“I remember my Morse.”
Bell sat at the key and tapped out orders to New York in cipher.
CINCINNATI
ON THE JUMP
FORRER—LINK ROAD SHOWS TO MURDERS MAP
DASHWOOD—ASSIST CINCINNATI FIELD OFFICE
BRING RIPPER WARNING POSTERS
ABBOTT, MILLS, WARREN—ON THE QUIET
“Why on the quiet?” said a voice over his shoulder.
“Hello, Joe.” Bell stood up and shook Joseph Van Dorn’s enormous hand. “I thought I heard you come in.”
“New York told me you were here. I caught the B&O from Washington.”
“Why?”
“To determine where your investigation is going.”
Isaac Bell’s face lighted in a triumphant smile.
“It is going to town with bells on.”
“Why on the quiet?”
“I’m disguising my operators.”
“As what?”
“I’ll show you.”
Bell led Van Dorn to the table where his notebook lay open among the programs.
One by one, he pointed to the crescents with his pen.
“Here’s a smile,” he told Van Dorn.
“So?”
“Here’s a frown.”
“If you say so.”
“Mouths! Eyes!”
“Isaac!” Van Dorn exploded. “What in blue blazes are you talking about?”
“Mouths. Upturned and downcast. Eyes. Upturned and downcast—the raw ingredients.”
“OF WHAT?”
ACT THREE
BACKSTAGE
33
CINCINNATI
The Deaver brothers were getting jumpy.
“Explain, again,” Jeff demanded. “Who is Isaac Bell?”
“Mr. Bell,” said Joe Deaver, “is a Hartford, Connecticut, insurance executive who—”
“We don’t need insurance! We won’t own anything to insure if Jekyll and Hyde closes on the road.”
Jeff hadn’t shaved or left their hotel suite in days. It had fallen to Joe to go out into the world, where, as luck would have it, he had been approached by a potential savior.
“A rich Hartford, Connecticut, insurance executive who’s put together a syndicate of investors to finance shows in the theater. He’s got some cockamamie idea to produce a musical play based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. We’re invited to the Queen City Club for lunch. We don’t want to keep him waiting. Get dressed!”
“We were going great guns,” moaned Jeff. “The show was making money hand over fist.”
“It also spends money hand over fist, which was fine as long as we filled the theaters. Now that we’re playing to some empty seats . . .”
“If Mother catches wind of this,” said Jeff Deaver.
“Don’t say it,” said Joe Deaver.
While the theatrical angels appeared fabulously wealthy to working actors and three-dollar-a-day stagehands, they actually existed on an allowance. It was generous enough to live large, but under the authority of Grandfather’s will, which compelled them to take the Deaver family name instead of their father’s, their mother held the purse strings. Since Mother blamed the theater for the showgirls who had seduced Father repeatedly, she would never release the next year’s allowance if she learned that they had lost this year’s investing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“I will slit that damned reporter’s throat and shove his leg through it,” said Jeff.
Joe had no doubt that Jeff would kill the reporter if opportunity arose, or he might even create the opportunity. “Don’t,” he said. “Even Mother would catch wind of that newspaper report.”
Mother was holed up in the family’s Lower Merion Main Line estate. The only visitors to her fifty rooms and two hundred acres—which Joe and Jeff dreamed of one day inheriting to subdivide—were her bankers and her priest.
“What’s this about Treasure Island? We don’t have any money for another play.”
“Which is why,” Joe explained patiently, “we will maneuver Mr. Isaac Bell into buying into our investment in Jekyll and Hyde. If these murdered girls sink us, we’ll at least get some of our money out.”
“But why would Bell invest in Jekyll and Hyde when the papers are full of murdered girls?”
Joe Deaver said, “Partly to involve Barrett & Buchanan in his pipe dreams for Treasure Island and partly to secure employment in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for a friend.”
Jeff Deaver grinned. At last, a motive he could understand. “Sounds like the insurance man fell for an actress.”
“Helen,” said Joe. “An attractive brunette who knows how to wear a gown. Bell claims she was a scholarship girl at Bryn Mawr who got taken under the wing of one of his investors.”
“A likely story.”
Joe shook his head emphatically. “Bell is as straitlaced as you’d expect of an insurance man. And I’m sorry to say Helen doesn’t come across as your average chorus girl on the make.”
“What part does she want?”
“Mr. Bell believes she should replace Barbara.”
“Barbara? No! Barbara makes a crackerjacks job of it. How do we know Bell’s friend is up to doing ‘general businesswoman’?”
Joe was running out of patience. He answered sharply.
“Your Barbara is paid twenty bucks a week to dust Jekyll’s library in one scene; speak the line ‘Mr. Hyde hasn’t come home yet, Dr. Jekyll’ in another; and get strangled any evening one of the regulars catches a cold. If Isaac Bell will cover half of our investment, I guarantee his friend Helen will be up to it.”
A Baltimore & Ohio fast freight from Pittsburgh slowed to enter the Cincinnati yards. A hobo dropped from a boxcar. A railroad detective ran after him with a billy club.
“Come here, you!”
Harry Warren did as he was told. His clothes were grimy, his hands and face smeared with coal soot, but a cop with a sharper eye might have noticed that he was fitter, stronger, and better fed than most who rode the rails.
“Where you think you’re going?”
“Hoping for Frisco.”
“You got yourself a long walk. And a busted head for stealing rides.” The yard bull whipped his billy skyward. “Tell your friends Cincinnati is off-limits.”
“Do you really want to try that?”
Warren’s tone was almost conversational. He waited for the yard bull to reconsider, but the man swung at him anyway. Seasoned hickory whistled. Parting the air that Harry Warren’s skull had occupied an instant earlier, the brutal blow ended up as a wild swing angled across the rail cop’s torso. When it smacked the gravel by his left foot, he was off balance, with his right side exposed.
Four inches of lead pipe had materialized in Harry Warren’s hand. He gauged his opportunity and applied the pipe to the yard bull’s skull well above his vulnerable temple with a force precisely calculated to flatten him facedown, head ringing, and legs too shaky to try to stand for several minutes.
“Which way’s the Lyric Theatre?”
“Huh?”
“The Lyric. Where they show Alias Jimmy Valentine. It’s about a detective trying to mistreat an innocent safecracker.”
An angry thumb gestured a route into the freight district.
Having ensured that he would be remembered as a tough who rode the rails if someone asked questions later, Harry Warren made a quick tour of streets clogged to a standstill by horse- and mule-drawn wagons, exasperated teamsters, and motor trucks belching blue exhaust. He breakfasted on sausages in saloons and washed them down with German beer. He met some local hard cases, and passed a pint of whiskey to a city cop; you never knew who’d come in handy later.
Quickly absorbing the nature of the city—skilled craftsmen packing saloons midday, their women working lo
w-paying jobs in the factories—he worked his way to the section where they showed movies, vaudeville, and plays.
The Clark Theatre’s electrics ballyhooed
DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE
Direct from BROADWAY
JACKSON BARRETT & JOHN BUCHANAN
Present
The Height of Mechanical Realism
Two Sensational Scenic Effects
Posters out front showed a red airplane and a speeding subway.
Warren headed next door to the Lyric.
ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE
Direct from NEW YORK
“Top O. Henry Short Story Topped Onstage”
—VARIETY
“Nate Stewart’s expecting me,” he told the old guy at the stage door and gave a name trusted by the wrong element in Hell’s Kitchen. “Tell him Quinn’s here.”
The head carpenter had received a telegram of introduction from a New York guy who knew Harry Warren as Quinn. A boy was sent running. Nate Stewart hurried out with a welcoming handshake.
“How was your train?”
“Free,” Harry Warren replied, with an us-against-the-bigwigs grin that said he saved his ticket money for better things. “Still got room for a sceneshifter?”
“You timed it perfect. The sons of guns at Jekyll and Hyde poached my top hand when their feller lit out for the Oklahoma oil fields.”
Lucy Balant loved the Dow Drugs pharmacy at the corner of Fifth and Vine, just down the street from Alias Jimmy Valentine. It had a Becker’s “iceless” soda fountain—the latest thing to chill syrups, soda water, and ice cream mechanically instead of with ice—which made drinks ambrosially colder on a hot day. The fountain was surrounded by an octagonal marble counter and sixteen stools that had a rapid turnover, since it was near the train station. So for an actress who finally had a steady job, even if it was only as an understudy, and could afford a treat, it was perfect to drop in for a quick ginger ale. Plus, the soda jerkers made darned sure mashers didn’t bother a girl alone.
A tall, dark-haired lady detective took the stool beside her the second it was empty. “I hope you remember me, Lucy.”
“Vividly. What are you doing in Cincinnati?”
“Hunting Anna’s killer.”
“Because of what happened to the vaudeville dancer?”
“The same man.”
Lucy shuddered. “It was horrible. Like hearing about Anna all over again. Have you seen those posters?”
“Did he look familiar?”
“He just looks like a guy. A well-off, older guy.”
“I keep hoping the poster will help. Doesn’t the picture remind you of anyone?”
“But it could be anyone.”
“Anyone in your show?”
“I suppose he looks a bit like Mr. Lockwood, and even a little like Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Barrett—I finally got to see Jekyll, the first act— It could even be Mr. Vietor. But of course it isn’t.”
“Does the man on the poster remind you of any man backstage at either show?”
“No. Why are you asking about the shows?”
“What about Jekyll and Hyde’s stage manager?”
“Mr. Young? I’ve never seen his face.”
“Your theaters are next door.”
“They say he never leaves the theater. Sleeps on a cot. Why are you asking about these men?”
“Because both their road shows toured in cities where women were murdered or went missing.”
Earlier that morning—in an elegant forest-green railcar parked on a private siding in Union Station—Grady Forrer had unrolled the map the Cutthroat Squad had last seen five days ago in Isaac Bell’s Lusitania stateroom. Bell, Archie Abbott, and Helen had weighted the curling corners with pocket pistols.
Three new lines intersected with the red line that depicted the Cutthroat’s trail of death across the Northeast and Middle West. Cities were now marked with the letters M or D. A yellow line looped from New York to Philadelphia to Boston and stopped in Albany, New York. A green line and a blue line ended beside the red in Cincinnati.
“What’s the short yellow line?”
“The Pharaoh’s Secret, a musical that closed in Albany. They sold the sets to a carnival and sent the actors home. Obviously, the murders and disappearances—M marks murders, D, disappearances—continued. The green line is Alias Jimmy Valentine. The blue is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Helen Mills repeated for Lucy Balant the gist of what Isaac Bell had said.
“In one of these companies is a vigorous killer in his early forties who came from England in the heyday of touring theater. He’s had twenty years to make a career in America.”
“He’s an actor?”
“He could be any man in the theater. Actor. Director. Stagehand. Manager. Angel. Scenic designer. Rigger. Electrician. Carpenter.”
“Mr. Vietor—our Jimmy Valentine—is English.”
“So I hear.”
“But he is very nice . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Of course he would be if he was tricking girls—”
Helen Mills interrupted urgently. “I am not saying it’s him. Please don’t jump to that conclusion.” Just like Isaac Bell had warned. Do not condemn an innocent to a lynch mob.
Lucy Balant pondered what she had heard. The soda jerker, who was sweet on her, asked if she wanted another ginger ale. She shook her head and he went away.
Helen Mills said, “Please look at me, Lucy.”
Lucy turned to her.
The detective said, “I will do anything to stop this Cutthroat. But I need to operate in disguise and I can’t do that if you suddenly blurt out, ‘I know Helen. She broke into my room in Philadelphia. She’s a private detective.’”
“You’d be trusting your life with me.”
“You knew Anna Waterbury. She was not just a story in the newspaper, was she?”
“She was a nice girl.”
“There you have it.”
“Does your boss know you’re talking to me?”
“No,” Helen lied. Isaac Bell had been reluctant to let her operate in Cincinnati but had concluded he had no choice if he was going to plant a woman inside one or both of the touring companies. They had come up with a story to deal with the fact that Lucy Balant knew she was a Van Dorn detective.
“I’m working this case on my own. No one knows I’m here. I took time off— Actually, I quit.”
“What do you live on?”
“I’ve saved my money since I was an apprentice.”
“Helen, you’re taking all kinds of chances.”
“Worth it if I catch him.”
“Do you mind me asking what your disguise will be?”
“Not at all,” said Helen, relieved that she had put over the story. “I don’t want to shock you if we bump into each other. I will masquerade as an actress reading for “general businesswoman” jobs in Jekyll and Hyde and Jimmy Valentine.”
Lucy said, “Ours is getting antsy to go back to New York.”
“I heard.”
“I wanted it,” said Lucy. “The stage manager keeps saying I’m too short. But you’re really tall. Have you ever been on the stage?”
“In school.”
“Good luck with Jimmy Valentine. You’ll need it, because you sure won’t get Jekyll and Hyde.”
“Why not?”
“I hear that the boyfriend of the girl who has it is a Jekyll and Hyde angel.”
“Mine’s a bigger angel.”
Lucy’s big eyes grew enormous. “You have a boyfriend who invests in the theater?” An up-from-under glance unspoken asked, is that how you can afford to quit your job?
Helen stuck to her story that she was working alone. “He’s not my boyfriend. I just met him on this investigation. He’s married. But he’s actually very nice. And
when people assume he’s helping me for the wrong reasons, he sets them straight.”
Lucy nodded. “You have to be careful on the road. That’s for sure.” She gave a rueful laugh. “The awful joke is, the nicer they are, the more careful they are, too. So you end up with both of you being careful and no one making the first move. Which reminds me, Helen, speaking of moves: When you read for Jimmy Valentine? Look out for Mr. Lockwood.”
“A grabber?”
“He thinks he’s irresistible.”
“Thanks for the warning. What do you hear about grabbers at Jekyll and Hyde?”
Lucy Balant grinned. “Girls hope Mr. Buchanan will grab them. But he refuses to have anything to do with actresses. Nice as can be, but strictly business. They say he goes with rich ladies because they don’t need anything from him.”
“And Mr. Barrett?”
“Oh, Mr. Barrett! I was introduced to him at a cast party in Chicago. He did that older gentleman thing where he bows over your hand. Then he looks in your eyes. He had me blushing like I was fourteen.” Lucy fanned her cheek with her napkin. “But, not a chance. Everybody says he’s all business, too.”
“What about your Jimmy Valentine?”
“Mr. Vietor is a gentleman. He’s been coaching me, actually. There’s a part that might come open if the girl takes a job in New York. I might be able to get it. Or at least read for the stage manager when Mr. Vietor thinks I’m ready.”
“Now you warned me, Lucy. And I must warn you. Be very, very careful who you ever go with alone. Particularly a man in his forties. Anna was not the only petite blonde this Cutthroat killed.”
“Mr. Vietor’s only in his thirties.”
“But don’t actors sometimes ‘adjust’ their age?”
“Mr. Vietor wouldn’t bother. He’s so handsome, who cares how old he is?”
34
“When did you first join forces, Mr. Barrett and Mr. Buchanan?”
The New York Sun assistant theater critic—a natty gent with gin on his breath and a flawlessly knotted bow tie—had caught up with the Jekyll and Hyde company in Cincinnati.
The Cutthroat Page 19