Ripping Time ts-3

by Robert Robert

  Skeeter said nothing at all. He merely glared at the drunken tourist and clamped his lips, eyes ravaged by a pain Margo could literally feel, it was so strong. Margo reached out hesitantly, touched his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Skeeter. I hope you find them. Tell them... tell them we helped look, okay?"

  Skeeter had stiffened under her hand. But he nodded. "Thanks, Margo. I'll see you later."

  He strode away through the crowd, disappearing past Joey Tyrolin, who teetered and abruptly found himself seated in the horse trough he'd just fished his pistol out of. Laughter floated in Skeeter's wake. Margo didn't join in. Skeeter was hurting, worse than she'd ever believed it possible for him to hurt. When she looked up, she found Kit's gaze on her. Her grandfather nodded, having read what was in her eyes and correctly interpreted it, all without a word spoken. It was one of the reasons she was still a little in awe of him—and why, at this moment, she loved him more fiercely than ever.

  "I'll keep looking, too, Imp," he promised. "You'd better scoot if you want to get into costume and get your luggage to the gate on time."

  Margo sighed. "Thanks. You'll come see us off?"

  He ruffled her hair affectionately. "Just try and keep me away."

  She gave him a swift, rib-cracking hug, having to blink salty water out of her eyes. "Love you, Kit," she whispered.

  Then she fled, hoping he hadn't noticed the tears.

  Time scouting was a tough business.

  Just now, Margo didn't feel quite tough enough.

  * * *

  The night dripped.

  Not honest rain, no; but a poisonous mist of coal smoke and river fog and steam that carried nameless scents in the coalescing yellow droplets. Above a gleam of damp roofing slates, long curls of black, acrid smoke belched from squat chimney pots that huddled down like misshapen gargoyles against an airborne, sulphurous tide. Far above, an almost forgotten moon hung poised above the city, a sickle-shaped crescent, the tautly drawn bow of the Divine Huntress of the Night, pure as unsullied silver above the foul murk, taking silent aim into the heart of a city long accustomed to asphyxiating beneath its own lethal mantle.

  Gas jets from scattered street lamps stung the darkness like impotent bees. The fog dispersed their glow into forlorn, hopeless little pustules of light along wet cobblestones and soot-blackened walls of wood and stone and ancient, crumbling brick. Diffuse smells lurked in eddies like old, fading bruises. The scent of harbor water thick with weeds and dead things afloat in the night drifted in from the river. Wet and half-rotted timbers lent a whiff of salt and moldering fungus. Putrefied refuse from the chamber pots and privies of five million people stung the throat and eyes, fighting for ascendency over the sickly stench of dead fish and drowned dogs.

  The distant, sweet freshness of wet hay and muddied straw eddying down from the enormous hay markets of Whitechapel and Haymarket itself lent a stark note of contrast, reminding the night that somewhere beyond these dismal brick walls, fresh air and clean winds swept across the land. Closer at hand came the stink of marsh and tidal mud littered with the myriad flotsam cast up by the River Thames to lap against the docks of Wapping and Stepney and the Isle of Dogs, a miasma that permeated the chilly night with a cloying stink like corpses too long immersed in a watery grave.

  In the houses of respectable folk, rambling in orderly fashion to the west along the river banks and far inland to the north, candleshades and gas lamps had long since been extinguished. But here in the raucous streets of Wapping, of Whitechapel and of Stepney, drunken voices bellowed out the words of favorite drinking tunes. In rented rooms the size of storage bins, huddled in ramshackle brick tenements which littered these darkened streets like cancerous growths, enterprising pimps played the blackmail-profitable game of "arse and twang" with hired whores, unsuspecting sailors, and switchblade knives. Working men and women stood or sat in doorways and windows, listening to the music drifting along the streets from public houses and poor-men's clubs like the Jewish Working Men's Association of Whitechapel, until the weariness of hard work for long, squalid hours dragged them indoors to beds and cots and stairwells for the night. In the darkened, shrouded streets, business of another kind rose sharply with the approach of the wee hours. Men moved in gangs or pairs or slipped singly from shadow to shadow, and plied the cudgels and prybars of their trade against the skulls and window casements of their favorite victims.

  Along one particular fog-cloaked street, where music and light spilled heedlessly from a popular gathering place for local denizens, bootheels clicked faintly on the wet cobbles as a lone young man, more a fair-haired boy than a man fully grown, staggered out into the wet night. A working lad, but not in the usual sense of the word, he had spent the better part of his night getting himself pissed as a newt on what had begun as "a quick one down to boozer" and had steadily progressed—through a series of pints of whatever the next-closest local had been selling cheapest—into a rat-arsed drunken binge.

  A kerb crawler of indeterminate years appeared from out of the yellow murk and flashed a saucy smile. "You look to be a bloke what likes jolly comp'ny, mate." She took his arm solicitously when he reeled against a sooty brick wall, leaving a dark streak of damp down his once-fine shirt, which had seen far better days in the fashionable West End. She smiled into his eyes. "What about a four-penny knee trembler t' share wiv a comfy lady?" A practiced hand stole along the front of his shapeless trousers.

  He grabbed a handful of the wares for sale, since it was expected and he had at least the shreds of a reputation to maintain, then he sighed dolefully, as though a sluggish, drunken thought had come to him. He carefully slurred his voice into the slang he'd heard on these streets for weeks, now. "Ain't got a four-pence, luv. No ackers a'tall. Totally coals an' coke, ‘at's what I am, I've spent the last of what I brung ‘ome t'night on thirty-eleven pints."

  The woman eyed him more closely in the dim light. "I know ‘at voice..."

  When she got a better look, she let out a disgusted screech and knocked his hand away. " ‘Oo are you tryin' t'fool, Morgan? Grabbin' like it's me thripenny bits you'd want, when it's cobbler's awl's you'd rather be gropin' after? Word's out, ‘bout you, Morgan. ‘At Polly Nichols shot ‘er mouth good, when she were drunk, ‘at she did." The woman shoved him away with a harsh, "Get ‘ome t' yer lovin' Mr. Eddy—if th' toff'll ‘ave you back, whoever he might be, unnatural sod!" She gave a short, ugly bark of laughter and stalked away into the night, muttering about wasting her time on beardless irons and finding a bloke with some honest sausage and mash to pay her doss money for the night.

  The cash-poor—and recently infamous—young drunk reeled at her sharp shove and plowed straight into the damp wall, landing with a low grunt of dismayed surprise. He caught himself ineffectually there and crumpled gradually to the wet pavement. Morgan sat there for a moment, blinking back tears of misery and absently rubbing his upper arm and shoulder. For several moments, he considered seriously what he ought to do next. Sitting in muck on a wet pavement for the remainder of the night didn't seem a particularly attractive notion. He hadn't any place to go and no doss money of his own and he was very far, indeed, from Cleveland Street and the fancy West Side house where he'd once been popular with a certain class of rich toffs—and until tomorrow night, at least, when Eddy would finally bring him the promised money, he would have nothing to buy food, either.

  His eyes stung. Damn that bitch, Polly Nichols! She was no better than he was, for all the righteous airs she put on. Just a common slattern, who'd lift her skirts for a stinking fourpence—or a well-filled glass of gin, for that matter. Word on the streets hereabout was, she'd been a common trollop for so many years her own husband had tossed her out as an unfit mother and convinced the courts to rescind the order for paying her maintenance money. Morgan, at least, had plied his trade with respectably wealthy clients; but thinking about that only made the hurt run deeper. The fine West End house had tossed him out, when he'd lost their richest client. Wasn't my fault Eddy threw me ove
r for that bloody mystic of his, with his fancy ways and fine house and his bloody deformed...

  And Polly Nichols, curse the drunken bitch, had found out about that particular house on Cleveland Street and Morgan's place in it, had shoved him against a wall and hissed out, "I know all about it, Morgan. All about what you let a bloke do t'you for money. I've ‘eard you got a little rainy day fund put aside, savin's, like, from that ‘ouse what tossed you onto the street. You ‘and it over, Morgan, maybe I won't grass on you, eh? Those constables in H Division, now, they might just want to know about an ‘andsome lad like you, bendin' over for it."

  Morgan had caught his breath in horror. The very last thing Morgan needed was entanglements with the police. Prostitution was bad enough for a woman. A lad caught prostituting himself with another man... Well, the death penalty was off the books, but it'd be prison for sure, a nice long stretch at hard labor, and the thought of what would happen to a lad like himself in prison... But Morgan had come away from the house on Cleveland Street with nothing save his clothes, a half-crown his last client had given him as a bonus, which he'd managed to hide from the house's proprietor, and a black eye.

  And Eddy's letters.

  "Here..." He produced the half-crown, handed it over. "It's everything I've got in the world. Please, Polly, I'm starving as it is, don't tell the constables."

  "An ‘alf a crown?" she screeched. "A mis'rable ‘alf crown? Bleedin' little sod! You come from a fine ‘ouse, you did, wiv rich men givin' it to you, what do you mean by givin' me nuffink but a miserly ‘alf crown!"

  "It's all I've got!" he cried, desperate. "They took everything else away! Even most of my clothes!" A harsh, half-strangled laugh broke loose. "Look at my face, Polly! That's what they gave me as a going away present!"

  "Copper's'll give you worse'n bruises an' a blacked eye, luv!" She jerked around and started to stalk away. "Constable!"

  Morgan clutched at her arm. "Wait!"

  She paused. "Well?"

  He licked his lips. They were all he had... but if this drunken whore sent him to prison, what good would Eddy's letters do him? And he didn't have to give them all to her. "I've got one thing. One valuable thing."

  "What's ‘at?" She narrowed her eyes.

  "Letters..."

  "Letters? What sort of fool d'you tyke me for?"

  "They're valuable letters! Worth a lot of money!"

  The narrow-eyed stare sharpened. "What sort o' letters ‘ave you got, Morgan, that'd be worth any money?"

  He licked his lips once more. "Love letters," he whispered. "From someone important. They're in his handwriting, on his personal stationery, and he's signed them with his own name. Talks about everything he did to me when he visited me in that house, everything he planned to do on his next visit. They're worth a fortune, Polly. I'll share them with you. He's going to give me a lot of money to get them back, a lot of money, Polly. Tomorrow night, he's going to buy back the first one, I'll give you some of the money—"

  "You'll give me the letters!" she snapped. "Hah! Share wiv you? I'll ‘ave them letters, if you please, y'little sod, you just ‘and ‘em over." She held out one grasping hand, eyes narrowed and dangerous.

  Morgan clenched his fists, hating her. At least he hadn't told the bitch how many letters there were. He'd divided them into two packets, one in his trouser pocket, the other beneath his shirt. The ones in his shirt were the letters Eddy had penned to him in English. The ones in his trouser pocket were the other letters, the "special surprise" Eddy had sent to him during that last month of visits. The filthy tart wouldn't be able to read a word of them. He pulled the packet from his trouser pocket and handed them over. "Here, curse you! And may you have joy reading them!" he added with a spiteful laugh, striding away before she could realize that Prince Albert Victor had penned those particular letters in Welsh.

  Now, hours later, having managed to find himself a sailor on the docks who wanted a more masculine sort of sport, Morgan was drunk and bitter, a mightily scared and very lonely lad far away from his native Cardiff. He rubbed his wet cheek with the back of his hand. Morgan had been a fool, a jolly, bloody fool, ever to leave Cardiff, but it was too late, now, to cry about it. And he couldn't sit here on his bum all night, some constable would pass and then he would be spending the night courtesy of the Metropolitan Police Department's H Division.

  Morgan peered about, trying to discern shapes through the fog, and thought he saw the dark form of a man nearby, but the fog closed round the shadow again and no one approached nearer, so he decided there was no one about to help him regain his feet, after all. Scraping himself slowly together, he elbowed his way back up the wall until he was more or less upright again, then coughed and shivered and wandered several yards further along the fog-shrouded street. At times, his ears played tricks with the echoing sounds that spilled out onto the dark streets from distant public houses. Snatches of laughter and song came interspersed faintly with the nearer click of footfalls on pavement, but each time he peered round, he found nothing but swirling, malevolent yellow drifts. So he continued his meandering way down the wet street, allowing his shoulder to bump against the sooty bricks to guide and steady him on his way, making for the hidey hole he used when there was no money for a doss-house bed.

  The entrance to a narrow alley robbed him of his sustaining wall. He scudded sideways, a half-swamped sailboat lashed by a sudden and brutal cross-wise gale, and stumbled into the dark alley. He tangled his wobbling feet, met another wet brick wall face on, and barely caught himself from a second ignominious slide into the muck. He was cursing softly under his breath when he heard that same, tantalizing whisper of faint footfalls from behind. Only this time, they were no trick of his hearing. Someone was coming toward him through the fog, hurrying now as he clung to the dirty brick wall in the darkness of the alley.

  Another tart, perhaps, or a footpad out to pinch what he didn't any longer possess. Alarm flared slowly through his drunken haze. He started to turn—but it was far too late. A blow from something heavy smashed across his skull from behind. Light exploded behind his eyes in a detonation of pain and terror. Unable even to cry out, he crumpled straight down into darkness.

  As Morgan toppled toward the filthy alley, a wiry man in his early thirties, dark-skinned with the look of Eastern Europe in his narrow face and eyes and dark moustaches, caught him under the arms. This second man grunted softly, curling his lip at the reek of alcohol and sweat which rose from the boy's grimy, once fancy clothes. This was no time, however, for fastidiousness. He twisted the boy around with a practiced jerk and heaved the dead weight over one shoulder. A swift glance told him the thick fog and darkness of the narrow alleyway had concealed the attack from any chance observation.

  Well, Johnny my boy, he smiled to himself, you've made a good start. Now to finish this pathetic little cockerel. Dr. John Lachley was as pleased with the enshrouding yellow murk as he was with his swift handiwork and the drunken little fool he'd trailed all evening, who'd finally wandered so conveniently close to a place he could strike. He'd feared he might have to trail the boy all the way back to the filthy hole he'd been living in, on the first floor of a ramshackle, abandoned warehouse along the docks, so dilapidated and dangerous it was in the process of being torn down.

  Quite a come-down, eh, pretty Morgan?

  Dark-haired, dark-eyed, darker-souled, John Lachley moved deeper into the darkness of the alleyway, staggering slightly under his burden until he found his new center of balance. The alley was narrow, clotted with rubbish and stench. A rat's eyes gleamed briefly in the foggy gloom. A street—little wider than the alley he followed—appeared through the murk. He turned to his right, moving toward the invisible docks a mere three blocks away, which were concealed from sight by grim warehouses and tumble-down shacks. Their bricks leaned drunkenly in the night, whole chunks of their walls missing in random patterns of darkness and swirling, jaundiced eddies.

  John Lachley's clothes, little cleaner than those of hi
s victim, revealed very little about their current owner; neither did the dark cloth cap he wore pulled low over his eyes. During daylight, his was a face that might well be recognized, even here, where many years ago Johnny Anubis had once been a household name, sought out by the poorest fishwives in search of hope; but in the darkness, in such rough clothing, even a man of his... notoriety... might go unremarked.

  He smiled and paused at the entrance to one of the soot-streaked blocks of ramshackle flats. An iron key from his pocket unlocked a shabby wooden door. He cast a glance overhead and spotted the waning horns of the sickle-shaped moon. He smiled again. "Lovely night for scything, Lady," he said softly to the sharp-edged crescent. "Grant me success in mine, eh?"

  Sulphurous fog drifted across the faintly glowing horns of that wicked sickle, seeming almost to catch and tear on the sharp points. He smiled again; then ducked inside, swung his victim's legs and head clear, and locked the door behind him. He needed no light to navigate the room, for it contained nothing but coal dust and scattered bits of refuse. A savage barking erupted from the darkness of the next room, sounding like every hound in hell had been loosed. Lachley spoke sharply. "Garm!"

  The barking subsided into low growls. Heaving his burden into a slightly more comfortable position on his shoulder, John Lachley entered the next room and swung shut another heavy door which he located by feel alone. Here he paused to grope along the wall for the gas light. The gas lit with a faint hiss and pop; dim light sprang up. The windowless brick walls were barren, the floor covered with a cheap rug. A wooden bed frame with a thin cotton tick stood along one wall. A battered dry sink held a jug and basin, a lantern, and a grimy towel. An equally battered clothes press leaned drunkenly in one corner. The chained dog crouched at the center of the room stopped growling and thumped its tail in greeting.