The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

Suddenly Bell heard a train. It was coming from the west, and in the starlight he saw a locomotive rounding the curve with a string of low-slung flatcars, another slow-moving freight. The old man saw it, too, and plodded onto the trestle.

Many would have let him seek the respite he would never find in life. Godspeed! But there was something stern and hopeful in Isaac Bell that would not give up hope on the most hopeless. A hot bath, clean clothes, and a square meal could change everything, and if the Ripper letter was a hoax, at least it had put him here on the railroad tracks at a moment that called for action.

“Hold on, old-timer!”

The veteran heard him. His head turned slightly, but instead of stopping, he pushed along with his staff to go faster. The locomotive’s dull headlight angled in from the curve, which made the beam bounce among the girders. No whistle. The engineer saw nothing amiss in the crazy leaping shadows. The old man opened his arms wide, embracing the end.

Bell ran full tilt after him, shouting over the rumble of the locomotive, “Hold on, sir! Let me help.”

He halved the distance between them, and halved it again. He thought he might make it—the engineer still didn’t see them, but the train had slowed for the curve. He put on a burst of speed and was reaching for the old man’s shoulder when he heard the sizzle of steel unsheathed.

47

Blade high, the Cutthroat whirled in a lightning pivot.

Isaac Bell’s right arm stretched forward and whipped the loose tail of his slicker at it. The Cutthroat’s blade sliced the oilcloth like tissue paper, and for one precious instant he had startled the Cutthroat, throwing the murderer off balance. His first blow missed Bell’s arm. The Cutthroat slashed again, slicing the slicker to shreds.

Bell pulled his gun and was yanking the slide to cock his first shot when the Cutthroat lunged. His blade leaped in a sudden rapier thrust. Bell parried it with his gun barrel, deflecting all but the lightest touch. It barely pierced his upper arm, but the needle point seemed to strike a nerve, and he felt his hand convulse as if jolted by an electric shock. It popped his fingers open. The pistol fell.

The Cutthroat whipped his blade high.

Bell, in a lightning move, caught the falling gun out of the air with his left hand, forced his right to close around the slide, and cocked it. The locomotive passed them in the instant he fired. Its main rod, which connected the piston to the drive wheels, brushed Bell’s shoulder like a steel fist. It banged him against a trestle girder. The girder kept him from falling into the canyon. But his shot went wild, his gun flew under the flatcars trundling past, and the Cutthroat slashed downward.

The killing blow plunged squarely into the crown of Isaac Bell’s hat.

The Cutthroat delivered his coup de grâce—a skin-flaying slash.

The tall detective was toppling backwards between two girders. He raised the shredded remains of his slicker as if it were a shield.

This time, the Cutthroat was ready. Nothing could distract him.

But to his astonishment, even as Isaac Bell fell backwards, even locked in the remorseless grip of gravity, he evaded the blade with a twist of fluid grace, took cool, deliberate aim, and flicked his left arm violently. The strip of oilcloth cracked into the Cutthroat’s face like a bullwhip.

A metal button seared the tender flesh beneath his eye.

Roaring in rage that Bell had marked him, he wheeled beside the moving train, vaulted onto a flatcar, and caught hold before it rolled him off. His last glimpse of Isaac Bell had been of the man falling backwards. Now he was rewarded by the sight of an empty trestle.

His spirits soared.

We’ll never know, Mr. Bell: Did my singing fool you? Or the stench?

By a miracle, his rucksack had stayed on his back. It reeked of its contents, a rotting length of a human leg. Thank you, Beatrice.

By now, Isaac Bell’s corpse was tumbling down the flooded arroyo.

The worst the Cutthroat suffered was a black eye.

48

Archie, thought Isaac Bell, I owe you a drink.

The alloy-steel derringer rack inside the crown of his hat had saved his skull, but the oilskin cowboy slicker that Archie had lifted from Wardrobe had served him three times—distracting the Cutthroat while he drew his gun, parrying a sword thrust with a counterpunch to the Cutthroat’s eye, and now acting as a lifeline.

The shreds of it had caught in the thicket of beams under the trestle. Dangling above the rushing arroyo, he swung in among the supports and hauled himself up onto the tracks.

The freight train’s red lights were fading toward Los Angeles.

Bell started after them at a dead run. He would never catch it, but dawn was graying fresh rain clouds, and morning trains would soon crowd the line to the city.