held his other hand at waist height, assessing the lock, first with his turning tool, then with a pick. He waited, looked around, and pretended to knock again. With only the gardens across the street, no one could see him from a window. Still, he pantomimed disappointment, descended the steps slowly, and walked around the corner onto Gate Street.

  Joel Wallace was waiting inside a two-wheeled hansom cab. The cabby, seated high up behind the passenger box, was an ex–Royal Marine who drove regularly for the Van Dorn field office. His horse was feeding from a nose bag.

  “How’s the lock?”

  “Brand-new Yale.”

  Joel Wallace groaned. “Why don’t you just borrow the thief catcher? I bet Roberts would lend it to you.”

  “He’d be happy to help,” Bell agreed. “But if it goes sour, the old boy’s out of his job. And his home.” He took out his watch. “Time. I’ve got twelve-ten.”

  Joel Wallace moved his ahead twenty seconds. “Twelve-ten.”

  “Bring the cab around the corner at twelve-fifteen.”

  “You can’t jimmy the Yale and lift that strongbox in five minutes.”

  “If I don’t, I’ll have a bobby wondering why I’m hanging around the Museum’s front steps at midnight.” He jumped out of the cab. “Five minutes. I’ll pass you the box on the garden side. Don’t stop. I’ll catch up at the office.”

  Bell hurried around the corner and up the steps. The lock was a standard six-pin, new and well made, probably by an English firm licensed by the Yale company. He reinserted his turning tool, put on light pressure, and worked in his pick. He found the pin that was most out of alignment in its hole—the candidate to be picked up first. He lifted it, which allowed the pressure on his turning tool to rotate the cylinder tube slightly. Then he felt for the next pin made to bind most tightly by the cylinder’s rotation.

  He heard footsteps on the sidewalk, the measured tread of a big man in heavy shoes. At this hour in this wealthy district, a firm stride and menacing swagger announced a police constable on patrol.

  23

  Isaac Bell stood tall and kept working his picks at waist level.

  He lifted the third pin, and the fourth. Two to go. But the fifth and sixth were both binding. Rushing to unlock the door before the bobby reached the steps, he had applied too much torque with his turning tool. He eased it slightly, prayed, and got one pin to go up, freeing the cylinder from all but the final pin. The footsteps stepped behind him.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  The constable’s imperious tone demanded an immediate response. The lack of the deference ordinarily accorded a well-dressed gentleman implied that a housebreaker with a brain in his head would dress the part to blend in with the residents of the neighborhood—wouldn’t he, sir?

  The sixth and final pin resisted the pick.

  “Good evening, Constable,” Isaac Bell tossed over his shoulder, shielding his hands with his torso.

  “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 Yal
e 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.”