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

Everyone on the set stood mesmerized, not certain if the fight had really become a vicious battle or only staged action for the movie.

Hyde waited to parry until Jekyll’s sword arm was fully extended and the point of his saber was only one inch from piercing his shoulder. His riposte pierced the sleeve on Barrett’s out-thrust and carved a deep cut in his forearm.

“A late parry, Mr. Hyde? You have neither the sense of distance nor the point control with your tight grip to put one over. How did you do that?”

Hyde gave no answer, and Barrett began to use tactics he hadn’t used in years. He deflected Hyde’s next attack with a straight, smooth line without wavering to attract a reaction—a swift, strong, clean parry without him seemingly noticing the blood flowing from his forearm.

Hyde did not immediately reengage Barrett but stepped back, gave his opponent a grotesque grin through his makeup, and spoke loudly so his voice carried to the crew over the wind machine.

“Jack Spelvin, my name is Isaac Bell, I am an investigator with the Van Dorn Detective Agency. I arrest you for the murder of Anna Waterbury and only God knows how many other women.”

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Barrett shouted, “Are you crazy? Your fellow detectives arrested Buchanan. He’s the Ripper.”

Blitzer the cameraman yelled over the exhaust roar of the wind machine. “Keep fighting, keep fighting. We’re still running the cameras.”

Bell, keeping a surly eye on Barrett, ignored the crew, their voices mixing with the wind machine and echoing in chorus throughout the cavern.

“Don’t bother attempting to escape, Barrett, or Spelvin,” said Bell. “Or whatever your name is. We found your little escape passage in the rear of the tunnel and it’s guarded by two heavily armed agents.”

“Playing the role of a shrewd detective?” warned Barrett. “It’s still your wife’s movie. I wonder which one of us will see the ending.”

“It won’t be you,” said Bell, with ice in his tone. “Now, wipe the makeup off your left eye. Buchanan did it. So did Henry Young.”

“What did that prove?”

“Neither is Jack the Ripper.”

“Why are you mucking about with a saber? If you really intend to arrest me, where’s your gun?”

“I lost it in a canyon.” Bell spread his arms. There was no room in his skintight costume for a gun. “If you resist arrest, I will slice you worse than you sliced women in your maniacal murder spree.”

To add to the horror of the moment, Jack the Ripper, alias Barrett, removed his makeup with his cape, revealing a bruised eye, and uttered a loud, nauseating laugh that echoed throughout the tunnel above the exhaust from the wind machine.

There were no niceties, no respectful salutes. Like a bolt of lightning, the Ripper attacked like an ancient predator. Bell was prepared. He knew Barrett’s intent by a slight shift in his footwork. It came as an advance lunge. Bell parried and deflected the encounter with a sharp feint.

“Thank you,” said Isaac Bell. “I was hoping you’d resist.”

The production crew watched the engagement in awe. As the fight progressed, it gained momentum. The contact between blades seemed to come in microseconds, as the speed of the sabers flashed under the Cooper Hewitt lights. It became obvious to the crew that the two duelists were in a brutal fight to kill one or the other.

Bell drove the Ripper back into the tunnel, past the second camera and beyond the weird gleam of the lights. Visually, it was stunning, because the wind machine had kicked up a small cloud of dust that swirled under the lights.

Concerned when Bell was out of sight, Marion used her megaphone to amplify her voice over the roar of the wind machine. “Isaac!” she shouted. “Come back! You’re out of the light.”

The Ripper recovered the initiative and fought back hard, using speed, strength, and extraordinary point control to put the tall detective on the defensive.

Bell used his retreat to discover the Ripper’s methods, his skills and tricks. They both fought as though they were fighting for their souls.

Jack the Ripper had developed the precision of hand that Italy’s masters were famous for. But, in actual fact, he was more predictable than any Italian. The monster enjoyed butchering his victims, favoring to shed blood than land internal wounds. To lose to him would be to suffer a slow death. But the open blows that he delivered in his desire to cut were also an invitation for an opponent to run him through.

Jack the Ripper fell back, but the tall, blond detective had to battle for every foot gained. The Ripper left no opening untested. In a parry-thrust, he wounded Bell by a cut in the bicep. Luckily, it barely broke the skin, but blood trickled down his arm, threatening to wet his weapon’s grip and make it slippery. Bell squeezed his shirtsleeve to absorb it.

Now Bell realized how Jack the Ripper could overwhelm the women he killed and startle them into defending themselves in ways he could predict.

The way to beat him was to be unpredictable. And no attack was more unpredictable than the back attack Bell devised with his naval friend.

Isaac Bell struck the Ripper’s thrust aside and lunged past. Inside the arc of his saber, Bell suddenly switched it to his opposite hand and plunged the tip all the way across his stomach and around the back of his waist toward the Ripper’s left lung. He felt it scrape a rib that kept the saber from going deep.

Now ten feet from the whirling propeller, warned by the increased strength of the wind against his costume, Jack the Ripper exploded in a counterattack. He started with a feint rather than a thrust. Then a fake thrust, and a fake feint.

Bell parried and retreated past Marion, who was on the right side of the cave, where rocks had been piled. In the split second he saw her, the Ripper feinted left, spun around and grabbed Marion with his