Marion shouted, “Mr. Barrett, Mr. Young: Good and evil battle to the death. Be ferocious — just please don’t accidentally kill each other, because we have a lot more film to make — if it ever stops raining.”
Jekyll and Hyde poised for engagement.
“Speed!”
Davidson and Blitzer cranked their cameras to take twenty frames per second.
Jekyll and Hyde saluted each other as a gesture of respect by raising the blades in front of their faces. The scenario, adapted loosely from the play, called for their first exchange to be aggressive. No hallucinogenic flouncing about, but good and evil tested severely. The hard beats of saber on saber rang loudly.
Jackson Barrett was still getting used to the idea that the audience in a movie would not hear the actual steely battle clang of the sabers, but the orchestra’s sound effects. On the other hand, the fact that they would not hear any words the actors spoke made for a rather fun game.
“Are you up for a fencing lesson, Mr. Young?”
In answer, the stage manager attacked without engaging in any feint, and Barrett was stunned to see Young use a counterbeat that swept under Barrett’s blade.
“The cameras are making you bold. Slow down.”
Hyde’s next lightning thrust actually forced Barrett to retreat.
His anger mounting, he snarled, “I’m putting a halt to this before I hurt you, and hurt you badly.”
He advanced to attack.
The stage manager surprised him with a sharp parry, then disengaged and executed his own attack with a sudden leap.
“Your moves are inventive,” said Barrett, with a quick parry. “You must have been practicing since the last time we were onstage.”
The stage manager had yet to speak. It was as if he were devoting himself to every move far in advance. Seeing Young display his sudden skills stunned Marion and the crew. They knew this was unlike any previous movie duel, as he handled a saber with unbelievable agility that was never there before.
“Mr. Young, if you try that again, I shall make you very sorry. Now, follow my lead. I will attack and you will retreat.”
Barrett tested him with a couple of hard beats, striking steel to steel, feinted with a hard beat, and lunged into a calculated move to show the audience the evil Mr. Hyde as if he were a rat scurrying down a dark alley.
It was becoming clear that Young was more adept than Buchanan with a saber. Barrett soon realized he was against one as good, if not better, with a sword than himself.
The stage manager made a direct riposte that ended in a thrust with no feints but with a total circle around Barrett’s blade. Barrett was half a second too quick to disengage and avoid Young’s offensive action.
Everyone on the set stood mesmerized, not certain if the fight had really become a vicious battle or only staged action for the movie.
Hyde waited to parry until Jekyll’s sword arm was fully extended and the point of his saber was only one inch from piercing his shoulder. His riposte pierced the sleeve on Barrett’s out-thrust and carved a deep cut in his forearm.
“A late parry, Mr. Hyde? You have neither the sense of distance nor the point control with your tight grip to put one over. How did you do that?”
Hyde gave no answer, and Barrett began to use tactics he hadn’t used in years. He deflected Hyde’s next attack with a straight, smooth line without wavering to attract a reaction — a swift, strong, clean parry without him seemingly noticing the blood flowing from his forearm.
Hyde did not immediately reengage Barrett but stepped back, gave his opponent a grotesque grin through his makeup, and spoke loudly so his voice carried to the crew over the wind machine.
“Jack Spelvin, my name is Isaac Bell, I am an investigator with the Van Dorn Detective Agency. I arrest you for the murder of Anna Waterbury and only God knows how many other women.”
50
Barrett shouted, “Are you crazy? Your fellow detectives arrested Buchanan. He’s the Ripper.”
Blitzer the cameraman yelled over the exhaust roar of the wind machine. “Keep fighting, keep fighting. We’re still running the cameras.”
Bell, keeping a surly eye on Barrett, ignored the crew, their voices mixing with the wind machine and echoing in chorus throughout the cavern.
“Don’t bother attempting to escape, Barrett, or Spelvin,” said Bell. “Or whatever your name is. We found your little escape passage in the rear of the tunnel and it’s guarded by two heavily armed agents.”
“Playing the role of a shrewd detective?” warned Barrett. “It’s still your wife’s movie. I wonder which one of us will see the ending.”
“It won’t be you,” said Bell, with ice in his tone. “Now, wipe the makeup off your left eye. Buchanan did it. So did Henry Young.”
“What did that prove?”
“Neither is Jack the Ripper.”
“Why are you mucking about with a saber? If you really intend to arrest me, where’s your gun?”
“I lost it in a canyon.” Bell spread his arms. There was no room in his skintight costume for a gun. “If you resist arrest, I will slice you worse than you sliced women in your maniacal murder spree.”
To add to the horror of the moment, Jack the Ripper, alias Barrett, removed his makeup with his cape, revealing a bruised eye, and uttered a loud, nauseating laugh that echoed throughout the tunnel above the exhaust from the wind machine.
There were no niceties, no respectful salutes. Like a bolt of lightning, the Ripper attacked like an ancient predator. Bell was prepared. He knew Barrett’s intent by a slight shift in his footwork. It came as an advance lunge. Bell parried and deflected the encounter with a sharp feint.
“Thank you,” said Isaac Bell. “I was hoping you’d resist.”
The production crew watched the engagement in awe. As the fight progressed, it gained momentum. The contact between blades seemed to come in microseconds, as the speed of the sabers flashed under the Cooper Hewitt lights. It became obvious to the crew that the two duelists were in a brutal fight to kill one or the other.
Bell drove the Ripper back into the tunnel, past the second camera and beyond the weird gleam of the lights. Visually, it was stunning, because the wind machine had kicked up a small cloud of dust that swirled under the lights.
Concerned when Bell was out of sight, Marion used her megaphone to amplify her voice over the roar of the wind machine. “Isaac!” she shouted. “Come back! You’re out of the light.”
The Ripper recovered the initiative and fought back hard, using speed, strength, and extraordinary point control to put the tall detective on the defensive.
Bell used his retreat to discover the Ripper’s methods, his skills and tricks. They both fought as though they were fighting for their souls.
Jack the Ripper had developed the precision of hand that Italy’s masters were famous for. But, in actual fact, he was more predictable than any Italian. The monster enjoyed butchering his victims, favoring to shed blood than land internal wounds. To lose to him would be to suffer a slow death. But the open blows that he delivered in his desire to cut were also an invitation for an opponent to run him through.
Jack the Ripper fell back, but the tall, blond detective had to battle for every foot gained. The Ripper left no opening untested. In a parry-thrust, he wounded Bell by a cut in the bicep. Luckily, it barely broke the skin, but blood trickled down his arm, threatening to wet his weapon’s grip and make it slippery. Bell squeezed his shirtsleeve to absorb it.
Now Bell realized how Jack the Ripper could overwhelm the women he killed and startle them into defending themselves in ways he could predict.
The way to beat him was to be unpredictable. And no attack was more unpredictable than the back attack Bell devised with his naval friend.