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

an old man reeking of whiskey and nickel cigars, had yet to speak. He had come aboard at Columbus. The publicist didn’t know him, and they had assumed he had been put out to pasture, covering theater news. He had put a dent in the whiskey, and had nodded amiably at the actors’ jokes. Now, just as they were wrapping things up, he had a question.

“Have you run into any difficulty selling tickets owing to the reports of murdered women?”

28

Jekyll and Hyde’s publicist stood, wild-eyed and speechless, in the swaying car.

John Buchanan said, “What?”

Jackson Barrett asked, “What do you mean?”

All three of the showmen noticed belatedly that the old man reeking of whiskey and nickel cigars had the crafty eyes of a seasoned police reporter with a nose for a big story. Or the cynicism to create one. “What I mean,” he said, “is that since you’ve been on tour, young girls have been getting murdered and mutilated. I’m curious whether the horror of these crimes has affected ticket sales?”

“Why would it?” blurted Barrett. Buchanan tried to stay him with a gesture, which would have been futile if Isabella Cook had not laid her hand on his arm.

“Well, you boys may be too young to remember, but when I was a young pup reporter in New York, Richard Mansfield’s Jekyll and Hyde company came back early from London with their tails between their legs. They had opened to wonderful reviews, as good as they got here. ‘The curtain fell upon a shock of silence,’ said the Telegraph, ‘followed by a roar of sympathetic applause.’ But then Jack the Ripper started murdering. Girl after girl, like is happening here. London audiences stopped buying tickets. As if they were saying, Too much blood in the street. Who wants to see it in the theater, too?”

Buchanan said, “We’ve noted no falloff in bookings.”

“No empty seats?”

“None,” said Barrett, and the publicist finally got a hold on himself to claim, “The wraps are actually increasing.”

The “wrap” was the money taken in at the box office, counted when the curtain went up, stacked in brick-size packs wrapped in paper, and delivered under armed guard to the Jekyll & Hyde Special’s steel safe, to be divvied up at prescribed intervals with the Deaver brothers.

“Why do you suppose your ticket sales have not been affected yet?”

“Audiences love the play,” said the publicist, “because it is a piece with class written all over it, and it has a great plot.”

“What about Alias Jimmy Valentine?” asked Barrett.

“What about it?”

“Jimmy Valentine’s been dogging us in every city we’ve played. Why blame us? Why not blame them?”

The wire-service man pounced with a cold smile. “Because Alias Jimmy Valentine doesn’t have murdered girls in its show.”

“Nonsense,” said Buchanan.

“Fact is, I hear in many quarters that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is jinxed.”

“Nonsense,” said Barrett.

“Add it up—Mr. Medick, the previous holder of the rights, tumbled to his death from a fire escape. Poor Miss Cook’s husband, the late Theatrical Syndicate booking trust magnate, Rufus S. Oppenheim, was blown to smithereens, along with his yacht, before you opened in New York. And now all these girls are getting murdered. Is there anything you would like to say to reassure audiences?”

The other reporters had pencils poised.

Buchanan stepped forward before Barrett could speak. “Yes. Please write that John Buchanan and Jackson Barrett hope that their play will offer audiences a respite from the cares of the world.”

“Tell ’em it has an exciting plot,” said the publicist. “They’ll kick themselves if they fail to see it.”

The reporter wrote down both answers, and turned to Barrett. “Mr. Barrett, have you anything to add?”

“Our hearts go out to the poor women and their families who loved them, and we pray the killer is arrested very soon.”

John Buchanan was red-faced and seething when he finally got Jackson Barrett alone in his Toledo dressing room. “Did you have to say that to that infernal reporter?”

“Say what?”

“‘Our hearts go out to the poor women and their families who loved them, and we pray the killer is arrested very soon.’”

“Somebody had to say it.”

“Did you hear what our publicist said? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. That’s why I said what had to be said.”

“You gave that reporter exactly what he wanted. You made a direct connection between those murders and our show. That story will dog us around the country, slashing sales just like Jack the Ripper did to Mansfield.”

“Nonsense! We live in modern times,” said Jackson Barrett. “Jack the Ripper was a Victorian fiend. We don’t have fiends in the twentieth century. Our audiences will mob the box office for blood and gore.”

“Is that a fact? Would you like to hear what that son of a bitch reporter said when he barged back into my private car after the others left?”

“If it will make you happy, of course I would like to hear what he said. What did he say?”

“He asked, ‘How will we answer a murder victim’s father and mother who claim that our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde provoked her killing?’”

“‘Provoked’? Ridiculous. It’s a play.”

“‘Ridiculous’? Tell that to Richard Mansfield.”

“Mansfield died in aught seven.”

“I know that,” shouted Buchanan. “But in London, according to that bastard reporter, that was the main thing that killed Mansfield’s box office. People asked, did the play provoke Jack the Ripper?”

“Absurd.”

“I know it’s absurd. You know it’s absurd.”

“That reporter knows it’s absurd.”

“But what if ticket buyers don’t know it’s absurd? What if they blame us?” Buchanan sank in a chair and put his head in his hands. “We are sunk . . . Jackson, how in blazes can we get around this?”

Barrett grinned the way he did whenever he came up with a big idea. “Tell you what. We have an airplane, right?”

“What airplane?”

“Flying over the stage. The one you said cost too much. Fortunately, I prevailed. Audiences love it.”

“So what?”

“So we paint an airplane red. We paint ‘Jekyll’ and ‘Hyde’ on the wings. We fly