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

“We’ll be carrying sixty people on the road,” Buchanan answered coldly, and they exploded into a red-faced, clenched-jaw shouting match.

“Melodrama is whipsawed! Why else are we attempting bloody Othello?”

“Cutting down saves money so we can make money.”

“Movies are driving us out of the theaters, and theater audiences are nuts for vaudeville.”

“Your free spending will kill us.”

“Damn the expense! We’re dead without spectacle.”

Their stage manager stuck his head in the door with a finger to his lips.

“Angels,” he whispered.

“Thank you, Mr. Young. Send them in.”

The partners manufactured warm smiles for their investors.

Joe and Jeff Deaver, almost as tall as Barrett and Buchanan and considerably heavier than in their college football days, were heirs to their mother’s locomotive factories and their father’s love of showgirls. Decked out in capes and top hats, twirling canes, and trailing the scent of the perfumed blondes they’d parked in the hall, they could finance Jekyll and Hyde with a stroke of a pen.

“Your timing is exquisite!” boomed Barrett.

“I’ll say. We just got invited to back Alias Jimmy Valentine. Broadway and a tour. They’ve got Vietor from England to play Valentine. And Lockwood to play Doyle. We’re going to clean up.”

“Not so fast,” said Barrett.

“Why?”

“Opportunity has arisen closer to home,” Buchanan explained. “Poor Medick is dead.”

Jeff, the brains of the duo, asked, “Is your Jekyll ready?”

Barrett nodded, arousing Buchanan’s suspicion that his partner’s “tinkering” had included private negotiation with the moneymen. “We are ready to go.”

“Do you have Isabella Cook?”

“We’ll find a way.”

“If you get Miss Cook on board, we say the heck with Jimmy Valentine,” said Joe. “Don’t we, Jeff? Vietor wants too much dough just ’cause he’s English. And Lockwood’s always getting chorus girls in trouble.”

“Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “Medick’s young. What killed him?”

“They say he fell from a fire escape. Fourth floor.”

“That’s crazy. The man was terrified of heights. We had him in our Black Crook. Remember, Joe? They couldn’t get him near the orchestra pit.”

“Something’s fishy. What was he doing on a fire escape?”

“Exiting a lady’s back door,” said Jackson Barrett, “pursued by a husband.”

ACT ONE

SPRING 1911 (SIX MONTHS LATER)

1

On the second floor of New York’s finest hotel, the Knickerbocker, at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s Chief Investigator sized up a new client through the reception room spy hole. The Research Department had provided a snapshot dossier of a “stiff-necked, full-of-himself Waterbury Brass King worth fifty million.”

Isaac Bell reckoned they had their facts straight.

William Lathrop Pape looked newly rich. A broad-bellied man in his early fifties, he stood rock-still, gloved hands clamping a gold-headed cane. His suit and shoes were English, his hat Italian. He boasted a heavy watch chain thick enough to moor a steam yacht, and his cold gaze bored through the front desk man as if the young detective were a piece of furniture.

Research had not discovered why the industrialist needed private detectives, but whatever William Lathrop Pape’s troubles, he had pulled numerous wires for a personal introduction to Joseph Van Dorn, the founder of the agency. As Van Dorn was three thousand miles away in San Francisco, it had fallen to Isaac Bell to extend the favor requested by an old friend of the Boss.

“O.K. Bring him in.”

The apprentice hovering at Bell’s elbow raced off.

Bell stepped behind Van Dorn’s desk, cleared candlestick telephones and a graphophone diaphragm out of his way, and laid down his notebook and fountain pen. He was tall and about thirty years of age, built lean and hard, with thick golden hair, a proud mustache, and probing blue eyes. On this warm spring day, he wore a tailor-made white linen suit. The hat he had tossed on Van Dorn’s rack was white, too, with a broad brim and a low crown. His made-to-order boots were calfskin, well worn and well cared for. He looked like he might smile easily, but a no-nonsense gaze and a panther’s grace promised anything but a smile were he provoked.

The apprentice delivered Pape.

Isaac Bell offered his hand and invited him to sit.

Pape spoke before the apprentice was out the door. “I was informed that Van Dorn would make every effort to be here.”

“Sincere as Mr. Van Dorn’s efforts were, they could not free him from previous obligations in San Francisco. I am his Chief Investigator. What can the Van Dorn Detective Agency do for you?”

“It’s imperative that I locate a person who disappeared.”

Bell picked up his pen. “Tell me about the person.”

William Lathrop Pape stared, silent for so long that Bell wondered if he had not heard. “The person’s name?” he asked.

“Pape! Anna Genevieve Pape,” said Pape, and fell silent again.

“A member of your family?” Bell prompted. “Your wife?”

“Of course not.”

“Then who?”

“My daughter, for pity’s sake. My wife wouldn’t . . .” His voice trailed off.

Bell asked, “How old is your daughter, Mr. Pape?”

“Eighteen.”

“When did you last see Anna?”

“At breakfast on February twenty-seventh.”

“Did she often go away for long periods of time?”

“Of course not. She lives at home, and will until she marries.”

“Is she engaged?”

“I told you, she’s only just turned eighteen.”

Isaac Bell asked a question that he was reasonably sure he already knew the answer to. “When did you report that the girl was missing?”

“I’m doing that right now.”

“But today is March twenty-fourth, Mr. Pape. Why have you waited so long to raise the alarm?”

“What does it matter?”

“It is the first question the police will ask when they get wind we’re looking.”

“I do not want the police involved.”

The tall detective had a steady, baritone voice. He used it to speak soothingly as if explaining a disappointment to a child. “Police involve themselves when the facts of a case indicate the possibility of foul play.”

“She’s an innocent girl. There’s no question of foul play.”

“Policemen suspect the worst. Why did you wait so long to raise the alarm if Anna’s disappearance was unusual?”

Pape gripped his stick harder. “I suspected that