The House That Jack Built ts-4

by Robert Robert

  When Skeeter reached the Neo Edo Hotel, he found Kit in his palatial office, bent over his computer. Skeeter paused just long enough to kick off his shoes before stepping onto the pristine tatami rice mats. "Where's Kaederman?" Skeeter asked tersely, searching the corners of Kit's office with an uneasy gaze. "I thought he was coming up here."

  Kit glanced up. "Kaederman," he said flatly, "went to bed. That man is the laziest detective I've ever met."

  "How'd we luck out? At least he's nowhere around to hear the news."

  "What news?" Kit leaned forward, eyes abruptly glittering.

  "Ianira's in London. She went through in a steamer trunk. One of Benny Catlin's. I'm sure of it. You remember that pile-up of luggage at the platform, when one of the trunks nearly slid off."

  "Yes, you mentioned it belonged to Benny Cat— Oh." Kit could out-swear Yesukai the Valiant. Then he grimaced. "Skeeter, you had no way of knowing, not at the time."

  "Maybe not," he muttered, pacing from the enormous desk to the withered landscape garden of raked sand and carefully placed stones to the wall of television monitors which kept Kit abreast of events all over Shangri-La Station. "But if I hadn't been so damn muddled, I'd have figured it out a lot sooner. And the trail wouldn't be so cold!"

  "Well, beating yourself up over this won't do Ianira any good," Kit pointed out gently. "At least we have a pretty good indication Ianira was alive, inside that trunk, given Jenna's reaction. I begin to wonder if anyone from the Ansar Majlis was with that girl when she went through the Britannia," Kit mused. "Other than a couple of hit men who died messily? And since she went through on her own, that really makes me wonder where Marcus and Armstrong went after hopping their train in Colorado. Once Armstrong eliminated the man who shot Julius, they certainly lost no time hightailing it out of there." Kit frowned slowly as he sat back in his chair. "Unless," he mused, "they weren't running away at all."

  Skeeter halted his pacing. "Huh?"

  "Maybe..." Kit tapped steepled fingertips against his lips. "Just maybe, they were running to something."

  Skeeter stared, trying to figure out what he was driving at. "Running to something? What? Where? There's nothing in 1885 they'd want to go to!"

  "No. Not in 1885. But in 1888..."

  Skeeter felt his eyes widen. "London?"

  "Makes sense. A lot of sense. Hide out for three years, make damned sure nobody's on their trail, cross the Atlantic to meet Jenna and Ianira when they come through the Britannia. Armstrong could easily have set up a base of operations in London, complete with false identity, a good occupation lined up, so money's coming in steadily. They could hide out for months, years, if necessary. With damned little chance of the Ansar Majlis ever finding them."

  "Or anybody else, for that matter," Skeeter added bitterly.

  "A definite plus, when one's marked for murder. And they'll have the children to think of," Kit added gently. "Surely you can see that?"

  He could. All too clearly. "So you think we shouldn't look for them, after all?"

  "No, I didn't say that. Shangri-La Station's still in mortal danger. And something tells me none of our fugitives will be safe until we get to the bottom of this. Too many pieces of this puzzle are still missing. Like that guy who killed Julius, for one. He was certainly no down-time Arabian jihad fighter. So who hired him? The Ansar Majlis? Hiring a paid killer isn't their style. Crazies like the Ansar Majlis do their own killing. So, if not them, who?"

  Skeeter didn't like the road Kit was walking down.

  "Yes, you do see it, don't you? I'm getting very itchy about the safety of this search team. If someone besides the Ansar Majlis is trying to kill Jenna, then merely looking for her could be as dangerous as finding her. The question is," Kit mused softly, "how, exactly, to begin the search once you get to London? I'd rather not risk Paula's life any more than necessary, but she ought to go along, to make a positive identification."

  Skeeter snorted. "That part's easy."

  Kit blinked. "Oh?"

  He told Kit about Goldie's counterfeit banknotes. Kit whistled softly.

  "So, you'll start by looking for angry merchants who've been ripped off? Hmm... It might work. There was a fairly large trade in counterfeit banknotes and coins, especially near the waterfront, where the fakes could be passed to unwary newcomers, people unfamiliar with English currency, but it's certainly the best lead we've got so far." Kit's grin was sudden, blinding, and terrifying. "Grand idea, Skeeter. Let's have you pose as a Pinkerton agent. Say you're after a Yank from New York, who's been counterfeiting money in the States, tell our angry London merchants you think he's moved his operation to London. We'll get Connie to whip up Pinkerton identification papers for you."

  "Good grief. First a house detective for the Neo Edo, now a Pinkerton agent? Who'd a-thunk it? Me, a private eye!"

  "And a pretty good one, so far," Kit grinned. "Get over to Connie's. I'll call her, give her a head's up. You'd better collect a few of those counterfeits from Goldie, too, so you'll have samples with you in London, as part of your cover story. And Skeeter..."

  "Yeah?"

  Kit's smile was positively evil. "Let's not tell Sid about this?"

  Skeeter started to laugh; then felt a chill, instead, straight down his spine.

  * * *

  Margo was not keen to watch the murders of Stride and Eddowes. Rather than join the Ripper Watch Team in the Vault, she changed clothing, requested a cup of hot tea from one of the Spaldergate House maids, and curled up beside the fire in the parlour. There she stayed, sitting on the floor in front of the hearth, chin on knees, watching the flames dance across the coals. Malcolm came in shortly after two A.M., looking for her. He paused in the doorway.

  "There you are. Well, it's over, down there. Maybrick turns out to be the one who chalked the graffiti in Goulston Street. And you'll never guess who we caught on tape? Those idiot reporters, Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast. They're following Maybrick and Lachley. Shadowed Maybrick to Goulston Street and photographed the graffiti after he left, then started trailing him once more."

  "Great. We should've staked out the murder sites, ourselves, and waited to nab those idiots."

  "Perhaps, but the chance is gone now. We've sent out Stoddard and Tanglewood to try to locate them, but they'll be long gone before either man can get close, I'm afraid." Malcolm crossed the parlour toward her, navigating his way around heavy furniture and tables full of bric-a-brac. "Whatever have you been doing, sitting here alone in the dark?"

  "Trying not to think about what's going on in Whitechapel."

  He settled on the carpeted floor beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "You're trembling."

  "I'm cold," she muttered. Then, betraying the lie, "You don't think I'm too weak for this job, do you? Because I can't watch?"

  Malcolm sighed. "There's a fairly large difference between running slap into something you're not expecting and going out of your way to watch something grisly, particularly when others are on the job to do it, instead. No, I don't think you're too weak, Margo. You extricated several people from that street brawl at the examination of Polly Nichols' remains, didn't you? Doug Tanglewood said he'd never been more thoroughly frightened in his life, yet you pulled them safely away, even Pavel Kostenka, when that lout was intent on beating him senseless."

  "That wasn't so hard," Margo shivered. "I just charged in and did the first thing that came to mind. He wasn't expecting Aikido, anyway."

  "Then you did precisely what a budding time scout should do," Malcolm murmured, stroking her hair gently. "Between the Ripper Watch and searching for our missing tourist, I haven't had the time to say how proud of you I've been. You've nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all."

  She bit her lip, wondering if now was a good time to talk about the past, which had been troubling her ever since she'd come to London. Her mother's descent into prostitution had been Margo's shameful secret for a long time, one she'd feared at first would drive Malcolm away; but she'd h
ad time to think about it and wondered now if she'd misjudged him, unfairly assigning to him the same prejudices she'd encountered in Minnesota. He knew about her being raped by a gang of fifteenth-century Portuguese, after all, and still wanted to marry her. Surely he wouldn't mind what her mother had done to make ends meet, if he didn't mind the other?

  Malcolm lifted her face, his expression deeply concerned. "What is it, Margo?"

  She leaned against his shoulder and told him. All of it. Her father's drinking. Her mother's desperation to pay the bills, when her father spent his paycheck and her mother's both, buying the booze. What her mother had done... and what her father had done, when he'd found out. "I never meant to say anything, because it would kill Kit, to learn how his little girl died. But I thought you ought to know. Before you married me."

  "Oh, Margo..." His voice shook. "I wish to God I could go back and undo it all. No wonder you fight the world so hard. You've had to, just to survive..." He brushed his thumb across her cheek, across her unsteady lips. "You're so beautiful, so full of courage, it makes my heart stop. If your father hadn't died in prison, they'd have to hang me for him."

  Margo's mouth twisted. "They don't hang people anymore, Malcolm."

  Then he was holding her close and nothing else in the universe mattered.

  * * *

  Dominica watched in astonishment as James Maybrick unlocked the door of a filthy hovel in Wapping and disappeared inside. Gas light appeared briefly through the windows and a ferocious barking erupted, then subsided just as abruptly. A moment later, the gas went out, leaving the house dark again.

  "What on earth?" she wondered aloud, startled. "What d'you suppose should we do now?" she whispered.

  "I'm going 'round the back, see if I can get a look inside."

  "Be careful!"

  Dominica waited impatiently while her partner vanished into the inky blackness. Rain spat at her, cold and miserable. She huddled deeper into her coat and shifted from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm. She'd been waiting for perhaps five minutes when snarls and savage barking erupted again from the house. A single gunshot split the wet night.

  "Guy!" Dominica ran across the street, just in time for the front door to be thrown wide. Guy snatched her wrist and pulled her inside. "Come on! There isn't a moment to lose!"

  "What—"

  "Shh!"

  He dragged her through the dark house into a central, windowless room where a gaslight burned low. A massive black dog sprawled across the bare wooden floorboards, dead in a puddle of spreading blood; Guy had shot it through the skull. In the center of the floor rested a heavy trap door, which Guy pulled up cautiously. Beneath, they found steps leading down into a cellar. "He's nowhere in the house," Guy whispered urgently. "He had to go through here. There's nowhere else he could have gone."

  Dominica dragged out her own pistol, aware that she was trembling violently.

  "There's no lantern," she muttered, eying the black hole uneasily.

  "He had one. Must have. It's pitch black, down there, but we'll hear him at the very least, follow the sound."

  Yes, she thought, and he'll hear us, as well. But they'd come this far and she wasn't giving up on the story of the century so easily. She gripped her pistol with damp fingers and followed Guy into the cellar, which proved to be no cellar at all, but rather a tunnel through the sewers beneath Wapping. So this is how he did it! Simply popped home to Wapping and vanished beneath the streets! Then, faint with distance, they heard it: the splash of footfalls through the filth in the tunnels. She and Guy, pausing at the base of the stairs, exchanged glances. Then Dominica hiked up her skirts and waded cautiously forward.

  She was going to get that Carson prize. And all that lovely money, which her video would fetch in the up-time world. Dominica Nosette intended to be the world's most famous photojournalist ever. And nothing was going to stop her.

  Chapter Nine

  John Lachley had just finished burning Elizabeth Stride's letter in the flames of his altar beneath the streets when a woman's high, ragged scream echoed out in the sewer. A man's angry snarl and a volley of gunshots roared through the tunnels, followed by a thud of colliding bodies, a grunt and sudden masculine cry of pain. Then James Maybrick's voice, maniacal: "Lipski!"

  Over and over again, "Lipski! Lipski!... Lipski LipskiLipski..."

  The ragged chant jerked Lachley across the room and out through the open iron doorway. The Liverpudlian was on his knees in the muddy water, his lantern thrown aside, hacking and stabbing at a motionless form. The thing lying on the sewer floor had, before Maybrick's violent assault, been a man. Blood had spurted and sprayed across Maybrick's face and chest. It dripped and spattered down his chin and hair from the arterial bleeding Lachley had warned him against when stalking the prostitutes. But a more terrible sound, by far, than the slam of Maybrick's knife into dead flesh came to Lachely's ears: running footsteps, receding into the blackness, unsteady and desperate.

  The woman who had screamed.

  Lachley left Maybrick to his grisly pleasure and raced after her. He had to stop her. Had to silence her. Whoever she was. It didn't matter a damn who, he had to catch her. She was slipping on the wet bricks ahead. Scrabbling up to run again. Blind and deaf and crashing into walls in the darkness. He could hear the scream of her breath. Shallow. Ragged. Wild. Could hear the scratch of her shoes. The splash of puddles under her staggering feet. Could smell the terror. Thick. Sexual. Delicious.

  When he caught her, she screamed. Fought him. Writhed and clawed at his hands, his face. He backhanded her into the bricks. Caught a fist in her hair. Forced her head back. Found the death grip at her throat... And ghostly red light flickered in his eyes, eerie and startling. Lachley reeled back a step, bringing up one arm defensively. Her head moved and the light vanished. Then a gunshot split the darkness. The bullet whined off bricks behind him. Lachley backhanded her again, fist clenched. The gun discharged, blinding him. They struggled for the weapon and she fired until the gun clicked, empty. He struck her a third time, knocking her to the floor, this time. She splashed into the muck at his feet and lay still. A faint moan escaped her. Lachley caught her under the arms, grasped her jaw, tilted her head—

  And the flicker of dull red light came again.

  Badly startled, he searched along her neck, up toward her ear, and touched slick, alien cords of some kind, something glassy, an odd tube of some kind, what felt like tiny wires... What the bloody devil?

  He gave a practiced heave and tossed her across one shoulder. Her head trailed down his back, arms loose, unjointed. Lachley strode back through the darkness, guided by the light pouring from Lower Tibor's open door. Maybrick was still hacking at the dead man.

  "James!"

  When the sharp sound of his voice failed to break the maniac's slavering frenzy, Lachley shoved him off balance with a booted foot. Maybrick sprawled sideways, splashing into the water, then snarled like an animal, knife flashing at the ready.

  "James! Put the sodding knife down! He's dead!"

  The cotton merchant blinked slowly and, as the wildness faded gradually from his eyes, he focused on Lachley's face. "Sorry," he whispered, voice shaking, "I'm sorry, doctor, didn't realize..."

  "You did well, James, killing that bastard. Drag him inside, now, and we'll see who our visitors might be."

  "Yes, of course." He hauled the dead man up by the arms, dragging the body out of the filthy water, and pulled him into Lower Tibor.

  "Leave him by the door, James, and find his sodding gun." Lachley dumped the unconscious woman across his work table and bound her wrists efficiently with a twist of rope. He found a cup and calmly poured out a dose of the drug he always gave Maybrick when they returned after a successful hunt through Whitechapel. "Ah, you found the pistol. Very good. Put it there. Now, James, you're shaking, badly in need of your medication. Here, swallow this down. Then take off your coat and the rest of those clothes. Burn them, you're covered in blood."

  Maybri
ck drank the powerful drug without question, then stripped off the blood-caked garments and dropped them on the altar for burning. Lachley heard water splashing as he cleaned himself up at the tiny basin. Satisfied that his mad cotton merchant was under proper control once more, Lachley turned his attention to the mutilated body lying beside the door. He opened the coat, torn and hacked through in two dozen places, searched the pockets, emptied the contents of his waistcoat and trouser pockets, as well. Then frowned slowly at what he found. Crouched beside a perfectly ordinary corpse, John Lachley found himself confronted with objects he could not comprehend.

  The man's pockets contained a handful of shillings, florins, a few half crowns, plus a wad of bank notes, a surprisingly large number of them. Nearly two hundred pounds, in fact. But the other items... He found a stiff, rectangular card of some sort, made of a substance Lachley had never encountered. Neither paper nor wood nor metal, it was nevertheless shiny and brightly colored, with a series of dark stripes down the back, formed of some other unknown substance which could not be scratched off easily with a fingernail. It reminded him of gutta-percha, obtained from the milky sap of a tree native to Malaysia, which like latex hardened on exposure to the air, forming a stiff substance somewhat like this, useful in cements, insulations, and so on. This card was not gutta-percha, however; attempting to dissolve it with oil of turpentine and naptha had no effect whatever, which proved it to be some other substance. Nor was it caoutchouc, which was not even as strong as gutta-percha and certainly nothing like as strong as this substance. Frowning, he put the little card aside and studied the other mysterious object he'd found, a tiny cylinder covered with a soft, spongy substance, with trailing wires coming out of it, coated with something slick and flexible. The wires plugged into a compact, heavy box. This was made of some other unknown substance, its feel similar to the stiff card, yet completely different, bent into a virtually seamless shape with tiny buttons and a hinged lid. This boasted a transparent cover of something that was not glass. In fiddling with the buttons, he pressed one that caused a faint, whirring sound to emerge from the box. Startled, he mashed other buttons, trying to get the sound to stop...