own. Don’t be shocked at anything I do.”
I nodded and knocked on the door.
Baston opened it and poured out into the hall. His eyes
were as red as the maraschino cherries in his Manhattan. He
teetered back and forth regarding us very gravely. He squinted
at my square-cut homburg hat and Sir Guy’s moustache.
“ Aha,” he intoned. “ The Walrus and the Carpenter.”
I introduced Sir Guy.
“ Welcome,” said Baston, gesturing us inside with over-
elaborate courtesy. He stumbled after us into the garish parlor.
I stared at the crowd that moved restlessly through the fog
of cigarette smoke.
It was the shank of the evening for this mob. Every hand
held a drink. Every face held a slightly hectic flush. Over in
one comer the piano was going full blast, but the imperious
strains of the March from The Love fo r Three Oranges
couldn’t drown out the profanity from the crap game in the
other comer.
Prokofleff had no chance against African polo, and one set
of ivories rattled louder than the other.
Sir Guy got a monocle-full right away. He saw LaVeme
Gonnister, the poetess, hit Hymie Kralik in the eye. He saw
Hymie sit down on the floor and cry until Dick Pool accidentally stepped on his stomach as he walked through to the dining room for a drink.
He heard Nadia Vilinoff, the commercial artist, tell Johnny
Odcutt that she thought his tattooing was in dreadful taste,
and he saw Barclay Melton crawl under the dining room table
with Johnny Odcutt’s wife.
His zoological observations might have continued indefinitely if Lester Baston hadn’t stepped to the center of the room and called for silence by dropping a vase on the floor.
“ We have distinguished visitors in our midst,” bawled
Lester, waving his empty glass in our direction. “ None other
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than the Walrus and the Carpenter. The Walrus is Sir Guy
Hollis, a something-or-other from the British Embassy. The
Carpenter, as you all know, is our own John Carmody, the
prominent dispenser of libido liniment.”
He turned and grabbed Sir Guy by the arm, dragging him
to the middle of the carpet. For a moment I thought Hollis
might object, but a quick wink reassured me. He was prepared for this.
“ It is our custom, Sir Guy,” said Baston, loudly, “ to subject our new friends to a little cross-examination. Just a little formality at these very formal gatherings, you understand.
Are your prepared to answer questions?”
Sir Guy nodded and grinned.
“ Very well,” Baston muttered. “ Friends—I give you this
bundle from Britain. Your witness.”
Then the ribbing started. I meant to listen, but at that moment Lydia Dare saw me and dragged me off into the vestibule for one of those Darling-I-waited-for-your-call-all-day routines.
By the time I got rid of her and went back, the impromptu
quiz session was in hill swing. From the attitude of the crowd,
I gathered that Sir Guy was doing all right for himself.
Then Baston himself inteijected a question that upset the
apple-cart.
“ And what, may I ask, brings you to our midst tonight?
What is your mission, oh Walrus?”
“ I ’m looking for Jack the Ripper.”
Nobody laughed.
Perhaps it struck them all the way it did me. I glanced at
my neighbors and began to wonder.
La Verne Gonnister. Hymie Kralik. Harmless. Dick Pool.
Nadia Vilinoff. Johnny Odcutt and his wife. Barclay Melton.
Lydia Dare. All harmless.
But what a forced smile on Dick Pool’s face! And that sly,
self-conscious smirk that Barclay Melton wore!
Oh, it was absurd, I grant you. But for the first time I saw
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
399
these people in a new light. I wondered about their lives—
their secret lives beyond the scenes of parties.
How many of them were playing a part, concealing something?
Who here would worship Hecate and grant that horrid
goddess the dark boon of blood?
Even Lester Baston might be masquerading.
The mood was upon us all, for a moment. I saw questions
flicker in the circle of eyes around the room.
Sir Guy stood there, and I could swear he was fully conscious of the situation he’d created, and enjoyed it.
1 wondered idly just what was really wrong with him. Why
he had this odd fixation concerning Jack the Ripper. Maybe
he was hiding secrets, too. . . .
Baston, as usual, broke the mood. He burlesqued it.
“ The Walrus isn’t kidding, friends,” he said. He slapped
Sir Guy on the back and put his aim around him as he orated.
“ Our English cousin is really on the trail of the fabulous Jack
the Ripper. You all remember Jack the Ripper, I presume?
Quite a cut-up in the old days, as I recall. Really had some
ripping good times when he went out on a tear.
“ The Walrus has some idea that the Ripper is still alive,
probably prowling around Chicago with a Boy Scout knife.
In fact” —Baston paused impressively and shot it out in a
rasping stage whisper—“ in fact, he has reason to believe that
Jack the Ripper might even be right here in our midst tonight.”
There was the expected reaction of giggles and grins. Baston eyed Lydia Dare reprovingly. “ You girls needn’t laugh,”
he smirked. “ Jack the Ripper might be a woman, too, you
know. Sort of a Jill the Ripper.”
“ You mean you actually suspect one of us?” shrieked
La Verne Gonnister, simpering up to Sir Guy. “ But that Jack
the Ripper person disappeared ages ago, didn’t he? In 1888?”
“ Aha!” interrupted Baston. “ How do you know so much
about it, young lady? Sounds suspicious! Watch her, Sir
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Robert Bloch
Guy—she may not be as young as she appears. These lady
poets have dark pasts.”
The tension was gone, the mood was shattered, and the
whole thing was beginning to degenerate into a trivial party
joke. The man who had played the March was eyeing the
piano with a scherzo gleam in his eye that augured ill for
Prokofieif. Lydia Dare was glancing at the kitchen, waiting
to make a break for another drink.
Then Baston caught it.
“ Guess what?” he yelled. “ The Walrus has a gun.”
His embracing arm had slipped and encountered a hard
oudine of the gun in Sir Guy’s pocket. He snatched it out
before Hollis had the opportunity to protest.
I stared hard at Sir Guy, wondering if this thing had carried
far enough. But he flicked a wink my way and I remembered
he had told me not to be alarmed.
So I waited as Baston broached a drunken inspiration.
“ Let’s play fair with our friend the Walrus,” he cried.
“ He came all the way from England to our party on this
mission. If none of you is willing to confess, I suggest we
give him a chance to find out—the hard way.”
“ What’s up?” asked Johnny Odcutt.
“ I ’ll turn out the lights for one minute. Sir Guy can stand
can either run for it or take the opportunity to—well, eradicate his pursuer. Fair enough?”
It was even sillier than it sounds, but it caught the popular
fancy. Sir Guy’s protests went unheard in the ensuing babble.
And before I could stride over and put in my two cents’
worth, Lester Baston had reached the light switch.
“ Don’t anybody move,” he announced, with fake solemnity. “ For one minute we will remain in darkness—perhaps at the mercy of a killer. At the end of that time, I ’ll turn up
the lights again and look for bodies. Choose your partners,
ladies and gentlemen.”
The lights went out.
Somebody giggled.
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
401
I heard footsteps in the darkness. Mutterings.
A hand brushed my face.
The watch on my wrist ticked violently. But even louder,
rising above it, I heard another thumping. The beating of my
heart.
Absurd. Standing in the dark with a group of tipsy fools.
And yet there was real terror lurking here, rustling through
the velvet blackness.
Jack the Ripper prowled in darkness like this. And Jack
the Ripper had a knife. Jack the Ripper had a madman’s brain
and a madman’s purpose.
But Jack the Ripper was dead, dead and dust these many
years—by every human law.
Only there are no human laws when you feel yourself in
the darkness,'when the darkness hides and protects and the
outer mask slips off your face and you feel something welling
up within you, a brooding shapeless purpose that is brother
to the blackness.
Sir Guy Hollis shrieked.
There was a grisly thud.
Baston put the lights on.
Everybody screamed.
Sir Guy Hollis lay sprawled on the floor in the center of
the room. The gun was still clutched in his hand.
I glanced at the faces, marveling at the variety of expressions human beings can assume when confronting horror.
All the faces were present in the circle. Nobody had fled.
And yet Sir Guy Hollis lay there.
LaVeme Gonnister was wailing and hiding her face.
“ All right.”
Sir Guy rolled over and jumped to his feet. He was smiling.
“ Just an experiment, eh? If Jack the Ripper were among •
those present, and thought I had been murdered, he would
have betrayed himself in some way when the lights went on
and he saw me lying there.
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Robert Bloch
“ I am convinced of your individual and collective innocence. Just a gentle spoof, my friends.”
Hollis stared at the goggling Baston and the rest of them
crowding in behind him.
‘‘Shall we leave, John?” he called to me. “ It’s getting late,
I think.”
Tbming, he headed for the closet. I followed him. Nobody
said a word.
It was a pretty dull party after that.
3
I met Sir Guy the following evening as we agreed, on the
comer of Twenty-Ninth and South Halsted.
After what had happened the night before, I was prepared
for almost anything. But Sir Guy seemed matter-of-fact
enough as he stood huddled against a grimy doorway and
waited for me to appear.,
“ Boo!” I said, jumping out suddenly. He smiled. Only the
betraying gesture of his left hand indicated that he’d instinctively reached for his gun when I startled him.
“ All ready for our wild-goose chase?” I asked.
“ Yes.” He nodded. “ I ’m glad that you agreed to meet me
without asking questions,” he told me. “ It shows you trust
my judgment.” He took my arm and edged me along the
street slowly.
“ It’s foggy tonight, John,” said Sir Guy Hollis. “ Like
London.”
I nodded.
“ Cold, too, for November. ”
I nodded again and half-shivered my agreement.
“ Curious,” mused Sir Guy. “ London fog and November.
The place and the time of the Ripper murders.”
I grinned through darkness. “ Let me remind you, Sir Guy,
that this isn’t London, but Chicago. And it isn’t November,
1888. It’s over fifty years later.”
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
403
Sir Guy returned my grin, but without mirth. “ I ’m not so
sure, at that,” he murmured. “ Look about you. Those tangled alleys and twisted streets. They’re like the East End.
Mitre Square. And surely they are as ancient as fifty years,
at least.”
“ You’re in die black neighborhood of South Clark Street,”
I said shortly. “ And why you dragged me down here I still
don’t know.”
“ It’s a hunch,” Sir Guy admitted. “ Just a hunch on my
part, John. I want to wander around down here. There’s the
same geographical conformation in these streets as in those
courts where the Ripper roamed and slew. That’s where we’ll
find him, John. Not in the bright lights, but down here in die
darkness. The darkness where he waits and crouches.”
“ Isn’t that why you brought a gun?” I asked. I was unable
to keep a trace of sarcastic nervousness from my voice. All
this talk, this incessant obsession with Jack the Ripper, got
on my nerves more than I cared to admit.
“ We may need a gun,” said Sir Guy, gravely. “ After all,
tonight is the appointed night.”
I sighed. We wandered on through the foggy, deserted
streets. Here and there a dim light burned above a gin-mill
doorway. Otherwise, all was darkness and shadow. Deep,
gaping alleyways loomed as we proceeded down a slanting
side street.
We crawled through that fog, alone and silent, like two
tiny maggots floundering within a shroud.
“ Can’t you see there’s not a soul around these streets?” I
said.
“ He’s bound to come,” said Sir Guy. “ He’ll be drawn
here. This is what I ’ve been looking for. A genius loci. An
evil spot that attracts evil. Always, when he slays, it’s in the
slums.
“ You see, that must be one of his weaknesses. He has a
fascination for squalor. Besides, the women he needs for sacrifice are more easily found in the dives and stewpots of a great city.”
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Robert Bloch
“ Well, let’s go into one of the dives or stewpots,” I suggested. “ I ’m cold. Need a drink. This damned fog gets into your bones. You Britishers can stand it, but I like warmth
and dry heat.”
We emerged from our sidestreet and stood upon the threshold of an alley.
Through the white clouds of mist ahead, I discerned a dim
blue light, a naked bulb dangling from a beer sign above an
alley tavern.
“ Let’s take a chance,” I said. “ I ’m beginning to shiver.”
“ Lead the way,” said Sir Guy. I led him down the alley
passage. We halted before the door of the dive.
“ What are you waiting for?” he asked.
“ Just looking in ,” I told him. “ This is a rough neighborhood, Sir Guy. Never know what you’re liabl
e to run into.
And I ’d prefer we didn’t get into the wrong company. Some
of these places resent white customers.”
“ Good idea, John.”
I finished my inspection through the doorway. “ Looks deserted,” I murmured. “ Let’s try it.”
We entered a dingy bar. A feeble light flickered above the
counter and railing, but failed to penetrate the further gloom
of the back booths.
A gigantic black lolled across the bar. He scarcely stirred
as we came in, but his eyes flicked open quite suddenly and
I knew he noted our presence and was judging us.
“ Evening,” I said.
He took his time before replying. Still sizing us up. Then,
he grinned.
“ Evening, gents. What’s your pleasure?”
“ Gin,” I said. “ Two gins. It’s a cold night.”
“ That’s right, gents.”
He poured, I paid, and took the glasses over to one of the
booths. We wasted no time in emptying them.
I went over to the bar and got the bottle. Sir Guy and I
poured ourselves another drink. The big man went into his
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
405
doze, with one wary eye half-open against any sudden activity.
The clock over the bar ticked on. The wind was rising
outside, tearing the shroud of fog to ragged shreds. Sir Guy
and I sat in the warm booth and drank our gin.
He began to talk, and the shadows crept up about us to
listen.
He rambled a great deal. He went over everything he’d said
in the office when I met him, just as though I hadn’t heard it
before. The poor devils with obsessions are like that.
I listened very patiently. I poured Sir Guy another drink.
And another.
But the liquor only made him more talkative. How he did
run on! About ritual killings and prolonging the life unnaturally—the whole fantastic tale came out again. And of course, he maintained his unyielding conviction that the Ripper was
abroad tonight.
I suppose I was guilty of goading him.
“ Very well,’’ I said, unable to keep the impatience from
my voice. “ Let us say that your theory is correct—even
though we must overlook every natural law and swallow a lot
of superstition to give it any credence.
“ But let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are
right. Jack the Ripper was a man who discovered how to
The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 49
