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

him shrewdly. “I regret to inform you that your old friend Lord Strone has been put out to pasture.”

“Leaving only you?”

“To your great good fortune,” said the commander. “I will have that cab surrounded by twenty picked men.”

“No,” said Bell. “Not one. This German is as sharp as they come. He’s survived twenty years’ spying in London and you never caught him. You don’t even know his name. He’ll spot your picked men in a flash. We will keep it simple—you, me, and him.”

“How did you stumble upon him?”

“Sheer luck,” said Bell.

“I thought so. How?”

“I was closing in on a Japanese. The German beat me to him. He wrecked everything I’d been working for. I lit out after him and caught up.”

“So you made your luck.”

“Exactly as you would, Commander. Shall we shake hands on it?”

Abbington-Westlake extended a soft pink hand. Bell gripped it hard. “Just so we understand each other, sir, I will spot your ‘picked men’ just as I spotted your shadow. Don’t try to slip them past me.”

“Wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”

Fog was thickening when Isaac Bell pulled up in front of the Charing Cross railroad station in a closed carriage, a roomy cab that Londoners called a growler. He opened the door and beckoned Commander Abbington-Westlake. The Navy spy was dressed identically to the hordes of City bankers rushing home in bowlers and raincoats, with one exception. Instead of an umbrella, he carried a walking stick with an ivory knob carved to resemble the head of a crocodile.

Bell moved over to make room on the seat beside him. Abbington-Westlake climbed in, and the Van Dorn driver set his horse at a quick trot up the Strand.

“Wait. Where are we going?”

“Our German changed his mind at the last minute. Trafalgar Square.”

“But—”

“But your picked men are at Charing Cross?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Because I suspect this fellow is going to run us in circles until he feels safe.”

At Trafalgar Square, a flower girl tapped the window and handed Bell a scrap of paper.

Bell read aloud, “‘Berkeley Square.’”

“How did that girl distinguish this cab from a hundred others?”

“The same way the German will. The driver has a white ribbon tied to his whip.”

The horse trotted up Cockspur to Pall Mall, up Pall Mall and across Regent Street to Piccadilly, where it turned at the Ritz Hotel onto Dover and down Hay Hill into Berkeley Square. It stopped abruptly. James Mapes flung open the cab door and climbed heavily inside with a strongbox under his arm. He was dressed in a fine suit of clothes, a rabbit-felt fedora, and the latest Burberrys waterproof. Bell could almost hear Joe Van Dorn’s howls of protest over his expense sheet.

“Took your time,” Mapes said in an accent so heavy that Abbington-Westlake, straining to see his face in the dark, said, “What was that?”

“He said,” said Bell, “we took our time.”

“Damn right, we took our time, and we’ll continue to take our time until we’re convinced you have something of value.”

“Vere ist der muny?”

“Where are the fire control plans?”

Mapes patted the strongbox. “In der buks.”

“Open it.”

“Show der marks.”

Bell passed him an envelope. “Give me the key.”

Mapes pulled a key from his pocket but held on to it and used it like a letter opener to slit the envelope. Suddenly a shadow loomed out of the fog. The driver knocked a warning, but he was too late, and the shadow took the shape of a constable’s helmet. A truncheon rattled the window.

“Ist der trick!” Mapes shouted. “Schweinhund!”

Bell snatched the key from his hand, but Mapes held on to the envelope as he pushed open the opposite door. Bell lunged for him, blocking Abbington-Westlake’s attempt to trip him with his walking stick. Mapes tumbled out, eluding Bell’s grasp, and ran into the gardens of Berkeley Square.

The constable lumbered after him, blowing his whistle. Abbington flung open his door.

Bell pinned his arm. “Let him go.”

“He’ll escape.”

“We have his strongbox,” said Bell. “There’ll be coppers all over us.” He called to the driver, “Get us out of here!”

The horse galloped onto Fitzmaurice Place, rounded the curve into Curzon Street at a speed that caused the top-heavy growler to careen on two wheels. The driver regained control before it fell on its side. Cracking his whip, he wove in and out of lanes. Suddenly they emerged into the flurry of Piccadilly traffic just west of the Ritz, where they blended in with a hundred other growlers, hansoms, and petrol motor taxis. At the edge of Green Park, he pulled under a streetlamp haloed by the fog. It cast soft light on Bell’s and Abbington-Westlake’s faces.

“Why is he stopping?”

“To give his horse a breather,” said Bell.

“Shall we have a look in the box?”

“Be my guest,” said Bell. He handed over the key.

“Wait!”

“Why?”

“Funny feeling,” said Isaac Bell. He leaned in and studied the box carefully. “I think it’s a trick.”

“What trick? I fail to see a trick. I see a strongbox filled with priceless information.”

“Let’s see your torch.”

Bell switched on the flashlight and played the beam over the lock and the keyhole.

“What do you see, Bell?”

“Give me your walking stick.”

24

Gingerly, Isaac Bell inserted the key partway into the strongbox lock.

Then he poked at the key with Abbington-Westlake’s walking stick.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“Let us pretend that you are turning that key,” said Isaac Bell. He turned the stick around and used the ornate knob to shove the key deeper into the lock. It engaged with a sharp snick. A sudden explosion of noise resounded in the closed cab like a thunderclap. The crocodile disintegrated, spraying Bell and Abbington-Westlake with splintered wood and ivory.

“What?” gasped Abbington-Westlake.

His shattered stick was pinned in the iron jaws of the wrist manacle that had sprung from the box.

“I had a funny feeling it was a thief catcher,” said Bell.

“A what?”

“Thief catcher. I read somewhere that accountants had to look out for them when they audited a dead man’s estate.”

Abbington-Westlake