The Cutthroat by Clive Cussler (popular books to read txt) 📗

Lucy Balant walked home to her shabby hotel, exhausted. She had never been so tired in her life. She hadn’t spoken a word of Alias Jimmy Valentine yet, hadn’t set a foot onstage except to rehearse lines with the stage manager for the roles she stood by for. But that didn’t mean she didn’t work. They paid her, fed her, and housed her, and in return the company required her to do any job needed. Skilled with a needle, she assisted the wardrobe mistress. Long days started very early in the morning, repairing costumes and washing them in the theater’s old-fashioned laundry, cranking them through the wringer, then racing up six flights of stairs to the roof to pin them on clotheslines, and ironing them when half dry.

She plodded up the stairs and into her room, shut the door, and leaned against it for a moment of peace and quiet in the dark. This was their last night in Philadelphia, then on to Boston, where maybe one of the regular actresses would get sick, or quit, or fall off the stage and break her neck.

“Lucy?”

She jumped, her heart leaping into her throat. A tall figure was in her room, standing in the shadow between the bed and the wardrobe.

“Don’t be afraid.” A woman’s voice, thankfully.

A raven-haired woman in her twenties stepped into the light spilling through the window. “I have to talk to you.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I let myself in.”

Lucy’s heart was still pounding. “I locked the door when I left.”

“I picked the lock. Lucy, my name is Helen—”

“Picked the lock? You forced your way into my room. What are you talking—why are you here?”

“I must talk to you. My name is Helen Mills. I am a Van Dorn detective. There is no reason to be afraid.”

“I am afraid. What are you doing in my room?”

Mills had recently been promoted to full detective—the first woman for the Van Dorn Agency—after graduating college. Quick to see opportunity and quicker to act, it only occurred to her belatedly to put herself in Lucy’s shoes. How would she or any woman alone feel if the door to her hotel room turned out not to be the protection she thought it was?

“I am sorry. This case is so important, I forgot my manners.”

“If you ever had any to start with— Case? What case? Why didn’t you just wait in the lobby? Or you could have found me at the theater.”

“I am sorry,” Helen apologized again. “But I wanted your full attention.”

“You have it. So what do you want?”

Helen Mills said, “I have terrible news and I need your help. Your roommate Anna is dead.”

“What? No! She was fine when I left New York.”

“Anna was murdered.”

Lucy staggered back a step and struck the bed, which nearly buckled her knees. “No, she . . .”

“I have to ask you some questions. Your answers could help us find the man who murdered her. I’m sure you’re upset.”

“How would you feel?”

“I would be very upset . . .”

“What do you mean murdered? What happened? Who’s the man?”

“We don’t know, yet. If you can manage to answer my questions, you can help us find him.”

“But why? That doesn’t make sense. She’s a really nice girl. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Still in her coat and shaking her head, Lucy sat on the bed. “She read for my part. If she’d gotten it instead of me, she wouldn’t have been killed.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Would she have told you if she did?”

Lucy said, “I would have known it. All she cared about was getting a role. That’s all she wanted. That’s why she left home, and it didn’t sound to me like her home was bad. I think she had a wonderful home.”

“Did she have a man who was hoping to be her boyfriend?”

“No one I saw.”

“Was there any man she might have gone with to an apartment?”

“I doubt that,” said Lucy. “She was Miss Innocent. I’d be amazed if she ever kissed a boy.”

Helen said, “But for some reason she went to an apartment with a man.”

“Alone?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, that’s a surprise, I must say. A huge surprise— Oh . . .”

“What?”

“No, it couldn’t be. He was too old.”

“Who was too old?” asked Helen.

“Some old man, a Broadway producer, was coaching her to read for a role.”

“Can you describe him?”

“No, I never saw him. She just told me about him.”

“How old?”

“She just said ‘old.’ He limped. I think he used a cane. And he was married. Or, at least he wore a wedding ring. She really thought he was going to help her get a role.”

“Did she read for the role?”

“I don’t know. She said he knew someone important in the show. She was sure she would get the job.”

“Did she say in what play?”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The spring tour. Barrett & Buchanan are taking it on the road.”

Isaac Bell was expecting her to wire a report. Instead, Helen Mills went straight to the Broad Street Station and took the train to New York City. Racing uptown from Pennsylvania Station, she stopped at the Almeida Theatre, where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had been playing before it went on tour, then hurried to the Van Dorn field office at the Knickerbocker.

Bell was issuing orders in the bull pen and detectives were rushing out. Ordinarily, they would welcome her with big greetings, but tonight all she got were grim nods. Bell sent Harry Warren on his way and conferred quietly with Archie Abbott, who had been his best friend since they boxed in college. An actor before his socially prominent mother demanded he quit the stage, Archie knew the ins and outs of show business.

Finally, Bell beckoned her to join them.

Helen Mills had apprenticed under Isaac Bell and become his protégée. Mr. Van Dorn had ordered her on the Philadelphia posting to broaden her experience. She hadn’t seen Bell in months, and the first thing she noticed was a face so joyless, it looked hacked from granite. She exchanged