Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

“I must say, it’s a dandy idea,” said O’Connor. “Deftly employed, it will sell thousands more papers and elevate Jeb’s Jack into the bogeyman of the nineteenth century. Maybe the twentieth as well.”

Who was I to protest such imbecility? I had no moral standing to argue it the other way, so I just nodded grimly and sat down. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Great,” said Harry, and with relish he set to work, clearing space on the makeup table. O’Connor and I watched as, in his surprisingly adroit hand, he copied my words on a piece of foolscap, so the whole thing did come to resemble a missive from the devil himself, had that old boy been educated by nuns, and come to think of it, he probably was!

When Harry was done, he pinched it by the corner, waved it about to dry, then folded it and crammed it into an envelope. “I’ll go hire a kid and make sure he drops it in the right slot at the Central News Agency,” he said. “By God, it’ll shake the old town up when they run it. And we’ll be ready to jump on the horse before anyone.”

“Excellent, Harry, positively brilliant. Jeb, you agree?”

“I suppose,” I said poutily, having lost on all rounds; I had written a document without integrity, then gotten all prideful over my effort, as if it were a noble calling, and now, absurdly, I felt degraded by further breaches of its integrity inflicted by others. Suddenly, I wanted to vomit.

“All right, then, boys,” said O’Connor, “let’s get back to business.”

Harry threw on his hat and coat and smiled as if he’d eaten the Christmas goose.

“Off you go, then,” said O’Connor, and Harry departed. O’Connor turned to me. “No long faces, Jeb. It’s just business. It’s how we operate, always have, always will. Now mind your P’s and Q’s, and wait for this to stir the pot.”

But I was far too much a baby to let a nice period of self-pity and victimization go wasted, so I took it upon myself to spend more rather than less time in the tearoom. And that was why I was playing the injured party, even several days later, and only Henry Bright noticed, if circumspectly.

So it was that when I came back to the newsroom after my dawdling, I was late to learn that Jack had done his bad trick a third time, at a place I’d never heard of called Dutfield’s Yard, and that Harry was shortly to be, if not already, on the scene.

“There you are, old man,” said Henry Bright. “I’ll be in makeup. We’ve got to redesign for tomorrow. Harry will call in with details and you—”

Someone came running over, and to this day, I cannot remember who, for the news was so overwhelming.

“My God,” whoever it was said, “the bastard’s done it again. Two in one night! This one at a place called Mitre Square a mile away. Two in one hour! And she’s really chopped up!”

“All right, Jeb,” said Henry Bright. “Get on your horse. It looks like it’ll be a long evening of fun.”

Inow pass to the second event of the evening. As to my disappearance from Dutfield’s Yard and the Anarchists’ Club, I record nothing, as I am exhausted (you will see why), and though it might be of interest to readers, I anticipate no readers and thus airily mean to skip that which I find tedious.

I found myself 1,570 paces to the west, on Aldgate, that being the same concourse as Whitechapel High Street, but having moved from London to the City of London, it had acquired a new name, as well as a new municipal government and police force. It was well after one A.M., and on the street I found myself, no rumble of the momentous events transpiring some blocks behind me evident. It was as if I had magically migrated to another planet, another atmosphere, another range of life-forms. I was disconsolate, as I had extremely well-laid plans for the evening and goals to be achieved, and I had failed utterly. It was my first such failure, and I had left the thing unfinished by a far part at Dutfield’s Yard, where my cursed luck had produced that Yiddish oaf on a pony cart, with his wonder horse, Boobsie, to muck everything up. Gad, I was angered. I am, as it turns out, not the type to go all jabberwocky and expectorate in rage; rather, my fury is entirely inward and takes the form of a fiery furnace in my chest, blazing madly in the chill air. I would have to start again, and damn thee to hell. Dutfield’s, carefully selected, had been so perfect for my plan. I wondered if ever I would find such a spot again.

And yet, as if Satan himself had become my sponsor, what should I spy as I moseyed drearily up Aldgate past the pump, past Houndsditch, but a lady herself. Judy or no? Difficult to tell, as she was in dark and the streets were not well lit, as all the newspapers continued to point out, but in an instant my mood transfigured from the blackest of black to the sudden blast of high engagement. I watched her meandering along, as if a bit unsteady, and noted that outside her skirts she wore an apron, a wide white expanse of milled cotton that marked off her whole front. It was most useful for my purposes, and seeing it, I decided her fate in an instant.

It took no speed or athleticism to catch up to her, and when she sensed my heat as I placed myself at her left shoulder, I in turn sensed her drunkenness, or should I say, her recent close acquaintanceship with liquor, for she fairly reeked, poor lass, of the devil’s favored beverage. But not then or consequently did she seem impaired as regarded her faculties.

Her first response was quite sensible, that being fear, but when she saw how fair of face I was, how kind of countenance, how much a gentleman stroller out for a bit of rogue notch and nothing else, she forced a smile to her worn and plain face. She was no beauty, as had been the last unfortunate to cross my path, and one would not notice her in any crowd except those more interested in notch than face. She was a short one, too, even shorter than the first, and rather square of face, a solid block of a gal.

“Good evening, madam,” I said.

“Just put off a drunken sailor,” she said. “All over me, that one was. You’re not that sort, is you, guv’nor?”

“My dear,” I said, “I’m a gentleman, I assure you, I only do that which is allowed, when it is allowed, where it is allowed, and I pay generously, not the usual thruppence for a night’s favor but a full fourpenny, good for both a gin and a night in a doss house.”

“No more gin for me, as I taxed my limits earlier. But a soft bed is worth a little putting out for such a fine man as yourself, sir.”

“Then lead on, and I’ll give you a swag you’ll not forget.”

She even giggled. “They all say that, they do.”

She led me another half block up Aldgate, and though it was late of hour, that avenue was still lit and bore some traffic. As was the way in the larger polity, no one paid us a bit of mind, since gentleman-and-Judy was such a common sight.

We reached a corner that led off to darkness, and not knowing what it could be, I glanced at the sign, learning that it was Mitre Street.

“A nice quiet square down this way for our business,” sang the nightingale. “Come on, then, don’t be shy.”

She lead me down this Mitre Street, and indeed there lay another passage, off to the right, between what appeared to be commercial buildings, maybe a dwelling or two, though I could not tell, as it was so dark. We followed the passage but a short bit, and it led us into a square, bulked up on either side by larger buildings that appeared to be of commercial nature. It was a tiny oasis in so vast a metropolitan desert, being barely if at all twenty-five yards on a side. I could make out in the dim light – our parsimonious city fathers allowed only two gas lamps for the entire square – some white lettering of the kind that usually heralds an owner’s name, but it was so dark and far that I could resolve no meaning for it. Besides, we were not to tarry. She took a direct right once within the square and led me, again not far, into its darkest corner. No light from the two wan lamps reached us, yet there was enough ambient illumination from our vantage point to see that the square was empty. I had no idea how long it would so remain, for I had not reconnoitered it and was not entirely sure where I was or how I would get out if danger appeared. But the opportunity was here, and fortune, it is said, always favors the bold, and I am by nature bold, and so I went ahead.