Ripping Time ts-3

by Robert Robert

  They were nearly to a columned portico beyond, which offered better cover, when something slammed against her hips. Jenna screamed in pain and fright. She crashed to the ground, trying to roll onto her back. Jenna jerked the gun around, fired point-blank into the gunman's belly—

  And the pistol clicked over an empty chamber.

  She'd shot it dry.

  "Run!" Jenna kicked and punched whatever she could reach, scrambled to hands and knees, saw Ianira racing for the shelter of the portico. Shadowy movement behind the columns suggested someone watching. Please God, let it be someone who can help. Jenna gained her feet, staggered forward a single stride. A hand around her ankle brought her down again. The glint of a knife caught her peripheral vision. Jenna kicked hard, felt bone crunch under the toe of her boot. The gunman screamed. Jenna rolled frantically, tried to free herself as the bastard swung the knife in a smashing blow toward her unprotected belly—

  A gunshot exploded right above Jenna. She screamed, convinced she'd just been shot. Then she realized she wasn't hit. A stranger had appeared from the darkness. The newcomer had fired that shot, not the man trying to murder her. The bullet had plowed straight through the back of the paid assassin's head. The hit-man who'd hunted them through the Britannia was dead. Messily dead. The explosive aftermath left Jenna shuddering, eyes clenched shut. Blood and bits of human brain had spattered across her face and neck and coat. She lay on her side, panting and shaking and fighting back nausea. Then she looked up, so slowly it might've taken a week just to lift her gaze from the wet street to the stranger's face. She expected to find a constable, recalled a snatch of memory that suggested London constables had not carried firearms in 1888, and found herself looking up into the face of a man in a dark evening coat and silk top hat.

  "Are you unharmed, sir? And the lady?"

  Ianira had fallen to her knees beside Jenna, weeping and touching her shoulder, her arm, her blood-smeared face. "I..." Jenna had to gulp back nausea. "I think I'm okay."

  The stranger offered a hand, calmly putting away his pistol in a capacious coat pocket. Jenna levered herself up with help. Once on her feet, she gently lifted Ianira and checked her pulse. Jenna didn't like the look of shock in the Cassondra's eyes or the desperate pallor of her skin, which was clammy and cold under her touch.

  The stranger's brows rose. "Are you a doctor, sir?"

  Jenna shook her head. "No. But I know enough to test a pulse point."

  "Ah... As it happens, I am a medical doctor. Allow me."

  The down-timer physician took Ianira's wrist to test her pulse, himself. And the Prophetess snapped rigid, eyes wide with shock. The Cassondra of Ephesus uttered a single choked sound that defied interpretation. She lifted both hands—gasped out something in Greek. The doctor stared sharply at Ianira and spoke even more sharply—also in Greek. While Jenna was struggling to recall a snatch of history lesson, that wealthy men of society had learned Greek and Latin as part of a gentleman's education, the physician snarled out something that sounded ugly. Naked shock had detonated through his eyes and twisted his face.

  The next moment, Jenna found herself staring down the wrong end of his gun barrel. "Sorry, old chap. Nothing personal, you know."

  He's going to kill me!

  Jenna flung herself sideways just as the gun discharged. Pain caught her head brutally and slammed her to the street. As the world went dark, she heard shouts and running footsteps, saw Ianira's knees buckle in a dead faint, saw the stranger simply scoop her up and walk off with her, disappearing into the yellow drizzle.

  Then darkness crashed down with a fist of brutal, black terror.

  Chapter Eight

  Malcolm Moore had done a great deal of hard work during his career as freelance time guide. But nothing had come even remotely close to the bruising hours he'd put in setting up a base camp in a rented hovel in Whitechapel Road, guiding scholars and criminologists through the East End from well before sunup until the early morning hours, sleeping in two and three-hour snatches, assisting them in the task of learning everything the scholars and Scotland Yard Inspectors wanted to know before the terror broke wide open on the final day of August.

  The last thing Malcolm expected when the Britannia cycled near dusk, just nine hours before the first Ripper murder was what he found in the Spaldergate parlour. Having rushed upstairs from his work with the scholars ensconced in the cellar, he stood blinking in stupid shock at the sight of her. "Margo?"

  "Malcolm!" His fiancée flung herself toward him, arms outstretched, eyes sparkling. "Oh, Malcolm! I missed you!"

  The kiss left his head spinning. Giddy as a schoolboy and grinning like a fool, Malcolm drew back at last, reluctant to break away from the vibrant warmth of her, and stared, amazed, into her eyes. "But Margo, whatever are you doing here?"

  "Reporting for duty, sir!" she laughed, giving him a mock salute. "Kit worked it out with Bax," she said in a rush, eyes sparkling. "I'll be guiding for the rest of the Ripper Watch tour, whatever you think I can handle, and Doug Tanglewood came through to help out, too, your message asking for assistance came through loud and clear!"

  Malcolm grinned. "Bloody marvelous! It's about time those dratted johnnies at Time Tours listened to me. How many additions to the Team did you bring through?"

  Margo grimaced expressively.

  "Oh, dear God," he muttered, "that many?"

  "Well, it's not too bad," Margo said guardedly. "Dr. Shahdi Feroz finally made it in. Mostly, it's those reporters. Guy Pendergast and Dominica Nosette. I don't know which is worse, honestly, the scholars or the newsies. Or the tourists," she added, rolling her eyes at the flood of Ripperoons crowding into Spaldergate's parlour.

  "That, I can believe," Malcolm muttered. "We haven't much time to get them settled. Polly Nichols is scheduled to die at about five o'clock tomorrow morning, which means we'll have to put our surveillance gear up sometime after two A.M. or so, when the pubs close and the streets grow a little more quiet. Daren't put up the equipment sooner, someone might notice it. It's not likely, since the wireless transmitters and miniaturized cameras and microphones we'll be setting up are so small. Still and all... Let's get them settled quickly, shall we, and take them downstairs to the vault. We've a base camp out in Whitechapel, but the main equipment is here, beneath Spaldergate, where we've the power for computers and recording equipment."

  Margo nodded. "Okay. Let's get them moving. And the sooner we get those reporters under wraps, the better I'll feel. They don't listen at all and don't follow rules very well, either."

  Malcolm grunted. "No surprise, there. The tourists the past few weeks have been bad enough, trying to duck out on their tour guides so they can cheat and stay long enough to see one of the murders. I expect the reporters will be even more delightful. Now, let's find Mrs. Gilbert, shall we, and assign everyone sleeping quarters..."

  An hour later, Malcolm and his fiancée escorted the newly arrived team members down into the vault beneath the house, where a perfectly ordinary wooden door halfway across a perfectly standard Victorian cellar opened to reveal a massive steel door that slid open on pneumatics. Beyond this lay a brightly lit computer center and modern infirmary. The scholars greeted one another excitedly, then immediately fell to squabbling over theories as well as practical approaches to research, while the newly arrived reporters busied themselves testing their equipment. Technicians nodded satisfactorily at the quality of the images and sound transmitted by cable from the carefully disguised receiving equipment on the roof of the house above this bubble of ultra-modern technology.

  While the scholars and journalists worked, Margo quietly brought Malcolm up to date about events on the station. The news left Malcolm fretting, not just because the station was in danger if the riots continued, but because there was literally nothing he could do to help search for Ianira or her family while trapped on this side of the Britannia Gate. "I've heard about the Ansar Majlis," Malcolm said tiredly, rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose. "Too m
uch, in fact."

  "You had friends on TT-66, didn't you?" Margo asked quietly, laying one gentle hand on his sleeve.

  Malcolm sighed. "Yes. I'm afraid I did."

  "Anyone..." she hesitated, looking quite abruptly very young and unsure of herself.

  Malcolm stroked her cheek. "No, Margo. No one like that." He drew her close for a moment, blessing Kit for sending her here. He'd have to turn around and send her into danger out on the streets, he knew that, it was part of the dream which burned inside her and made her the young woman he loved so much; but for the moment, he was content merely to have her close. "Just very good friends, guides I'd known for years."

  She nodded, cheek rubbing against the fine lawn of the expensive gentleman's shirt he'd put on to greet the new team members. "I'm sorry, Malcolm."

  "So," he sighed, "am I. How much of the station had they managed to search before you had to leave?"

  Margo's description of search efforts on station was interrupted by the shrill of the telephone on the computer console behind them. Hooked into a much more antique-looking telephone in the house above, it was a direct link between the outside world and the vault. Malcolm pulled reluctantly away and snagged the receiver. "Yes?"

  It was Hetty Gilbert, co-gatekeeper of the Time Tours Gatehouse. The news she had was even worse than Margo's. All color drained from Malcolm's cheeks as he listened. "Oh, dear God. Yes, of course. We'll come up straight away."

  "What is it?" Margo asked breathlessly as he hung up again.

  "Trouble. Very serious trouble." He glanced at the monitor where, a few hours from now, they hoped to record the identity of Jack the Ripper. Weeks, he'd put in, preparing for that moment. And now it would have to wait. Reluctantly, Malcolm met Margo's gaze again.

  "What is it?" Margo demanded, as if half-afraid to hear the answer.

  "We have a tourist missing," he said quietly. "A male tourist."

  "Oh, my God."

  "Yes. His name is Benny Catlin. The Gilberts are asking for our help with the search teams. Evidently, he has already killed someone in a brutal shooting at the Piccadilly Hotel. A Time Tours driver is in critical condition, should be arriving within minutes for surgery. He managed to telephone from the hotel before he collapsed."

  The animated excitement of the anticipated search for the Ripper's identity drained from Margo's face. Malcolm hated seeing the dread and fear which replaced it. Missing tourist... any time guide's worst nightmare. And not just any tourist, either, but one who'd already committed murder in a quiet Victorian hotel. A missing and homicidal tourist, search teams combing London at the beginning of the Ripper's reign of terror... and back on the station, riots and murders and kidnappings... Malcolm met Margo's frightened gaze, read the same bleak assessment in her eyes which coursed through his entire being. Margo's budding career as a time scout, her dreams, were as much on the line as his own. Malcolm hadn't seen Margo look so frightened since that horrible little prison cell in Portuguese Africa.

  Wordlessly, he took her hand, squeezed her fingers. "We'd better get up there."

  They headed upstairs at a dead run.

  * * *

  John Lachley hadn't planned to walk down past the Royal Opera, tonight.

  But he'd emerged from his lecture at the Egyptian Hall to find the street blocked by an overturned carriage, which had collided with a team of drays, spilling the contents of a freight wagon and several screaming, hysterical ladies into the street, more frightned than injured. Glancing impatiently at his pocket watch, he'd determined that there was time, after all, before meeting Maybrick at his surgery in Cleveland Street, and rendered medical assistance, then pushed his way through the crowd and snarled traffic in search of a hansom he might hire.

  It was sheer, blind chance which sent him down toward the Opera, where a rank of cabs could normally be found waiting for patrons. Sheer, bloody chance that had sent him straight into the path of a young woman who appeared from the murk of the wet night, gabbling out a plea for help. John Lachley had been at the wrong end of many an attack from vicious footpads, growing up in the East End, a target for nearly everyone's scorn and hatred. Rage had detonated through him, watching an innocent young man struggle with a knife-wielding assailant, fighting for his life.

  So Lachley drew the pistol he'd concealed for the night's work with Maybrick and strode forward, ridding the street of this particular vermin with a single shot to the back of the skull. He expected the young man's shock, of course, no one reacted well to having blood and bits of brain spattered across his face, and he even expected the young woman's distraught reaction, nearly fainting under the strain of their close call.

  But he did not expect what happened when he sounded the beautiful young woman's pulse. The words came pouring out of her, in flawless Greek, ancient Greek, even as she snapped rigid, straining away from him: Death hangs on the tree beneath the vault... down beneath the bricks where the boy's sightless skull rests... and six shall die for his letters and his pride...

  This girl could not possibly know about the letters, about Tibor, about Morgan's skull, sitting as a trophy atop the flame-ringed altar, or the massive oak on which the little bastard had died. But she did. And more, she had prophesied that five others should die for the sake of Eddy's accursed letters...

  Who?

  He couldn't even hazard an educated guess. But he intended to find out. Oh, yes, he most certainly intended to find out. He reacted with the swiftness a childhood in the East End had taught him, brought up the pistol to eliminate the young man whose life he'd just saved. "Sorry, old chap. Nothing personal..."

  He discharged the gun at the same instant the shaken young man realized Lachley's intent. The blood-spattered man flung himself violently sideways, trying to save himself. The bullet grazed the side of his skull, sending him reeling, wounded, to the ground. Lachley snarled out an oath and brought the pistol up to fire again, while the girl screamed and fainted—

  "Jenna!"

  The shout was from almost directly in front of him. Lachley jerked his gaze up and found a wild-eyed woman in a shabby dress racing toward him, twenty yards away and closing fast. She had an enormous revolver in one hand and was pointing it right at Lachley. With only a split-second to decide, Lachley loosed off a wild shot at the approaching woman to delay her and snatched up the unconcious girl at his feet. A gunshot ripped through the damp night and a bullet whipped past his ear, knocking his top hat to the street. Lachley swore and bolted with his prize, flung her across one shoulder and ran down toward Drury Lane and SoHo's maze of mean, narrow streets.

  He fully expected to hear the hue and cry sounded as constables were summoned; but no cry came, nor did any footsteps chase after him. Lachley slowed to a more decorous pace, discovering he was halfway down Drury Lane, and allowed his pulse to drop from its thunderous roar in his ears. With the panic of flight receding, rational thought returned. He paused for a moment in a narrow alley, shaking violently, then mastered himself and drew deep, gulping lungfuls of wet air to calm the tremors still ripping through him. Dear God... What was he to make of this?

  He shifted the unconcious girl, cradled her in both arms, now, as though he were merely assisting a young lady in distress, and stared down at her pallid features. She was a tiny little thing, delicate of stature. Her face was exquisite and her rich black hair and olive cast of skin bespoke Mediterranean heritage. She'd gabbled out her plea for help in English, but the words spoken in shock—almost, he frowned, in a trance—had been the purest Greek he'd ever heard. But not modern Greek. Ancient Greek, the language of Aristotle and Aristophanes... yet with a distinctive dialectic difference he couldn't quite pin down.

  He'd studied a great deal, since his charity school days, educated as a scholarship pupil at a school where the other boys had tormented him endlessly. He'd learned everything he could lay hands on, had drunk in languages and history the way East End whores downed gin and rum, had discovered a carton of books in the back of the school's ding
y, mouldering library, books donated by a wealthy and eccentric patroness who had dabbled in the occult. John Lachley's knowledge of ancient languages and occult practices had grown steadily over the years, earning him a hard-earned reputation as a renowned SoHo scholar of antiquities and magical practices. Lachley could read three major ancient dialects of Greek, alone, and knew several other ancient languages, including Aramaic.

  But he couldn't quite place the source of this girl's phrasing and inflections.

  Her half-choked words spilled through his memory again and again, brilliant as an iron welder's torch. Who was this insignificant slip of a girl? As he peered at her face, stepping back out into Drury Lane to find a gaslight by which to study her, he realized she couldn't be more than twenty years of age, if that. Where had she learned to speak ancient Greek? Ladies were not routinely taught such things, particularly in the Mediterranean countries. And where in the names of the unholy ancient gods which Lachley worshiped had she acquired the clairvoyant talent he'd witnessed outside the Opera House? A talent of that magnitude would cause shockwaves through the circles in which Lachley travelled.

  He frowned at the thought. Revealing her might prove dangerous at this juncture. Surely someone would miss the girl? Would search for her? No matter. He could keep her quite well hidden from any search and he intended to exploit her raw talent in every possible way he could contrive. His frown deepened as he considered the problem. It would be best to drug her for a bit, keep her quietly hidden at the top of the house, locked into a bedroom, until he could determine more precisely who she was, where she'd come from, and what efforts would be made to locate her by the young man and the poorly dressed woman with the revolver.