“Why us?”
“Your modernized Jekyll and Hyde demonstrates that Robert Louis Stevenson is as sure a financial thing as the original was twenty-five years ago. You’re the men to do it next for Treasure Island.”
“Didn’t we hear Julie Goodman is writing a Treasure Island?” Buchanan asked Barrett.
“It doesn’t matter what Jules Eckert Goodman is doing,” Bell said dismissively. “Ours is a musical play.”
“A musical? What a strange idea.”
Bell returned a thin smile. “Our due diligence went beyond rockfish. You’ve done musicals. And they made money.”
“Well, we didn’t lose any,” Buchanan admitted.
Bell said, “Critics and audiences applaud your alternating roles in Jekyll and Hyde. They will love Treasure Island. You’ll be Long John Silver one night, Mr. Barrett, and Squire Trelawney the next.”
The actors regarded Isaac Bell with shrewd expressions that told the tall detective that he had lassoed their attention. Time to act on Archie Abbott’s advice: The language of the theater is cash.
“Treasure Island will make you rich. Royalties for the script alone could run as much as fifty thousand—before you count your profits from the Broadway production and the road show.”
“There is one big, insurmountable problem with Treasure Island,” said Buchanan.
“I see no problem. Mr. Stevenson’s widow accepted our offer for the rights, and a million boys and girls who loved the book are now adults who will line up to buy tickets.”
“The problem is, no girl in the story,” said Barrett. “No romance. No hope of hero and heroine falling in love. A musical Treasure Island must have a romantic angle if it’s to play to bigger audiences than children’s Christmas pantos.”
“But there is a girl,” said Bell.
Barrett laughed. “What are you proposing, bring young Jim Hawkins’s mother on the voyage?”
Buchanan joined the laughter. “Jim’s mother falls for Long John Silver. Silver is reformed by love and turns his Spyglass Tavern into a Methodist mission.”
“Dr. Livesey is your girl,” said Isaac Bell.
The actors’ eyes lighted up like double eagle gold pieces.
Barrett said, “Change Squire Trelawney’s sidekick to his fiancée.”
“No women doctors in the eighteenth century,” Buchanan protested.
Bell said, “Your modernized Treasure Island will be taking place in the twentieth century—here-and-now 1911, just like Jekyll and Hyde.”
Barrett said, “No pirates in 1911. The Royal Navy exterminated them.”
Isaac Bell looked them both in the eye. “We have no shortage of cutthroats in 1911.”
Barrett and Buchanan exchanged a glance.
Buchanan said, “True,” and Isaac Bell smothered his impulse to level a gun in their faces and demand, “Tell me what is true.”
“But with no pirates,” Jackson Barrett asked, “where did the lost treasure come from?”
Bell was ready for that one. “The Spanish — American War.”
“Yes!” Barrett said, suddenly excited. “They lifted the treasure when the Maine blew up in Cuba.”
“Long John Silver betrayed Cuban rebels,” said Buchanan, and the actors chorused the 1898 battle cry: “Remember the Maine!”
Bell asked, “Can you persuade Miss Isabella Cook to play Dr. Livesey?”
“Miss Cook will demand a share.”
“Whatever agreement you made that makes her happy in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will be fine with me— Which reminds me, I want to see your production again before I report to my investors.”
“You will be our guest tomorrow evening.”
“No thank you, I will buy my ticket. This is strictly business. But there is a favor I would ask you.”
“Name it!”
“If we decide to go forward with Treasure Island, I would like to spend time with your Jekyll and Hyde company — backstage, and aboard your train when you leave for the West.”
“You’ll find it quite dull, Mr. Bell,” said Buchanan. “Strictly business.”
“Melodramas are short on the ‘chorus girls’ of lore,” said Barrett.
“I’m recently married,” Bell grinned back at him. “No need of chorus girls. But I’m obliged to learn enough ins and outs of the theater arts to protect my partners.”
“Let’s hitch your car to our train,” said Jackson Barrett.
“Ride along to San Francisco,” said John Buchanan.
“You’ll be our caboose.”
“I could not ask for more,” said Isaac Bell.
36
The Cutthroat brushed spirit gum on his upper lip and cursed out loud. He had just shaved, his skin was raw, and it stung like the devil. It would sting even worse when he removed the mustache, this time an enormous affair trimmed in the walrus style. He fanned the lace backing with his souvenir program and fixed it under his nose.
He was dressed in blue-striped overalls over a red-checked shirt, which he had bulked up with horsehair padding. Now he perched a battered derby on his head and wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose. Pipe cutters, wrenches, hacksaw, files, and a gasoline blowtorch arrayed in a wooden toolbox completed the portrait of a master gas fitter. He even had a card from the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company emblazoned with the motto “Heat with gas, light with electricity.” The company was expanding, enjoying great success with modern, up-and-coming customers like the Van Dorn Detective Agency on Plum Street.
He hefted the toolbox on his shoulder, sauntered out of his yellow cottage by the river, walked to the streetcar stop, and rode into the center of town. Off near Plum Street, he walked to the Van Dorn office on the ground floor of a substantial-looking building. The private back door was down an alley, but he walked in the street entrance.
They had one wall plastered with wanted posters — including a copy of the imaginatively aged one of himself that had riveted his eye in the red-light district. The sharp-eyed young detective, working in vest and shirtsleeves, had a pistol in a shoulder holster. He jumped up from his desk with an eager-to-help smile.
“Hello there. What can I do for you?”
“I’m supposed to check your meter.”
The detective opened a door to the cellar stairs. “Give a shout if you need anything.”
“Thank you.” The Cutthroat paused on the steps to look at the wall of posters. “Do you think you’ll catch all those guys?”
“That’s our job.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Catch them all?”
“We never give up.”
“Never?”
The Cutthroat studied his poster. He recognized the hand of a newspaper illustrator back in London. A decent artist, but the likeness wasn’t specific. He was tempted to stand beside it, yank off his walrus mustache, and ask, “Look familiar?”
He could use every tool in his box. Theater lights were all electric now, but he had learned gas fitting back in his apprentice days when footlights, wing lights, and border lights burned “town gas.” Here in Cincinnati, it was the new and abundant and more potent “natural,” taken from the ground instead of manufactured from coal.
He found the live-gas inlet pipe, found the master cock, and closed it. He removed the meter from the inlet and outlet pipes. The inlet and outlet holes were supposed to be tightly corked to keep air away from the residual gas inside the meter. Instead, he left them open and laid the meter on the cellar floor, directly under the service pipe, which would get you sacked in a flash by any supervisor who noticed. Then he bridged the inlet and outlet pipes with a prethreaded length of lead pipe, in which he had drilled a microscopic pinhole. He opened the master cock. The gas that leaked slowly through the pinhole would gather in the cellar.