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

“Welcome to Broadway,” Lucy fired back. She was jumpy, waiting to hear if she got the understudy part in Alias Jimmy Valentine, a big sensation based on an O. Henry story, which was sending a road company to Philadelphia. They had both tried out for it, but only Lucy had been called back for a second reading.

“No,” said Anna. “He’s not like that. He’s a sweet old thing.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know—old as my father. He limps, on a cane. Besides, he’s married. He wears a ring. He doesn’t hide it. He’s full of wonderful advice.”

“Like what?”

“Give the star the center of the stage and stay out of his way.”

“What’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you his name. He made me promise— Why? Because the cast would resent me if they knew he got me the part.”

“What big hit?”

Anna dropped her voice even lower, and she looked around, though who else could fit in their tiny room? “This!” She waved Variety. “The spring tour for Jekyll and Hyde! I can hardly believe my luck.”

There was a brisk knock at the door, and their landlady flung it open with an unusually warm smile. “Lucy Balant, you have a visitor.”

Bouncing up and down beside Mrs. Shine, cap in hand, was a callboy from Wallack’s Theatre. “Stage manager says to pack your bag!”

Lucy was out the door in minutes. “Good luck, Anna. Don’t worry. It’ll be your turn next.”

Anna went to the narrow window and craned her neck to watch Lucy trotting alongside the callboy. She had a strong feeling that it really would be her turn next. What would she do if the nice old gentleman asked her to dine at Rector’s? She knew in her heart that she did not have to answer that because he wouldn’t. He really did want to help her. Although maybe after she got the part, he might ask her there to celebrate. Fair enough. As long as he brought his wife.

3

ALL CLOTHES WASHED GOOD AS NEW

THEATRE COSTUME OUR SPECIAL

Isaac Bell hurried out of the Chinese laundry.

A broad-shouldered hard case in an overcoat and derby blocked the sidewalk.

“Care to tell me why the Chief Investigator of a private detective agency, with field offices in every city worth the name, and foreign outposts in London, Paris, and Berlin, is personally sleuthing for one missing young lady?”

“I wondered when you’d show, Mike. Your plainclothes boys were pretending not to watch me exiting Hammerstein’s stage door.”

“I train them to dislike surprises.”

Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney commanded the New York Police Department’s Tenderloin station house. His precinct included much of the Theater District and the hotel and boardinghouse neighborhoods where actors lived. Bell had worked closely with him years ago on the Gangster case, but operating on the same side of the law at sharply different angles made them competitors as much as allies. The policeman danced an elaborate ballet with the politicians who bossed New York City. The private detective was beholden to none. Coligney had six thousand cops backing him up, Bell had the Van Dorn Agency’s ironclad guarantee: “We never give up! Never!”

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Coligney. “Where you been?”

“Out west.”

“What brought you back?”

Bell gave him a copy of Anna’s picture. Now that the captain had the police “involved,” as Pape had put it, he intended to recruit extra eyes.

“Sweet-looking kid,” Coligney said. “A hopeful actress explains why your sidekick Archie Abbott is hanging out in the theatricals’ saloons. The blue-blooded Mr. Archibald Abbott IV having been a thespian before you brought him into the agency.”

Bell remained reticent.

The captain probed drily, “It might even explain why Harry Warren’s Gang Squad is knocking on rooming house doors, though I’m not sure how far detectives disguised as gangsters will get with rooming house landladies. But it still doesn’t explain why you are gumshoeing personally—is the lassie’s father a big wheel?”

“Not a Rockefeller or Judge Congdon, but big enough. Truth is, I had a couple of light days and felt sorry for the poor devil. He’s self-important and self-admiring—the richest man in the Brass City—but Anna is his only child, and it became clear to me that he loves her dearly.”

“Any luck?”

“Not a lot. I found a stage manager who sort of remembers hearing her read for a role. Archie found a callboy who told her ‘no parts.’ Harry found a landlady who thought she’d been looking for a room, three or four weeks ago. That would fit the time she left home, but if the name she gave was hers, she changed it for the stage.”

“So did Lillian Russell.”

“This one’s become ‘Anna Waterbury.’”

“Homesick.”

Bell and Abbott had made the rounds of dance and music schools, and the cheap eateries patronized by young actors starting out and older ones on the way down, and Bell was now finishing up low-cost laundries in the theater neighborhood. They had shown Anna’s photograph to landladies, young actors and actresses, and stage door tenders; a few thought they recognized her. In a tiny dressing room crammed with chorus girls at the Broadway Music Hall, Bell had found one who recognized her picture and recalled the name Anna Waterbury. So he was reasonably sure she was in New York, but still had no clue where.

“Hospitals?” asked Coligney.

“No Papes, no Waterburys.”

“Morgue?”

“Any unidentified young women I should know about?” Bell replied, doubting there were. He was neither especially concerned about young Anna’s safety nor surprised he hadn’t located her yet. New York was a huge city, and there were thousands of jobs for actresses in the vaudeville and dramatic theaters, in musicals and burlesque, and the road shows they spawned.

“None as of an hour ago,” said Coligney. “Good to see you again, Isaac. Congratulations, by the way. I heard you finally persuaded Marion Morgan to marry you.”

“Thank you. If there’s a luckier man on the planet, I haven’t met him.”

“Lord knows what she sees in you.”

“She’s funny that way,” Bell