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

moment, the firemen finished tying into the city hydrants. Hose water blasted through the windows, scattering glass and dropping flames to the floor. The smoke shifted. Jerry Sedgwick was there, coughing violently and trying to stand.

Bell got halfway to him before the water stopped. By the time he reached the chief’s desk, flames were jumping to the ceiling again, and the wet towel he pressed to his face had dried stiffly in the heat. Bell slung Sedgwick over his shoulder and tried to retrace his steps. But the smoke was suddenly so dense, he could not see the way. The water streams sprayed again, knocking down smoke. The respite was brief, the smoke thicker. He was running out of air.

“Mr. Bell!”

Dashwood was calling.

“Mr. Bell! Isaac!”

Bell staggered toward the sound of his voice.

He saw Dashwood reaching for him and, behind the young detective, the alley door. He pushed Sedgwick into Dashwood’s arms. In the alley, half a dozen deep breaths of cool, fresh air had the eager chief gasping, “I’m O.K. I’m O.K.”

“Hospital,” said Bell.

“No! I’m O.K. I gotta talk to you.”

“Talk in the ambulance,” said Bell.

The Cutthroat Squad had swung into action, quietly bribing an ambulance crew for their help and the police to clear a path. Once inside the motor wagon, Bell asked, “You sure you’re O.K.?” Sedgwick had lost his eyebrows and most of his hair.

“I mined coal when I was a kid. This was nothing compared to that. Mr. Bell, he blew us up.”

“Who blew us up?”

“Gas fitter said he was from Cincinnati Gas and Electric, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Little while ago, I smelled something funny and went down to check. He had unhooked the meter and laid a slow fuse. That’s what I smelled. I went to put it out, but I was too late. It blew me back up the stairs. What I don’t know is, who he was and why he did it.”

Bell exchanged a glance with Dashwood.

Dashwood said, “Sounds like he knows we’re here?”

“Not the Cutthroat Squad,” Bell said after a moment’s reflection. “More likely, our wanted poster set him off. And now we know something else about him.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s a counterpuncher.”

When the Jekyll & Hyde Special started out for St. Louis, Bell joined the closing-night cast party in the dining car. While pretending to trade small talk, Archie Abbott explained the gas-fitter connection to the Cutthroat.

“If we’re right that he’s had backstage experience, it’s no coincidence that he’s a gas fitter. These days, lighting effects are all electrical. But theater electricians also manage water effects, like rain and floods. That’s because plumbing and gas fitting are similar trades and used to fit pipes to light theaters with gas.”

“He’s an actor, first and foremost,” said Isaac Bell. “It’s one thing to know how to be a gas fitter, but to impersonate a fitter—to costume himself and portray himself as a workman so believably that he could fool an operator as sharp as Jerry Sedgwick, inside our field office, which has his face on a wanted poster—the Cutthroat has got to be one heck of an actor.”

39

ST. LOUIS

“My so-called St. Louis Express was late,” said Marion Morgan Bell. “I missed the show, and I haven’t even changed, but I hoped I could catch you before you left the theater.”

Isabella Cook was removing makeup in her Grand Opera House dressing room.

She inspected the tall blonde and liked what she saw. Stylish in a traveling outfit of tweed jacket, boot-length straight skirt, and a snug cloche hat, Marion Morgan had forthright sea-coral green eyes and a sure-footed smile—clearly a woman like herself who got things done and done right.

“Your husband claimed he was faithful to his wife. One look and I’m not surprised.”

“Sounds like you tested him.”

“It would have been a mug’s game. Have you eaten?”

“On the train, thank you.”

“Would you like a glass of wine—I’m having several.”

Her maid poured a glass of Billecart-Salmon Brut champagne for Marion and topped off Isabella’s, who said, “Your telegram was the first I’ve ever had that offered immortality.”

“Isaac wrote me that you expressed a low opinion of ‘movie manufacturing.’ I wanted to capture your attention.”

“You have it. What’s your pitch?”

“There will come a day when the last men and women who were thrilled by you tonight in St. Louis will pass from this earth and take their memory of your performance with them. But if you allow me to film your performance, it will live forever.”

“But I won’t live forever.”

“But we will both live longer than we can imagine when we’re this young. Isaac was just in London and he saw my film of King Edward’s funeral procession. I haven’t been in London in a year, but it’s still showing in the movie theaters. If you let me film your performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you can see your Gabriella Utterson again and again, year after year, for the rest of your life—and so can your audience.”

“They’ll get bored after the second decade.”

“Not of the performance I saw in Columbus,” said Marion, and Isabella Cook laughed.

“Are you always so persuasive?”

“Only for good causes.”

“Do you have your Isaac wrapped around your finger?”

“We wrap each other.”

Isabella Cook sighed. “I’ll bet you do . . . Would he happen to have a brother?”

Marion shook her head, with a small smile. “He’s an only child. His mother died when he was a little boy . . . I want to move the play out of doors, beyond the confines of the stage.”

“Why?”

“When Mr. Hyde stalks your Gabriella in a storm, I want beautiful Central Park buffeted by a gale.”

“Why?”

“Death is a thief. It steals our joys. When we take Gabriella Utterson out of doors, we will see her joy in the sun, in the rain, in the snow and trees and sky—the joy she will lose if the evil in Jekyll and Hyde takes her life.”

“How do you go about ‘buffeting’?”

“I haven’t done any yet, but while I