I, Ripper

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?”