“What?”
“He came bolting up this way, just a minute after you’d gone down. John Harder. Jack the Ripper.” Her hand went to her throat.
I dragged her fingers away, checking her neck. It had not been cut, but there were red welts rising on either side. “What happened?”
“He took my whistle,” she said. “He knew I was the one who called you. He said, ‘You squealed.”’
I stared in terror at her. “That’s it? That’s all he said?”
“That’s all he could say. You came running up the stairs the next moment.”
“He must have been in the weeds the whole time—must have skulked away even as I found her.”
“Wait—he—he did say one other thing: ‘Not done tonight.’ Then he bolted across the street.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” She turned, pointing east along Whitechapel Road. Men and women, horses and carriages, the great roiling serpent of desire coiled down that road, but there was no sign of John Harder.
“He’s going to kill again,” I said, taking her hand. It was all unraveling now, and I was not going to let go of her. “Damn it, and God damn it,” I murmured. “He’s seen you. It’s just like Jeremy Bachman all over again. He can trace you.” I dragged her with me down the busy street.
“What are we going to do?” Anna asked, dodging past a crowd that watched Punch beat Judy.
“We’re going to catch him—tonight.”
29
HUNTING THE RIPPER
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:
Anna and I jostled down the Whitechapel Road amid the welter of humanity. “Stay sharp! Watch everyone! Look for that greatcoat.”
We passed a five-year-old urchin begging for food, a dozen men watching a pair of mongrels fight in an alley, a hurdy-gurdy man whose monkey shivered more than danced, a pair of teamsters groaning as they rolled a cask up a street, a fifty-year-old woman troweled with makeup to hide her pox … .
I grabbed the woman’s arm. “Did a man proposition you, moments ago?”
“Yor a man, ain’t ya? Yor positioning me, yeah?”
“I mean another man. We’re on his trail. Jack the Ripper.”
“Ho! Ho!” the woman cried. “Like I ain’t heard that one a million times. You ain’t hustling ole Bette off lest’n I see the money first.”
I shook my head grimly. “Beware, ole Bette. Jack’s killed once already tonight. He’s prowling for another kill.”
“A double job, then, is it, guv—? ‘Cause I got another double job in mind for you an’ yor boyfriend.”
“Achh!” I growled, stepping away and pulling Anna along with me. As we dodged along the pavement, I craned to see past all the top hats and bowlers. “I just wish I could get a clear view.”
Ahead, a lamplighter made his way along the road. He paused at a pole, leaned his slender ladder against it, mounted up, and reached with a tall wand to ignite the gas. The lamp flared, casting a lurid glow over the downturned heads below.
“That’s it!” I charged to the lamplighter, fished a crown from my breast pocket, and slapped it into his sweaty palm.
“Whoa, now, guvnor. What’s this?”
“I’m renting your ladder,” I said, pushing him aside and climbing up to gaze out over the crowd. “Just for a moment.”
“A crown says you can stay up there all night.”
“I haven’t got all night.”
There, two blocks away—where Whitechapel Road crossed Thomas Street—a veiled woman spoke to a man in a blue greatcoat.
I leaped down from the ladder and, holding tight to Anna’s hand, ran forward through the throng.
“You saw him?” Anna asked.
“Two blocks up. We’re lucky he didn’t turn off.”
“He’s just going where the prostitutes are.”
“Yes—but he’s also taunting us. He knows we’re on to him, and he’s got a new victim—right under our noses!”
We reached the first street and crossed it, leaping the slops channel in its center. On the block beyond, the mob so packed the pavement that we had to thread our way between a line of parked cabs and the rumbling stream of traffic.
At last we could see the street corner where Jack had spoken to the woman in the veil—but both of them were gone. Anna and I ran up to the spot and turned in circles, searching the crowd in vain. “Do you see them?”
“No,” Anna said, her voice tremulous.
“Damn,” I growled, only then noticing another prostitute across the street—a different woman. Her lips were as red and curved as a heart. “Let’s find out what she saw.”
We bolted across the road, almost getting run down by a black coach. Seeing our desperate dash, the prostitute smiled with drunken amusement.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said breathlessly as we approached.
“Such manners!” she replied, her teeth splaying in a smile. “Nothing to excuse. Name’s Mary.”
“Mary, did you see the woman across the street—the other woman?”
“Kate, you mean? You’re too late for her. Somebody else got her.”
“That someone was Jack the Ripper,” I said gravely.
Mary’s eyes clouded. “Now that ain’t nothing to kid about.”
“I’m deadly serious. Did you see which way they went?”
“Up Thomas Street,” she said, and beneath the makeup on her face, her cheeks trembled. “You don’t think—?”
“Are there any secluded spots up that way, somewhere out of the public eye?”
Mary’s eyes shifted in thought. “There’s alleys aplenty that way, and little nooks behind the wool warehouse and the rendering house.”
“Take us there,” I said, gripping her arm.
Just then, a faint shout came echoing down Thomas Street. “It’s him, Mary! It’s the Ripper!”
Mary flung my hand off her. Her eyes flared. “You’re him, ain’t you? You’re trying to lure me away. Help! Help! The Ripper!”
I stood rooted to the ground, astonished. “No. No! We’re trying to catch him.”
“Jack the Ripper!” she shouted, pointing at me.
I glanced around, seeing angry men turn their faces my way. The bloodstains on my trousers didn’t help my case. I growled to Anna, “Run!”
Anna and I darted up Thomas Street in the direction that Mary had indicated. I harbored some vain hope we might find him, might stop him, but running was perhaps our greatest mistake. It triggered the predatory instincts of that predatory mob. They ditched their smoldering hunks of meat and their dancing monkeys and their dogfights and gave chase.
This was disaster. We’d never catch him now. We’d never outrun—
A foot hooked my ankle, and I tripped, sprawling out on the pavement. I let go of Anna’s hand. “Run!” Then the air was blasted from my chest as man after man piled on me. I tried to squirm free, but they were too many, their hot breath blasting my neck.
“That’s right, boys. Hold him down till the coppers nab him. Saucy Jack!” said a craggy voice—a voice I was sure belonged to the Ripper himself.
Before I could call him out, though, the men on my back lunged in as one, and the crushing weight of them made me go black.
I AWOKE to a hot lantern shining into my eyes. I was tied to a chair, and in the stuffy darkness beyond the lamp, figures shifted listlessly.
“So, the Ripper awakes.”
I gave a little laugh, which resulted in a slap across the face. The blow stung, and, if nothing else, woke me fully.
The man who had struck me paced slowly, just beyond reach of the lantern. “My name is Inspector Lestrade. What is your name?”
“It’s bloody well not Jack the Ripper,” I said. “I’m Professor James Moriarty, chair of Maths and Physics at Jesus College, Cambridge.”
“A long way from Jesus, aren’t we?”
“I know you won’t believe me, but I will tell you anyway: I came to London to track down Jac
k the Ripper, and I have discovered his identity.”
“Truly?”
“His name is John Harder, master of the tops of the steam cutter Union Jack, even now docked at Wapping.”
“You talk a pretty story, Jack,” said Lestrade.
And so began another night of monstrous inquisitions. They asked about the blood on my hands and all down my front, and I told them of the first woman that Harder had attacked, told them how I was only a few seconds too late. Rueful smiles flashed in the darkness. I indicated where they would find her body—that she was not mutilated like the others because I had interrupted the Ripper. I had been that close behind.
“So close, you might be one and the same man.”
“The woman died in my arms.”
“I bet she did.”
“There was nothing else I could do for her, and I was determined to capture the Ripper, and he attacked my daughter so that—”
“Your daughter?”
I explained Anna’s presence, disguised as a paper seller. The hyena grins all around me only grew. Lestrade snarled question after question at me, wondering why a professor would be so stupid as to bring his daughter to the hunting grounds of the Ripper, why he would disguise her as a paperboy, why he thought a whistle would keep her safe. I tried to dismiss all these issues, driving instead to the Ripper’s words to Anna: “I ain’t done yet.” I told how Anna and I had given chase, had seen him at the corner of Whitechapel and Thomas with a prostitute named Kate.
“Oh, good guess! Every whore’s named Kate!”
They jeered, certain they had gotten their man. As the horrible night wore on, I grew quiet, not only because I had testified to everything five times over, but also because I knew that Jack was still out there, carving up Kate. And once he was finished with Kate, Jack would make his way to Scotland Yard, would somehow find out the name of the man that the police were questioning, and would come after me—and Anna.
So, it was with both relief and terror that I greeted Anna as they brought her into the room. Her very appearance at Scotland Yard—a sixteen-year-old girl disguised as a paper seller—did much to quiet those laughing mouths. Her story then did even more. She corroborated my account in every particular. She also had her own adventures to tell about:
“The mob brought my father down, sure enough, just where you found him. They thought he was the Ripper, but that’s only because Jack himself had stirred them up. I saw him—Jack in his blue greatcoat standing in an alley, calling my father out and taunting the mob. But when a few of those brutes looked up to see who was shouting, well, then old Jack turned and vanished into the shadows.”
“Oh, simple enough to claim,” Lestrade said. “So the real Jack got away up an alley?”
“No. He didn’t get away.”
“Then where is he? If he didn’t get away, then you must have captured him. Where are you hiding him?” Lestrade mocked.
“I didn’t capture him—but I did follow him.”
I said, “Foolish!”
“I was careful,” Anna said. “I didn’t see Kate with him, so I was afraid it was all a trap to ambush me. I hung back—until I heard the scream.”
Lestrade’s expression grew intent. “His next victim.”
“Yes. One quick scream, and then nothing more. It sounded … cut off.”
Grim chuckles rumbled around us.
“Well, I went slowly, looking in every dark place. Without the sound of a scream to follow, it was blind man’s bluff. At last, I came to Mitre Square, and in the corner opposite me, I saw a man hunched over in the dark, and I knew that greatcoat on his back, and I screamed. He looked back at me. It was John Harder, all right, but his face was striped in blood. He turned, and something small and white flew off the knife in his hand. I think it was the woman’s ear. It went in a bush, and he went to get it, but I screamed again, and he stalked toward me. ‘Triple job!’ That’s what he said. ‘Triple job!”’
“You should have run,” I said.
“I started to, but then a crowd of people came charging up behind me. Some were from the same mob that had grabbed Father. They’d heard me scream and they came running and they saw John Harder, too. They saw that he was the real Ripper. He turned and dashed away.”
“Didn’t anyone chase him?” Lestrade asked.
“They started to, but then they saw … they saw … poor Kate.”
Lestrade asked, “What did she look like?”
“Mutilated. Throat cut. Belly cut. Guts pulled out …”
“All right, all right,” Lestrade said, waving away the testimony. “This has all been very interesting and dramatic, but all these intimate details—the names of the victims, the locations of the killings, the types of wounds inflicted, the fact that you and your father tell exactly the same story—they all might simply mean that you two planned and carried out these killings as a team.”
“Except that,” said Anna with a fierce look in her eyes, “when the police came, they brought ten of us back to testify. There are nine others waiting to describe Jack the Ripper to you.”
“You’ve got all the evidence, now!” I said. “Sweep down to Wapping and snatch this monster from the Union Jack!”
At last, we’d gotten through to Inspector Lestrade. He sent one of his men to the docks, though he retained Anna and me while he interrogated the other witnesses. Every last one corroborated our story.
An hour later, the officer returned, panting and covered in cold sweat. “It’s as he said. Wapping, the Union Jack—even this John Harder fellow, master of the tops—”
“And? And?” Lestrade prompted.
“And the ship sailed again before dawn.”
“Where’s she bound?”
“Paris.”
“Paris?”
“She’s a steam cutter. Fast ship. No one’ll catch her.”
Lestrade leaned his knuckles on his desk, jaw working, eyes fiery as if they could burn through the wall. “We’ll send another ship to intercept. We’ll send a man to the Continent to wire the French. God damn it—the French! They’re not going to nab Jack the Ripper. I’ll go myself, will wire ahead from Normandy and then beat him there on the train and be ready to nab him at the dock at Paris.”
“Inspector,” broke in a new voice—a young officer who entered the interrogation room and waved a postcard in the air. “He sent it to the Central News Agency—and they sent it on to us.”
Lestrade snatched the postcard, held it up, and read silently. His hand trembled.
“What is it?” asked several of the other detectives.
“It’s from Jack, I’d wager,” I said, “another taunt, yes?”
Giving me an imperious glare, Lestrade drew a deep breath and read:
I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. Ha not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping Mr. M. back so I got to work again.
“One of you morons gave him my name!” I raged.
Anna glared at me, a look that combined frustration and fear. Then she asked Lestrade, “Are we free to go now?”
Lestrade snorted and gestured to his comrades to unshackle me.
I stood, rubbing my chafed wrists, and said, “I hope you buckle him—Boss.”
30
REVENGE
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:
Anna and I cleaned ourselves up, purchased new clothes, and headed to Victoria Station. There, I bought two tickets to Cambridge.
“Cambridge?” Anna objected. “We can’t go home. We almost got him. We could catch him in Paris. Do you think Lestrade will catch him?”
I laughed aloud. “We tracked him, we found him, we got his name, we would have captured him this very night if not for the police. No, they know less than the papers, and the papers know nothing.”
“Then we have to go to Paris!” Anna pressed.
I stepped from the platform onto the train. “Do you honestly believe that John Harder will be on that boat when it docks in France?”
Anna shook her head sullenly. “Of course not.” She took my hand.
I lifted her up beside me. “Of course not.”
She was trembling; my darling Anna was trembling. All through that insane night, she had been a rock, even when Jack the Ripper was spewing his rancor into her face, but now she trembled.
Anna clutched my coat sleeve. “What will we do?”
“Mrs. Mulroney,” I said heavily, leading her into an empty coach compartment. “We’ll stay at the boardinghouse tonight. Jack’s canny, but not so canny that he will have traced us out that far. We need a night’s rest, need to be able to think clearly to outsmart him.” I sat down.
Anna melted against me, all the trembling terror pouring out of her. “Oh, Father, I’m glad of it. A night’s sleep—Mrs. Mulroney—a warm, safe bed tonight.”
“Yes.”
Evening was drawing down over the Cambridge platform when we arrived. I held Anna back, kept our train compartment dark, and watched out the windows to see if Jack lurked there. Every last passenger debarked. The conductor called, “All aboard to Ely!” Porters and passengers made their way onto the train, but still we waited. The first blasts of steam came as the brakes disengaged and the pistons surged—and Jack was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s go!” Grabbing Anna’s hand, I hurried her from the compartment, through the aisle, and down the steps. Already the train was rolling, and the platform scrolled away below our feet. “Hit the ground running,” I advised and leaped, barely able to stay upright. Anna followed—good girl—and landed with more grace than I.
The moment we had caught our balance, we ran together to the station house, passed through it, reached the street, and hailed a hansom. A cab pulled up with a rumpled man sitting on the board, his cap dragged down over his brow. Before letting Anna climb in, I stood up on the fender and knocked the hat off the man’s head.
The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls Page 17