“Who is this Chow Chee John Potter?” asked Dickens.

“Jack’s dead,” she said. “He was an ol’ Chinee ship’s cook who had the Christian name ’cause he’d been christened, but he was never right in ’is head, sir. ’E was like a sweet child, ’e was… only a mean, vicious child if he drank rum. But never mean just from smokin’. No.”

“This Chow Chee was a friend of Drood’s?” asked Dickens.

Old Sal rattled another laugh. It sounded as if her lungs were almost gone from the smoke or consumption or both.

“Drood—if that was ’is name—didn’t have no friends, sir. Everyone was afraid of ’im. Even Chow Chee.”

“But the first time you saw him here—Drood—he came in with Chow Chee?”

“Aye, sir, he come with ’im, but I suspect that ’e’d just run into old Jack and had the old pleasant idiot show ’im the way to the nearest opium house. Jack would’ve done that for a kind word, much less for a shillin’.”

“Does Drood live around here?” asked Dickens.

Sal started to laugh again but then started coughing. The terrible noise went on for what seemed like an endless amount of time. Finally she gasped and said, “Live ’round ’ere? ’Round New Court or Bluegate Fields or the docks or Whitechapel? Nossir. No chance of that, sir.”

“Why not?” asked Dickens.

“We would’ve known, gov’ner,” rasped the woman. “Someone like Drood would’ve scared every man, woman, and child in Whitechapel and London and Shadwell. We all would’ve left town.”

“Why?” asked Dickens.

“Because of his Story,” hissed the crone. “His true and awful Story.”

“Tell us his story,” said Dickens.

She hesitated.

Hatchery ran the edge of his club up the outside of her arm and lightly rapped her on her bony elbow.

After her howling stopped, she told the story as she had heard it from the late Chow Chee John Potter, another opium dealer named Yahee, and yet another user named Lascar Emma.

“Drood’s not new to these ’ere parts; them what knows says ’e’s been a’haunting these neighbourhoods for forty years and more.…”

I interrupted with “What is this Mr Drood’s Christian name, woman?”

Hatchery and Dickens both scowled at me. I blinked and stepped back. It was the only question I was to ask the Puffer Princess that night.

Sal scowled at me as well. “Christian name? Drood ain’t got no Christian name. He ain’t no Christian and never was. It’s just Drood. That’s part of his Story. Do you want me to tell it or don’t you?”

I nodded, feeling the blush heat the skin between the lower rim of my spectacles and the beginnings of my beard.

“Drood’s just Drood,” repeated Old Sal. “Word from Lascar Emma was that Drood was a sailor once. Yahee, who’s older than Mother Abdallah and dirt combined, says he wasn’t no sailor, just a passenger on a sailing ship that come here long ago. Maybe sixty years ago—maybe a hundred. But them all agreed that Drood come from Egypt.…”

I saw Dickens and the huge detective exchange glances, as if the crone’s words were confirming something they already knew or suspected.

“’E was an Egyptian, and dark-skinned as all of ’is damned-to-hell Mohammadan race,” continued Sal. “Word was that ’e had ’air then, too, black as pitch. Some says ’e was handsome. But ’e was always an opium man. As soon’s ’e set foot on English soil, they says, ’e was puffing at the blue bottle pipe.

“First ’e spent all the money ’e had on it—thousands of pounds, if the story is true. He must’ve come from royalty there in Mohammadan Egypt. At the very least, ’e come from money. Or come by it some’ow shady. Chin Chin the Chinaman, the old Chinee dealer in the West End, stole Drood blind, charging him ten, twenty, fifty times what ’e charged ’is reg’lar customers. Then, when ’is own money runned out, Drood tried to work for the money—sweepin’ at crossin’s and doin’ magic tricks for the gents and ladies up at Falcon Square—but ’onest-come-by money didn’t buy ’im enough. It never does. So the ’gyptian became a cut-purse and then a cut-throat, robbin’ and a’killin’ sailors near the docks. That kept ’im in Chin Chin’s good graces and guaranteed the ’ighest-quality smoke, bought by the Chinaman from Johnny Chang’s establishment up at the London and Saint Katharine Coffee-’ouse on Ratcliff ’ighway.

“Drood gathered ’round him some others—most ’gyptians, some Malays, some Lascars, some free niggers off the ships, some dirty Irish, some mean Germans—but mostly, as I say, other ’gyptians. They’ve themselves sort of a religion and they live and worship in the old Undertown.…”

Not understanding but afraid of interrupting again, I looked first at Dickens and then at Hatchery. Both men shook their heads and shrugged.

“One day, or night it were, maybe twenty year ago,” continued Sal, “Drood went to waylay and sap a sailor; some say ’is name was Finn, but this Finn waren’t as drunk as ’e seemed nor as easy a target as Drood thought. The ’gyptian Drood used a skinning knife for ’is dark work—or maybe it was one of them curvy bonin’ knives you see up at them Whitechapel butchers, what with their cry of ‘prime and nobby jintes for to-morrer’s dinner at nine-a-half, and no bone to speak of’… and it was true, gentlemen and Constable ’Ib, that when Drood was a’finished with ’em on the docks, there was money for smoke in ’is purse and no bone to speak of for the sailor whose ’ollowed-out corpse was then dumped like so many fish guts into the Thames.…”

There came a low moaning from one of the adjoining rooms. I felt the hair on my neck rise, but this other-worldly moaning was no response to Old Sal’s story. Just a customer with a pipe in need of a refill. The crone ignored the moaning and so did her rapt audience of three.

“Not this night twenty years ago,” she said. “Finn—if Finn was ’is name—wasn’t no regular customer for Drood’s blade; ’e got Drood’s arm before it done ’im harm and then he got the bonin’ knife, or skinnin’ knife, whichever, and cut off the ’gyptian’s nose. Then ’e cut ’is would-be murderer open from crotch to collarbone, ’e did. Oh, Finn knew ’ow to wield a knife from his years ’afore the mast, is how ol’ Lascar Emma tells it. Drood, all slashed but still alive, yells no, no, mercy, no, and Finn cuts the blackguard’s tongue out of his mouth. Then ’e cuts off the heathen’s privy parts and offers to place ’em where the missin’ tongue had been. And then ’e done what ’e offered.”

I realised that I was blinking rapidly and breathing shallowly. I had never heard a woman talk this way. One glance towards Dickens told me that the Inimitable was equally enthralled by the tale and the teller.

“So finally,” continued Sal, “this Finn—this sailor by any other name who knew ’is knife-work—cuts Drood’s ’eart out of ’is chest and dumps the ’gyptian’s dead body into the river from a dock not a mile from this ’ouse. So ’elp me God, gentlemen.”

“But wait,” interrupted Dickens. “This occurred more than twenty years ago? You said earlier that Drood was your customer here for seven or eight years, up until about a year ago. Are you so dazed with the drug that you are forgetting your own lies?”

The Puffer Princess squinted evilly at Dickens and showed her clawed fingers and arched her bowed back while her wild hair seemed to stick out farther from her head and for a minute I was certain that she was transmogrifying into a cat and would begin spitting and clawing within another second or two.

Instead, she hissed—“Drood’s dead is what I been tellin’ you. Been dead since ’e was carved and tossed into the Thames by the sailor nigh onto twenty year ago. But ’is band, ’is group, ’is followers, ’is co-religionists—them other ’gyptians, Malays, Lascars, Irishmen, Germans, Hindoos—they fished ’is rotting, bloated corpse out of the river some days after ’is murder and did their heathen ritules and brought Drood back to life again. Lascar Emma says it was down in Undertown, where ’e dwells to this day. Old Yahee, who knew Drood when ’e was alive, ’e says the restorrection was over across the river in the mountains o’ ’orse and ’uman shit what you gentlemen so politely call ‘dust ’eaps.’ But wherever they done it, ’owever they done it, they brought Drood back.”