“For what?”
“Burglary.”
“Fact-based truth,” Joel Wallace agreed. But he blinked like a man whose head was spinning. “Mind me asking what’re you planning to break into?”
“The Lock Museum.”
22
At seven o’clock, the bar at the Garrick Club emptied out as actors hurried off to the West End theaters to dress for the evening shows. The few who remained nursed their drinks with an eye to keeping them going until some prosperous soul offered to buy a round for a player “at liberty.”
The obvious candidate was a tall, amiable American in an expensive white suit. He was a guest, the barman confided to the members, who had presented a letter of introduction from The Players, an actors’ and writers’ club in New York that had a reciprocal membership arrangement with the Garrick.
Sadly, the guest was already buying whiskeys for James Mapes, a handsome leading man whose great mane of wavy hair was laced with silver. Despite his years, Mapes, whose mane might once have been as golden as Isaac Bell’s, still cut a commanding figure. Only his frayed cuffs suggested that he had been refusing to play character roles for longer than he should.
“‘Reckless,’ the critics call me,” he told Bell. “‘Deluded.’ Granger—the cruelest of those scribblers—actually wrote of my last Count of Monte Cristo, and this I quote from memory, ‘Mapes ought to have switched to character parts whilst Queen Victoria reigned.’”
“Why would the critics pile on like that?” asked Bell sympathetically.
“Because they’re right! Who wants to see an old warhorse making love to a filly?”
“Half the men in the audience.”
Mapes laughed. “Ah, you’re a generous soul, Bell. Yes, sir. Generous.” He peered into the diminished contents of his glass.
“Would you join me in another?” asked Bell. “Not to worry, it’s on the firm.”
“Then I thank you, and I thank the firm.”
Bell signaled the barman, who poured fresh doubles.
“Cheers! . . . Mr. Mapes, have you ever played a German?”
“Not in donkey’s years. Way back when I was too young to carry leads.”
“What sort of Germans did you play?”
“Villains. Heavies. Vhut utter Shermans ah zere?”
They took their drinks and wandered through the handsome club, which was hung with oil paintings of members, present and deceased, in famous roles, and decorated with costumes and stage props. Bell pointed out an empty space. “Waiting for you, perhaps?”
“More likely, my friend Vietor. He’s made a ‘sudden smash sensation’ in Alias Jimmy Valentine.”
“O. Henry’s safecracker story. My wife and I saw it on Broadway.”
“What did you think of Vietor’s reformed criminal?”
“I believed Jimmy Valentine intended to go straight. Even though I knew the short story, he had me worried for his fate.”
“He asked me to coach him in the role,” said Mapes. “Subduing the dark side of Vietor’s character was like pulling teeth. Now he’s touring your provinces, raking it in hand over fist. Hope for us all! When last I last saw him in New York, he was cadging drinks at the Waldorf-Astoria. Now he’s ready to return to England, equal parts rich and famous.”
In the well-appointed library, Bell found the privacy he was seeking. He had spent an hour in it earlier, poring through a collection of old programs, but had had no luck finding any from Wilton’s Music Hall. “Do you know anyone in the theater named Jack Spelvin?”
“No.”
“He was a callboy at Wilton’s back in the eighties.”
“You’re sure you don’t mean George Spelvin?”