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

Dashwood eased quietly down the rows and sat when he was close enough to distinguish faces on the stage.

Beautiful actresses were rehearsing getting strangled.

“Say, kid?” he whispered to the opera glasses boy, who was hustling down the aisle with an armload of programs. “How come both guys are strangling them?”

“Mr. Barrett and Mr. Buchanan exchange the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They have to rehearse both as villain and hero.”

Jackson Barrett and John Buchanan actually looked quite similar—so alike, they could pass for brothers. They were big, vigorous men in their early forties and Arrow Collar model handsome, except when one did the strangling. Then, while the stage lights grew faint, his whole stance changed. Hunched low, expression transformed, Mr. Hyde appeared smaller yet, in some mysterious way, even stronger, and left no doubt he would make short work of the girls.

“Who are the rich guys?”

“Angels.”

“What?”

“Our investors—Mr. Deaver and Mr. Deaver—the moneybags.”

“And who’s the scraggly fellow over there?”

The boy looked where Dashwood had nodded. His cheery expression darkened. “The troublemaker.”

Dashwood looked more closely. “The troublemaker” was younger, early forties, than his appearance suggested. “What’s he doing here?”

“Snuck in like you.”

A woman screamed.

The cry of abject terror whipped Dashwood’s head around. She wasn’t on the stage but somewhere in the dimly lit rows of empty seats. The detective was up in a flash, running to help, a hand plunging for the pistol under his coat. She screamed again. Now he saw her across the empty rows. She stumbled, wracked with convulsions, clutched her breast, and collapsed into the aisle.

“Miss Gold!” thundered a strong voice from the stage.

Mr. Hyde had straightened up to John Buchanan’s full height.

The fainting victim scrambled to her feet. “Yes, Mr. Buchanan?”

“One piercing shriek will suffice, Miss Gold.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan. I thought the moment required—”

Jackson Barrett strode forward and cut her off in tones as thundery as his partner. “Young lady, we plant you in the audience to ‘faint from terror,’ to encourage the rumors that our grisly Mr. Hyde will so overly stimulate Boston ladies that they swoon. The ‘moment requires’ that you convince potential ticket buyers—not overly distract the audience that’s already purchased tickets to see me and Mr. Buchanan and Miss Cook onstage.”

“Yes, Mr. Barrett.”

“Get back on the floor.”

“Stretcher bearers,” roared Buchanan. “Enter and exit swiftly.”

Actors, clad in white like hospital orderlies and a nurse, raced down the aisle. They rolled Miss Gold onto their stretcher and hauled her away, with the nurse trotting alongside taking her pulse.

The rehearsal resumed.

An incredibly beautiful actress entered, and Dashwood recognized the famous Isabella Cook, whose picture was on every magazine stand. She seemed to glow in the light. Buchanan burst from the shadows, hunched as Mr. Hyde, and growled at her. Before she could recoil, the shabby man with the long hair jumped from his seat, shouting,

“Those are my words! I wrote that.”

Barrett and Buchanan advanced to the edge of the stage, shoulder to shoulder, and peered into the lights. “Who’s that out front?”

“I wrote that. You stole my words.”

“Good Lord,” shouted Barrett. “It’s Cox—again. Out, damned liar!”

Buchanan ordered, “Remove that fool from this theater.”

“I wrote that. Those are my words.”

“Mr. Rick L. Cox, you are a lunatic, get OUT of our theater!”

Ushers stormed down the aisle and dragged Rick L. Cox out the doors.

“Mr. Young!” demanded Buchanan. “How did he get in here?”

Young, whom Dashwood had already determined was the stage manager, ran to them, wringing his hands. “I am terribly sorry, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Buchanan. It won’t happen again.”

“Bloody well better not.”

“Crazed lunatic.”

The stage manager turned to the gaping cast and stagehands. “Ladies and gentlemen, may we resume, as we are raising the curtain in six hours?”

Rehearsal continued.

Dashwood established from a purloined program that the stage manager’s full name was Henry Booker Young. Almost as tall as Barrett and Buchanan, and nearly as handsome, the rail-thin Young was bounding around in shirtsleeves and vest, listening to the stars, and hurrying down to the orchestra pit to confer with the conductor. When he came out into the house to check the lighting, Dashwood trailed him back up the steps and through a door beside the stage.

Backstage was busier than a farm at harvest.

In a single glance about the high, narrow space, James Dashwood saw crowds of actors and stagehands, enough rope to raise sails on a square-rigger, and a gang of cussing carpenters attempting to assemble half a New York City subway car. Overhead in the towering flies floated a full-size biplane—another “sensational scenic effect,” Dashwood surmised. Riggers were struggling with ropes, trying to keep it from swaying, and Dashwood had a sudden insight that illusion in the theater was forged with heavy objects.

He made himself invisible in the folds of a curtain and waited for a lull in the activity storming around the stage manager. At last, Henry Young announced, “Lunch, ladies and gentlemen. Back in half an hour.”

Actresses, actors, and stagehands stampeded into the wings, and James Dashwood found himself alone with Henry Young. He followed him onto the stage and froze, transfixed by the auditorium. It looked as if each of the thousand seats was an eye staring at him.

He edged sideways into the far wing and bumped into a table arrayed with knives, clubs, swords, and blackjacks. It looked like the aftermath of a police raid on a street gang. But when he picked up a gleaming dagger, he discovered it was made of rubber painted silver.

“Put that down!” shouted the stage manager, running full tilt from the opposite wing.

“Sorry, I—”

Young snatched the rubber dagger from his hand and placed it reverently where it had been. “This is a property table, young man. The props are laid out in the order the actors will pick them up. Never, ever, ever molest a property table. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Dashwood straightened his shoulders and stood taller. “I am Detective James Dashwood, Van Dorn Agency. May I ask you a question?”

“About what?”

“Do you