Perhaps the most bizarre (and compelling) of all Hoch’s characters is Simon Ark, who claims to have been a Coptic priest in ancient Egypt two thousand years ago and has been battling evil ever since. He purports to be immortal, but so is the “Ultimate Evil,” with whose avatars he is confronted. Ark was the protagonist of Hoch’s first published story, “Village of the Dead” (1955), in which the entire population of a village commits suicide by leaping off a cliff, perhaps at the suggestion of a powerful religious leader. The story preceded the mass suicide of nine hundred nine members of the Peoples Temple of Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
“The Treasure of Jack the Ripper” was first published in the October 1978 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
THE TREASURE OF JACK THE RIPPER
Edward D. Hoch
Before recounting the remarkable events surrounding the search for the lost treasure of Jack the Ripper, it might be well to say a few words about my friend and occasional companion, Simon Ark. It was Simon who brought the affair to a satisfying conclusion, as he has so many other times in the twenty-two years I’ve known him.
I was a young newspaper reporter when I first met Simon Ark back in the mid-fifties. I’d been sent to a remote western town to report on an apparent mass suicide. Simon was there, too, looking tall and imposing and very old. He told me later that he was nearly two thousand years old, that he’d been a Coptic priest in Egypt, and now was doomed to roam the world like some Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew, undying, seeking a final confrontation with Satan and all that was evil on this earth.
Did I believe any of that?
Frankly, no. Not at first, anyway. I married a wonderful girl named Shelly Constance and moved from a career in journalism to one in publishing. When Simon Ark reappeared in my life, as he kept doing at irregular intervals, I was an editor at Neptune Books. Whether I believed his story or not, I realized his vast knowledge of the occult and the mystic arts could be put to good use. He wrote a book and I published it. This was, after all, the era when every mystic had a book to publish.
In recent years Simon and I drifted apart. I was a middle-aged editor no longer quite up to the sudden journeys to Egypt or Poland or London that used to fascinate me in the old days. And for all I knew, Simon himself might have died of old age. Because I never really believed all that business about Simon being two thousand years old, did I?
It had been fully five years since our last adventure together when suddenly he was back, on the other end of the telephone, acting as if he’d seen me not ten minutes earlier.
“Hello, my friend.”
“Simon! Is that really you?”
“Are you free for lunch?”
“Of course! But what—”
“I could not pass through New York without telephoning my publisher now, could I?” I knew his face would have that familiar sly smile as he said it.
I arranged to meet him at one o’clock at a steakhouse near my office. It had a small back room where customers could talk or drink away the afternoon without interruption, and I often took my authors there to iron out some sticky point in their plots or in our contracts.
“You look the same,” I told Simon, meaning every word of it. His large body and worn but vigorous face reminded me of our first meeting twenty-two years earlier.
“You are looking good, too, my friend. Putting on a little weight, though. How is Shelly?”
“She’s fine. Away visiting her mother in Florida at the moment.”
“Ah, then you’re alone?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“Come to England with me,” he said suddenly.
It was the sort of spur-of-the-moment suggestion I would have relished in the old days. “I can’t, Simon. I have my work.”
“We shall have some high old times, as we did in the old days.”
“Still chasing the Devil?”
“Yes. It is an eternal quest.” His face had gone solemn at my question. “Satanism has become a new fad among many young people.”
“I’ve been reading about the resurgence of witch cults in England. Is that what you’re after?”
He shook his head. “Something far more evil, my friend.” The old eyes flashed with a familiar fire. “The treasure of the late Jack the Ripper.”
“At least you admit that he’s dead. Every once in a while someone tries to prove he’s still alive. But I never heard of any treasure.”
“I have a communication from a man in London named Ceritus Vats. A collector of esoterica. He feels my presence is needed to forestall a murder. And to find a treasure.”
I thought about it. I still had a week’s vacation coming, and June was a slow time in publishing. The autumn books were already in various stages of production, the concern of other people, and I wouldn’t have to finalize our spring list for months yet. Shelly would be at her mother’s place another week. There was no real reason why I couldn’t go, except common sense.
And I’d never let that stop me before.
If Simon Ark was going to find a treasure belonging to Jack the Ripper, I wanted to be along for the show.
—
I phoned Shelly in Florida to tell her what was up. She’d always had mixed feelings about Simon Ark, and I knew she was far from delighted to have him back in our lives. But she didn’t argue about the trip. She only said, “Be careful,” and then, “I’ll see you next week.”
At ten o’clock the following night Simon and I were airborne over the Atlantic. It had been a bumpy takeoff from Kennedy, in the midst of an early summer rainstorm, but the flight quickly settled down to a smooth uneventful crossing. “What have you been doing with yourself these past five years?” I asked Simon.
He smiled. “Five years is merely a weekend to me, my friend. A pause, a rest from the search. As a matter of fact, I was studying at an Irish abbey for part of the time. I had only just returned to America when Ceritus Vats got in touch with me.”
“What sort of man is Vats? And how did he know where to reach you? I’ve never known your address in all these years, except for the brief times you stayed with Shelly and me.”
“Ceritus Vats is a bookseller, among other things. He operates from a little shop off Hammersmith Road in London. He knows my wants in certain fields, and he knows an address where I may be reached.”
“You mentioned esoterica. The mystic arts, I suppose.”
“In this case, yes, though he deals in a wide range of books and maps. Anything old or rare.”
I was prepared to meet a man who went with his name, but Ceritus Vats was a surprise. Our first afternoon in London was misty with a damp June rain, but the shop of Ceritus Vats was warm and brightly lit. He was a short handsome gentleman with white hair, who moved between the stacks of old books with a nimbleness born of long experience. Though the shop had the traditional hodgepodge look of a good secondhand bookstore, I never doubted that he could lay his hand on any title in the place at a moment’s notice.
“So good to see you again, Simon,” he said with a smile. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
I shook his hand and sat down. “I noticed a few of our Neptune Books have drifted across the sea to England.”
“Quite a few, actually. Neptune is a fine American house.”
Simon cleared his throat, anxious to get down to business. “You can speak freely in front of my friend here. He’s shared many adventures with me.”
Vats glanced at me a bit uncertainly, then replied, “Very well. Of course you’re familiar with Jack the Ripper and his crimes.”
“I am,” Simon said. “Unfortunately I was not in London at the time, or I might have brought the criminal to justice.”
I was used to this sort of talk from Simon, and apparently Vats was, too. He hurried on. “Nowadays the killing of five prostitutes on the streets of London would hardly attract all that fuss.”
“Perhaps it would,” Simon said. “If done in the manner of the Ripper�
��s killings.”
“You mean the mutilations?”
“And the letters to the newspapers. He was nothing if not a showman.”
Ceritus Vats leaned back in his chair. “Suppose I told you I have evidence that the Ripper was neither a madman nor a sex fiend, but only a coldly calculating killer whose motive was financial gain?”
“I’d find that difficult to believe,” Simon said.
“And suppose I could name the Ripper?”
“Do so, by all means!”
“Recently a remarkable document—a handwritten journal—was offered to dealers in rare books and esoterica, like myself. Its author purports to be none other than Jack the Ripper himself. In this journal he explains the motive for his crimes and reveals his identity. I must say that the handwriting compares favorably with that in reproductions of the Ripper’s newspaper letters.”
“Who is offering this journal?”
“A great-granddaughter of the man who wrote it. Her name is Glenda Coxe. His was Raymond Slackly.”
“I’ve never heard of Slackly,” Simon admitted. “Nor the woman either, for that matter.”
“According to the journal, Raymond Slackly was a small-time thief. He’d once knifed a man in a brawl, but he admits to no other prior violence. Sometime in the mid-1880s he teamed up with another thief named Hogarth, a smarter criminal who expanded both their horizons. After a number of profitable robberies they heard about the heist of a lifetime.
“It seems that 1887 was Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year, the fiftieth anniversary of her coronation. To celebrate the event a merchant named Felix Rhineman collected contributions for the crafting of a solid gold lion encrusted with fifty diamonds. It was to be a surprise gift to Victoria from London’s merchants, presented during the summer Jubilee week. Only a few people knew of it in advance, but unfortunately one of them let something slip in a pub. Hogarth and Slackly learned of the golden lion and managed to steal it on the eve of the presentation. The matter was hushed up to avoid embarrassment and Queen Victoria never knew of it.”
“Do you believe all this?” I asked with an editor’s natural skepticism. “That sort of thing went out with the Maltese Falcon!”
Ceritus Vats merely smiled. “It’s possible your Mr. Hammett got his idea from legends about the golden lion. Certainly I demand proof for such a story—but the map is proof of a sort.”
“What about Jack the Ripper?” Simon pressed on. The lines of his face were deep and his eyes were veiled.
“Hogarth and Slackly were afraid to offer the lion for sale once they’d stolen it. And they possessed neither the knowledge nor the equipment to melt it down. They decided Hogarth would bury the treasure in a safe place for five years, at which time they would then take the lion abroad and sell it.”
“Where was it buried?”
Vats shook his head. “Hogarth never told Slackly. He claimed that Slackly drank too much and had a loose tongue. But Slackly insisted he draw a map of the location, in the event he was arrested for some other crime. Hogarth agreed to draw a map in five parts and to leave one part with each of five London streetwalkers. They were paid to keep it, with more money promised in five years’ time. Only Hogarth and Slackly had lists of the prostitutes’ names.”
“An unlikely story,” Simon remarked.
“But is it? For the money, and the promise of more money, these women could be depended on. The parts of the map would remain safe. Hogarth seemed certain they wouldn’t be lost or misplaced. And even if one of the women died or disappeared, Hogarth himself still knew the location of the treasure. The trouble is, Hogarth died—he was killed in a pub brawl the following year. Slackly was left with five names and nothing more. According to the journal, he tracked the women down over a period of months but each one refused to give him her portion of the map—he hadn’t the money that was promised. So he was forced to kill them, all five, using the mutilations and his letters to the press to hide the true motive.”
“Is there any evidence besides the handwriting?” Simon asked.
“The journal is curiously reticent about the specific details of the killings—almost as if Slackly himself could no longer face the memory of them. But he does say he strangled the women before using his knife. Donald Rumbelow’s recent book on the Ripper confirms that at least four of the victims were probably strangled first.”
“Could I examine this journal?”
Vats shook his head. “I was allowed to read portions in the presence of Glenda Coxe, but she would not let me keep it.”
“And the map?”
“That’s the strangest part of all. Once Slackly retrieved it and put the pieces together, he found he couldn’t read it. That’s why he wrote the journal, leaving the map for his heirs.”
“I assume Miss Coxe can’t read it either, or she’d hardly offer it for sale.”
“Correct. She feels the journal and the map themselves are of great value, even if the treasure is never located.”
“And certainly they are valuable, if the story is true.”
“Can you help me, Simon?” Vats asked.
“Just what sort of help do you need? You asked me to forestall a murder.”
Vats nodded sadly. “My own. It is depressing to reach this stage in one’s life and realize that a colleague would actually kill you for financial gain.”
“And this colleague is—?”
“Martin Rood, an antiquarian bookseller and dealer in esoterica like myself. We’ve been friendly rivals for years.”
“Miss Coxe showed him the journal, too?”
“Yes, indeed. She wanted us to bid against each other and she has succeeded admirably.”
“Has Rood actually threatened your life?”
“Yes. Last week we held a joint meeting with Miss Coxe. When I topped his bid he stormed out, saying if I cheated him out of the journal and map he’d see me in Hades. He was not jesting.”
“But perhaps he’s cooled down by now.”
“No. On the morning I cabled you I received a package at my shop here. It was an old leather-bound book with no indication of who’d sent it. When I opened the cover I saw the book had been hollowed out—to make room for a live black widow spider.”
“My God!” I breathed.
But Simon did not take it so seriously. “Hardly a serious attempt to kill you, Ceritus, or the book would have contained a bomb rather than a spider. Still, it’s a bit unpleasant. You think Rood sent it?”
“Who else? The book was an old regimental history of little value. I almost think I’d seen it on his shelves.”
“Have you spoken to him since then?”
“I tried to phone him, but he’s always out.”
“Perhaps a visit to Mr. Rood is in order,” Simon decided. “Meanwhile, is it possible that Miss Glenda Coxe has shown this journal to other dealers?”
“I doubt it. Both Rood and I made strong bids for it.”
“And the map? Did she allow you to inspect that as well?”
“No. Only the buyer gets to see the map, though she’s described it to us as a circle of dots with a horseshoe of dots inside.”
Simon Ark lifted his head. “Is that so? And she was unable to identify it?”
“So she says. Do you know—”
“Just a thought. I’ll withhold comment for the present.”
“Can you speak to Rood, Simon? Somehow get him off my back so I can close this deal for the journal?”
“I can speak to him. But the police could have spoken to him, too. Why didn’t you simply call them and tell them about the spider?”
“If the police got wind of this Ripper connection they’d surely confiscate the journal and the map. The newspapers would get the story and no one would make a penny out of it!”
“I suppose the monetary factor is important to you.”
“Of course it’s important. I’m not in this business for my health, Simon! And neither is Rood. This is my chance to acquire the find of a lifetim
e!”
“Have you and Rood considered sharing it?”
“Share? With him? Never!”
There seemed little more to be said. Simon and I left Vats with a promise to do what we could. But I detected in my friend a depression that our long journey had come to this. “I have known Ceritus for years,” he said finally, breaking the gloomy silence, “but I never realized the full extent of his greed. Rood resorts to spiders in hollowed-out books, and Ceritus resorts to me. I am to be the weapon to gain his ends.”
“Do you really believe this business about Jack the Ripper’s buried treasure?”
“Perhaps this solution is no more fantastic than the original crimes were. However, it leaves one fact unaccounted for: if the Ripper was a sane and rational man bent only on finding that buried lion, why did he find it necessary to mutilate his victims after strangling them?”
“He was crazy and this whole business is crazy, if you ask me. Let’s forget it and catch the next plane back to New York.”
“I think first a few words with Martin Rood are called for. Then perhaps we will leave.”
Rood’s Rare Books occupied a shop on Bayswater Road, opposite Kensington Gardens. In its cluttered shelves and haphazard piles of books it was much like Vats’s shop, but the lighting was dimmer and the odor a bit mustier. And Martin Rood, when he appeared, looked very much like the sort of person who would send black widow spiders in hollowed-out books. He was as tall as Simon, but much thinner, with sunken cheeks and a pale skin that gave him something of a cadaverous appearance.
“What may I help you with today?” he asked. “We have some fine leather-bound volumes of Sir Walter Scott, just purchased from an estate.”
“I’m more in the market for regimental histories,” Simon remarked. “Perhaps something on the Black Widows.”
“Black Widows?” Rood seemed puzzled. “I don’t believe I know that regiment.”
“Strange. Ceritus Vats thought you could help me.”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 125