The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

“This was taken upon his incarceration in the New York State prison at Sing Sing. Unfortunately, he gained a pardon and promptly went back to his ways. I’m fai

rly certain he has worked the liners, and I can’t help but wonder whether upon disembarking popped up to London to crack a safe, then home free on another ship.”

“That would take nerve.”

“Rosania knows no shortage of nerve.”

“Are you requesting Scotland Yard’s assistance in the matter?”

The deferential citizen permitted himself a nonplussed laugh. “No! Of course not. It’s not the sort of case I’d expect the police to grapple with. Conspiracy and all, if you can imagine. Far too complicated.”

“Too complicated?” The inspector bristled. “Then what the dickens are you doing here?”

“I just landed from the Mauretania.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“Aboard ship, I encountered a ring of operators in the smoker who should interest you.”

“Jewel thieves?” the inspector asked, with an expression that combined a smirk and a sneer.

“Blackmailers,” said Bell. When he spotted them working up their racket in the First Class Smoking Room, he had seen a golden opportunity to get Scotland Yard on his side.

And indeed the inspector’s smirk faded. “Whom were they blackmailing?”

“I don’t know if you are familiar with the expression ‘badger game’ over here, but it involves maneuvering the blackmail victim into a compromising situation where he fears exposure.”

“I have heard of the badger game.”

“I deduced that they were working the badger game on a rich old geezer.”

“Did you happen to ‘deduce’ the victim’s identity?”

“His name is Skelton. I believe you would know of him as the Earl of Milton.”

The inspector sat up straight. “Do you have proof of this?”

Bell pulled from his pocket five Kodak snaps of shipboard gatherings. He fanned them on the inspector’s desk like a royal flush. “Of course, you recognize Lord Skelton. This man here is the ringleader. The young lady with her hand on Skelton’s arm is the one who inveigled her way into the poor old duffer’s stateroom. This surly bruiser pretended to be her angry husband.”

“Why would they let you take their pictures?”

“They didn’t know I had a camera.”

“How did you conceal it?”

The tall detective smiled, a trifle less cordially. “How I conceal my camera could be called an insurance investigator’s trade secret.”

Yet another of the joys of being married to a beautiful filmmaker.

“The extortionists persuaded Skelton to withdraw money from his London bank and pay them off at the Savoy Hotel this afternoon.”

Isaac Bell tugged his gold fob chain and drew forth a Waltham music pocket watch. The lid was engraved with a speeding 4-4-0 locomotive that sparked memories of his first encounter with the Van Dorn Detective Agency. It hinged open at his touch and chimed George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

“Three o’clock,” Bell said over the music. “They’ll be at the Savoy any minute. As Mauretania is a British liner, I believe the blackmailers land in your jurisdiction.”

The inspector thought so, too. Detectives were summoned urgently.

Isaac Bell filled them in on pertinent details including—thanks to the estimable Joel Wallace—the number of the room where the shakedown would take place. He declined a halfhearted invitation to tag along on the raid, claiming, “Anonymity is priceless in insurance investigation.”