The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

The young detective slipped inside the empty house and waited while his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Rows and rows of seats were empty, except for two large codgers in silk top hats, and a lanky fellow with a tangle of long hair and a scraggly beard.

Dashwood eased quietly down the rows and sat when he was close enough to distinguish faces on the stage.

Beautiful actresses were rehearsing getting strangled.

“Say, kid?” he whispered to the opera glasses boy, who was hustling down the aisle with an armload of programs. “How come both guys are strangling them?”

“Mr. Barrett and Mr. Buchanan exchange the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They have to rehearse both as villain and hero.”

Jackson Barrett and John Buchanan actually looked quite similar—so alike, they could pass for brothers. They were big, vigorous men in their early forties and Arrow Collar model handsome, except when one did the strangling. Then, while the stage lights grew faint, his whole stance changed. Hunched low, expression transformed, Mr. Hyde appeared smaller yet, in some mysterious way, even stronger, and left no doubt he would make short work of the girls.

“Who are the rich guys?”

“Angels.”

“What?”

“Our investors—Mr. Deaver and Mr. Deaver—the moneybags.”

“And who’s the scraggly fellow over there?”

The boy looked where Dashwood had nodded. His cheery expression darkened. “The troublemaker.”

Dashwood looked more closely. “The troublemaker” was younger, early forties, than his appearance suggested. “What’s he doing here?”

“Snuck in like you.”

A woman screamed.

The cry of abject terror whipped Dashwood’s head around. She wasn’t on the stage but somewhere in the dimly lit rows of empty seats. The detective was up in a flash, running to help, a hand plunging for the pistol under his coat. She screamed again. Now he saw her across the empty rows. She stumbled, wracked with convulsions, clutched her breast, and collapsed into the aisle.

“Miss Gold!” thundered a strong voice from the stage.

Mr. Hyde had straightened up to John Buchanan’s full height.

The fainting victim scrambled to her feet. “Yes, Mr. Buchanan?”

“One piercing shriek will suffice, Miss Gold.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan. I thought the moment required—”

Jackson Barrett strode forward and cut her off in tones as thundery as his partner. “Young lady, we plant you in the audience to ‘faint from terror,’ to encourage the rumors that our grisly Mr. Hyde will so overly stimulate Boston ladies that they swoon. The ‘moment requires’ that you convince potential ticket buyers—not overly distract the audience that’s already purchased tickets to see me and Mr. Buchanan and Miss Cook onstage.”

“Yes, Mr. Barrett.”

“Get back on the floor.”

“Stretcher bearers,” roared Buchanan. “Enter and exit swiftly.”

Actors, clad in white like hospital orderlies and a nurse, ra

ced down the aisle. They rolled Miss Gold onto their stretcher and hauled her away, with the nurse trotting alongside taking her pulse.

The rehearsal resumed.

An incredibly beautiful actress entered, and Dashwood recognized the famous Isabella Cook, whose picture was on every magazine stand. She seemed to glow in the light. Buchanan burst from the shadows, hunched as Mr. Hyde, and growled at her. Before she could recoil, the shabby man with the long hair jumped from his seat, shouting,

“Those are my words! I wrote that.”