Текст книги "I, Ripper: A Novel"

Автор книги: Stephen Hunter

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Jeb’s Memoir

Suddenly, it was November 6, which was just in advance of the high-water mark of the quarter-moon and the run of days most likely for Jack to express himself once again. We had to make a choice on which man to follow if indeed he went one of those nights.

“Tell me,” Dare said, “which of our three boys we should pick for our game, given that either he’s cleverly disguised his intentions or none of the three has a thing to do with this.”

“I would say we could abandon Major MacNeese. With his job’s long hours, his children underfoot, his wife’s love and engagement, he’s the least likely candidate. Leaving out of it how his brain works, the chap is too busy for Jack’s kind of all-night action.”

“I had hoped you would reach that conclusion. So of the others, Major Pullham and the heroic Colonel Woodruff, VC, which do you prefer?”

“The case for Woodruff is strongest.” I said. “He is alone all nights or in an opium den. His life is Spartan, dedicated to a duty that, it seems to me, is of dubious usage to the world, and therefore has more discipline for controlling himself for as long as he can. He comes and goes and reports to nobody. He does not drink with friends or hang about with other old soldiers. It’s as if he’s in mourning. So he, of the three, has by far the most ample opportunity, and given his battle experience and his long service s/ID, the most exposure to the sort of violence and carnage of which Jack is so happily author. He would be by far the most auspicious choice.”

“I have reached the same conclusion,” he said.

“As for the adventurous rake Major Pullham, he is clearly a kind of sex maniac, but not our kind of sex maniac. He lives to have intercourse.”

“He does indeed.”

“So he engineers such a thing at each opportunity, plus keeping up a busy professional life and being a willing partner in Lady Meachum’s ambitious social plans, which means he must be all ritzied up for suppers, brunches, weekends in the country, even the odd ball or masquerade, as those of that class are so idiotically inclined to do. So the question must be asked: How would he have time? He’d have to plan like a genius, and though he’s clearly a gallant sport, there’s no indication he’s a genius.”

“It would not seem so.”

“However . . .” I said.

“Yes.”

“The rings. We are forgetting that Jack took Annie’s wedding rings.”

“Your point?”

“Rings are treasure. Goods. Material things. Clearly, Major Pullham needs to prosper. Though he is not primarily a thief, he could not help but snatch something there that he thought had value. For Woodruff, there seems to be little of the material world in his mind. He does not have, he does not acquire, he has no interest in things. They insult him. His acts are pure.”

Dare considered. “The point is well constructed. I would not have thought of it.”

“So. Does hunger for treasure trump abundance of opportunity?”

“A believer in capital—that is, treasure—would argue that it did.”

“It is indeed human motive, well verified in history, literature, myth, and folklore since ancient times.”

“I must say, I do agree.”

“We are in accord?”

“Indeed. To Major Pullham, then, boulevardier, dasher, swordsman, cavalryman, ace salesman of horsey gimcracks and gewgaws, and Jack the Ripper,” said the professor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Diary

November 6, 1888

It is almost over. I have but once more piece of butcher’s theater to provide the horrified, titillated busybodies of London. And the great city demands that it be a corker. I have to surpass all previous efforts and stamp my legend on the face of the town as permanently as Big Ben or St. Paul’s Cathedral or the stone intricacy fronting the Houses of Parliament. Those three plus Jack: London, linked in memory forever.

What does one need for a masterpiece? Clearly, I needed time and space and privacy. The street had done well in the early going, if somewhat insecure. Moving to sealed-off squares and yards was an improvement. But none had light, room, and security, and I’d had too many by-the-whiskers escapes with blue bottles just missing me or me just missing them, with cart drivers and night watchmen and all the riffraff that coagulates in the rotting East End good nights and bad, fair and foul, morning, noon, or night.

Thus I took my most monstrous risk today. I tried to make it as safe as possible, minimize the play of fate, discipline myself severely for the part I need play, not give in to temptation to show off my wit or learning or eloquence, but keep hard and steady on course, wheel locked or tied in.

I chose my wardrobe with some patience, acquiring a dingy, stained frock and a bowler that looked as if it had been dragged behind the omnibus, escaping none of the shit the team of beasts normally left on our city streets. White shirt, though tending toward gray, frayed at the collar; black four-in-hand, utterly unremarkable; my dingiest boots, no spats, no knife hidden away in belt beneath frock.

Garbed several levels below my station, I got to the Ten Bells at the busy hour of eleven P.M. It’s not a big place, with the bar in a square island at the center eating up more floor space, so it was crowded, smoke hung in the air, gambling games were in full drama, yells and shouts and curses filled the air, most of the inhabitants being men either preparing for a night’s friction in the alleyways all ’round or recovering from same, and so it was a diverse group united only by sex impulse: bankers, stock traders, beer wagon teamsters, sailors, soldiers perhaps, hod carriers, maybe a construction laborer or two. Many looked like something out of Mr. Dickens’s sugar-glazed ingot of Christmas treacle, perhaps the low clerk Bob Cratchit, drinking to oblivion after whoring away the money that should have been saved against Tiny Tim’s operation, ha ha.

Exactly as I desired. I sat at the bar, sipping stout, enjoying it, I smoked a cigar, I laughed and seemed as animated as any of them, and after I felt comfortable and had assured myself that none of Abberline’s plainclothesmen lurked about, I enjoyed the rhapsody of Jack. You heard it everywhere.

“Think he’s gone? Been a bit.”

“Not Jack. That boy’ll ride his horse hard to the end.”

“Sooner or later, he’ll jigsaw a dolly and a copper will round the corner. Copper goes to whistle, gives chase, and soon enough the revolver squad arrives. One shot, and that’s the end of Jack.”

“One shot? More like fifty, and they’ll knock off a parson, two choir members, and a wee lassie in the volley!”

In time, I entered a conversation with one of the barmen, a burly chap with reddish muttonchops and hands and forearms that you might find on a dock worker. Tattoos, too, signifying naval or army service or to the East for John Company. He had the beady eyes of a man who noticed.

As for entrée into a conversational encounter, the universal welcome mat to chat was conjecture about Jack, every man’s obsession.

“I say, friend, I heard a rumor they got Jack already.”

“No such bloomin’ luck,” he said. “My wife’s brother’s a copper for Warren, and he’s telling us the boys in blue don’t have nothing, not a clue, not a direction, not even a scrap of evidence. Most of the witnesses is liars, and Jack’s by far a cleverer boy than anybody knows. It ain’t luck getting him by, it’s brains, it is.”

“I agree,” I said. “From what I hear, he’s been a hair away from apprehension four or five times, and the coppers just missed it together.”

“He’s clever and he’s got guts,” the barman said. “Bloke is mad as a hatter, but you’ve got to admire the cheek on the bugger.”

We lapsed into silence, he drifted off to fill glasses with gin or stout or beer, exchange cheer, josh a gal or two, and eventually return to my area for a lounge. But I knew the man, like all the men, wanted to talk Jack. I waited for him to think of something to say, and finally he did.

“Quarter-moon’s coming up. He’ll do it again, you watch. He’s got a thirst now, bad, likes the blood, but most of all likes the way the town is all rattled. Him, one lad, bringing five million people to a dead halt. Must be a feeling.”

“I’ll never know,” I said. “I’m too busy adding sums by gaslight to squash a fly.”

“That’s me, too, brother, slinging suds twelve long hours a day,” he said.

“Let me ask you something.”

At this point, another round of professional activity ensued as he tended to his customers, a rowdy lot, and when I caught an eye, I pointed to my empty glass, and he nodded and brought me another, almost black it was, with a cusp of foam like frosting on a Christmas cake. I took a mellow gulp, enjoyed, and then leaned a little closer. “I’m betting a feller like you, works in here, knows a thing or two. Pays attention-like. Hears a lot, forgets nothing.”

“Perhaps it’s so.”

“Yes, well, here’s the point. I’m a married man, see, but I likes the pleasure when it’s safe. I come down here once every two or three months off money I’ve cribbed up the wife don’t see. It don’t harm no one, is how I see it.”

“It sure don’t,” he said.

“Exactly,” I said. “Now, here’s my little issue. I can’t help think of what happens if I’m with Judy in the alley, all steamed up, boiler set to pop, and Jack comes along and decides to do two tonight instead of one.”

He laughed. That is, larfed. “Old son, Jack’s down on birds. He ain’t picking out men yet, is he now?”

“He ain’t till he is. I’d hate to be first. You don’t stand much chance against a fellow so right with a knife.”

“Not without the Royal Artillery, you don’t.”

“So here’s my play, friend. Worth a shilling. Would you know of a gal who’s got a room? You could visit her there, be all safe and tidy and away from Jack’s ways with the blade. I’d pay the tariff, knowing it’s more than the thruppence standard. The safety would be worth it.”

“Hmm,” he said, scrunching up an eye.

Then business called, and he tended some others, paused for a time to josh two men who looked like barristers slumming, poured three gins for a gal in the trade who wound her way back to a table where she sat with two friends, lit a fellow’s cheroot, then drifted back. The shilling was on the bar, under my hand.

He came close, I released, he snatched and pocketed. “All right, chum, you didn’t hear this from Brian Murphy, now.”

“Got it.”

“Fellow named Joe Barnett, lives with a gal off and on. Now I hear it’s off. She lets her friends double up when it’s cold out and they can’t make doss. He don’t like that, as the room is small. So off he goes, all the girls is talking about the poor thing. She’s a pretty thing, too, though somewhat gone to flab. Says she worked in a high-class house once. She ain’t in here now, but she’s on the streets most nights; believe me, she ain’t at choir practice.”

I laughed.

“Little heavyset, blond, though, like an angel you’d see in some old painting. Rosy-cheeked, bosom all aquiver, you’d enjoy a romp with her. Name’s Mary Jane Kelly, any of the girls knows Mary Jane, they does, and she lives just down the avenue in McCarthy’s Rents.”

“McCarthy’s Rents?”

“Fellow named McCarthy owns it. It’s really called Miller’s Court. Rank little place, one of them hole-in-the-walls, you go in a passageway, it’s all little rooms back there. She’s in thirteen, if I recall.”

“Mary Jane Kelly.”

“She was in earlier tonight. She’s in a lot. Or at the Britannia, drinking it up as fast as she earns it. Got the gin bug bad, poor thing, and when she’s all hooched up, she likes to sing. I cuts her a break now and then, slipping her a free one. But she’d be the one for you, friend.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Jeb’s Memoir

Major Pullham lived in a smart house on Hoxton Square in Hackney, perhaps a mile and a half north of Whitechapel. It was all gentry, the best sort of tidy, prosperous, upper-bourgeois London, the ideal toward which all Englishmen were instructed to strive. His—actually, Lady Meachum’s—house stood on a street of grace in a state of grace, happily a peer of its cohort, stately, refined, well kept, an ample recompense for a dashing cavalryman shot at ten thousand times in his career for the crown. Too bad he wasn’t satisfied with it alone, but then that’s the nature of the beast.

I arrived at eleven P.M. Indeed, the quarter-moon now and then shone through the rushing clouds and a brisk wind sent the branches of the abundant trees clackity-clacking. It was really late autumn, and they had changed color and wore scarlet and russet threaded through their crowns, and the leaves, upon achieving the perfection of dry death, fell in swirls to earth and clotted gutters and lawns. The suggestion of rain was heavy in the air, and I felt it would fall before dawn. I had accordingly worn an ancient, used-to-be-father’s mackintosh over my brown suit, and a plaid scarf around my neck and my crumpled felt hat, pulled low over my ears. I wasn’t going to let rain stand between myself and Jack.

I found Professor Dare exactly where we’d planned, at a bench in Hoxton Square a good hundred meters from the major’s dwelling, but with a plain view of it. The major could not leave without our knowledge, as the back-of-yards formed a nice parkground but held no exit, being buttressed on all sides by houses such as his.

“Is he there?” I asked.

“Indeed. He and Lady Meachum returned at ten from some sort of social gathering. They were all topped up in silks and diamonds, so perhaps it involved the Mayfair set or some other golden collection. The hansom dropped them off, they let the last servant return to quarter, and now they are in the bedroom. Perhaps he’s atop her now, shouting ‘Onward, old girl, let me into the breech!’ and that’s that for the evening.”

“I believe we’d hear her scream in bliss,” I said. “It would overcome even the rush of the wind.”

We both laughed. Over our adventure, an enjoyable comradery had sprung up, which was perhaps why I reacted so angrily to Harry Dam’s calumny. Dare was every bit as ironical as I, every bit as radical, every bit as aware of the pomp and circumstance of empire and the core of rot it concealed, but a little bit more cold-blooded. He never grew angry at the ugliness of what hid in plain sight before much of London’s sleepy eyes; he only enjoyed a dark chuckle now and then. He was truly the Holmesian ideal.

“Here,” he said, “you may as well take this now. It’s quite cumbersome.”

With that, he opened his cape, did some dipping and unbuckling, and passed something over to me. It was quite heavy, an object in a leather pouch, the leather pouch in a nest of strapping. I felt it deposited on my lap and was astounded that its weight appeared far more than its size indicated. I bent, peeled through the leather strapping, got to the object concealed in the pouch, and while at first it made no sense to me in the low light of a far-off gas lamp, it gradually resolved itself into more or less known forms.

“Good heavens,” I said, genuinely shocked, “a gun.”

“Yes, it is. Damned big one, too, I’m told.”

I saw that it had a kind of curved wooden hand grip, and by that, I pulled it partly out of its sheathing and realized it had double hammers over double barrels. It was only a foot long or so, and thus its messages were contradictory. The part I’d pulled had a rifle quality, or perhaps shotgun, as there was a hinge and latch by means of which one could break it and insert shells; but there was no stock, only the thick, curled wooden grip. It had no barrel length, either, which disqualified it further from the rifle or shotgun category.

“Howdah . . . you do?” the professor said merrily.

“Er, I don’t—”

“It’s called a Howdah pistol,” he said. “Evidently I had an uncle who spent his life and fortune accumulating heads to hang in a hall in his home. Pointless, if you ask me, unless the heads were human, but alas, none was. He died, perhaps under wildebeest hooves, and it came to my father, and when he died, it came to me along with other knickknacks of dubious usefulness. I’ve had it in an upstairs room for years.”

“Is it a hunting gun?”

“After a fashion. It’s not for when you are hunting them, however, but when they are hunting you.”

I said nothing, not following.

“In India, they hunt tiger from little compartments cinched about an elephant’s back. Sahib need not walk in brushy, punishing jungle as he draws near his quarry. He rides in comfort, as befits the raj. But the tiger is smart. Sometimes he climbs a tree and, knowing he’s hunted, will wait concealed in the branches until the elephant passes by. He’s not stupid. He knows he has no quarrel with the elephant. He knows who his enemy is, so he leaps into the compartment up top and readies for lunch. In those closed circumstances, the rifle is too clumsy to maneuver. Sahib pulls his Howdah pistol from its scabbard, cocks both hammers, and, as the tiger lunges, fires two immense bullets down its throat. Sahib and Memsahib live to eat mango chutney another night and have many tales to tell.”

“It’s a last-ditch sort of thing,” I said, finally grasping the concept through the irony.

“Indeed. And what better to have along if, by chance, we jump Jack and he jumps back. I doubt we can argue him into dropping his knife, brilliant though we may be, so it’s on you to cock and fire. The caliber is something called 5-7-7 Kynoch, whatever that means, but the size of it will certainly dissuade Jack from further fuss.”

“It’s loaded?”

“Half the weight is the ammunition, my friend.”

“I don’t know if I could shoot a man,” I said.

“The knife in his hand and the smile on his face will convince you otherwise. Furthermore, it’s much better to have it and not need it than the opposite.”

Strapping the belt together, I realized it was meant to be slung over one shoulder so that it dangled under the other. Affecting this process, after accommodating my jacket and mac to it, I found it nested comfortably enough there, although its weight was not borne by any part of my body but rested on the bench.

Then we settled back. We were nestled in a copse of trees at the center of the square, near the statue of Hoxton, whoever in hell’s name he happened to be; no Bobby could see us unless he came through the square itself, and Professor Dare assured me they never did.

“The rich,” he said, “need no extra patrol. They are quite safe behind their walls of rectitude.”

And so we sat, and so the time passed, the clouds grew thicker, and the occasional beams of wan moonlight ceased to pop through the clouds; perhaps the wind increased, although perhaps it was merely that I grew cold in the waiting, with my nether side resting on the cold stone of ceremonial bench. A hansom now and then passed, and occasionally a party of pedestrians, usually loud under sway of drink, came by, but no one entered the square, and there was no business from the house.

Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I pulled my pocket watch and made out that it was well past one. Over two hours of sitting.

“It’s begun to look like nothing,” I said.

“I agree. He’s at least an hour’s walk from Whitechapel’s loins, which would move his action to two, then he’s got to find a bird, engage her, move her toward privacy, rip her, and head back. Quite an agenda to finish before—Hello, what’s this?”

Hello, indeed.

A figure emerged from the major’s house, definitely male, well prepared against the coldness and oncoming rain, dashed across the street, where there were fewer gaslights, and began a hunched though purposeful stride in the direction of Whitechapel.

“By God, sir, it’s him,” said the professor. “I’ve seen the walk from afar many times in the past week. He’s a strider, of no patience nor elegance, hungry for the advance, and so is that one.”

“Let’s—”

“No,” he said, “he’ll turn at the corner, but not before issuing a look-see. Military training. We stay still until the turn, and then we’re off.”

We watched as he receded, and as the professor had prophesied, he stopped at the corner and had a good look around. It being deserted in this happy little nook of London, two blokes as weird as the professor and I would have stood out like clowns had we been upright and mobile. But even at that distance, it was clear his eyes picked out nothing in the trees in the center of the square, or anywhere, and in a second, he was off. And so were we.

We rose—oof, suddenly taking the full weight of the Howdah against my shoulder, I realized how heavy the blasted thing was!—and were after the fox. We pushed ourselves, our strides determined, and reached the corner he’d negotiated a little before he reached his own next corner, and saw him again.

The professor produced opera glasses, gave them a look, and confirmed that he was no longer cautious but was bounding ahead, his destination presumably Kingsland Road, which led to Commercial and thence to the guts of Whitechapel’s flesh trade.

“All right,” he said, “let’s ourselves straight to Kingsland. He’s cutting diagonals to save time. At Kingsland, we’ll hail a hansom and take it toward Whitechapel, looking for him. If we see him, we pass him and set up on either side of the street ahead of him, and one watches from across, signaling the other, who never looks around.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Hardly. If you’ve better, please inform.”

“I’m the total novice.”

“Then let’s hither.”

And we did, cutting hard three blocks to Kingsland. Damn the luck, no hansoms in sight, the traffic sparse, the thoroughfare largely empty, as this was no dolly land. We gamely thrust ahead, down the street, aware that our vertical to his diagonal had probably put us six blocks behind him by now, and we cursed our luck, and our curses had effect.

The hansom seemed to arrive from nowhere, and the fellow behind said he was going off duty, but I told him I’d pay a premium and he said yes to that, and in we went as the vehicle trembled ahead. It was a relief to get the weight of Dr. Howdah off my shoulder and keep it from banging hard against my hip, where it surely would bring bruises. It was also a relief to catch up on oxygen, produce some saliva to wet my dry lips, and sip air at leisure instead of desperation.

We rumbled along, clippity-clop, clippity-clop, keeping a sharp lookout on either side. Guessing the major would be on the right, I yielded that position to the professor and set myself to examine all the pedestrians along the left side of the street. As it became Shoreditch, by that enraging and confounding London tradition the population on foot grew thicker, then thicker still when it took its angled right on Commercial and headed down that long stretch of well-lit and quite busy thoroughfare, darting in and out between the delivery wagons that plowed the road twenty-four hours a day, even as the pedestrians were darting in and out of the now mostly closed costers’ stalls. The gaslights did their duty, the pubs and beer shops and odd retail cast their light as well, but it had the kind of crazed affect of chiaroscuro, expressing an emotional value but no specific imagery. Jangle-jangle was how it felt, the whole thing with a mad carnival flash to it, made more urgent by the stress I felt and the fear I also felt that I might miss something and have the blood of a victim on my hands the next—

“Dr. Ripper, I presume,” proclaimed the professor.

“You have him?”

“Walking as bold as Cecil Rhodes across Africa with a pocketful of diamonds,” he said. He looked up, poked open the spy hole that allowed contact with the hansom driver, and said, “Two more blocks, then drop us on the left.”

“Aye,” said the driver, “but mind your bloomin’ ’eads, sir, as she’s started to rain.”

What impact would that have on things? Jack had never worked in the rain. Perhaps it would drive him back. Or perhaps he’d try to work indoors or make some other arrangement, I thought, and realized that if so, we’d never catch up, and this one would go down as a miss. The professor paid the driver.

We pulled away, took up a kind of boys’-spy position behind a shuttered coster stall—we would have looked quite mad to passersby, had they noticed, but of course they didn’t—and waited, and yes, here came, recognizable by his powerful gait and lack of patience, Major Pullham of the Royal Irish Hussars, now wrapped up like Private Pullham of the Royal Irish Horse Shitscoopers. He was, by the rules of his class, in mufti.

He appoached, drew even with us, and then forwarded his way along.

“I will go on the advance,” said the professor. “You stay on this side of the street. I will look back at you, but never at him, for your signals. Understood?”

“Excellent,” I said, and that is just what we did. The professor dashed across Commercial, set himself up, and walked briskly a hundred feet ahead of the major. He never looked back at the major but looked across to me, as I had positioned myself fifty feet behind the man, though on the opposite side of the street. Block after block I signaled straight ahead. Passing Fashion Street, then Wentworth, the professor gambled that the major would go right on Whitechapel, and plunged around the corner without hesitation. The major cooperated and we continued our little game of tag down the avenue.

Another pause as he went into the Ten Bells, right on the corner of Commercial and Fournier, across from Spitalfields Market, and had a draft of beer while we twiddled thumbs outside in the lightly falling rain.

“I’m guessing he was checking for Peelers,” said the professor. “He goes around, checks for knots of them, for the direction of their foot patrols; he looks for plainclothesmen in the crowds. I’m also guessing he has a spot already picked out, one he’s not used before, and after he quaffs his fill, he’ll ease out, taking his time, and at a certain spot slide up to Judy and ask for her company. Agreeing, she’ll lead him into a dark alley or down a dark street. Having scouted, he’s anticipated her choice.”

“I follow,” I said.

“I think we should abandon our magic following trick. We might have to move faster. If he takes her into the alley, we have to be on the couple instantly. He never hesitates. He’ll go to knife, but before he can hurt her, we have to call him out and secure him. The gun will control the transaction.”

“Shouldn’t we alert a Bobby?”

“Do you think it wise?”

“Ah—” I considered, seeing as many pitfalls as possibilities. “I’m agnostic at this point.”

“Perhaps it’s too much to control. Following, interceding, capturing, restraining, and calling a Peeler? Too many tasks, easy to mix up or forget or execute without confidence. We’re on him now, exactly as we thought; we’ll play it out and take the prize.”

I swallowed involuntarily. I made a secret promise to myself not to get too close. The man was fast with the blade, and in a blinding second, before I had time to react, he’d have my heart in his hand, munching it like an apple. No, no, I told myself, Jeb, old boy, you think too highly of yourself to end up that way. Keep your distance, remember to cock the damned gun, and if he steps toward you, send him to hell. Be the hero. Welcome the endless love. Just remember to cock the damned gun!

We stood there, across from the pub and could see him hunched at the bar. In a bit, more people within moved about, obscuring him, but he couldn’t have come out, as there was only one exit.

“He’s coming,” said the professor. “Oh my God, he’s got one, he’s got a Judy!”

Indeed it was so. He emerged, dawdled, and in another few seconds a young woman came out, by her demeanor and wardrobe of the whore subset and the smaller still prey subset. She moseyed ahead until out of view of the patrons in the bar through the broad windows and, once in shadow, paused to look back. He leaped to her side with mock gallantry, which made her smile.

“Here we go,” said the professor.

We rushed crazily across Commercial, hearing the shouts of drivers as we interrupted their rights to passage through the muddy concourse. Meanwhile, the rain pelted down, stinging our faces and forcing us to squint, but somehow we made it with no incident other than additional mud to our boots from the glop that had become the road surface. We arrived on that side of Commercial about fifty feet behind the happy twosome as they walked down the street, arm in arm. They had elected not to try Fournier but ambled down Commercial, past Christchurch and its towering steeple, and down another block. I got a good view, and I must say, if this were Jack, the public would be shocked.

Far from the creepy, anonymous skulker, his face cadaverous, his eyes haunted, his teeth pointed, this Jack was a merry seducer. We could see how totally engaged he was in charming her. Perhaps that was the plan, to gull her toward defenseless love with wit and then cut her down. Perhaps he enjoyed the moment when she saw the knife and knew the cad was her killer and the shock stunned her face.

But he was laying it on with a trowel. I could see him whispering in her ear intimately; evidently he was a wit and quite experienced in the art of making women comfortable (an attribute I sadly lacked): Her face, turned admiringly toward him, radiated rapture at his performance and affection for the man behind it. I watched as she seemed to gradually melt in to him, until they were not two walking side by side but one, of four-legged persuasion, in perfect unison and of one heart, easing their way down the sidewalk, too close to worry about costers’ stalls, too close to note the others passing them by at a far faster pace, and too intent on each’s response to the other to notice the two hooded gentlemen fifty feet behind them, matching perfectly their pace.

At last they came to a side street on the left, and I saw them put their heads together as they came to a halt, and then she giggled and he guffawed and they turned left.

“All right,” said the professor. “Now it gets dicey. Get that gun out so you don’t have to pull it while he’s cutting off your ears.”

I obeyed, sliding it out by one hand and easing it more or less under my mac, and we nodded, each took a deep breath, and steeled self against the upcoming. The rain was really falling now, cutting horizontally, propelled by angry wind, and a chill lay upon all and every. Perhaps hoarfrost in the morning? Who knew what morning would bring? At that moment, we took the corner hard and stepped into the blackness of an alley and saw in a second the figures of two people, enmeshed.