Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  Maria and Gloria followed Bent, and then Garcia, his hands bound behind his back by the same rope he had earlier used to tie up Charlotte Elmwood. Lestrade came after him, his revolver in his hand. Maria turned to the driver and said, “Winchmore Hill, and you stop for neither man nor beast. Understand?”

  She turned back to the window of the cab, where Charlotte Elmwood sat, half-stunned still. “And that goes for you, too. Straight home, yes?”

  The girl nodded tearfully. “Thank you for everything you have done, Maria. I will never forget you.”

  Maria smiled crookedly. “You will remember me every time you look in the mirror, Charlotte. Now go!”

  “What should we do with him?” asked Lestrade, pointing his gun at Garcia.

  “He’ll have to come with us,” said Bent. “No time to get him comfortable in an effing cell somewhere, George, and for all we know Commercial Road is burned to the ground.”

  They ran up the steps to the House of Commons, where a lone uniformed police officer before the vast double doors put his hand up uncertainly.

  “I am Inspector George Lestrade,” said Lestrade, digging in his pocket for his warrant card. “I’m sorry, it is somewhat bloodstained, but…”

  The constable inspected it. “You are from Commercial Road? Every man is down there. They’ve got the army on their way, by all accounts. Is it bad?”

  “Not as bad as it’s going to effing get in here,” said Bent, elbowing past him. “Has the underground railway debate started?”

  “Half an hour ago,” said the constable. “But you can’t—”

  The motley troupe marched into the marble foyer past the protesting policeman and Bent led them to the doors of the main chamber, where a warden in the livery of Westminster Palace opened his mouth to challenge them.

  “No effing time,” said Bent, pushing him out of the way and leaning hard on the doors.

  * * *

  The chamber of the House of Commons was full to bursting, every seat on the four-tiered rows taken, the Liberal Members of Parliament facing the Conservatives, the Speaker, Viscount Arthur Peel, sitting resplendent on his thronelike perch between the two factions. William Hayes Fisher, the right honorable member for Fulham, was on his feet, waving papers across at the jeering Liberals.

  “Progress, sirs! Progress! Would the honorable gentlemen opposite stand in the way of this, the greatest city upon God’s Earth, becoming yet greater? The streets are choked with steam-cabs and omnibuses, horse-drawn carriages and stilt-trains. The skies are filled with dirigibles and aerostats. We have not a pennyworth of space left in London, so we must go down, underground!”

  The Speaker nodded to a Liberal, and said, “Thomas Bolton for Derbyshire North East will respond.”

  The gentleman stood and hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. “And how much will this cost, sir? Once again the provinces are squeezed dry to pay for London’s largesse. And, pray tell, what do we know of the subterranean world below our feet? Is it really safe? Can we be sure there are no…”

  The MP tailed off at the sound of a huge crash, and all eyes turned to the doors, where Aloysius Bent, Maria, Gloria Monday, and George Lestrade, pushing the bound Sergio de la Garcia before him, burst through.

  “Thank eff!” cried Bent. “We’re in time!”

  Then there was a shrieking of splintering wood, and the polished floor before the Speaker’s chair buckled and erupted, the green head of the young Tyrannosaurus rex emerging and opening its mouth, lined with cruel rows of daggerlike teeth, to emit an earsplitting roar.

  * * *

  “Go,” said Collier to Deeptendu. “Wait at our appointed meeting place for two days, then if I do not turn up you must make your way home. May Ganesha ease your passage.”

  “We will not abandon you, Fereng,” said Deeptendu.

  “Go!” hissed Collier. “I … I must see my daughter. I cannot have her remember me like this, the man who brought war to England. Gideon Smith is right. This is not the way. This is personal vengeance, not for the greater good.”

  The Thuggees all clapped Collier on his shoulder then melted into the shadows of the tunnel. He nodded at Gideon then began to climb, swiftly for a man with one wooden leg, up the iron rungs set into the brick service hatch.

  They reached a wide but cramped space, light flooding in from the smashed trapdoor above them. Below it was a web of ropes where the Thuggees had slung the drugged dinosaur, its only escape to claw its way upward and through the hatch. From above rang the sounds of chaos and panic, shouts and screams providing a counterpoint to the rumbling roars of the tyrannosaur.

  “You cannot have thought the beast would kill all six hundred and seventy Members of Parliament,” said Gideon.

  “It will kill enough,” said Collier grimly. “Such a primal engine of destruction, such a forgotten force of nature, loose in the black heart of the most advanced empire on Earth.”

  “As my friend Aloysius Bent would say, the symbolism is not effing lost on me,” said Gideon through gritted teeth. “Come on.”

  Then he began to climb the rope netting to the chamber of the House of Commons.

  * * *

  “Ouch,” said Bent, wincing as the beast, standing between the opposing rows of seats on its powerful hind legs and casting this way and that with its massive head, eventually decided to lunge for a panicking front-bencher on the Conservative ranks trying to climb over the seat behind him. “Looks like they’re going to be calling a special election in Dorset.”

  The chamber was a chaotic scramble of bodies fighting their way toward the double doors, but the sheer mass of them created a huge bottleneck behind the Speaker’s chair.

  “This way, this way!” cried Maria, waving them on. “But you must stop pushing and fighting!” She looked at Bent in despair. “They’re like stampeding bulls.”

  Lestrade was trying to get a bead on the beast with his revolver but was constantly shoved and elbowed by screaming politicians. “Does anyone actually have a plan?” he shouted.

  “Free me!” cried Garcia. “Take off my bonds!”

  “Not now, there’s a good chap,” said Bent. “We’ve got our hands full.”

  “Free me!” said Garcia. “I can stop it!”

  “Wait,” said Maria. She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  His eyes met hers. “Please. I am going to die anyway, yes?”

  Bent shrugged. “I imagine you’ll hang for what you’ve done, yes.”

  “Then let me die a hero!” he cried. “My wife and children are dead; at least let Inez remember me for the right reasons.”

  Bent looked at Lestrade, who shrugged. Maria gripped the ropes binding Garcia’s hands and tore them off. “My sword,” he said.

  She took the rapier from Gloria and handed it to him. He seemed to grow in stature, straighten, as though life flooded back into him. He looked at them each in turn and pulled his cowl over his head, holding the shaft of his sword in front of his face, his eyes shining.

  “El Chupacabras!” he said, then turned and ran through the scrambling mob.

  “And look!” cried Maria. “Gideon!”

  * * *

  “I must make this right,” said Collier. “For Rowena.” He drew his knife from his boot. The tyrannosaur had its back to them, the red-raw body of an MP before it, roaring in triumph.

  Gideon put a hand on his arm. “A fortune-teller told me … ‘a lost father dies’ … don’t you wish to see Rowena again?”

  “Better she remembers me like this,” said Collier.

  Gideon held on to him. “Wait,” he said. “Look.”

  Through the fleeing crowd a black shape was vaulting toward the beast, sword held high, crying, “El Chupacabras! El Chupacabras!”

  “We need to get its attention,” said Gideon. He ran, Collier behind him, straight for the beast, screaming and shouting until he was just feet from it. He began to stamp his boots on the wooden floor, and eventually it grunted and turned, its yellow e
yes lighting upon him. It opened its mouth and roared, the chandeliers far above shaking in the roof. Then it lunged for Gideon.

  Jip, the monkey, leaped from Collier’s shoulder, screeching and waving its arms. It was a tiny, inconsequential thing compared to the dinosaur, but it was enough to distract the beast and buy enough time.

  Garcia put one boot on the fallen Speaker’s chair and launched himself into the air, holding the hilt of his rapier with both hands and pointing it downward, landing like a cat on the arched back of the reptile and calling out one last time “El Chupacabras!” before plunging the blade into the back of its neck.

  The dinosaur roared, twisting around and swatting Jip across the room with its huge head. It took Garcia in its snapping jaws, worrying him to the ground in front of it and lifting its head to show its bloodred teeth, scraps of black hood hanging from them.

  A lost father dies.

  Then the beast’s tiny brain finally received the messages of pain being sent by its nerve endings, and it howled and fell forward with a crash.

  Gideon and Collier leaped out of the way as the beast fell. It lay silent for a moment, then raised its head and tried to claw its way to its feet, the rapier protruding from its neck. It fell again then pulled itself forward until it was near the splintered hatch, turning to regard Gideon with a baleful yellow eye, before dragging itself over the lip and into the shaft, and slithering out of sight.

  Maria ran through the thinning crowds to embrace Gideon. “Is it dead?” she asked.

  He held her tightly and looked down into the black shaft. “It’s certainly gone,” he said, looking up at Collier. “Though being gone and being dead are not necessarily the same thing.”

  * * *

  Lizzie Strutter surveyed her room after packing her meager belongings into a battered trunk. Not much to show for a quarter of a century in the sex trade in London. It was her body that carried the main baggage, bore the memories, sported the scars. And speaking of scars … Lizzie looked up, frowning, as Rachel burst in unannounced.

  “Mum, you’ll never guess…,” said the girl, then stopped, looking at the trunk. “Mum? You off somewhere?”

  “Manchester,” said Lizzie.

  Rachel gaped at her. “What for?”

  Lizzie sighed. “I’m done with London. For a bit, anyway. We’ve wrung each other dry.”

  “But Mum, the riot … it’s over. Haven’t you heard? There’s been some sort of monster attacking the Houses of Parliament. The real Jack the Ripper was there. He fought the monster and now he’s dead. It’s over, Mum.”

  Lizzie fastened the trunk. “Yes, it is.” She looked at the girl. “Time for a clean break, love. There’s too much bad blood for me here now. The police’ll never leave me alone, not after starting that riot on Commercial Road.”

  “But what about me? And the rest of the girls?”

  Lizzie tapped her finger against her chin, then dug in her apron pocket and fished out a set of keys. She tossed them to Rachel. “Time for you to make a go of it, love. Give your cunt a rest.”

  “Me?” asked Rachel. “Run the house? Be a madam?”

  “Yes.” Lizzie smiled. “You’ve earned it.”

  * * *

  Mr. Tait chewed the bone reflectively. A poodle, it had been, with a little ribbon in its curly fur. Wiry thing, not a lot of meat on it. He said, “Funny old thing, Mr. Lyall.”

  “The poodle, Mr. Tait?”

  “No, all that business with Smith. And the one-legged chap. And this thing they had, what did he call it? Tyrannosaurus?”

  “Tyrannosaurus rex, Mr. Tait. King of the dinosaurs, by all accounts.”

  Distantly there sounded an echoing roar, as if something were in pain, or angry, or perhaps both. They listened to it for a while, until it faded.

  “Ever eaten lizard, Mr. Lyall?”

  “Once or twice, Mr. Tait.”

  “Bet there’d be a bit of meat on a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

  They dampened the stove and packed away their pans and plates, hefting their packs onto their shoulders in the gloom of the sewer.

  “Shall we, Mr. Lyall?”

  “Well, you know what we always say down here, Mr. Tait. Eat or be eaten.”

  They began to trudge toward the ringing echo of the roars, and Mr. Lyall broke into song.

  31

  SCOURGE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

  “How … how was it, Rowena?”

  She blinked and looked at him as though she hadn’t heard. She was pale and thin, her hair dull and matted, and he immediately chided himself for the stupidity of his question. She had spent the best part of the week in Holloway and the Old Bailey, wrongly accused of murder, the death penalty looming over her.

  She gazed into the depths of the fire. “I thought you would come for me, Gideon.”

  “I was lost,” he began, but she put up a hand.

  “I know. You would have come if you could have.” She looked at him. “They formally dropped the charges this morning. At the same time they arrested my father. He admitted everything. He came back for revenge, Gideon. Came back to kill the man he thought had killed me long ago.”

  Gideon nodded; he remembered everything of his sojourn in the sewers. “He … his heart was in the right place, Rowena. I don’t think he meant to cause harm, really.”

  She sighed. “I think you’re wrong, Gideon. He knew what he was doing. The Empire treated him very badly.”

  Gideon said carefully, “But of course, you cannot condone his plan to attack Parliament.…”

  Rowena raised an eyebrow. She had changed out of her prison shift and into her more usual clothes, but there still seemed something … trapped about her. She looked around the parlor at Grosvenor Square as though it were little better than her cell at Holloway. She said, “I still haven’t seen him, you know.”

  Gideon poured her another cup of tea. “I’m sure that can be arranged. Mr. Walsingham will be able to sort out—”

  Her lip curled viciously, unattractively, into a sneer. Gideon was taken aback. He’d never seen her like this. “Walsingham? Walsingham left my father to die. He would have watched me hang.”

  “He is as hidebound by the rule of law as the rest of us, Rowena.”

  She sneered again. “Law? We are above the law, Gideon.”

  He shook his head. “We are not.”

  She looked into the depths of her teacup, as though seeking her fortune there. “If not above it, then outside it. That has always been the way for me. The things I’ve seen, Gideon, the things I’ve done. And most of them at the behest of the Crown. Yet they would have hanged me like a dog for something I did not do.”

  He wasn’t quite sure what to say, so he said, “What are your plans for Christmas? You are most welcome, of course, to join us.”

  She gave a wry grin. “I am planning to be out of the country for the season.”

  Gideon raised an eyebrow. “You are? Not working?”

  She shook her head then met his gaze. “Gideon. I need to know something. You love Maria?”

  He held her stare a long time before replying. He was back in the dream, the illusion created by Mesmer’s Hypno-Array. The one where he lived a life of mundane happiness back in Sandsend, a life he had thought saw him married to Maria, until the door opened and his beloved walked through … and it was Rowena.

  Illusion, misdirection, the mind playing tricks. Mesmer’s mischief. Nothing more.

  “Of course I do,” he said. “Do you need to ask, after everything I’ve been through with her?”

  Rowena pursed her lips and nodded, as though she had made up her mind about something. She said, “You do not have to be what they say you are, Gideon. The Empire owes you nothing, really. If you must be a hero, be a hero for Maria.”

  She placed her teacup in the saucer and stood. Gideon stood also. She said, “Will you say good-bye to Maria, and Aloysius, and Mrs. Cadwallader for me? I don’t think I could bear to.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You
sound like you are not planning to return.”

  “I think once we are gone, we shall be away for some time. Perhaps, as you say, forever.”

  “We, Rowena?”

  She smiled. “When Aloysius came to see me at court I asked him how I was to be freed. A tunnel? A daring escape over the prison walls? He told me that I was at the mercy of justice. I am Rowena Fanshawe, Gideon. The Belle of the Airways. When I drowned Jane Gaunt, I also killed the fetters of normal society. I will never be bound again, Gideon. No one clips Rowena Fanshawe’s wings.”

  At last, it dawned on him. “Collier,” he said. “You are going to break him out of Newgate Prison. I cannot allow this, Rowena.”

  She drew herself up to her full height and looked him square in the eye. Her pale skin flushed, the brightness returned to her eyes, and her auburn hair seemed to acquire a luster that had been absent.

  Rowena Fanshawe was back.

  She said, “I am. And so here we are. You are going to stop me, Gideon?”

  He looked away first. How could he stop her, after all they had been through? Was he meant to wrestle her to the ground? Was he that sort of hero?

  “No,” he said quietly. “But I cannot let this go unchallenged.”

  She moved toward the parlor door. “Then do what you must, Gideon. But after what has happened to me, I doubt I shall be returning to England.” She smiled, baring her teeth, and at that moment Gideon saw she was truly Charles Collier’s flesh and blood. “Not as a friend, at any rate. Fair winds, Gideon. I’ll see myself out.”

  “Fair winds,” he said quietly as she closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  “Gideon?” Maria let herself into the parlor, looking around. “Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Rowena—”