“Who wants to tell Mr. Bell it’s a coincidence?”
A profound silence settled over them — the Chief Investigator took a dim view of coincidences in general and an even dimmer view of coincidences offered as explanations. The silence was broken suddenly by James Dashwood, who was thumbing through a pile of old issues of The Clipper, the actors’ weekly that listed jobs.
“There you are!”
“Who?”
“Stage manager I told you about. For Jekyll and Hyde? I knew I recognized him.” He held up The Clipper. “Henry Young.” He pointed to a line drawing of an actor playing a villain in an 1897 melodrama.
“That’s not a wanted poster.”
“I know. But now I know he was working in a Syracuse stock company in the late nineties.”
Joseph Van Dorn burst into the bull pen. Last heard from, the Boss was in Washington, and the detectives jumped to their feet. “Who’s heard from Isaac?”
Archie Abbott said, “He had Joel Wallace cable me to check up on Lord Strone. He’s the—”
“British spy. What does he want with a British spy?”
“To see if Strone’s still in business.”
“Is he?”
“He’s kind of disappeared on his yacht.”
“That’s all you’ve heard from Isaac?”
“Well, he cabled Marion when he arrived in London.”
“Maybe we should install his wife down here to keep up with him.”
Van Dorn stormed off. Looks were exchanged. The Boss was losing patience with the Cutthroat Squad.
Archie Abbott waited until the front desk telephoned that Van Dorn had gone downstairs for a late breakfast. Quickly, he stood up and gathered his things. “See you tomorrow.”
“You’re going home at ten in the morning?”
“I’ve got tickets to see Jekyll and Hyde again.”
“It closed. It’s on the road, remember?”
“I’m seeing it in Columbus.”
“You’re going all the way to Ohio to watch a play?”
“Lillian invited Marion Bell. Marion missed it in New York, and now she misses Isaac, so we’re taking her with us.”
“Still, a long ways to go for a play.”
“My father-in-law is lending us his train.”
Detectives who rode to work on streetcars rolled their eyes.
“It will get us there in time for the curtain,” Abbott explained blithely. “On the way home, we’ll tuck into bed for a good night’s sleep.”
Harry Warren said, “Of all the girls I could have married, why did it never occur to me to nail one whose father owns a railroad?”
“Numerous railroads.”
Marion Morgan Bell hung back a step when Lillian and Archie walked down the center aisle and the audience craned necks for a glimpse of the famously beautiful railroad heiress and the man who had been the New York Four Hundred’s most eligible bachelor before he fell for her. As Isaac put it, “Detective disguises don’t come better than man-about-town who married well.”
They were the last to take their seats. The orchestra began to play, and the curtain rose on a set that depicted a light and airy apartment in a New York City skyscraper, an up-to-date image that captured the attention of every Columbus lady in the audience. The story moved with great speed, and when night transformed the apartment for Mr. Hyde’s entrance, the modern home seemed deeply sinister. It was impossible to tell whether Barrett or Buchanan was playing Hyde, so convincingly evil was the character.
But only when women began gasping and crying out did Marion realize she was not as caught up in the play as the rest of the audience. She glanced at Lillian, a brave and steady young woman. Lillian looked terrified. Even Archie, who had seen it before, appeared so riveted that Marion half expected him to pull a pistol to protect them.
As it raced on, as a huge airplane swooped over the stage, as Hyde leaped on the roof of a speeding subway car, as the utterly compelling Isabella Cook came within inches of destruction — prompting more than one man to start from his seat to help her — Marion wondered why she was not quite so engaged as the others. The answer was simple, and no fault of the brilliant production. She so admired every bit of craft that was stirring the audience that her mind had shifted to the technical details of how she could re-create and embellish those effects on film.
The play ended to standing ovation, shouts, and cheers.
Lillian said, “Let’s go backstage and meet the actors.”
“No,” said Marion. “Not me.”
“Why?”
“I want to see them as I saw them.”
A little pout started to form on Lillian’s face, but it melted into a smile. They were very close, with Marion sometimes in the role of big sister. “I know what you mean. You’re right. Let’s remember them as we saw them.”
Archie said, “I sense a ‘Marion plot,’ don’t I?”
Marion Morgan Bell clutched the program in her fist. “I am going to make a movie of Barrett & Buchanan’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Isaac Bell rode the London & North Western back to London, retrieved his clothing from Euston’s baggage office, and changed in the lavatory. Then he telephoned Joel Wallace from a coin-operated call box. The box he chose was at the end of the row, with cut-glass windows overlooking the station’s Great Hall.
Wallace asked, “How’d you make out in Manchester?”
“Found out why they hate each other. Otherwise, a bust. The poor girl fell for a good-looking theater callboy who may or may not have been the guy who tried to kill her. That’s who she remembered… Any more cables from New York?”
“Testy one from the Boss.”
“Another ‘Report now’?”
“‘Report immediately.’”
“What does Research say?”
“No new bodies since you sailed. Except a tall brunette they don’t think counts.”
“Missing girls?”
“Chicago, Pittsburgh, Columbus.”
On Bell’s orders, Grady Forrer’s boys were querying field offices daily for reports of missing girls who resembled the fair and petite murder victims.
“None out west?”
“None we hadn’t heard about earlier.”
Bell pondered the report. Missing girls, no bodies. Young women disappeared for all sorts of reasons. But this murderer so often succeeded in hiding his victims.
“Have you ever been to Wilton’s Music Hall?”
“In Whitechapel? No, the Methodists took it over for a mission twenty years ago. Why?”
“Just a thought. Ever hear of a guy in the theater named Jack Spelvin?”
“On the stage?”
“Could be anything — an all-rounder, or even a scenic designer, director, actor, manager.”
“Not here in London. I think I heard of a George Spelvin back home. Not Jack. Why?”
“Emily’s crush,” Bell answered distractedly. His eyes roamed the train travelers crisscrossing the Great Hall.
“What’s the word on Lord Strone?”
“Out of business,” said Wallace. “The Secret Service Bureau gave him his walking papers.”
“Are you certain?”
“As certain as I can be about spies. Cabled a fellow I bank on to confirm. He cabled back that Strone’s gone fishing in Florida.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Bell. “I’ve got another job for you.”
“When?”
“Right this minute. On the jump!”
Isaac Bell took an escalator deep underground to the tube train and rode east for several stops. He returned to the surface at Moorgate. A misty drizzle mingled with the coal smoke. It was hard to see fifty feet ahead. He walked into the East End and onto Bishopsgate, a busy commercial street jam-packed with wagons and double-decker horse trams that cut through the Whitechapel district that Jack the Ripper had terrorized.