Ripping Time

Chapter Five

The reporters were waiting outside his office building, of course.

Senator Caddrick stepped out of his chauffeured limo and faced the explosion of camera flashes and television lights with an expression of grief and shock and carefully reddened eyes.

"Senator! Would you comment on this terrorist attack—"

"—tell us how feels to lose your sister-in-law to terrorists—"

"—any word on your daughter—"

Caddrick held up his hands, pled with the reporters. "Please, I don't know anything more than you do. Cassie's dead..." He paused, allowing the catch in his voice to circle the globe live via satellite. "My little girl is still missing, her college roommate has been brutally murdered, that's all I know, really..." He was pushing his way through the mob, his aide at his side.

"Is it true the terrorists were members of the Ansar Majlis, the down-time organization that's declared jihad against the Lady of Heaven Temples?"

"Will this attack cause you to re-open your campaign to shut down the time terminals?"

"Senator, are you aware that Senator Simon Mukhtar al Harb, a known Ansar Majlis sympathizer, is spearheading an investigation into the Temples—"

"Senator, what do you plan to do about this attack—"

He turned halfway up the steps leading to his office and faced the cameras, allowing his reddened eyes to water. "I intend to find my daughter," he said raggedly. "And I intend to find the bastards responsible for her disappearance, and for murdering poor Cassie... If it turns out these down-timer terrorists were responsible for Cassie's murder, if they've kidnapped my only child, then I will do whatever it takes to get every time terminal on this planet shut down! I've warned Congress for years, the down-timers flooding into the stations are a grave threat to the stability of our up-time world. And now this... I'm sorry, that's all I can say, I'm too upset to say anything else."

He fled up the steps and into his office.

And deep in his heart, smiled.

Phase Two, successfully launched...

Ianira Cassondra regained consciousness while Jenna and Noah were still packing. The faint sound from the hotel bed where she rested brought Jenna around, hands filled with the Victorian notion of ladies' underwear, which she'd purchased specifically for Ianira with Aunt Cassie's money. Jenna would be going through to London in disguise as a young man, something that left her shaking with stage fright worse than any she'd ever experienced. Seeing Ianira stir, Jenna dumped corsets and woolen drawers into an open steamer trunk and hurried over to join Marcus. Noah glanced up from the telephone, where the detective was busy scheduling an appointment with the station's cosmetologist. Armstrong wanted Jenna to go in for some quick facial alterations before the gate opened, to add Victorian-style whiskers to Jenna's too-famous, feminine face. Noah frowned, more reflectively than in irritation, then finished making the appointment and joined them.

Ianira stirred against the pillow. Dark lashes fluttered. Jenna discovered she was clenching her hands around her new costume's trousers belt. The leather felt slippery under the sweat. She realized with a sinking sensation in her gut that it was one thing to carry the prophetess on earth unconscious through the station's basement. It was quite another to gaze eye-to-eye with the embodiment of all that Jenna had come to believe about life and how it ought to be lived. Then Ianira's eyelids fluttered open and Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus, lay gazing up at her. For a breathless moment, no intelligence flickered in those dark eyes. Then an indrawn breath and a lightning flicker of terror lashed at Jenna. Ianira flinched back, as though Jenna had struck her. Marcus, who knew Ianira better than anyone, surely, pressed the tips of his fingers across her lips.

"Hush, beloved. We are in danger. Cry out and you warn them."

Ianira's gaze ripped away from Jenna's, met her husband's. "Marcus..." It was the sound of a drowning soul clinging to a storm-battered, rocky shore. His arms went around her. The former Roman slave lifted her trembling figure, held her close. Jenna had to turn aside. The sight of such intimacy tore through her, a bitter reminder of the emptiness of her own life before Carl, an emptiness which had brought her, shaking and sick in her heart, into the Temple in the first place. The Temple, where she'd found real friendship for the first time in her life, friendship and Carl... The loss tore through her, still too new and raw to endure. Across the hotel room, Marcus was speaking, voice low, the words in some language other than English or the Latin he'd used earlier. Greek, probably, since Ianira had come to the station from Athens.

Someone touched Jenna's arm. She glanced up and found Noah watching her. "Yeah?" she asked, voice roughened, uncertain.

"She's asked for you."

Jenna's pulse banged unpleasantly in the back of her throat as she crouched down at the edge of the hotel bed. Ianira's dark, unearthly gaze shook her so deeply she couldn't even dredge up a greeting. When the prophetess lifted a hand, Jenna very nearly flinched back. Then Ianira touched Jenna's brow, slowly. "Why do you Seek," she murmured, "when you already know the answers in your heart?"

The room closed in around Jenna, dizzy and strange, as though voices whispered to her from out of a shimmering haze, voices whose whispered words she could not quite hear. From the depths of the blackness which filled her mind, a blackness which had swallowed nearly all of her childhood—which was far better forgotten than relived in aching emptiness again and again—a single image blazed in Jenna's mind. A woman's smiling face... arms held out to her... closing around her with a sense of safety and shelter she had not felt since her mother's death, so many years ago, now, it was blurred in her memory. What this sudden memory meant, Jenna wasn't sure, but it left her gasping and sick on her knees, so violently shaken she couldn't even wipe her burning eyes.

Someone crouched beside her, braced Jenna all along one side, wiped her face with a warm, damp cloth. When the stinging, salty blindness had passed, she found Noah gazing worriedly at her. "You okay, kid?"

"Yeah." The fact that it was true shocked her. She was okay. Then it hit her why: she wasn't quite alone any longer. She knew almost nothing about Noah Armstrong, not even the most basic thing one person can know about another—their gender—but she wasn't alone, facing this nightmare. Noah might not be going with her when Jenna stepped through the Britannia Gate a couple of hours from now, but Noah cared. Somehow, it was enough. She managed to meet the enigmatic detective's eyes. "Thanks."

"Sure." Noah gave her a hand up, steadied her.

Jenna turned slowly to face the woman whose presence, whose touch and single question had triggered... whatever it had been. "Did—" Jenna had to clear her throat roughly. "Did Marcus tell you what's happened?"

She studied Jenna gravely. "He has told me all that he knows."

Jenna drew breath, trying to find the words to make sense of this. "My father..." She stopped, started again, coming at this mess from a different direction, trying to find the words to explain to a woman who had never seen the up-time world and would never be permitted to visit it. "You see, lots of people don't like the Temples. The Lady of Heaven Temples. They've got different reasons, but the prejudice is growing. Some people think Templars are immoral. Dangerous to society. Perverting children, that kind of garbage.

"There's this one group, though... down-timers, mostly, coming up-time from the remains of TT-66. They formed a cult to destroy us. The Ansar Majlis hate us, say it's blasphemous to worship a goddess. Rather than their idea of a god." It came out bitter, shaky. The expression in Ianira's eyes left Jenna gulping, terrified to her bones. She got the rest out in a rush, trying to hold onto her nerve. "As long as the Ansar Majlis were kept bottled up in the Middle East, where they started coming through the down-time gates, they were pretty much harmless. But a lot of people would like to see the Temples destroyed, or at least hurt badly enough they're not a political threat, anymore. Some of the lunatics who live up time have been helping that murdering pack of terrorists..."

"Your father," she said quietly. "He is among them."

Jenna didn't have to answer; Ianira knew. Jenna bit one lip, ashamed of the blood in her own veins and furious that she couldn't do anything besides smash Ianira's world to pieces. "He gave the orders, yes. To a death squad. They murdered my mother's sister. And my... my best friend from college..." Jenna's voice went ragged.

Ianira reached across, touched Jenna's hand. "They have taken him from you," she whispered, the sympathy in her voice almost too much to bear, "but you have his final gift to you. Surely this must bring some consolation, some hope for the future?"

Jenna blinked, almost too afraid of this woman to meet those dark, too-wise eyes. "What... what do you mean?"

Ianira brushed fingergips across Jenna's abdomen, across the queasiness which had plagued her for nearly a full week, now. "You carry his child," Ianira said softly.

When the room greyed out and Jenna clutched at the edge of the bed in stupid shock, the prophetess spoke again, very gently. "Didn't you know?"

Someone had Jenna by the shoulders, kept her her from falling straight to the floor. Dear God... it's not fear sickness, it's morning sickness... and I am late, oh, God, I'm going to Victorian London with Daddy's killers trying to find me and I'm carrying Carl's baby... . How long would they have to hide in London? Weeks? Months? Years? I can't go disguised as a man, if I'm pregnant! But she had no real choice and she knew it. Her father's hired killers would be searching for a frightened girl in the company of a detective, not a lone young man travelling with several large steamer trunks. When she looked up, she found Ianira's dark gaze fastened on her and, more surprisingly, Noah Armstrong's grey-eyed gaze, filled with worry and compassion.

"You're... sure... ?" Jenna choked out.

Ianira brushed hair back from Jenna's brow. "I am not infallible, child. But about this, yes, I am certain."

Jenna wanted to break down and cry, wanted to curl up someplace and hide for the next several decades, wanted to be held and rocked and reassured that everything would be all right. But she couldn't. She met Ianira's gaze again. "They'll kill us all, if they can." She wrapped protective arms around her middle, around the miracle of Carl's baby, growing somewhere inside her. A fierce determination to protect that tiny life kindled deep within. "I'd be in a morgue someplace, already, undergoing an autopsy, if Noah hadn't dragged me out of that trap where Aunt Cassie died. I'm not going to let them win. Not if I have to spend the next forty years on the run, until we can find a way to stop them."

"And they have come here," Ianira whispered, fingers tightening around Jenna's arm, "to destroy the world we have built for ourselves."

Jenna wanted to look away from those too-knowing eyes, wanted to crawl away and hide, rather than confirm it. But she couldn't lie to the prophetess, even to spare her pain. "Yes. I'm sorry..." She had to stop for a moment, regain her composure. "We can get you off station, make a run for it down time. I don't give a damn about the laws forbidding down-timers to emigrate through a gate."

Ianira's gaze went to her children. Mute grief touched those dark eyes. "They cannot come with me?"

Noah answered, voice firm. "No. We don't dare risk it. They'll find a way to follow us through every gate that opens this week. If we put your children in the same trunk we smuggle you out of the station in, and their assassins get to Jenna..."

Ianira Cassondra shuddered. "Yes. It is too dangerous. Marcus..."

He gripped her hands hard. "I will guard them. With my life, Ianira. And Julius has pledged to help us escape. No one else must know. Not even our friends, not even the Council of Seven. Julius only knows because he was using the tunnels to run a message from one end of Commons to the other. He found us."

At the look that came into her eyes, a shudder touched its cold finger to Jenna's spine. Ianira's eyelids came clenching down. "The death that stalks us is worse than we know... two faces... two faces beyond the gates... and bricks enclose the tree where the flame burns and blood runs black... be wary of the one with grey eyes, death lives behind the smile... the letters are the key, the letters bring terror and destruction... the one who lives behind the silent gun will strike in the night... seeks to destroy the soul unborn... will strike where the newborn bells burn bright with the sound of screams..." She sagged against her husband, limp and trembling.

Jenna, too, was trembling, so violently she could scarcely keep her feet where she crouched beside the bed.

Marcus glanced up, eyes dark and frightened. "I have never seen the visions come to her so powerfully. Please, I beg of you, be careful with her."

Jenna found herself lifting Ianira's cold hands to warm them. They shook in Jenna's grasp. "Lady," she whispered, "I'm not much good at killing. But they've already destroyed the two people I cared about more than anything in the world. I swear, I will kill anything or anyone who tries to hurt you."

Ianira's gaze lifted slowly. Tears had reddened her eyes. "I know," she choked out. "It is why I grieve."

To that, Jenna had no answer whatever.

Dr. John Lachley had a problem.

A very serious problem.

Polly Nichols possessed half of Eddy's eight letters, written to the now-deceased orphan from Cardiff. Unlike Morgan, however, whom nobody would miss, Polly Nichols had lived in the East End all her life. When she turned up rather seriously dead, those who knew her were going to talk. And what they knew, or recalled having seen, they would tell the constables of the Metropolitan Police Department's H Division. While the police were neither well liked nor respected in Whitechapel, Polly Nichols was, despite her infamous profession. Those who liked and respected her would help the police catch whoever did to her what John Lachley intended to do to anyone who came into possession of Eddy's miserable little letters.

God, but he had enjoyed carving up that little bastard, Morgan...

The very memory made his private and unique anatomy ache.

So... he must find Polly Nichols, obtain her letters, then cut her up the same delightful way he had cut Morgan, as a message to all blackmailing whores walking these filthy streets, and he must do it without being remarked upon or caught. He would disguise himself, of course, but John Lachley's was a difficult face to disguise. He looked too foreign, always had, from earliest childhood in these mean streets, a gift from his immigrant mother. Lachley knew enough theatrical people, through his illustrious clientele, to know which shops to visit to obtain false beards and so on, but even that was risky. Acquiring such things meant people would recall him as the foreigner who had bought an actor's bag of makeup and accouterments. That was nearly as bad as being recalled as the last man seen with a murdered woman. Might well prove worse, since being remembered for buying disguises indicated someone with a guilty secret to hide. How the devil did one approach the woman close enough to obtain the letters and murder her, afterwards, without being seen?

He might throw suspicion on other foreigners, perhaps, if he disguised himself as one of the East End's thousands of Jews. A long false beard, perhaps, or a prayer shawl knotted under his overcoat... Ever since that Jew, what was his name, Lipski, had murdered that little girl in the East End last year, angry Cockneys had been hurtling insults at foreigners in the eastern reaches of London. In the docklands, so many refugees were pouring in from the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, the very word "foreigner" had come to mean "Jew." Lachley would have to give that serious consideration, throwing blame somehow onto the community of foreigners. If some foreign Jew hanged for Lachley's deeds, so much the better.

But his problem was more complicated than simply tracing Polly Nichols, recovering her letters, and silencing her. There was His Highness' tutor to consider, as well. The man knew too much, far too much for safety. Mr. James K. Stephen would have to die. Which was the reason John Lachley had left London for the nearby village of Greenwich, this morning: to murder Mr. James K. Stephen.

He had made a point of striking up an acquaintance with the man on the riding paths surrounding Greenwich just the morning previously. Lachley, studying the layout of the land Stephen preferred for his morning rides, had casually trailed Stephen while looking for a place to stage a fatal accident. The path Eddy's tutor habitually took carried the riders out into fields where farm workers labored to bring in the harvest despite the appalling rain squalls, then wandered within a few feet of a large windmill near the railway line. Lachley gazed at that windmill with a faint smile. If he could engineer it so that Stephen rode past the windmill at the same time as a passing train...

So he followed Stephen further along the trail and cantered his horse up alongside, smiling in greeting, and introduced himself. "Good morning, sir. John Lachley, physician."

"Good morning, Dr. Lachley," Eddy's unsuspecting tutor smiled in return. "James Stephen."

He feigned surprise. "Surely not James K. Stephen?"

The prince's former tutor stared in astonishment. "Yes, in fact, I am."

"Why, I am delighted, sir! Delighted! Eddy has spoken so fondly of you! Oh, I ought to explain," he added at the man's look of total astonishment. "His Highness Prince Albert Victor is one of my patients, nothing serious, of course, I assure you. We've become rather good friends over the last few months. He has spoken often of you, sir. Constantly assigns to you the lion's share of the credit for his success at Cambridge."

Stephen flushed with pleasure. "How kind of His Highness! It was my priviledge to have tutored him at university. You say Eddy is quite well, then?"

"Oh, yes. Quite so. I use certain mesmeric techniques in my practice, you see, and Eddy had heard that the use of mesmeric therapy can improve one's memory."

Stephen smiled in genuine delight. "So naturally Eddy was interested! Of course. I hope you have been able to assist him?"

"Indeed," John Lachley laughed easily. "His memory will never be the same."

Stephen shared his chuckle without understanding Lachley's private reasons for amusement. As they rode on in companionable conversation, Lachley let fall a seemingly casual remark. "You know, I've enjoyed this ride more than any I can recall in an age. So much more refreshing than Hyde Park or Rotten Row, where one only appears to be in the countryside, whereas this is the genuine article. Do you ride this way often?"

"Indeed, sir, I do. Every morning."

"Oh, splendid! I say, do you suppose we might ride out together again tomorrow? I should enjoy the company and we might chat about Eddy, share a few amusing anecdotes, perhaps?"

"I should enjoy it tremendously. At eight o'clock, if that isn't too early?"

"Not at all." He made a mental note to check the train schedules to time their ride past that so-convenient windmill. "Eight o'clock it shall be." And so they rode on, chatting pleasantly while John Lachley laid his plans to murder the amiable young man who had helped Eddy with one too many translations.

Early morning light, watery and weak, tried vainly to break through rainclouds as Lachley stepped off Greenwich pier from the waterman's taxi he'd taken down from London. The clock of the world-famous Greenwich observatory struck eight chimes as Lachley rented a nag from a dockside livery stable and met James Stephen, as agreed. The unsuspecting Stephen greeted him warmly. "Dr. Lachley! Well met, old chap! I say, it's rather a dismal morning, but we'll put a good face on it, eh? Company makes the gloomiest day brighter, what?"

"Indeed," Lachley nodded, giving the doomed tutor a cheery smile.

The scent of the River Thames drifted on the damp breeze, mingling with the green smell of swampy ground from Greenwich Marshes and the acrid, harsh smell of coal smoke, but Dr. John Lachley drew a deep, double-lungful and smiled again at the man who rode beside him, who had but a quarter of an hour to live.

Riding down the waterfront, past berths where old fashioned, sail-powered clipper ships and small, iron-hulled steamers creaked quietly at anchor, Lachley and Mr. Stephen turned their nags up King William Walk to reach Greenwich Park, then headed parallel to the river past the Queen's House, built for Queen Anne of Denmark by James the First in 1615. Greenwich boasted none of London's stink, smelling instead of fresh marshes and late-autumn hay and old money. Tudor monarchs had summered here and several had been born in Greenwich palaces. The Royal Naval College, once a Royal Hospital for Seamen, shared the little village on the outskirts of London with the Royal Observatory and the world-famous Greenwich Meridian, the zero line of oceanic navigation.

As they left behind the village with its royal associations, riding out along the bridle path which snaked its way between Trafalgar Road and the railway line, Lachley began sharing an amusing story about Eddy's latest forays into the East End, a low and vulgar habit Eddy had indulged even during his years at Cambridge, in order to drink and make the rounds of the brothels, pubs, and even, occasionally, the street walkers and fourpence whores who could be had for the price of a loaf of bread.

"... told the girl he'd give her quid if she'd give him a four-penny knee-trembler and the child turned out to be an honest working girl. Slapped his face so hard it left a hand-print, little dreaming she'd just struck the grandson of the queen. And poor Eddy went chasing after her to apologize, ended up buying every flower in her tray..."

They were approaching the fateful windmill Lachley had spied the previous morning. The screaming whistle of a distant train announced the arrival of the diversion Lachley required for his scheme. He smiled to himself and slowed his horse deliberately, to be sure of the timing, leaning down as though concerned his horse might be drawing up lame. Stephen also reined in slightly to match pace with him and to hear the end of the story he was relating.

The train whistle shrieked again. Both horses tossed their heads in a fretting movement. Good... Lachley nodded approvingly. A nervous horse under Mr. James K. Stephen was all the better. The sorrel Stephen rode danced sideways as the train made its roaring, smoking approach. A moment later they were engulfed in a choking cloud of black smoke and raining cinders.

Lachley whipped his hand into his coat pocket and dragged out the lead-filled sap he'd brought along. His pulse thundered. His nostrils dilated. His whole body tingled with electric awareness. His vision narrowed, tunnelling down to show him the precise spot he would strike. They passed the whirling blades of the windmill, engulfed in the deafening roar of the passing train. Now! Lachley reined his horse around in a lightning move that brought him alongside Stephen's sweating mount. Excitement shot through him, ragged, euphoric. He caught a glimpse of James Stephen's trusting, unsuspecting face—

A single, savage blow was all it took.

The thud of the lead sap against his victim's skull jarred Lachley's whole arm, from wrist to shoulder. Pain and shock exploded across Stephen's face. The man's horse screamed and lunged sideways as its rider crumpled in the saddle. The nag bolted straight under the windmill, crowded in that direction by Lachley's own horse and the deafening thunder of the passing train. Stephen pitched sideways out of the saddle, reeling toward unconsciousness. And precisely as Lachley had known it would, one of the windmill vanes caught Stephen brutally across the back of the skull. He was thrown violently to one side by the turning blade. The one-time tutor to Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward landed in a crumpled heap several feet away. Lachley sat watching for a long, shaking moment. The sensations sweeping through him, almost sexual in their intensity, left him trembling.

Then, moving with creditable calm for a man who had just committed his second murder with his own hands—and the first in open view of the public eye—John Lachley wiped the lead sap on his handkerchief and secreted his weapon in his pocket once more. He reined his horse around and tied it to the nearest tree. Dismounting from the saddle, he walked over to the man he'd come here to kill. James K. Stephen lay in a broken heap. Lachley bent down... and felt the pulse fluttering at the man's throat.

The bastard was still alive! Fury blasted through him, brought his vision shrieking down to a narrow hunter's focus once more. He stole his hand into his pocket, where the lead sap lay hidden—

"Dear God!" a voice broke into his awareness above the shriek and rattle of the train. Lachley whirled around, violently shaken. Another man on horseback had approached from the trail. The stranger was jumping to the ground, running towards them. Worse, a striking young woman with heavy blond hair sat another horse on the trail, watching them with an expression of shock and horror.

"What's happened?" the intruder asked, reasonably enough.

Lachley forced himself to calmness, drew on a lifetime's worth of deceit and the need to hide who and what he was in order to survive, and said in a voice filled with concern, "This gentleman and I were riding along the trail, here, when the train passed. Something from the train struck him as it went by, I don't know what, a large cinder perhaps, or maybe someone threw something from a window. But his horse bolted quite abruptly. Poor devil was thrown from the saddle, straight under the windmill blades. I'd just reached him when you rode up."

As he spoke, he knelt at Stephen's side, lifted his wrist to sound his pulse, used his handkerchief to bind the deep wound in his head, neatly explaining away the blood on the snowy linen. The stranger crouched beside him, expression deeply concerned.

"We must get him to safety at once! Here... cradle the poor man's head and I'll lift his feet. We'll put him in my saddle and I'll ride behind, keep him from falling. Alice, love, don't look too closely, his head's a dreadful sight, covered in blood."

Lachley ground his teeth in a raging frustration and gave the man a seemingly relieved smile. "Capital idea! Splendid. Careful, now..."

Ten minutes later the man he'd come all this way to murder lay in a bed in a Greenwich Village doctor's cottage, in a deep coma and not—as the doctor said with a sad shake of his head—expected to survive. Lachley agreed that it was a terrible tragedy and explained to the village constable what had occurred, then gave the man his name and address in case he were needed again.

The constable said with genuine concern, "Not that there's likely to be any inquest, even if the poor chap dies, it's clearly an accident, terrible freak of an accident, and I appreciate your help, sir, that I do."

The bastard who'd come along at just the wrong instant gave the constable his own name, as well, a merchant down from Manchester, visiting London with his younger sister. Lachley wanted to snatch the lead sap out of his pocket and smash in the merchant's skull with it. Instead, he took his leave of the miserable little physician's cottage while the constable arranged to contact James Stephen's family. It was some consolation, at least, that Stephen was not likely to survive much longer. And, of course, even if Stephen did live, the man would not realize that the blow which had struck him down had been an intentional one. The story of the accident would be relayed to the victim by the constable, the village doctor, even his own family. And if Stephen did survive...

There were ways, even then, of erasing the problem he still represented.

The matter being as resolved as he could make it at this juncture, John Lachley set his horse toward Greenwich Village pier for the return trip to London and set his seething mind toward Polly Nichols and the problems she represented.

He was still wrestling with the problem when he returned home to find a letter which had arrived, postmarked, of all places, Whitechapel, London, Liverpool Street Station. "My dearest Dr. Lachley," the missive began, "such a tremendous difference you have made! Many of my symptoms have abated immeasurably since my visit to your office, Friday last. I feel stronger, more well, than I have in many months. But I am still troubled greatly by itching hands and dreadful headaches. I wondered if you would be so good as to arrange another appointment for me in your surgery? I am certain you can do me more good than any other physician in the world. As I have returned to London on business, it would be most kind of you to fit me into your admittedly busy schedule. I eagerly await your response. Please contact me by return post, general delivery, Whitechapel."

It was signed James Maybrick, Esquire.

John Lachley stared at the signature. Then a slow smile began to form. James Maybrick, the murderous cotton merchant from Liverpool... With his delightful written diary and its equally delightful confession of murder. And not just any murder, either, but the murder of a whore, by damn, committed by a man with all the motive in the world to hate prostitutes! Maybrick wasn't a Jew, didn't look even remotely foreign. But if Lachley recruited Maybrick into this hunt for Polly Nichols, worked with him, there would be two descriptions for eyewitnesses to hand police, confounding the issue further, throwing the constables even more violently off Lachley's trail. Yes, by damn, Maybrick was just the thing he required.

It was so simple, he very nearly laughed aloud. He would meet the man in Whitechapel this very night, by God, induce a state of drugged mesmeric trance, then turn that lethal rage of his into the perfect killing machine, a weapon he could direct at will against whatever target he chose. And the diary would ensure the man's death at the end of a rope. Lachley chuckled, allowing the seething frustration over his failure to silence the prince's tutor to drop away. He would encourage Maybrick to dutifully record every sordid detail of Polly Nichols' murder, would even place mesmeric blocks in Maybrick's mind to prevent the imbecile from mentioning him in the diary.

James Maybrick was a godsend, by damn, a genuine godsend!

But as he turned his thoughts toward the use he would make of Maybrick, the enormity of the threat Polly Nichols represented drained away his jubilant mood. God, that Nichols bitch had been in possession of the letters long enough, she might have found someone to translate the bloody letters into English! He had to move quickly, that much was certain. Tonight. He would risk waiting no longer than that.

Lachley opened his desk and removed pen, paper, and penny-post stamps, then composed a brief reply to his arsenic-addicted little cotton merchant. "My dear sir, I would be delighted to continue your treatment. It is an honor to be entrusted with your health. I am certain I can make a changed man of you. Please call upon me in my Cleveland Street surgery this evening by eight P.M. If you are unable to keep this appointment, please advise me by telegram and we will arrange a mutually agreeable time."

He left the house to post the letter, himself, wanting to be certain it would go out in plenty of time for the late afternoon mail delivery bound for Liverpool Street Station, Whitechapel—no more than a handful of miles from his house in Cleveland Street. London was the envy of Europe for its mail service, with multiple pickups a day and delivery times of only a few hours, particularly for general delivery mail service. Lachley smiled to himself and whistled easily as he strolled past the fashionable artists' studios which lined Cleveland Street, giving it the air of respectability and fashion its other, less reputable inhabitants could never hope to achieve. Men of wealth and high station patronized the studios on Cleveland Street, commissioning paintings for their homes, portraits of their wives and progeny, immortalizing themselves on the canvasses of talented artists like Walter Sickert and the incomparable Vallon, who'd recently painted a canvas which the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, had just purchased for the astonishing sum of five hundred pounds, merely because members of his family were included in the work.

John Lachley had chosen Cleveland Street for his residence because of its association with the highly fashionable artistic community. Here, a mesmeric physician and occultist appeared to his wealthy clientele as a model of staid respectability compared with the somewhat more Bohemian artists of the district. Lachley knew perfectly well he would have been considered outlandish in more sedate surroundings such as Belgravia. So to Cleveland Street he had come, despite the reputations of one or two of its pubs and houses, which catered to men of Eddy's persuasion. And it was in Cleveland Street where he had first met the darling prince Albert Victor Christian Edward and turned that chance meeting to his considerable advantage. His scheme was certainly paying handsome dividends.

All he had to do now was protect his investment.

Polly Nichols didn't yet know it, but she had less than a day to live. Lachley hoped she spent it enjoying herself. He certainly intended to enjoy her demise. He hastened his footsteps, eager to post his letter and set into motion the events necessary to bring him to that moment. James Maybrick would make the perfect weapon. Why, he might even let Maybrick have the knife, once Lachley, himself, had vented his rage.

He chuckled aloud and could have kissed the fateful letter in his gloved hand.

Tonight, he promised Polly Nichols. We meet tonight.

When Margo arrived at the Britannia Gate's departures lounge, Victoria Station had taken on the chaotic air of a tenting circus in the process of takedown for transit to the next town. Not a cafe table in sight, either on the Commons floor or up on one of the balconies, could be had for less than a minor king's ransom and it was standing room only on every catwalk and balcony overlooking Victoria Station. If many more spectators tried to crowd onto the concrete and steel walkways up there, they'd have balconies falling three and four stories under the weight.

Besides the ordinary onlookers, the loons were out in force, as well, carrying placards and holding up homemade signs. Delighted news crews filmed the chaos while Ripperoons and assorted lunatics gave interviews to straight-faced camera operators about how Lord Jack was going to appear through an unstable gate created by a passing meteor and step off into the open Britannia amidst a host of unheavenly demons charged with guarding his most unsacred person from all earthly harm...

It might almost have been funny if not for the handful of real crazies demanding to be allowed through, tickets or no tickets, to serve their lord and master in whatever fashion Jack saw fit. Margo, jockeying for position in the crowd, trying to get her luggage cart through, stumbled away from one wild-eyed madman who snatched at her arm, screaming, "Unchaste whore! Jack will see your sins! He will punish you in this ripping time..." Margo slipped out of his grasp and left him windmilling for balance, unprepared for someone who knew Aikido.

Security arrived a moment later and Margo waved at Wally Klontz as the nutcase came after her again. "Wally! Hey! Over here!"

"What's the prob—oh, shit!" Wally snatched out handcuffs and grabbed the guy as he lunged again at Margo and screamed obscenities. More security waded in as a couple of other frenzied nutcases protested the man's removal. Violence broke out in a brief, brutish scuffle that ended with Margo gulping down acid nervousness while security agents hauled away a dozen seriously deranged individuals—a couple of them in straightjackets. Standing in the midst of a wide-eyed crowd of onlookers and glassy camera lenses, Margo brought her shudders under control and shoved her way past news crews who thrust microphones and cameras into her face.

"Aren't you Margo Smith, the Time Tours special guide for the Ripper Watch—"

"—true you're training to become a time scout?"

"—give us your feelings about being accosted by a member of a ‘Jack is Lord' cult—"

"No comment," she muttered again and again, using the luggage cart as a battering ram to force the newsies aside. If things were this bad on station... What was it really going to be like in London's East End, when the Ripper terror struck?

And what if it'd been one of those madmen who'd grabbed Ianira? As a sacrifice to Jack the Ripper? It didn't bear thinking about. Margo thrust the thought firmly aside and turned her luggage over to Time Tours baggage handlers, securing her claim stubs in her reticule, then lunged for the refuge of the departures lounge, where the news crews could follow her only with zoom lenses and directional microphones. It wasn't privacy, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances and Margo had no intention of giving anybody an interview about anything.

Once in the Time Tours departures lounge, she searched the crowd, looking for her new charges, Shahdi Feroz and the two journalists joining the Ripper Watch Team. She'd made one complete circuit of the departures area and was beginning to quarter it through the center when the SLUR-TV theme music swelled out over the crowds jamming Commons and a big screen television came to life. Shangri-La's new television anchor, Booth Hackett, voiced the question of the hour in booming tones that cut across the chaos echoing through Commons.

"It's official, Shangri-La Station! Ripper Season is underway and the entire world is asking, who really was Jack the Ripper? The list of suspects is impressive, the theories about conspiracies in high-government offices as convoluted as any modern conspiracy theorist could want. In an interview taped several hours ago with Dr. Shahdi Feroz, psycho-social historical criminologist and occult specialist for the team..."

Margo tuned it out and kept hunting for the Ripper scholar and wayward journalists, who should've been here by now. She wasn't interested in what that ghoul, Hackett, had to say and she already knew all the theories by heart. Kit had made sure of that before consenting to send her down the Britannia. First came the theories involving cults and black magic—hence Shahdi Feroz's inclusion on the team. Robert Donston Stephenson, who had claimed to know the Ripper and his motives personally and was at the top of several suspect lists, had been a known Satanist and practitioner of black magic. Aleister Crowley was on the cult-member suspect list, as well, although the evidence was slim to non-existent. Neither man, despite individual notoriety, fit the profile of a deranged psychopathic killer such as the Ripper. Margo wasn't betting on either of them.

She didn't buy any of the Mary Kelly theories, either—and some of them were among the weirdest of all Ripper theories. Honestly, Queen Victoria ordering the Prime Minister to kill anyone who knew that her grandson had secretly married a Catholic prostitute and fathered a daughter by her, guaranteeing a Catholic heir to the throne? Not to mention the Prime Minister drafting his pals in the Masonic Temple to re-enact some idiot's idea of Masonic rituals on the victims? It was just too nutty, not to mention the total lack of factual support. And she didn't think Mary Kelly's lover, the unemployed fish porter Joseph Barnett, had cut her up with one of his fish-gutting knives, either, despite their having quarrelled, or that he'd killed the other women to "scare" her off the streets. No, the Mary Kelly theories were just too witless...

"You are looking very irritated, Miss Smith."

Margo jumped nearly out of her skin, then blinked and focused on Shahdi Feroz' exquisite features. "Oh! Dr. Feroz... I, uh, was just looking..." She shut up, realizing it would come out sounding like she was irritated with the scholar if she said "I was looking for you," then turned red and stammered out, "I was thinking about all those stupid theories." She nodded toward the big-screen television where Dr. Feroz' taped interview was still playing, then added, "I mean, the ones about Mary Kelly."

Shahdi Feroz smiled. "Yes, there are some absurd ones about her, poor creature."

"You can say that again! You're all checked in and your luggage is ready?"

The scholar nodded. "Yes. And—oh bother!"

Newsies. Lots of them. Leaning right across the departures lounge barricades, with microphones and cameras trained on Shadhi Feroz and Margo. "This way!" Margo dragged the scholar by the wrist to the most remote corner of the departures lounge, putting a mass of tourists between themselves and the frustrated news crews. As Margo forced their way through, speculation flew wild amongst the tourists milling around them in every direction, eager to depart.

"—I think it was the queen's grandson, himself, not just some alleged lover."

"The queen's grandson? Duke of Clarence? Or rather, Prince Albert Victor? He wasn't named Duke of Clarence until after the Ripper murders. Poor guy. He's named in at least three outlandish theories, despite unshakable alibis. Like being several hundred miles north of London, in Scotland, for God's sake, during at least one of the murders..."

A nearby Time Tours guide in down-time servant's livery, was saying, "Ducks, don't you know, just everybody wants it to've been a nice, juicy royal scandal. Anytime a British royal's involved in something like the Ripper murders or the drunk-driving death of the Princess of Wales, back near the end of the twentieth century, conspiracy theories pop up faster than muckraking reporters are able to spread ‘em round."

They finally gained the farthest corner, out of sight of reporters, if not out of earshot of the appalling noise loose in Victoria Station. "Thank you, my dear," Shadhi breathed a sigh. "I should not be so churlish, I suppose, but I am tired and reporters..." She gave an elegant shrug of her Persian shoulders, currently clad in Victorian watered silk, and added with a twinkle in her dark eyes, "So you believe none of the theories about Mary Kelly?"

"Nope."

"Not even the mad midwife theory?"

Margo blinked. Mad midwife? Uh-oh...

Shahdi Feroz laughed gently. "Don't be so distressed, Miss Smith. It is not a commonly known theory."

"Yes, but Kit made me study this case inside out, backwards and forwards—"

"And you have been given, what? A few days, at most, to study it? I have spent a lifetime puzzling over this case. Don't feel so bad."

"There really is a mad midwife theory?"

Shahdi nodded. "Oh, yes. Mary Kelly was three months pregnant when she died. With a child she couldn't afford to feed. Abortions were illegal, but easily obtained, particularly in the East End, and usually performed by midwives, under appalling conditions. And midwives could come and go at all hours, without having to explain blood on their clothing. Even Inspector Abberline believed they might well be looking for a woman killer. This was based on testimony of a very reliable eyewitness to the murder of Mary Kelly. Abberline couldn't reconcile the testimony any other way, you see. A woman was seen wearing Mary Kelly's clothes and leaving her rented room the morning she was killed, several hours after coroners determined that Mary Kelly had died."

Margo frowned. "That's odd."

"Yes. She was seen twice, once between eight o'clock and eight-thirty, looking quite ill, and again about an hour later outside the Britannia public house, speaking with a man. This woman was seen both times by the same witness, a very sober and reliable housewife who lived near Mary Kelly, Mrs. Caroline Maxwell. Her testimony led Inspector Abberline to wonder if the killer might perhaps be a deranged midwife who dressed in the clothing of her victim as a disguise. And there certainly were clothes burned in Mary Kelly's hearth, shortly after the poor girl was murdered."

"But she died at four A.M.," Margo protested. "What would've kept her busy in there for a whole four hours? And what about the mutilations?"

"Those," Shahdi Feroz smiled a trifle grimly, "are two of the questions we hope to solve. What the killer did between Mary Kelly's death and his or her escape from Miller's Court, and why."

Margo shivered and smoothed her dress sleeves down her arms, trying to smooth the goose chills, as well. She didn't like thinking about Mary Kelly, the youngest and prettiest of the Ripper's victims, with her glorious strawberry blond hair. Margo's memories of her mother were sharp and terrible. Long, thick strawberry blond hair, strewn across the kitchen floor in sticky puddles of blood...

The less Margo recalled about what her mother had been and how she'd died, the better. "A mad midwife sounds nutty to me," she muttered. "As nutty as the other theories about Mary Kelly. Besides, there probably was no such person, just a police inspector groping for a solution to fit the testimony."

Shahdi Feroz chuckled. "You would be wrong, my dear, for a mad midwife did, in fact exist. Midwife Mary Pearcey was arrested and hanged for slashing to death the wife and child of her married lover in 1890. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suggested the police might have been searching for a killer of the wrong gender. He wrote a story based on this idea."

"That Sherlock Holmes should've been searching for Jill the Ripper, not Jack the Ripper?"

Shahdi Feroz laughed. "I agree with you, it isn't very likely."

"Not very! I mean, women killers don't do that sort of thing. Chop up their victims and eat the parts? Do they?"

The Ripper scholar's expression sobered. "Actually, a woman killer is quite capable of inflicting such mutilations. Criminologists have long interpreted such female-inflicted mutilations in a psychologically significant light. While lesbianism is a perfectly normal biological state for a fair percentage of the population and lesbians are no more or less likely than heterosexuals or gays to fit psychologically disturbed profiles, nonetheless there is a pattern which some lesbian killers do fit."

"Lesbian killers?"

"Yes, criminologists have known for decades that one particular profile of disturbed woman killer, some of whom happen to be lesbians, kill their lovers in a fit of jealousy or anger. They often mutilate the face and breasts and sexual organs. Which the Ripper most certainly did. A few such murders have been solved only after police investigators stopped looking for a male psychotically deranged sexual killer and began searching, instead, for a female version of the psychotic sexual killer."

Margo shuddered. "This is spooky. What causes it? I mean, what happens to turn an innocent little baby into something like Jack the Ripper? Or Jill the Ripper?"

Shahdi Feroz said very gently, "Psychotic serial killers are sometimes formed by deep pyschological damage, committed by the adults who have charge of them as young children. It's such a shocking tragedy, the waste of human potential, the pain inflicted... . The adults in such a person's life often combine sexual abuse with physical abuse, severe emotional abuse, and utter repression of the child's developing personality, robbery of the child's power and control over his or her life, a whole host of factors. Other times..." She shook her head. "Occasionally, we run across a serial killer who has no such abuse in his background. He simply enjoys the killing, the power. At times, I can only explain such choices as the work of evil."

"Evil?" Margo echoed.

Shahdi Feroz nodded. "I have studied cults in many different time periods, have looked at what draws disturbed people to pursue occult power, to descend into the kind of killing frenzy one sees with the psychotic killer. Some have been badly warped by abusers, yet others simply crave the power and the thrill of control over others' lives. I cannot find any other words to describe such people, besides a love of evil."

"Like Aleister Crowley," Margo murmured.

"Yes. Although he is not very likely Jack the Ripper."

Margo discovered she was shuddering inside, down in the core of herself, where her worst memories lurked. Her own father had been a monster, her mother a prostitute, trying to earn enough money to pay the bills when her father drank everything in their joint bank account. Margo's childhood environment had been pretty dehumanized. So why hadn't she turned out a psychopath? She still didn't get it, not completely. Maybe her parents, bad as they'd been, hadn't been quite monstrous enough? The very thought left her queasy.

"Are you all right?" Shahdi asked in a low voice.

Margo gave the scholar a bright smile. "Sure. Just a little weirded out, I guess. Serial killers are creepy."

"They are," Shahdi Feroz said softly, "the most terrifying creation the human race has ever produced. It is why I study them. In the probably vain hope we can avoid creating more of them."

"That," Margo said with a shiver, "is probably the most impossible quest I've ever heard of. Good luck. I mean that, too."

"What d'you mean, Miss Smith?" a British voice said in her ear. "Good luck with what?"

Margo yelped and came straight up off the floor, at least two inches airborne; then stood glaring at Guy Pendergast and berating herself for not paying better attention. Some time scout trainee you are! Stay this unfocused and some East End blagger's going to shove a knife through your ribcage... . "Mr. Pendergast. I didn't see you arrive. And Miss Nosette. You've checked in? Good. All right, everybody's here. We've got—" she craned her head to look at the overhead chronometers "—eleven minutes to departure if you want to make any last-minute purchases, exchange money, buy a cup of coffee. You've all got your timecards? Great. Any questions?" Please don't have any questions...

Guy Pendergast gave her a friendly grin. "Is it true, then?"

She blinked warily at him. "Is what true?"

"Are you really bent on suicide, trying to become a time scout?"

Margo lifted her chin a notch, a defiant cricket trying to impress a maestro musician with its musicality. "There's nothing suicidal about it! Scouting may be a dangerous profession, but so are a lot of other jobs. Police work or down-time journalism, for instance."

Pendergast chuckled easily. "Can't argue that, not with the scar I've got across me arse—oh, I beg pardon, Miss Smith."

Margo almost relaxed. Almost. "Apology accepted. Whenever I'm in a lady's attire," she brushed a hand across the watered silk of her costume, "please watch your speech in my presence. But," and she managed a smile, "when I put on my ragged boy's togs or the tattered skirts of an East End working woman, don't be shocked at the language I start using. I've been studying Cockney rhyming slang until I speak it in my dreams at night. One thing I'm learning as a trainee scout is to fit language and behavior to the role I play down time."

"I don't know about the rest of the team," Dominica Nosette flashed an abruptly dazzling smile at Margo and held out a friendly hand, completely at odds with her belligerence over the shooting lesson, "but I would be honored to be assigned to you for guide services. And of course, the London New Times will be happy to pay you for any additional services you might be willing to render."

Margo shook Dominica's hand, wondering what, exactly, the woman wanted from her. Besides the scoop of the century, of course. "Thank you," she managed, "that's very gracious, Ms. Nosette."

"Dominica, please. And you'll have to excuse my scapegrace partner. Guy's manners are atrocious."

Pendergast broke into a grin. "Delighted, m'dear, can't tell you how delighted I am to be touring with the famous Margo Smith."

"Oh, but I'm not famous."

He winked, rolling a sidewise glance at his partner. "Not yet, m'dear, but if I know Minnie, your name will be a household word by tea time."

Margo hadn't expected reporters to notice her, not yet, anyway, not until she'd really proved herself as an independent scout. All of which left her floundering slightly as Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast and, God help her, Shahdi Feroz, waited for her response. What would Kit want me to do? To say? He hates reporters, I know that, but he's never said anything about what I should do if they talk to me...

Fortunately, Doug Tanglewood, another of the guides for the Ripper Watch tour, arrived on the scene looking nine feet tall in an elegant frock coat and top hat. "Ah, Miss Smith, I'm so glad you're here. You've brought the check-in list? And the baggage manifests well in hand, I see. Ladies, gentlemen, Miss Smith is, indeed, a time scout in training. And since we will be joining her fiancé in London, I'm certain she would appreciate your utmost courtesy to her as a lady of means and substance."

Guy Pendergast said in dismay, "Fiancé? Oh, bloody hell!" and gave a theatrical groan that drew chuckles from several nearby male tourists. Doug Tanglewood smiled. "And if you would excuse us, we have rather a great deal to accomplish before departure."

Doug nodded politely and drew Margo over toward the baggage, then said in a low voice, "Be on your guard against those two, Miss Smith. Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast are notorious, with a reputation that I do not approve of in the slightest. But they had enough influence in the right circles to be added to the team, so we're stranded with them."

"They were very polite," she pointed out.

Tanglewood frowned. "I'm certain they were. They are very good at what they do. Just bear this firmly in mind. What they do is pry into other people's lives in order to report the sordid details to the world. Remember that, and there's no harm done. Now, have you seen Kit? He's waiting to see you off."

Margo's irritation fled. "Oh, where?"

"Across that way, at the barricade. Go along, then, and say goodbye. I'll take over from here."

She fled toward her grandfather, who'd managed to secure a vantage point next to the velvet barricade ropes. "Can you believe it? Eight minutes! Just eight more minutes and then, wow! Three and a half months in London! Three and a half very hard months," she added hastily at the beginnings of a stern glower in her world-famous grandfather's eyes.

Kit kept scowling, but she'd learned to understand those ferocious scowls during the past several months. They concealed genuine fear for her, trying to tackle this career when there was so much to be learned and so very much that could go wrong, even on a short and relatively safe tour. Kit ruffled her hair, disarranging her stylish hat in the process. "Keep that in mind, Imp. Do you by any chance remember the first rule of surviving a dangerous encounter on the streets?"

Her face went hot, given her recent lapses in attention, but she shot back the answer promptly enough. "Sure do! Don't get into it in the first place. Keep your eyes and ears open and avoid anything that even remotely smells like trouble. And if trouble does break, run like hel—eck." She really was trying to watch her language. Ladies in Victorian London did not swear. Women did, all the time; ladies, never.

Kit chucked her gently under the chin. "That's my girl. Promise me, Margo, that you'll watch your back in Whitechapel. What you ran into before, in the Seven Dials, is going to look like a picnic, compared with the Ripper terror. That will blow the East End apart."

She bit her lower lip. "I know. I won't lie," she said in a sudden rush, realizing it was true and not wanting to leave her grandfather with the impression that she was reckless or foolhardy—at least, not any longer. "I'm scared. What we're walking into... The Ripper's victims weren't the only women murdered in London's East End during the next three months. And I can only guess what it's going to be like when the vigilance committees start patrolling the streets and London's women start arming themselves out of sheer terror."

"Those who could afford it," Kit nodded solemnly. "Going armed in that kind of explosive atmosphere is a damned fine idea, actually, so long as you keep your wits and remember your training."

Margo's own gun, a little top-break revolver, was fully loaded and tucked neatly into her dress pocket, in a specially designed holster Connie Logan had made for her. After her first, disastrous visit to London's East End with this pistol, Margo had drilled with it until she could load and shoot it blindfolded in her sleep. She just hoped she didn't need to use it, ever.

Far overhead, the station's public address system crackled to life. "Your attention please. Gate Two is due to cycle in two minutes. All departures..."

"Well," Margo said awkwardly, "I guess this is it. I've got to go help Doug Tanglewood herd that bunch through the gate."

Kit smiled. "You'll do fine, Imp. If you don't, I'll kick your bustled backside up time so fast, it'll make your head swim!"

"Hah! You and what army?"

Kit's world-famous jack-o-lantern grin blazed down at her. "Margo, honey, I am an army. Or have you forgotten your last Aikido lesson?"

Margo just groaned. She still had the bruises. "You're mean and horrible and nasty. How come I love you?"

Kit laughed, then leaned over the barricade to give her a hug. "Because you're as crazy as I am, that's why." He added in a sudden, fierce whisper, "Take care of yourself!"

Margo hugged him tight and gave him a swift kiss on one lean, weathered cheek. "Promise."

Kit's eyes were just a hint too bright, despite the now-familiar scowl. "Off with you, then. I'll be waiting to test you on everything you've learned when you get back."

"Oh, God..." But she was laughing as she took her leave and found Douglas Tanglewood and their charges. When the Britannia Gate finally rumbled open and Margo started up the long flight of metal stairs, her computerized scout's log and ATLS slung over her shoulder in a carpet bag, Margo's heart was pounding as fast as the butterflies swooping and circling through her stomach. Three and a half months of Ripper Watch Tour wasn't exactly scouting... but solving the most famous serial murder of all time was just about the next best thing. She was going to make Kit proud of her, if it was the last thing she ever did. Frankly, she could hardly wait to get started!