Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

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.”