The Cutthroat by Clive Cussler (audio ebook reader .TXT) 📕

me what’s the matter?” he asked again, and Mary Beth Winthrop found herself suddenly pouring out every hope and dream in her heart to a complete stranger. He listened intently, nodding, never interrupted. When she was done, he asked, “Would you tell me your name?”

“Mary Beth.”

“What a pretty name. It suits you. Don’t worry, Mary Beth. You’ll get another chance.”

“In Springfield? Never. Nothing like this ever comes to Springfield. Jekyll and Hyde was my only way out of here. I’ll have to stay home and marry some stupid—”

“No, no, no. I meant you’ll get another chance today.”

“What do you mean? For Jekyll and Hyde?”

“Of course.”

“But they’re striking the sets. They’re leaving.”

“I’ll arrange it.”

“Are you in the company?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Then how can you arrange it?”

“Do you know what an angel is?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“In the theater, an angel is a man who invests money in a show—puts up the cash. So, no, I am not a member of the Jekyll and Hyde company. But they regard me as their friend. Their very, very good friend. Now, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Then come with me.”

He walked her to a small hotel.

“We’ll go in the back way. The stage manager stays in the annex. But he wants it private.”

“Isn’t he loading the train?”

“He’ll be saying good-bye to an old friend, if you know what I mean, before he joins the train. But before his old friend joins him, we—that is to say, you—will sing for him. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring your music with you?”

“Right here.”

“Good. In we go now. Just let’s make sure we are not spotted. Because he will be very unhappy if we inadvertently give him away. And you do not want to sing for an unhappy man— Oh, by the way, if you are shocked, you have every right to be. But please remember, not everyone in the theater behaves this way. There are plenty of happily married, faithful thespians—and even some stagestruck angels.” He tugged off his glove and showed her his wedding ring.

Mary Beth clutched her music and followed him up the alley. He opened a door and led the way up a narrow back staircase, opened another door, glanced down a hall, then touched his finger to his lips for silence and started down it, with Mary Beth close behind. He opened the door with a room key, slipped in, and beckoned her to follow. It was a small room, barely large enough to hold a bed and a steamer trunk, where she would have expected an armchair.

On the trunk was the familiar red and white wagon call card you displayed on a door or in the window to signal the Adams Express driver of a delivery to be picked up. The call card partly covered an address written on a shipping label:

—dale, arizona territory. ppp ranch, attention range boss peters

He closed the door, tossed his cane on the bed, and shrugged his cape off his shoulders.

“Look at me,” he said.

Mystified, she looked up and sucked in a startled breath. She had not realized how compelling his gaze was. His eyes were a stony shade of blue, and they pierced hers with the concentrated force of bottled lightning. “Where . . .” she started to ask. Where was the stage manager? Her eyes drifted back to the address label. She recognized the sender’s name, a deacon in her own church. “Where—”

He snapped his fingers.

“Look at me!”

The rigor in his voice rivaled the force of his eyes, and for an awful moment she felt that she had no choice but to obey. At the edge of her vision she saw his hands fly at her face.

Quick and athletic, the young woman dodged instinctively, whipping her head back and away from his hands. Only when she tried to scream and could not make a sound did she realize that he had tricked her into exposing her throat.

Half the sport, half the pleasure of the game, was to plan the plan. Plan, anticipate, hope. And savor, knowing they would never catch a master of self-discipline and restraint. This time, the Cutthroat had planned as painstakingly as he had for Anna Waterbury in New York. Then all he had had to do was wait. And hope for the exact right candidate to come along. God bless her, she had. Unlike Lillian—when he found himself stalking Boston Common on sudden impulse—there would be no interruptions in Springfield, no lovers rutting in the dark, no unfinished job, no dog walkers, no cops.

The room was paid in advance, booked for a week. It was situated at the end of the hall in the back of the house. The hotel across the alley catered to salesmen, who were out working all day, carousing in saloons half the night, and stumbling home so blotto they would not notice a pig slaughtered next door. The room had its own private bathroom with a deep porcelain tub longer than the girl was tall.

10

The express wagon driver swore to anyone who would listen that his horses knew how to read. Or if his team could not read, they at least had a fine eye for the shape and color of the Adams call card. He never had to tighten the reins to stop when they saw the red and white rectangle hanging from a doorknob.

A heavy steamer trunk bound for the Arizona Territory was waiting to be picked up, the charges prepaid. He wrestled it into the wagon and continued his rounds until he saw the company’s one-ton power wagon, which ran on a twenty-eight-cell Exide electric battery and bore the sign THIS WAGON CARRIES INTERSTATE COMMERCE TRAFFIC ONLY.

He hailed the driver, and they transferred the Arizona trunk.

“Heavy.”

They noticed the return address and laughed. “Bibles.”

The power wagon delivered the trunk to the freight depot attached to Springfield’s Union Station, where it was put aboard an Adams Express car on the Albany-bound Boston section of the