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

Collins being a prime example. But quite another to teach fencing, as Mr. Barrett trained Mr. Young. Double that to teach the exquisite skill of Italian fencing.

Detective Eddie Tobin waited at the Chelsea Piers in a fast launch. Joseph Van Dorn clambered aboard. Tobin started up a pair of eight-cylinder Wolseley-Siddeley gasoline engines that Isaac Bell had had shipped over from England and thundered across the crowded, smoke-shrouded harbor toward Staten Island.

Tobin, whose misshapen face reflected a terrible Gopher Gang beating when he was a Van Dorn apprentice, lounged at the helm like a man who had been born in a cockpit, nonchalantly dodging tugs, coal barges, railcar floats, victualing lighters, sail and steam freighters, and liners, at thirty knots. Ordered by Chief Inspector Bell to look afresh at the Oppenheim yacht explosion, the young detective had found a witness.

“How come the cops never talked to him?” Mr. Van Dorn wanted to know.

“He doesn’t talk to cops. And he won’t talk to us either, at least not directly.”

Van Dorn assumed the witness was one of his cousins as the tight-lipped Tobin-Darbee-Richards-Gordon-and-Scott clan of Staten Island scowmen included oysters tongers, tugboat men, coal pirates, and smugglers.

“The problem is, Mr. Van Dorn, it’s going to be hearsay.”

“I’m not building a court case,” Van Dorn growled. “All Isaac needs is ammunition.”

Into the harbor at St. George, Tobin slowed just enough for two muscle-bound oyster tongers to jump on from a pier head. Van Dorn nodded coolly but shook hands. Jimmy Richards and Marvyn Gordon were in and out of jail regularly, but they were by and large larcenous, not vicious, for which he would cut them some slack. Tobin raced out into the Kill Van Kull, slowing a mile in and cutting the engines when Richards and Gordon pointed at an oyster scow anchored beside a derelict schooner. A pretty, dark-haired girl stepped out of the low cabin. Van Dorn figured she was about fourteen.

“Molly, this is Mr. Van Dorn, who I told you about.”

Molly extended her hand to shake Van Dorn’s solemnly but invited no one aboard her boat.

Tobin said, “Molly’s father told her what he saw. She’s going to tell you.”

Molly said, “An old Italian greengrocer with a big hooked nose hired Father to take him to the yacht.”

“The Oppenheim yacht?”

“The one that blew up. He delivered crates of lettuce. The water was rough, and he got sick on the way back. Seasick. Sweating and throwing up. When Father helped him up to the dock, his nose fell off.”

“His nose—”

“And his big black mustache. The Italian kind.”

Van Dorn wired Isaac Bell in Los Angeles.

YACHT

OLD MAN

ACTOR AGAIN

“Now we know that he doesn’t kill only for twisted pleasure,” Bell confided in Marion, whom he had been consoling with a late supper after another day of rain had forced her to take her cameras indoors. “He kills for profit, too.”

“He killed to get control of the show.”

The Cleveland field office was not thrilled to have an investigation reviewed by a detective as young as James Dashwood. That Dashwood reported directly to Chief Investigator Isaac Bell did not make the Cleveland boys love him more.

“Interesting,” Dashwood commented politely after a painstaking examination of photographs from the morgue.

“Yeah, what’s interesting?”

“Well, that you could conclude that the murderer did not carve crescent shapes on the victim’s arms.”

“Which we did.”

“On the other hand, these marks on her legs could be interpreted as crescent-shaped.”

“They could also be interpreted as stab wounds inflicted during their struggle.”

“What struggle? The coroner concluded that death was rapid, if not instantaneous, due to this wound in her throat, or this separation of vertebrae C3 and C4 . . .”

The Cleveland chief concealed a longing to march Dashwood off a Lake Erie pier. “Is there anything else?”

“There is something odd about this theater program that Mr. Buchanan inscribed to the lady.”

“My pleasure,” John Buchanan had written over his name in the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde cast list. And under it, his signature. Both flowed in a clear, bold English round hand, decorated with beautiful hooks and dramatic flourishes.

“What about it?”

“You did a remarkable job of documenting their ‘visits’ with each other.”

“Rich folk don’t go to a lot of trouble to hide it. If the lady’s husband didn’t notice, or didn’t want to notice, who’s going to call them on it?”

“And it was genius discovering the husband’s girlfriend.”

“Thank you, sonny.”

“But what is it about this program? It’s driving me nuts— May I keep it, please?”

“You’ll have to sign a receipt.”

“My pleasure,” said Dashwood.

The Cutthroat had waited too long.

The rain had slowed everything to a maddening crawl.

It was time—long past time—to attack.

A vital murder.

A joyous slaughter.

46

Joel Wallace outdid himself with his second cable to Isaac Bell:

EMPTY COTTON SHIPS

LIVERPOOL TO NEW ORLEANS

NO PAPERS

With little hope for more than a list culled from old newspapers, and even less for a quick answer as to where the murderer had gone next twenty years ago, Bell wired the New Orleans field office:

GIRLS MURDERED AUGUST–DECEMBER 1891

A letter arrived at the railcar. The envelope was addressed to Isaac Bell, c/o the Arcade Depot, where the Jekyll & Hyde Special was parked.

The letter inside read

Dear Boss,

Mile 342. SP. Midnight.

Come alone, old boy.

At the end of the day, isn’t it just between us?

I couldn’t blame you if you don’t come alone.

Or don’t come at all.

I ask too much of bravery.

One of us is immortal, and you know it isn’t you.

“Twenty-to-one, it’s a hoax,” he told Archie Abbott.

“You going anyway?”

“Have to.”

“Alone?”

“Like the man says.”

Bell recognized the handwriting as similar to the “My funny little games” letter that Jack the Ripper wrote to the Central News Agency in 1888—which Scotland Yard had thought authentic and put up on posters in the fruitless hope someone who knew him would recognize the handwriting.

A crescent was inked under Jack the Ripper’s signature, which anyone could have picked up reading the papers. But “Dear Boss” was more