“I say,” I said, which is what people say when they have nothing to say, “I say, you have the advantage over me. I know not—”

“Oh, come now. I’ve particularly enjoyed the pieces on Warren’s folly. Your analysis of the broken system that underlies his Scotland Yard is spot-on, but even if they become more efficient and get more boots to the street faster, I don’t think the killer will fall to dragnet. If he were that careless, his luck would have run out, given his need to commit his deeds in heavily patrolled areas, just missing the blue bottles by a hair each time out.”

“Professor Dare, I shan’t lie, because I am indeed professionally Jeb, but how on earth, sir, did you know? Did some kind of spy—”

“No, no. Language. Phonetics. One of my many theories is that we speak two Englishes, a shallow English and a deep English. The second is the language of structure, organization; I call it the Beneath. It lurks, prehistoric and brutal, under the gibbets of grammar, words, punctuation, and neatness in penmanship. It is a reflection of the manner in which we solve problems, it expresses how we think, it expresses our true self. It is, in the end, our truth. I believe I’ve trained myself to read for the tracks of this Beneath, and when I read Jeb in the Star over the past few weeks, I saw those tracks. The music was extremely familiar. Some of the words, too, some of the effects—though now you’re drawn through the sieve of newspaper editing, with some dilution occurring. But I recognized it. You have much to write, much to learn, but if you give it your life, you might at one time accomplish something of note.”

“I’ve actually written five novels. Unpublished, the lot.”

“Write five more.”

“Perhaps I shall. But may I ask, to return to first causes, why you despise Warren at my level of intensity? It seems to be my job, and that explains my occasional interceptions of his vector, but you, sir, a professor at university, I cannot—”

“The murderer. The fiend, of course.”

“The murderer?”

“I adore him. He is so real, he is so fascinating, I cannot get enough. And unlike anything in years, he provokes me. That is why I pore over the accounts; that is why, when time has cooled off the curious mobs, I visit each murder site and look hither and yon for whatever the coppers may have missed. Haven’t found a thing yet. And the most demanding question of all: Where is he? Do you have theories?”

“I don’t believe, no matter what the Star publishes, that he’s a Jew. What little I know of Jews convinces me they are not of killing ilk. No, he’s one of us, and his contempt for the poor degraded Judys is really a critique on our system. But perhaps I impose my politics. Sir, do you have theories?”

“In formation. Unsuited for expression at this time.”

“I would love to hear them.”

“Perhaps, then, when they jell into aspic, I shall invite you to the club for a chat. Does that suit?”

“Fabulously,” I said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Diary

September 25, 1888

I had planned very carefully this time, and reconnoitered skillfully, examining against the triple indices of privacy, escape possibilities, and constable patrols. I had found a perfect spot, for this one had to be perfect, and for it to be perfect I had to have privacy with the body for more than a few minutes. I had this night an important agenda. Too bad a poor missy would have to pay for my higher purpose, but then that is the way of our wicked world, is it not?

This time I marked the area south of Whitechapel Road as my hunting ground, while my two previous expeditions had been well north of it. Where Commercial crossed it, then bent toward the east—Whitechapel’s layout is a mess, by the way, having been invented a thousand years ago by wandering cows, chiefly—it pursued an admirable straight course for quite a ways, and the fourth intersection it afforded was with the nondescript Berner Street. This byway yielded a low no-man’s-land of grimy brick and chimney, and being close to Commercial, where the Judys still were ample, it offered darkness for many a secluded rut. I reasoned it would be easy enough to engineer a tête-à-tête with one, and she would turn off Commercial and lead me down Berner. That such a spot was but a few blocks from the police station did not particularly perturb me, for in my observation, the constables did not favor Berner with their attentions.

Perhaps they had been warned off by Sir Charles, because halfway down the first block was a queer institution known as the Anarchists’ Club, where I’d once heard William Morris hold forth on a new aesthetic for modern times to an indifferent audience. He preferred wallpaper to revolution, not a popular position in those precincts. It was full nearly every night with radicals of various Slavic, Jewish, and Russian origins, singing and chanting and conspiring the night away. The coppers would fancy that so much energy would keep any mad killer away, when the exact opposite was true. I knew that such men as were drawn to the club were of a species known as zealots, which would mean that though their eyes were open, what they were really seeing would be dreams of a society where they, and not the pale, lily-livered millionaires of the Kensington Club set, were the masters. The anarchists would hang anybody who belonged to a club, and it was the image of those well-shod feet dangling eight inches above the ground that occupied their imaginations. Then, of course, they would found their own clubs. Such it is with all grand dreamers, of this ilk or that.

I spent this evening rooting around the club. Since radicals believe (happily) that property is crime, they find the notion of locked doors abhorrent. Anyone radical or pretending to be radical may enter and wander the club, which sits next to one of those improvised spaces in chockablock Whitechapel called Dutfield’s Yard. It’s not a yard and there’s no Dutfield anywhere, save painted long ago on the gate. I observed that Judy would frequently open a door in the closed gate for a quick stand-up assignation in the darkness and quietude of the yard, then leave, always pulling the door shut behind her. Thus for my purposes, it was perfect.

But I had to know what species of experience the club offered, so I found myself one of a hundred or so throaty rip-roarers purporting to represent the masses as they—none more enthusiastically than myself—bellowed forth the sacred hymn of all those who believed we had to tear down before we could build up. I came a bit late, so it wasn’t until the fifth stanza that I made my contribution.

The kings made us drunk with fumes,

Peace among us, war to the tyrants!

Let the armies go on strike.

Stocks in the air, and break ranks.

If they insist, these cannibals

On making heroes of us,

They will know soon that our bullets

Are for our own generals!

Lovely sentiment, but try singing it in the mess of the 44th Argyle Foot and you’ll end up swinging from a tree overlooking the parade ground. Were they planning this year’s uprising or celebrating last year’s? Was it to be Mittleuropa or some unpronounceable republic in the far Balkans? Or maybe they were planning to go against the Great Bear herself, which meant that of the two hundred comrades the building held, at least a hundred and fifty of them were tsarist secret policemen, but they would have no interest in what happened in the yard outside their windows, only in far-off dungeons and torture rooms. However, I shared my doubts with nobody and presented to the company the very image of a happy mansion arsonist and execution squad commander. The louder I was, the more invisible I became.