The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

“But not unique.”

“Looks like a grown-up altar boy,” said Harry Warren.

“This eliminates men who look older and younger,” said Dashwood. “He’s not thirty. He’s not fifty.”

“Why don’t we print these up like wanted posters?” asked Mills. “Warn street girls about a man who looks like this.”

Isaac Bell thought of Wayne Barlowe, caught in a similar bind, refusing to draw the angelic and possibly innocent youth for the police posters, and second-guessing himself ever since. “No,” he said. “Archie’s right. This drawing could be many gents in their forties. If we print these up, we’ll get bullies forming lynch mobs and a bunch of innocents dancing from their necks.”

“That’s a valid point,” said Helen. “But the girls he’s killing are innocent, too.”

Bell said, “I’ll consider it after we isolate the city he’s operating in. Meantime, a better angle is to decipher the crescent shapes he carves in the bodies.”

“Did the London Ripper do this to his girls?”

“He cut symbols. But they were different. We need to know what his crescents mean.”

“How come no one’s seen him attack?” asked Helen. “No one’s even heard a scream?”

“Three reasons,” said Bell. “One, he’s a predator. That means he’s extraordinarily alert and aware of his surroundings. Probably the last time he had to run was the night when a con man named Davy Collins caught a glimpse of him in ’eighty-eight. Two, he never frightens his victim before he has complete control of her. He’s made an art of putting her at ease. Three, America is a big continent. When he arrived, he reckoned he’d never get caught if he kept moving around. If the Van Dorn Agency hadn’t been working up the Anna case, no one would have noticed the connection between her and Lillian Lent in Boston and Mary Beth Winthrop in Springfield. Fortunately, we are working the case, so the All Field Offices Alert turned up a slew of his killings. We know he’s still in business. We know what his victims look like. And I’m betting he looks something like this picture.”

“He’s killed girls in twenty cities,” said Harry Warren. “How does he get around?”

“Precisely what we will focus on,” said Bell. “How does he travel? Why does he travel? What line is he in?”

“A drummer,” said Archie Abbott. “Who travels more than a traveling salesman?”

“He’s an executive,” said Helen. “He travels city to city visiting his company’s factories.”

“He’s a bank robber,” said Harry Warren. “The new breed that cross state lines in autos.”

Bell shook his head. “He’s been murdering since 1891. How’d he cross state lines before autos?”

“Covered wagon.”

Isaac Bell did not smile. The detectives exchanged wary glances. The stateroom fell so silent, they could hear stewards hustling luggage in the corridor and the faint piping of pilot whistles as Lusitania crept toward Quarantine.

“Sorry, Isaac.”

“A circus performer,” said Archie Abbott. “They’re always on the move. Or a vaudevillian.”

Now Bell had his people where he wanted them—the best minds in the agency, working full steam at turning speculation into facts. He looked at Abbott. “If he had been a London music hall actor, could he play vaudeville here?”

“Why not? Music is music, and the jokes work the same: Set-up. Premise. Punch line. Was he on the bill?”

“I have no playbills or programs from back then. The music hall isn’t even a theater anymore.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack Spelvin.”

“Sounds like he had a sense of humor. Spelvin’s a pseudonym.”

“The Ripper liked his games.” If the crescent cuts were the murderer’s idea of a joke, thought Bell, what was the punch line?

“He could be a hobo,” said Harry Warren. “Stealing rides on freight trains.”

“Except,” said Helen Mills, “where does a hobo get cash in hand to show the girl?”