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

shout, “Yes! Perfect!” But to be on the safe side, the Cutthroat had cleared a path through the rubble at the back of the tunnel in order to escape, with a hostage, if he had to.

He could not have known that Bell was a detective, too. Their boss, no less. But it didn’t matter. Framing Buchanan for the Cleveland murder had worked as planned. Buchanan had no alibi. Not without naming the woman he sneaked off with that night. The philanderer had lost his heart to a pretty little airplane pilot who loved the children she would surely lose in a divorce. Love had made him honorable. Rather than betray her, the poor fool would rot in prison until they executed him.

Plan. Anticipate. Hope.

The Jekyll and Hyde movie had vaulted his usual optimism to stratospheric levels.

Marion Morgan Bell showed them pictures she had taken of the Dream Duel rehearsal.

“Immortal” was hardly the word. Seeing his face and his body in motion had a thousand times the impact of a photograph—ten thousand times—and it was easier than ever to believe that he would never die. And would sure as hell never be captured.

“Please take your places before we start the machines . . . Mr. Davidson? Mr. Blitzer?”

“Right here, Mrs. Bell,” said Davidson. He was standing beside her in the first cranny, twenty feet from the wind machine.

“Here,” Blitzer called from his nook on the other side of the tunnel, fifteen feet deeper in.

“Mrs. Rennegal, please get off that ladder and tend the dynamo.”

Rennegal adjusted one more Cooper Hewitt, descended the ladder reluctantly, and carried it out of the tunnel.

Kellan, Davidson’s assistant, hurried outside to run the wind machine.

“Mr. Barrett?”

Barrett saluted her with his saber. He was the image of a hallucinogenic swordsman, in a plumed musketeer’s hat, thigh-high black boots, and white shirt with puffed sleeves. Above his head, Rennegal’s ribbons stirred in the draft of air drifting from the back of the tunnel.

“Where’s Mr. Young? . . . Is Mr. Young making up at the hotel?”

“Hyde here! Sorry I’m late.”

Mr. Hyde squeezed past the wind machine, observed the various fencing weapons laid out on the prop table, noted that Barrett was holding a weapon with a flat blade and knuckle guard, perfect for thrusting and cutting actions, a dueling saber. He selected a weapon that felt as if it was born in his hand and took his place facing Dr. Jekyll.

Head to toe, his costume was black, his shirt and trousers as tight-fitting as a dancer’s, his hat, helmet-like and unadorned, a stark frame for his grotesquely bloated face mask. He wore a cape that came below his knees.

Marion picked up the megaphone she would need when the wind machine crackled and whirled into action.

“Ready, Mrs. Bell!”

“Lights!”

“Dynamo ready!” Rennegal called.

“Kellan, start the motor!”

“Contact!”

Mrs. Rennegal threw an electrical switch placed well out of range of the propeller. Its violent whirlwind yet to come.

Young Kellan gave the propeller a couple of turns, and when he reached a compression-resistance point, tugged up hard. Two more pulls and the Curtiss clattered to life, pistons popping, valves rattling, propeller building a stiff breeze. Even at idling speed, the silk strips danced and Jekyll’s and Hyde’s capes fluttered.

“Lights!”

Mrs. Rennegal engaged the belt drive powering the dynamo. The Cooper Hewitts flooded a harsh blue-green glare on Jekyll and Hyde.

“Cameras!”

Davidson and Blitzer began to crank slowly.

Marion shouted, “Mr. Barrett, Mr. Young: Good and evil battle to the death. Be ferocious—just please don’t accidentally kill each other, because we have a lot more film to make—if it ever stops raining.”

Jekyll and Hyde poised for engagement.

“Speed!”

Davidson and Blitzer cranked their cameras to take twenty frames per second.

Jekyll and Hyde saluted each other as a gesture of respect by raising the blades in front of their faces. The scenario, adapted loosely from the play, called for their first exchange to be aggressive. No hallucinogenic flouncing about, but good and evil tested severely. The hard beats of saber on saber rang loudly.

Jackson Barrett was still getting used to the idea that the audience in a movie would not hear the actual steely battle clang of the sabers, but the orchestra’s sound effects. On the other hand, the fact that they would not hear any words the actors spoke made for a rather fun game.

“Are you up for a fencing lesson, Mr. Young?”

In answer, the stage manager attacked without engaging in any feint, and Barrett was stunned to see Young use a counterbeat that swept under Barrett’s blade.

“The cameras are making you bold. Slow down.”

Hyde’s next lightning thrust actually forced Barrett to retreat.

His anger mounting, he snarled, “I’m putting a halt to this before I hurt you, and hurt you badly.”

He advanced to attack.

The stage manager surprised him with a sharp parry, then disengaged and executed his own attack with a sudden leap.

“Your moves are inventive,” said Barrett, with a quick parry. “You must have been practicing since the last time we were onstage.”

The stage manager had yet to speak. It was as if he were devoting himself to every move far in advance. Seeing Young display his sudden skills stunned Marion and the crew. They knew this was unlike any previous movie duel, as he handled a saber with unbelievable agility that was never there before.

“Mr. Young, if you try that again, I shall make you very sorry. Now, follow my lead. I will attack and you will retreat.”

Barrett tested him with a couple of hard beats, striking steel to steel, feinted with a hard beat, and lunged into a calculated move to show the audience the evil Mr. Hyde as if he were a rat scurrying down a dark alley.

It was becoming clear that Young was more adept than Buchanan with a saber. Barrett soon realized he was against one as good, if not better, with a sword than himself.

The stage manager made a direct riposte that ended in a thrust with no feints but with a total circle around Barrett’s blade. Barrett was half a second too quick to disengage and