He laid a long, narrow parcel upon the table, and the President proceeded to open it. The contents consisted of a policeman’s truncheon—branded H 1839—and a long, narrow-bladed, double-edged knife, having an ebony handle, which was cut in criss-cross ridges. There were stains of blood upon the truncheon, and the knife appeared to have been dipped in a red transparent varnish, of the nature of which there could be no doubt.
“Those are the exhibits,” said Horace Jeaffreson. “The slit in my coat, my wounded hand, that truncheon, and that bloodstained knife, and a copy of the morning paper, are all the proofs I have to give you that my adventure of last night was not a hideous nightmare dream, or a wildly improbable yarn.
“I must confess that when I placed my forefinger haphazard upon the map last night, and found that fate had given me Whitechapel as my hunting-ground, I was considerably disgusted. I left this place bound for the heart of sordid London, the home of vice, of misery, and crime. Until last night I knew nothing whatever about the East End of London. I’ve never been bitten with the desire to do even the smallest bit of ‘slumming.’ I’m sorry enough for the poor. I’d do all I can to help them in the way of subscribing, and that sort of thing, you know; but actual poverty in the flesh I confess to fighting shy of—it’s a weakness I own, but, so to say, poverty, crass poverty, offends my nostrils. I’m not a snob, but that’s the truth. However, I was in for it; I had got to pass the night in Whitechapel for the sake of what might turn up. A good deal turned up, and a good deal more than I had bargained for.
“ ‘Shall I wait for you, sir?’ said the cabman, as he pulled up his hansom at the corner of Osborne Street. ‘I’m game to wait, sir, if you won’t be long.’
“But I dismissed him. ‘I shall be here for several hours, my man,’ I said.
“ ‘You know best, sir,’ said the cabman: ‘everyone to his taste. You’d better keep yer weather-eye open, sir, anyhow; for the side streets ain’t over and above safe about here. If I were you, sir, I’d get a “copper” to show me round.’ And then the man thanked me for a liberal fare, and flicking his horse, drove off.
“But I had come to Whitechapel to seek adventure, something was bound to turn up, and, as a modern Don Quixote, I determined to take my chance alone; for it wasn’t under the protecting wing of a member of the Force that I was likely to come across any very stirring novelty.
“I wandered about the dirty, badly-lighted streets, and I marvelled at the teeming hundreds who thronged the principal thoroughfares. I don’t think that ever in my life before I had seen so many hungry, hopeless-looking, anxious-looking people crowded together. They all seemed to be hurrying either to the public-house or from the public-house. Nobody offered to molest me. I’m a fairly big man, and with the exception of having my pockets attempted some half-dozen times, I met with no annoyance of any kind. As twelve o’clock struck an extraordinary change came over the neighbourhood; the doors of the public-houses were closed, and, save in the larger thoroughfares, the whole miserable quarter seemed to become suddenly silent and deserted. I had succeeded in losing myself at least half a dozen times; but go where I would, turn where I might, two things struck me—first, the extraordinary number of policemen about; second, the frightened way in which men and women, particularly the homeless wanderers of the night, of both sexes, regarded me. Belated wayfarers would step aside out of my path, and stare at me, as though with dread. Some, more timorous than the rest, would even cross the road at my approach; or, avoiding me, start off at a run or at a shambling trot. It puzzled me at first. Why on earth should the poverty-stricken rabble, who had the misfortune to live in this wretched neighbourhood, be afraid of a man, or appear to be afraid of a man, who had a decent coat to his back?
“The side streets, as I say, were almost absolutely deserted, save for infrequent policemen who gave me good-night, or gazed at me suspiciously. I was wandering aimlessly along, when my curiosity was suddenly aroused by a powerful, acrid, and peculiar odour. ‘Without doubt,’ said I to myself, ‘that is the nastiest stench it has ever been my misfortune to smell in the whole course of my life.’ ‘Stench’ is a Johnsonian word, and very expressive; it’s the only word to convey any idea of the nastiness of the mixed odours which assailed my nostrils. ‘I will follow my nose,’ I said to myself, and I turned down a narrow lane, a short lane, lit by a single gas-lamp. ‘It gets worse and worse,’ I thought, ‘and it can’t be far off, whatever it is.’ It was so bad that I actually had to hold my nose.
“At that moment I ran into the arms of a policeman, who appeared to spring suddenly out of the earth.
“ ‘I’m sure I beg your pardon,’ I said to the man.
“ ‘Don’t mention it, sir,’ replied the policeman briskly and there was something of a countryman’s drawl in the young man’s voice. ‘Been and lost yourself, sir, I suppose?’ he continued.
“ ‘Well, not exactly,’ I replied. ‘The fact is, I wandered down here to see where the smell came from.’
“ ‘You’ve come to the right shop, sir,’ said the policeman, with a smile; ‘it’s a regular devil’s kitchen they’ve got going on down here, it’s just a knacker’s, sir, that’s what it is; and they make glue, and size, and cat’s-meat, and patent manure. It isn’t a trade that most people would hanker for,’ said the young policeman with a smile. ‘They are in a very large way of business, sir, are Melmoth Brothers; it might be worth your while, sir, to take a look round; you’ll find the night-watchman inside, sir, and he’d be pleased to show you over the place for a trifle; and it’s worth seeing is Melmoth Brothers.’
“ ‘I’ll take your advice, and have a look at the place,’ I answered. ‘There seems to be a great number of police about tonight, my man,’ I said.
“ ‘Well, yes, sir,’ replied the constable, ‘you see the scare down here gets worse and worse; and the people here are just afraid of their own shadows after midnight; the wonder to my mind is, sir, that we haven’t dropped on to him long ago.’
“Then all at once it dawned upon me why it was that men and women had turned aside from me in fear; then I saw why it was that the place seemed a perfect ants’ nest of police. The great scare was at its height: the last atrocity had been committed only four days before.
“ ‘Why, bless my heart, sir,’ cried the young policeman confidentially, ‘one might come upon him red-handed at any moment. I only wish it was my luck to come across him, sir,’ he added. ‘Lor’ bless ye, sir,’ the young policeman went on, ‘he’ll be a pulling it off just once too often, one of these nights.’
“ ‘Well, I suppose he helps to keep you awake,’ I said with a smile, for want of something better to say.
“ ‘Keep me awake, sir!’ said the man solemnly; ‘I don’t suppose there’s a single constable in the whole H Division as thinks of aught else. Why, sir, he haunts me like; and do you know, sir’—and the man’s voice suddenly dropped to a very low whisper—‘I do think as how I saw him’; and then he gave a sigh. ‘I was standing, sir, just where I was when I popped out on you, a hiding-up like; it was more than a month ago, and there was a woman standing crying, leaning on that very post, sir, by Melmoth Brothers’ gate, with just a thin ragged shawl, sir, drawn over her head. She was down upon her luck, I suppose, you see, sir—and there was a heavyish fog on at the time—when stealing up out of the fog behind where the poor thing was standing, sir, sobbing and crying for all the world just like a hungry child, I saw something brown noiselessly stealing up towards the woman; she had her back to it, sir—and she never moved. I could just make out the stooping figure of a man, who came swiftly forward with noiseless footsteps, crouching along in the deep shadow of yonder wall. I rubbed my eyes to see if I was awake or dreaming; and, as the crouching figure rapidly advanced, I saw that it was a man in a long close-fitting brown coat of common tweed. He’d got a black billycock jammed down over his eyes, and a red cotton comforter that hid his face; and in his left hand, which he held behind him, sir, was somet
hing that now and again glittered in the light of that lamp up there. I loosed my truncheon, sir, and I stood back as quiet as a mouse, for I guessed who I’d got to deal with. Whoever he was, he meant murder, and that was clear—murder and worse. All of a sudden, sir, he turned and ran back into the fog, and I after him as hard as I could pelt; and then he disappeared just as if he’d sunk through the earth. I blew my whistle, sir, and I reported what I’d seen at the station, and the superintendent—he just reprimanded me, that’s what he did.
“ ‘ “1839, I don’t believe a word of it,” said he; and he didn’t.
“ ‘But I did see him, sir, all the same; and if I get the chance,’ said the man bitterly, ‘I’ll put my mark on him.’
“ ‘Well, policeman,’ I said, ‘I hope you may, for your sake,’ and then I forced a shilling on him. ‘I’ll go and have a look round at Melmoth Brothers’ place,’ I said. I gave the young policeman good night, and I crossed the road and walked through the open gateway into a large yard, from whence proceeded the atrocious odour that poisoned the neighbourhood.
“The place was on a slope, it was paved with small round stones, and was triangular in shape; a high wall at the end by which I had entered formed the base of the triangle, and one side of the narrow lane in which I had left the young policeman. There was a sort of shed or shelter of corrugated iron running along this wall, and under the shed I could indistinctly see the figures of horses and other animals, evidently secured, in a long row. All down one side of the boundary wall of the great yard which sloped from the lane towards the point of the triangle, I saw a number of furnace doors, five and twenty of them at least; they appeared to be let into a long low wall of masonry of the most solid description, and they presented an extraordinary appearance, giving one the idea of the hulk of a mysterious ship, burnt well-nigh to the water’s edge, through whose closed ports the fire, which was slowly consuming her, might be plainly seen. The curious similitude to a burning hulk was rendered still more striking by the fact that, above the low wall in which the furnace doors were set, there was a heavy cloud of dense white steam which hung suspended above what seemed like the burning hull of the great phantom ship. There wasn’t a breath of air last night, you know, to stir that reeking cloud of fetid steam; and the young summer moon shone down upon it bright and clear, making the heaped piles of steaming vapour look like great clouds of fleecy whiteness. The place was silent as the grave itself, save for a soft bubbling sound as of some thick fluid that perpetually boiled and simmered, and the occasional movement of one of the tethered animals. The wall opposite the row of furnaces, which formed the other side of the triangle, had a number of stout iron rings set in it some four feet apart, and looked, for all the world, like some old wharf from which the sea had long ago receded. At the apex of the triangle, where the walls nearly met, were a pair of heavy double doors of wood, which were well-nigh covered with stains and splashes of dazzling whiteness; and the ground in front of them was stained white too, as though milk, or whitewash, had been spilled, for several feet.
“There were great wooden blocks and huge benches standing about in the great paved yard; and I noted a couple of solid gallowslike structures, from each of which depended an iron pulley, holding a chain and a great iron hook. I noted, too, as a strange thing, that though the ground was paved with rounded stones—and, as you know, it was a dry night and early summer—yet in many places there were puddles of dark mud, and the ground there was wet and slippery.
“But what struck me as the strangest thing of all in this weird and dreadful place, were the numerous horses lying about in every direction, apparently sleeping soundly; but as I stared at them, brilliantly lighted up as they were by the rays of the clear bright moon, I saw that they were not sleeping beasts at all—that they were not old and worn-out animals calmly sleeping in happy ignorance of the fate that waited them on the morrow—but by their strange stiffened and gruesome attitudes, I perceived that the creatures were already dead.
“I’m no longer a child, I have no illusions, and I am not easily frightened; but I felt a terrible sense of oppression come over me in this dreadful place. I began to feel as a little one feels when he is thrust, for the first time in his life, into a dark room by a thoughtless nurse. But I had come out of curiosity to see the place; I had expressed my intention of doing so to Constable 1839 of the H Division; so I made up my mind to go through with it. I would see what there was to be seen, I would learn something about the mysterious trade of Melmoth Brothers; and as a preliminary I proceeded to light my briar-root, so as, if possible, to get rid to some extent of the numerous diabolical smells of the place by the fragrant odour of Murray’s mixture.
“And then, when I had lighted my pipe, I was startled by a hoarse voice which suddenly croaked out—‘Make yourself at home, guv’nor; don’t you stand on no sort o’ ceremony, for you look a gentleman, you does; a real gentleman, a chap what always has the price of a pint in his pocket, and wouldn’t grudge the loan of a bit of baccy to a pore old chap as is down on his luck.’
“I turned to the place from whence the voice proceeded. It was a strange-looking creature that had addressed me. He was an old man with a pointed grey beard, who sat upon a bench of massive timber covered with dreadful stains. The bright moon lighted up his face, and I could see his features as clearly as though I saw them by the light of day. He was clad in a long linen jerkin of coarse stuff, reaching nearly to his heels; but its colour was no longer white—the garment was red, reddened by awful smears and splashes from head to foot. The figure wore a pair of heavy jack-boots, with wooden soles, nigh upon an inch thick, to which the uppers were riveted with nails of copper; those great boots of his made me sick to look at them. But the strangest thing of all in the dreadful costume of the grim figure was the head-dress, which was a close-fitting wig of knitted grey wool; very similar, in appearance at all events, to the undress wig worn by the Lord High Chancellor of England—that wig, that once sacred wig, which Mr. George Grossmith has taught us to look upon with that familiarity which breeds contempt. The wig was tied beneath the pointed beard by a string. I noted that round the figure’s waist was a leathern strap, from which hung a sort of black pouch; from the top of this projected, so as to be ready to his hand, the hafts of several knives of divers sorts and sizes. The face was lean, haggard, and wrinkled; fierce ferrety eyes sparkled beneath long shaggy grey eyebrows; and the toothless jaws of the old man and his pointed grey beard seemed to wage convulsively as in suppressed amusement. And then Macaulay’s lines ran through my mind—
“ ‘To the mouth of some dark lair,
Where growling low, a fierce old bear
Lies amidst bones and blood.’
“ ‘Haw-haw! guv’nor,’ he said, ‘you might think as I was one o’ these murderers. I ain’t the kind of cove as a young woman would care to meet of a summer night, nor any sort of night for the matter of that, am I? Haw-haw! But the houses is closed, guv’nor, worse luck; and I’m dreadful dry.’
“ ‘You talk as if you’d been drinking, my man,’ I said.
“ ‘That’s where you’re wrong, guv’nor. Why, bless me if I’ve touched a drop of drink for six mortal days; but tomorrow’s pay-day, and tomorrow night, guv’nor—tomorrow night I’ll make up for it. And so you’ve come to look round, eh? You’re the fust swell as I ever seed in this here blooming yard as had the pluck.’
“And then I began to question him about the details of the hideous business of Melmoth Brothers.
“ ‘They brings ’em in, guv’nor, mostly irregular,’ said the old man; ‘they brings ’em in dead, and chucks ’em down anywhere, just as you see; and they brings ’em in alive, and we ties ’em up and feeds ’em proper, and gives ’em water, according to the Act; and then we just turns ’em into size and glue, or various special lines, or cat’s-meat, or patent manure, or superphosphate, as the case may be. We boils ’em all down within twenty-four hours. Haw-haw!’ cried the dreadful old man in a
lmost fiendish glee. ‘There ain’t much left of ’em when we’ve done with ’em, except the smell. Haw-haw! Why, bless ye, there’s nigh on half a dozen cab ranks a simmering in them there boilers,’ and he pointed to the furnace fires.
“And then the old man led me past the great row of furnace doors, and down the yard to the very end; and then we reached the two low wooden gates which stood at the lower end of the sloping yard. He pushed back one of the splashed and whitened doors with a great iron fork, and propped it open; then he flung open the door of the end furnace, which threw a lurid light into a low vaulted brickwork chamber within. I saw that the floor of the chamber consisted of a vast leaden cistern, and that some fluid, on whose surface was a thick white scum, filled it, and gave forth a strangely acrid and, at the same time, pungent, odour.
“ ‘This ’ere,’ said the old man, ‘is where we make the superphosphate; there’s several tons of the strongest vitriol in this here place; we filled up fresh today, guv’nor. If I was to shove you into that there vat, you’d just melt up for all the world like a lump of sugar in a glass of hot toddy; and you’d come out superphosphate, guv’nor, when they drors the vat. Haw-haw! Seein’s believin’, they say; just you look here. This here barrer’s full of fresh horses’ bones; they’ve ben biled nigh on two days. They’re bones, you see, real bones, without a bit of flesh on them. You just stand back, guv’nor, lest you get splashed and spiles yer clothes. Haw-haw!’
“I did as I was bid. And then the old man suddenly shot the barrow full of white bones into the steaming vat.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 60
