Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  On the deck, the bag had spilled out something remarkable. Almost like a glass bowl. Palmer stooped to pick it up. It seemed to be made of something much harder than glass, opaque with a yellowish tinge. He hefted it; it was perhaps three pounds in weight, the curved side bisected by a slight indentation, the underside peppered with symmetrically spaced holes and one large aperture, an inch in diameter. It seemed both incredibly old and fantastically other at the same time. A shout brought Palmer back to his senses.

  “Cut the ropes!” he ordered, then headed to the bridge, still clutching the glass artifact. He stowed it in his deep desk drawer and broke out his rifle, feeling the Lady Jane right herself as the Proteus was cut loose. Loading the rifle, he headed back out on deck, to see the submersible and the vast kraken wheeling away in the waves. He raised the weapon and blasted at the beast, ripping a huge wound in its flank. Leadbeater had crawled out onto the hull of the Proteus, stabbing at one of the kraken’s leathery tentacles with a knife. The man was not short on bravery, Palmer had to give him that.

  Another of the navy crew had appeared at the hatch, firing at the kraken’s other eye. By accident or design, the monster swung a tentacle at him, curling it around the sailor and lifting him, screaming, into the air. Palmer reloaded and fired again, but the kraken plunged the navy man deep into the water with a forceful finality.

  It seemed to be loosening its grip, sliding backward off the Proteus, whose air-filled cells were proving more than the beast had bargained for. Reed cupped his hand to his mouth and called, “Leadbeater! Swim for it, now the beast is injured!”

  The commodore nodded and shouted into the submersible. The surviving lieutenant climbed out and the two men dove into the choppy waters. Palmer ordered the two Spaniards to throw them lines; that water was freezing and they wouldn’t last long. As they were dragged toward the Lady Jane, Palmer raised his rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. The thing was built like an octopus, and he hoped its brain was in the same place. He aimed for the bulge above its stricken eyes and fired. The kraken uttered its first sound, a high-pitched shriek, and slid from the submersible and under the waves. As Leadbeater and his surviving lieutenant were pulled aboard by the mulatto and the Irishman, the Proteus, evidently greatly damaged by the encounter, spun once, upended, and sank stern first out of sight.

  “I’m sorry we lost your ship,” said Palmer. “But at least we saved the—”

  “Captain!” said Devonshire.

  “What now, Mr. Devonshire?” asked Palmer, turning to where the first mate was pointing. One of the Lady Jane’s lifeboats, only a slender affair, had been put out to sea off the port side. Two figures were in it, and a quick head count identified them as the Frenchman and one of the Spaniards. The oilskin bag that Leadbeater had tossed aboard was gone.

  Leadbeater glanced at Reed then closed his eyes. “Curses. We’ve lost the Proteus and the—oh, bollocks.”

  With a swift coldness that surprised even Palmer, Reed took his pistol and put a bullet each into the remaining Spaniard, the mulatto, and the Irishman before they even had time to realize what was happening.

  “That was my crew,” said Palmer, stunned.

  “You were told to leave your crew at home,” said Reed wearily. “This is why. Throw them overboard.”

  Palmer looked into the distant sea, the lifeboat lost to sight. “What of the other two?”

  “Spies,” sighed Reed. There were a couple items scattered on the deck, leftovers from the bag. Reed picked them up and held to the dim light a ruby of fantastic size, suspended on a gold chain. He stared into its depths for a moment then pocketed it.

  “A Spaniard and a Frenchman? Working together?” said Palmer incredulously.

  “Apparently so.” Reed puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “Bother. Bloody bollocking bother.” He looked up at Palmer. “Don’t suppose you have any rum, do you?”

  Palmer led Reed and Leadbeater to the bridge while Devonshire and the navy lieutenant disposed of the Gibraltar sailors. “You going to be in trouble when we dock?” Palmer asked.

  “A world of trouble.” Leadbeater nodded.

  “But at least you got something,” said Palmer. “That ruby I saw you pocket, Dr. Reed.”

  “A trinket,” said Reed. “Not what we came for.”

  Palmer opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle of rum, pouring two generous measures. He sipped his and watched Leadbeater throw his drink back in one swallow, then refilled his glass.

  “Good job I saved you this, then,” Palmer said, taking out the strange glass object.

  Reed’s eyes widened, then he broke out into a wide grin.

  Palmer said, “Don’t suppose there’s much point in me asking what it is.”

  “This,” said Reed, taking the artifact from Palmer and holding it reverently, “really is above top secret. Well done, Captain Palmer. Now I’d be gratified if you could take us all home.”

  2

  DECEMBER 1890

  Inspector George Lestrade was having a bad day, and it wasn’t yet ten o’clock. Through the frosted glass of his office door he could see a thin, wiry figure, ridiculous deerstalker hat on its head, performing what appeared to be a series of jiglike dance movements. He refocused his attention on the man across the beeswaxed desk from him, on the walruslike mustache hiding his mouth as he clutched the brim of his bowler hat in both hands; he sat upright in the tall-backed chair, speckles of snow slowly melting on his hunched shoulders within his heavy overcoat.

  “Doctor,” said Lestrade wearily. “Just what is that maniac doing out there?”

  “That is what we are here to talk about,” said the man, wringing his hat excitedly. “My colleague believes he has a unique insight into the activities of Jack the—”

  Lestrade held up a hand. He could feel a headache building behind his eyes, like the roiling waters of a dam that was about to burst. “Doctor, when I said maniac I was not talking about the mass murderer whom I refuse to honor with that ridiculous appellation the gutter press have conferred upon him. Rather, I am talking about your patient, cavorting out there in the corridor and thus bringing disturbance and yes, chaos, sir, to the Commercial Road police station over which I am trying to preside with some measure of order and discipline.”

  “Oh,” said the man, and huffed a long sigh through the curtains of his mustache. “Inspector … George.”

  Lestrade matched the sigh with one of his own. He needed a pot of coffee to drive away the headache. He sucked in another breath and said more gently, “John. How long are you going to … to encourage him in this delusional fallacy? Can you really believe pandering to his fancies does your patient any degree of service?”

  “I prefer to call him my colleague rather than my patient,” said the other man. “And it is my firm belief that forcing him to deny the fantasy world he has built for himself will cause more harm than good. That would be like taking a sledgehammer to the wall that he has built around his own fragile mind; what is required is to take down that wall, slowly, brick by brick. And perpetuating his delusion is the only way I can get through to him.”

  “The Great Detective,” said Lestrade witheringly. He looked out the window at the sleet that battered the glass. It had barely managed to get light out there, between the infernal, snow-laden clouds that had hung over London for three days now and the smog that lurked at street level as the capital stoked its fires and burned its gas lamps with abandon to ward off the foul winter that had settled in like a house guest with no intention of leaving. The Great Detective. In the window Lestrade caught his own reflection, his face sallow for want of sunshine, his eyes black pinpricks. Like a rat’s, they said unkindly when they described him in the newspapers, which was becoming more and more frequent these days as he failed to bring to book the man who was slicing up prostitutes in the East End. The top brass had dressed it up as some kind of temporary promotion when they transferred him from Scotland Yard down to the Commercial Road to head up what even his
bosses were now calling “the Ripper inquiry.” Do a good job with this, they’d said, and who knows? Maybe there’ll be chief inspector in it for you, Lestrade.

  Or maybe he had been set up to fail. Maybe there was no room for old-fashioned coppers like George Lestrade these days at Scotland Yard, where they gasped with wonder and amazement at the latest technological marvel that they were sure was going to make the job of the bobby on the beat even easier. Hydraulic truncheons that expanded from a foot long to the height of a man at the push of a button. Electric machines that tapped out a man’s heartbeat in inky lines that leaped and danced if he told a lie. Clockwork dogs that could follow a scent through even Billingsgate fish market.

  George Lestrade didn’t need any of that. Good detective work was what was needed to close a case, and failing that, five minutes and a couple of burly coppers in a locked room normally extracted a confession from even the hardiest crook. His record attested to the number of successful prosecutions that had resulted from his single-minded pursuit of justice and application of the law. By rights, the newspapers should be calling him the Great Detective, not John Watson’s capering cretin.

  “I want him away from anything to do with the Ripper case,” said Lestrade finally, the word “Ripper” curdling on his tongue. But how else could he describe the man who was slicing the tops of the heads off London’s whores, when that was how the rest of the country—the rest of the Empire, even—referred to him? “Seriously, John. He’s hindering my investigations. And with Christmas coming up, I’m going to be short on manpower as it is without tripping over him.”

  “You won’t even listen to what he has to say?”

  “No. Keep him out of my way. I’d say lock him up, but I know you won’t do that. Can’t you at least cook something up to distract him?”

  The doctor stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “There is something I can … refocus his efforts on, perhaps. My colleague’s reputation is growing, and a man came to us in Baker Street with a story about a gem, a carbuncle I think, he’d found inside the carcass of a goose…”

  “Sounds harmless enough,” said Lestrade. “Let him loose on that mystery if you want. Just keep him out of Whitechapel.”

  * * *

  Lestrade called for a constable to show the doctor out and bring him a pot of coffee. The coffee came back quickly, but also with a less edifying side order.

  “Someone to see you, guvnor,” said the constable apologetically as a shape, as rotund and monstrous as the doctor’s patient had been thin and reedlike, hove into view in the doorway. “Sir, I do know you are aware of the regulations governing unauthorized access to—”

  “Yes, yes, Ayres,” said Lestrade. “Who—?”

  “Lestrade, best of the effing season to you!” boomed a voice.

  Lestrade pinched his nose, closed his eyes, and counted slowly to ten. “Aloysius Bent,” he breathed, opening one eye to glare at the man who cheerfully described his own face as not unlike a stocking full of porridge. “To what do I owe this intense pleasure?”

  The vast man, who was bearing his rumpled suit as a rock might sport a covering of moss rather than actually wearing it with any sort of style, sank heavily into the chair so recently vacated by the doctor and belched loudly. He reached over and helped himself to the single cup that the constable had brought and poured himself some coffee from the pot. “Don’t mind, do you? It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. Thought I’d come and see you. Been a while.”

  “Yes, I think the last time we met was when you vomited copious amounts of spicy sausage on my shoes.”

  Bent belched again. “Got to love an effing sausage, now and again. That was … let’s see … Frances Coles, wasn’t it? Back in July? Ripper did for her behind that tripe shop on Lomas Street.”

  Lestrade opened his desk drawer and found an old tin cup and poured himself some coffee. “That was the last Ripper story you did for the Argus, wasn’t it? Shortly afterward you were transferred to the penny dreadful? World Marvels & Wonders?”

  Bent cackled. “Don’t pretend you don’t know, George. I’m an effing hero, I am. Went to bloody Egypt and fought mummies, then there was all that malarkey with the brass dragon. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done since then. Dinosaurs, George, big as an effing house. Giant metal men. Warlords with steam-powered arms. Red Indians!”

  Lestrade forced a smile. “Ah, yes. You are now the official chronicler of the adventures of Gideon Smith, the Hero of the Empire.” He cocked his head, much like a ferret—a description frequently applied to Lestrade by Bent’s ilk in Fleet Street. “I must say, Mr. Bent, I never had you down as the adventurous type.”

  Bent shrugged and poured more coffee. “A change is as good as a rest, George. Between you and me, I wasn’t pleased when they told me I’d have to go off gallivanting around the effing world with young Smith, but it’s been quite an invigorating experience, all told.” He paused and raised one vast cheek to let loose a hissing fart. “Aside from nearly getting killed once or twice, of course.”

  “Heaven forbid,” said Lestrade, though without much conviction. He watched Bent slurping coffee for a moment, then said, “Well, as gratified as I am that you bullishly elbowed your way into my office for no apparent reason, I’m very much afraid that I am a busy man and—”

  Bent banged the cup down on the desk. “Ah ha! That’s why I’m here, George old chap. Going to lighten your effing load a bit.” He winked. “Give you more time to spend with that chickadee I heard you was knocking about with. Very unorthodox, so’s I was told.”

  Lestrade raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Bent, I fail to see—”

  Bent waved him away and nodded enthusiastically. “Don’t worry, I don’t go in for that sort of yellow journalism no more. Bigger fish to fry, Lestrade. Going to solve your bloody Jack the Ripper mystery for you, ain’t I?”

  Lestrade felt something wither and die inside him. The slim hope that today was going to be anything other than dreadful, he surmised. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Oh, but it will, George,” said Bent. “Necessary indeed. You see, Mr. Gideon Smith has been charged by his employers, in other words the Crown, to get to the bottom of this Ripper malarkey once and for all.”

  Lestrade fixed his ratlike eyes on Bent. “You jest, of course.”

  The journalist put a fat hand on his crumpled shirtfront. “Jest, George? About something as serious as this? Not an effing chance, big man.” His eyes narrowed. “And not when I happen to be the foremost expert on Jack the Ripper in the whole of effing London.”

  There was a moment’s silence while Lestrade tried to marshal his response into something coherent, which was broken by the constable lumbering into the office. Didn’t anyone bother to knock anymore? Was an inspector in Her Majesty’s Constabulary not worth even the merest ounce of respect?

  “Early editions of the rags, sir,” said the constable, his arms full of the midmorning newspapers. “Something in the Argus I thought you might want to see.”

  “Unlikely,” sniffed Bent. “They haven’t had a story I’d wipe my effing arse on since I got booted on to the penny dreadful.”

  Lestrade took the Argus from the constable and peered at the front page, surrounded by advertisements for gentlemen’s outfitters offering the latest styles, Bird’s Crystal Jelly, the medicinal effects of chewing tobacco, steam-powered rug cleaners and clothes washers, airship trips to Paris for Christmas. The lead story was about the suggestions to build some kind of underground steam railway beneath the streets of London to alleviate the traffic problems in the choked streets. Lestrade thought that was inviting trouble; tunnels crisscrossing the capital would be a boon to thieves and crooks of all kinds. Bent, trying to read it upside down across the desk, swore and dragged it off him.

  “Effing hell. This has to be some sort of joke.”

  Lestrade glared and tugged the newspaper back. It was not the story about Parliament’s imminent debating of the underground railway
matter that was the cause of concern, but a piece below with the headline “RUINED WOMEN” OF WHITECHAPEL WITHDRAW SERVICES WITH REGARD TO INCREASING ACTIVITIES OF JACK THE RIPPER. A secondary deck of type declared:

  OPEN LETTER FROM LIZZIE STRUTTER, A HARLOT OF THE EAST END, DELIVERED TO THE OFFICES OF THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON ARGUS LATE LAST NIGHT.

  The failure of the police to have any measure of success with regard to the apprehension of the killer known colloquially as Jack the Ripper has prompted the ladies of the night who ply their disgraceful trade on the streets and byways of the East End to take matters into their own hands.

  A letter received late last night at the offices of this newspaper from one Lizzie Strutter and signed (in many cases with a simple X as the “ruined women” of Whitechapel are not known for their extensive education) by what purports to be a phalanx of some 1,127 streetwalkers has announced that those who pursue the vocation of prostitute in the East End have withdrawn from their chosen occupation.

  WIVES REJOICE!

  Mrs. Strutter, who is considered to be one of the most militant and—according to those “in the know”—influential prostitutes in Whitechapel, has apparently organized her fellow streetwalkers into some kind of union for the purposes of self-preservation.

  Her letter (written upon paper of a very low grade, and in handwriting that has most certainly not been the product of any finishing school of London or beyond) states: “We the undersigned are sick and tired of the police failing to catch Jack the Ripper what is slicing up good honest working girls in Whitechapel & surrounding parishes.

  “Until such time as Jack the Ripper is brought to justice there will be no business entertained on the streets of Whitechapel.

  “Any girl who is caught touting for custom will be properly dealt with.”