Buchanan said, “True,” and Isaac Bell smothered his impulse to level a gun in their faces and demand, “Tell me what is true.”
“But with no pirates,” Jackson Barrett asked, “where did the lost treasure come from?”
Bell was ready for that one. “The Spanish–American War.”
“Yes!” Barrett said, suddenly excited. “They lifted the treasure when the Maine blew up in Cuba.”
“Long John Silver betrayed Cuban rebels,” said Buchanan, and the actors chorused the 1898 battle cry: “Remember the Maine!”
Bell asked, “Can you persuade Miss Isabella Cook to play Dr. Livesey?”
“Miss Cook will demand a share.”
“Whatever agreement you made that makes her happy in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will be fine with me— Which reminds me, I want to see your production again before I report to my investors.”
“You will be our guest tomorrow evening.”
“No thank you, I will buy my ticket. This is strictly business. But there is a favor I would ask you.”
“Name it!”
“If we decide to go forward with Treasure Island, I would like to spend time with your Jekyll and Hyde company—backstage, and aboard your train when you leave for the West.”
“You’ll find it quite dull, Mr. Bell,” said Buchanan. “Strictly business.”
“Melodramas are short on the ‘chorus girls’ of lore,” said Barrett.
“I’m recently married,” Bell grinned back at him. “No need of chorus girls. But I’m obliged to learn enough ins and outs of the theater arts to protect my partners.”
“Let’s hitch your car to our train,” said Jackson Barrett.
“Ride along to San Francisco,” said John Buchanan.
“You’ll be our caboose.”
“I could not ask for more,” said Isaac Bell.
36
The Cutthroat brushed spirit gum on his upper lip and cursed out loud. He had just shaved, his skin was raw, and it stung like the devil. It would sting even worse when he removed the mustache, this time an enormous affair trimmed in the walrus style. He fanned the lace backing with his souvenir program and fixed it under his nose.
He was dressed in blue-striped overalls over a red-checked shirt, which he had bulked up with horsehair padding. Now he perched a battered derby on his head and wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose. Pipe cutters, wrenches, hacksaw, files, and a gasoline blowtorch arrayed in a wooden toolbox completed the portrait of a master gas fitter. He even had a card from the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company emblazoned with the motto “Heat with gas, light with electricity.” The company was expanding, enjoying great success with modern, up-and-coming customers like the Van Dorn Detective Agency on Plum Street.
He hefted the toolbox on his shoulder, sauntered out of his yellow cottage by the river, walked to the streetcar stop, and rode into the center of town. Off near Plum Street, he walked to the Van Dorn office on the ground floor of a substantial-looking building. The private back door was down an alley, but he walked in the street entrance.
They had one wall plastered with wanted posters—including a copy of the imaginatively aged one of himself that had riveted his eye in the red-light district. The sharp-eyed young detective, working in vest and shirtsleeves, had a pistol in a shoulder holster. He jumped up from his desk with an eager-to-help smile.
“Hello there. What can I do for you?”
“I’m supposed to check your meter.”
The detective opened a door to the cellar stairs. “Give a shout if you need anything.”
“Thank you.” The Cutthroat paused on the steps to look at the wall of posters. “Do you think you’ll catch all those guys?”
“That’s our job.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Catch them all?”
“We never give up.”
“Never?”
The Cutthroat studied his poster. He recognized the hand of a newspaper illustrator back in London. A decent artist, but the likeness wasn’t specific. He was tempted to stand beside it, yank off his walrus mustache, and ask, “Look familiar?”
He could use every tool in his box. Theater lights were all electric now, but he had learned gas fitting back in his apprentice days when footlights, wing lights, and border lights burned “town gas.” Here in Cincinnati, it was the new and abundant and more potent “natural,” taken from the ground instead of manufactured from coal.
He found the live-gas inlet pipe, found the master cock, and closed it. He removed the meter from the inlet and outlet pipes. The inlet and outlet holes were supposed to be tightly corked to keep air away from the residual gas inside the meter. Instead, he left them open and laid the meter on the cellar floor, directly under the service pipe, which would get you sacked in a flash by any supervisor who noticed. Then he bridged the inlet and outlet pipes with a prethreaded length of lead pipe, in which he had drilled a microscopic pinhole. He opened the master cock. The gas that leaked slowly through the pinhole would gather in the cellar.
Air entering the uncorked meter would form a highly volatile mix with the gas inside it. He slipped the end of a long length of slow-burning fuse in one of the holes, uncoiled it along the cellar wall, and lit the fuse. When the slowly smouldering flame finally ignited the air–gas mix in the meter, that small explosion would set off the rest of the accumulated gas as powerfully as a blasting cap exploded dynamite.
He climbed the stairs and closed the door.
“What’s that I smell?” asked the detective.
The Cutthroat plucked the blowtorch from his box. “I had to sweat a pipe.”
“Hope you didn’t fire that thing up to look for a leak,” the detective joked.
The Cutthroat laughed along with him. “Believe it or not, no matter how often we warn the public not to, people still light a match when they smell gas in the dark. Sorry about the stink, it will dissipate before you know it.”
Isaac Bell tipped his hat to Isabella Cook.
The actress was drinking tea in a wicker peacock chair in the Palace Hotel’s Palm Court. Other ladies were wearing wide-brimmed, flower-and-feather-heaped Merry Widow hats that were getting tangled in the high-back chairs. Miss Cook sat, unentangled and stylish, in the latest Paris fashion: a Paul Poiret turban hat. Instead of merely framing her lovely face, the close-fitting turban made it all the more beautiful by allowing her eyes, her bow lips, and her aquiline nose to emphasize themselves.
“I have been looking everywhere for you, Miss Cook.”
“Purchasing a ticket will bring you near for three more nights at the Clark Theatre. After that, you may enjoy repeat performances in St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco.”
Bell said, “I can’t risk shouting my proposal in the theater. The audience would lynch me for interrupting your performance.”
She looked him up and down with a small smile and a shrewd eye. “It looks to me like they’ll have their hands full if they try. Who are you, sir?”
Bell swept his hat off his head. “Isaac Bell. May I sit with you?”
“What do you want, Mr. Bell?”
“I have a proposal that will make you rich and happy.”
“I fell for that line when I married.”
Bell said, “I offer my condolences. I know you were widowed last fall.”
She ignored his condolences, and asked, “Is yours a financial proposal?”
“It is.”
“Sit down, Mr. Bell.” She beckoned a waiter, and Bell ordered tea. They shared small talk about Cincinnati and the pleasures and tribulations of traveling, she on the stage, Bell selling insurance to banks and railroads and timber barons. She asked where he lived when he wasn’t traveling.
He answered truthfully as it meshed with his Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock insurance cover. “My wife
and I have a house in San Francisco.”
“New-built since the earthquake?”
“One of the few that survived on Nob Hill.”
She looked suitably impressed by Nob Hob, and Bell said, “I read in the Chicago papers that you are close friends with Mr. Barrett and Mr. Buchanan.”
“We’ve worked together in the past. And we’re having a fine time at present. The Boys are serious businessmen and spectacular showmen—a rare combination in the theater.”
“Where are they from?”
“The thee-ah-tore!” Miss Cook emoted with a devilish smile, and Bell, who had liked her immediately, liked her more. “Born in a properties trunk.”
“Both of them?” he asked, going along with her joke to steer her toward the mystery of where they were born.
“Where else would they be born, Mr. Bell? Some dreary inland city? Some soul-smothering small town bereft of art and theater?”
“I read in the magazines that you’re from a small town.”
“I know of what I speak. Though I confess, had I been born in a grand city, I might have aspired to no higher station than the youngest president of the Ladies Garden Improvement Society.”
“Certainly the most compelling,” said Bell.
“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Bell?”
“No, ma’am. I never flirt with beautiful women.”
Mobile eyebrows joined the smile. “Why not?”
“I am faithful to my wife.”
“Pity . . . What is your offer?”
“I’ve suggested backing a new play for Barrett & Buchanan. I hope you will find it engaging, too, which is why I was asking about their background. As fiscal agent for my syndicate, I am obliged to know the nature and background of potential partners.”
“Their ‘nature and background’ is an open book. They’ve been on the stage their entire lives, and have a reputation for as much honesty as can be found in most producers. Seriously, Mr. Bell, had there ever been a hint of fraud, I would not be in business with them. No, I think you can rest easy on that count. They are what they appear to be—undefeated men of the theater.”
“It sounds like you admire them.”
“I admire survivors who succeed with a minimum of damage to others. The theater is not easy. They do it well. Which is why I don’t care where they were born. For that matter, I don’t know why you care. Now, tell me about your proposal. That’s what got you seated beside me.”
“I am obliged by my principals to conclude arrangements with Barrett & Buchanan first. After that, I have the deepest hope that you will be interested, too.”
“Before you waste your time, let me caution you: I will not work for them,” she said. “I will work with them.”
“That goes without saying,” said Bell. “The sensation you’ve made of Jekyll and Hyde guarantees that you would be a principal, too.”
“Then I look forward to answering more due diligence questions.”
“Well, I’m curious about one thing. It seems strange that the actor Medick and your husband, Rufus Oppenheim, died within days of each other.”
“Strange? Bizarre, is more like it. None of this—a sensational run on Broadway, a first class tour, my ‘triumphant return’—would have happened if they didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Medick owned tour rights to Richard Mansfield’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Barrett & Buchanan backers would never invest in their new version while Medick was still making a go of it on the road.”
“No wonder you say ‘bizarre.’ Is it true that Medick fell from a fire escape?”
“Pursued by a husband, went the story. Medick was a renowned, shall we say, ‘swordsman,’ hated by grooms, cherished by brides.”
“Like John Buchanan?” asked Bell.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Due diligence includes weighing gossip.”
Isabella Cook shook her head. “Mr. Buchanan never dips his pen in the company ink. He conducts his escapades where they are nobody’s business—far from the stage, and higher up the social scale, where smirking moralists are shunned.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. Is Mr. Barrett as sensible?”
“In my experience,” she said, “Mr. Barrett, too, steers clear of actresses— How did we get on escapades, Mr. Bell?”
“Two freak deaths back-to-back—Medick’s fire escape and your husband’s yacht.”
“I almost died, too, speaking of bizarre, but the tender had just taken me ashore to have lunch at the Knickerbocker. I heard the explosion as I stepped onto the pier. I turned and saw a nightmarish sight—where the boat had been—a horrible ball of fire. Sheer luck I had the appointment. Not that ‘luck’ is a word one uses around death.”
“Who were you meeting for lunch?”
“The Boys. Jackson and John wanted me to persuade Mr. Oppenheim to let me return to the stage. Which, of course, he never would have. Men are impossible that way, aren’t they? How long have you been married, Mr. Bell?”
“We will celebrate our first anniversary next week.”
“Do you allow your wife to support herself in her own career?”
“She was in the habit long before I met her.”
“What does she do?”
“She makes movies.”
“Really? I often sneak into afternoon shows. Great fun. I’m sure I’ve seen hers.”
“She is Marion Morgan Bell.”
“Marion Morgan! Of course. The filmmaker who married an insurance man. You’re the insurance man—but not so staid as the label implies—I love her films.”
“She’d love to get you in one.”
“I cannot imagine working with movie manufacturers,” Isabella Cook replied coolly. “On the stage, I play to my audience—not some faceless entity snipping bits of celluloid.”
“Marion is too lovely to be a faceless entity. She’s a knockout— Forgive me! That was thoughtless.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Rhapsodizing about my marriage when you just lost your husband.”
Isabella Cook brushed the back of Bell’s hand with her fingertips and raised cool, clear eyes to his. “Rufus Oppenheim was a dog.”
Back in his railcar, Isaac Bell wired New York:
SPEED UP INVESTIGATING
MEDICK FIRE ESCAPE
OPPENHEIM YACHT
He was grasping at straws.
If only he could come up with some way to distract the Cutthroat. Make him look over his shoulder. Throw him off balance, before he killed again.
37
“Miss Mills,” said the Alias Jimmy Valentine stage manager. “I want you to read these lines with Mr. Douglas Lockwood, who plays Detective Doyle.”
Helen Mills nodded eagerly.
Lockwood was tall and handsome, with a stern manner that fit the character of Doyle, the detective determined to send reformed safecracker Jimmy Valentine back to prison. He took Helen’s arm firmly in his strong hand and stood very close.
He spoke his line.
Helen spoke hers. “Yes, Mr. Doyle.”
The stage manager asked them to do it again. Still holding her arm, Lockwood repeated his line. Helen repeated hers. Then Lockwood addressed the stage manager as if Helen was not standing on the stage between them.
“She’s a bit green. Stiff as a board, actually. Perhaps not hopelessly . . . What time is it? I’ll tell you what, let me rehearse her a little. I’ll bring her back shortly.”
“Half an hour, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Come along, dear. Bring your script.”
Lockwood led her through the wings and back to the principals’ dressing rooms and opened a door with his name on it. It was comfortably sized, with a lighted mirror for putting on makeup, a washstand with running water, and a couch.
/> “Sit there. Now, here’s the thing, dear. If you’re going to put this part across, you’ve got to give the impression that you are attracted to Detective Doyle. He’s a breath of fresh air in your constrained life, and, frankly, quite exciting compared to the boys who hang about trying to court you. So when you say, ‘Yes, Mr. Doyle,’ you must say it as if you are happy—delighted, even—to agree to whatever he proposes . . . O.K.? Now, let’s try it. Here, I’ll make it easy, I’ll sit next to you.”
He sat close to her, took her arm firmly, and spoke his line.
Helen said, “Yes, Mr. Doyle.”
“No, no, no, no.” Apparently baffled, and sounding impatient, he ran his fingers through his hair. Then he patted her shoulder.
Helen Mills said, “I think I could relax a little if you just talked to me for a moment. Tell me about yourself.”
Lockwood smiled, and asked in a husky voice, “What do you want to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . Where were you born? You sound as if you’re from England.”
“Well, that’s very sweet of you to say, but I’m afraid my birthplace is not quite so romantic.”
“I read in a magazine that you’re from London.”
“You’re confusing me with my fellow star. Mr. Vietor is from England.”
“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry,” Helen said. In fact, Grady Forrer’s researchers had queried the magazine’s editor, who stood by the story but offered no actual proof.
“Sometimes publicists exaggerate.”
“Where were you born?”
“Jersey City. Just across the river from New York. You’re not from New York, are you?”
“Oh, gosh, just a little town you never heard of, in Maryland.”
Lockwood sighed. “You Southern girls are just so exciting, I lose all control around you.”
“Please let go of me, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Now, dear, just relax and get into the mood of your line. You are, after all, saying yes.”
“My ‘yes’ does not go backstage.”
“It better if you want to get on the stage,” he said curtly. “Now, come on, dear, we don’t have all afternoon. I can get you this part with a snap of my fingers.”