There are plenty like him. Eugene Aram, after the murder of Daniel Clarke, lived a quiet, contented life for fourteen years, unhaunted by his crime and unshaken in his self-esteem. Dr. Crippen murdered his wife, and then lived pleasantly with his mistress in the house under whose floor he had buried the wife. Constance Kent, found Not Guilty of the murder of her young brother, led a peaceful life for five years before she confessed. George Joseph Smith and William Palmer lived amiably among their fellows untroubled by fear or by remorse for their poisoning and drownings. Charles Peace, at the time he made his one unfortunate essay, had settled down into a respectable citizen with an interest in antiques. It happened that, after a lapse of time, these men were discovered, but more murderers than we guess are living decent lives today, and will die in decency, undiscovered and unsuspected. As this man will.
But he had a narrow escape, and it was perhaps this narrow escape that brought him to a stop. The escape was due to an error of judgment on the part of the journalist.
As soon as he had the full story of the affair, which took some time, he spent fifteen minutes on the telephone sending the story through, and at the end of the fifteen minutes, when the stimulus of the business had left him, he felt physically tired and mentally dishevelled. He was not yet free to go home; the paper would not go away for another hour; so he turned into a bar for a drink and some sandwiches.
It was then, when he had dismissed the whole business from his mind, and was looking about the bar and admiring the landlord’s taste in watch chains and his air of domination, and was thinking that the landlord of a well-conducted tavern had a more comfortable life than a newspaperman, that his mind received from nowhere a spark of light. He was not thinking about the Strangling Horrors; his mind was on his sandwich. As a public-house sandwich, it was a curiosity. The bread had been thinly cut, it was buttered, and the ham was not two months stale; it was ham as it should be. His mind turned to the inventor of this refreshment, the Earl of Sandwich, and then to George the Fourth, and then to the Georges, and to the legend of that George who was worried to know how the apple got into the apple dumpling. He wondered whether George would have been equally puzzled to know how the ham got into the ham sandwich, and how long it would have been before it occurred to him that the ham could not have got there unless somebody had put it there. He got up to order another sandwich, and in that moment a little active corner of his mind settled the affair. If there was ham in his sandwich, somebody must have put it there. If seven people had been murdered, somebody must have been there to murder them. There was no aeroplane or automobile that would go into a man’s pocket; therefore that somebody must have escaped either by running away or standing still; and again therefore—
He was visualizing the front-page story that his paper would carry if his theory were correct, and if—a matter of conjecture—his editor had the necessary nerve to make a bold stroke, when a cry of “Time, gentlemen, please! All out!” reminded him of the hour. He got up and went out into a world of mist, broken by the ragged discs of roadside puddles and the streaming lightning of motorbuses. He was certain that he had the story, but, even if it were proved, he was doubtful whether the policy of his paper would permit him to print it. It had one great fault. It was truth, but it was impossible truth. It rocked the foundations of everything that newspaper readers believed and that newspaper editors helped them to believe. They might believe that Turkish carpet sellers had the gift of making themselves invisible. They would not believe this.
As it happened, they were not asked to, for the story was never written. As his paper had by now gone away, and as he was nourished by his refreshment and stimulated by his theory, he thought he might put in an extra half hour by testing that theory. So he began to look about for the man he had in mind—a man with white hair, and large white hands; otherwise an everyday figure whom nobody would look twice at. He wanted to spring his idea on this man without warning, and he was going to place himself within reach of a man armored in legends of dreadfulness and grue. This might appear to be an act of supreme courage—that one man, with no hope of immediate outside support, should place himself at the mercy of one who was holding a whole parish in terror. But it wasn’t. He didn’t think about the risk. He didn’t think about his duty to his employers or loyalty to his paper. He was moved simply by an instinct to follow a story to its end.
He walked slowly from the tavern and crossed into Fingal Street, making for Deever Market, where he had hope of finding his man. But his journey was shortened. At the corner of Lotus Street he saw him—or a man who looked like him. This street was poorly lit, and he could see little of the man: but he could see white hands. For some twenty paces he stalked him; then drew level with him; and at a point where the arch of a railway crossed the street, he saw that this was his man. He approached him with the current conversational phrase of the district: “Well, seen anything of the murderer?” The man stopped to look sharply at him; then, satisfied that the journalist was not the murderer, said:
“Eh? No, nor’s anybody else, curse it. Doubt if they ever will.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about them, and I’ve got an idea.”
“So?”
“Yes. Came to me all of a sudden. Quarter of an hour ago. And I’d felt that we’d all been blind. It’s been staring us in the face.”
The man turned again to look at him, and the look and the movement held suspicion of this man who seemed to know so much. “Oh? Has it? Well, why not give us the benefit of it?”
“I’m going to.” They walked level, and were nearly at the end of the little street where it meets Deever Market, when the journalist turned casually to the man. He put a finger on his arm. “Yes, it seems to me quite simple now. But there’s still one point I don’t understand. One little thing I’d like to clear up. I mean the motive. Now, as man to man, tell me, Sergeant Ottermole, just why did you kill all those inoffensive people?”
The sergeant stopped, and the journalist stopped. There was just enough light from the sky, which held the reflected light of the continent of London, to give him a sight of the sergeant’s face, and the sergeant’s face was turned to him with a wide smile of such urbanity and charm that the journalist’s eyes were frozen as they met it. The smile stayed for some seconds. Then said the sergeant: “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Newspaperman, I don’t know. I really don’t know. In fact, I’ve been worried about it myself. But I’ve got an idea—just like you. Everybody knows that we can’t control the workings of our minds. Don’t they? Ideas come into our minds without asking. But everybody’s supposed to be able to control his body. Why? Eh? We get our minds from Lord-knows-where—from people who were dead hundreds of years before we were born. Mayn’t we get our bodies in the same way? Our faces—our legs—our heads—they aren’t completely ours. We don’t make ’em. They come to us. And couldn’t ideas come into our bodies like ideas come into our minds? Eh? Can’t ideas live in nerve and muscle as well as in brain? Couldn’t it be that parts of our bodies aren’t really us, and couldn’t ideas come into those parts all of a sudden, like ideas come into—into”—he shot his arms out, showing the great white gloved hands and hairy wrists; shot them out so swiftly to the journalist’s throat that his eyes never saw them—“into my hands!”
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
ROBERT BLOCH
As an enthusiastic reader of Weird Tales, the most successful pulp magazine in the science fiction and horror genres, Robert Albert Bloch (1917–1994) especially liked the work of H. P. Lovecraft and began a correspondence with him. Lovecraft encouraged Bloch’s writing ambitions, resulting in two of his stories being sold to Weird Tales at the age of seventeen, beginning a successful and prolific writing career.
Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and twenty novels, the most famous being Psycho (1959), which was memorably filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. While his early work was virtually a pastiche of Lovecraft, he went on to develop his own style. Much of his
work was exceptionally dark, gory, and violent for its time, but a plethora of his short fiction has elements of humor—often relying on a pun or wordplay in the last line. A famously warm, friendly, and humorous man in real life, he defended himself against charges of being a macabre writer by saying that he wasn’t that way at all. “Why, I have the heart of a small boy,” he said. “It’s in a jar, on my desk.” He commonly created a short story by inventing a good pun for the last line, then writing a narrative to accompany it.
One of the first stories that brought him renown was “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” published in 1943. It was adapted for a radio series titled The Kate Smith Hour (1944), starring Laird Cregar; again the following year on Stay Tuned for Terror; and for an episode of the television series Thriller that starred Boris Karloff in 1961. Bloch returned to Red Jack several times, writing a sequel to “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” titled “A Toy for Juliette” (1967); an original Star Trek episode titled “Wolf in the Fold” (1967); a short story inspired by the Ripper murders, “A Most Unusual Murder” (1976); and a full-length novel, The Night of the Ripper (1984), which featured appearances by such prominent Victorians as Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and the Elephant Man.
“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” was first published in the July 1943 issue of Weird Tales magazine; it was first collected in Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch (New York, Belmont Books, 1962).
YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER
Robert Bloch
1
I looked at the stage Englishman. He looked at me.
“Sir Guy Hollis?” I asked.
“Indeed. Have I the pleasure of addressing John Carmody, the psychiatrist?”
I nodded. My eyes swept over the figure of my distinguished visitor. Tall, lean, sandy-haired—with the traditional tufted mustache. And the tweeds. I suspected a monocle concealed in a vest pocket, and wondered if he’d left his umbrella in the outer office.
But more than that, I wondered what the devil had impelled Sir Guy Hollis of the British Embassy to seek out a total stranger here in Chicago.
Sir Guy didn’t help matters any as he sat down. He cleared his throat, glanced around nervously, tapped his pipe against the side of the desk. Then he opened his mouth.
“Mr. Carmody,” he said, “have you ever heard of—Jack the Ripper?”
“The murderer?” I asked.
“Exactly. The greatest monster of them all. Worse than Springheel Jack or Crippen. Jack the Ripper. Red Jack.”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said.
“Do you know his history?”
“I don’t think we’ll get anyplace swapping old wives’ tales about famous crimes of history.”
He took a deep breath.
“This is no old wives’ tale. It’s a matter of life or death.”
He was so wrapped up in his obsession he even talked that way. Well—I was willing to listen. We psychiatrists get paid for listening.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Let’s have the story.”
Sir Guy lit a cigarette and began to talk.
“London, 1888,” he began. “Late summer and early fall. That was the time. Out of nowhere came the shadowy figure of Jack the Ripper—a stalking shadow with a knife, prowling through London’s East End. Haunting the squalid dives of Whitechapel, Spitalfields. Where he came from no one knew. But he brought death. Death in a knife.
“Six times that knife descended to slash the throats and bodies of London’s women. Drabs and alley sluts. August 7th was the date of the first butchery. They found her body lying there with thirty-nine stab wounds. A ghastly murder. On August 31st, another victim. The press became interested. The slum inhabitants were more deeply interested still.
“Who was this unknown killer who prowled in their midst and struck at will in the deserted alleyways of night-town? And what was more important—when would he strike again?
“September 8th was the date. Scotland Yard assigned special deputies. Rumors ran rampant. The atrocious nature of the slayings was the subject for shocking speculation.
“The killer used a knife—expertly. He cut throats and removed—certain portions—of the bodies after death. He chose victims and settings with a fiendish deliberation. No one saw him or heard him. But watchmen making their gray rounds in the dawn would stumble across the hacked and horrid thing that was the Ripper’s handiwork.
“Who was he? What was he? A mad surgeon? A butcher? An insane scientist? A pathological degenerate escaped from an asylum? A deranged nobleman? A member of the London police?
“Then the poem appeared in the newspaper. The anonymous poem, designed to put a stop to speculations—but which only aroused public interest to a further frenzy. A mocking little stanza:
I’m not a butcher, I’m not a Yid
Nor yet a foreign skipper,
But I’m your own true loving friend,
Yours truly—Jack the Ripper.
“And on September 30th, two more throats were slashed open. There was silence, then, in London for a time. Silence, and a nameless fear. When would Red Jack strike again? They waited through October. Every figment of fog concealed his phantom presence. Concealed it well—for nothing was learned of the Ripper’s identity, or his purpose. The drabs of London shivered in the raw wind of early November. Shivered, and were thankful for the coming of each morning’s sun.
“November 9th. They found her in her room. She lay there very quietly, limbs neatly arranged. And beside her, with equal neatness, were laid her breasts and heart. The Ripper had outdone himself in execution.
“Then, panic. But needless panic. For though press, police, and populace alike waited in sick dread, Jack the Ripper did not strike again.
“Months passed. A year. The immediate interest died, but not the memory. They said Jack had skipped to America. That he had committed suicide. They said—and they wrote. They’ve written ever since. Theories, hypotheses, arguments, treatises. But to this day no one knows who Jack the Ripper was. Or why he killed. Or why he stopped killing.”
Sir Guy was silent. Obviously he expected some comment from me.
“You tell the story well,” I remarked. “Though with a slight emotional bias.”
“I suppose you want to know why I’m interested?” he snapped.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
“Because,” said Sir Guy Hollis, “I am on the trail of Jack the Ripper now. I think he’s here—in Chicago!”
“Say that again.”
“Jack the Ripper is alive, in Chicago, and I’m out to find him.”
He wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t a joke.
“See here,” I said. “What was the date of these murders?”
“August to November, 1888.”
“1888? But if Jack the Ripper was an able-bodied man in 1888, he’d surely be dead today! Why look, man—if he were merely born in that year, he’d be fifty-seven years old today!”
“Would he?” smiled Sir Guy Hollis. “Or should I say, ‘Would she?’ Because Jack the Ripper may have been a woman. Or any number of things.”
“Sir Guy,” I said. “You came to the right person when you looked me up. You definitely need the services of a psychiatrist.”
“Perhaps. Tell me, Mr. Carmody, do you think I’m crazy?”
I looked at him and shrugged. But I had to give him a truthful answer.
“Frankly—no.”
“Then you might listen to the reasons I believe Jack the Ripper is alive today.”
“I might.”
“I’ve studied these cases for thirty years. Been over the actual ground. Talked to officials. Talked to friends and acquaintances of the poor drabs who were killed. Visited with men and women in the neighborhood. Collected an entire library of material touching on Jack the Ripper. Studied all the wild theories or crazy notions.
“I learned a little. Not much, but a little. I won’t bore you with my conclusions. But there was another br
anch of inquiry that yielded more fruitful return. I have studied unsolved crimes. Murders.
“I could show you clippings from the papers of half the world’s greatest cities. San Francisco. Shanghai. Calcutta. Omsk. Paris. Berlin. Pretoria. Cairo. Milan. Adelaide.
“The trail is there, the pattern. Unsolved crimes. Slashed throats of women. With the peculiar disfigurations and removals. Yes, I’ve followed the trail of blood. From New York westward across the continent. Then to the Pacific. From there to Africa. During the World War of 1914–18 it was Europe. After that, South America. And since 1930, the United States again. Eighty-seven such murders—and to the trained criminologist, all bear the stigma of the Ripper’s handiwork.
“Recently there were the so-called Cleveland torso slayings. Remember? A shocking series. And finally, two recent deaths in Chicago. Within the past six months. One out on South Dearborn. The other somewhere up on Halsted. Same type of crime, same technique. I tell you, there are unmistakable indications in all these affairs—indications of the work of Jack the Ripper!”
“A very tight theory,” I said. I’ll not question your evidence at all, or the deductions you draw. You’re the criminologist, and I’ll take your word for it. Just one thing remains to be explained. A minor point, perhaps, but worth mentioning.”
“And what is that?” asked Sir Guy.
“Just how could a man of, let us say, eighty-five years, commit these crimes? For if Jack the Ripper was around thirty in 1888 and lived, he’d be eighty-five today.”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 129