Skeeter sketched a sloppy salute. "Yessir!"

"Huh. Thank God you were never in the army, Skeeter, you'd have ended in Leavenworth inside a week. All right, let's go find out what that Time Tours guide is doing out here by himself with Paula Booker. Besides playing bait for every outlaw in the territory."

Wordlessly, they headed down into the rocky defile.

Chapter Six

Time Scout in-training Margo Smith was so keyed up she was very nearly shaking as she and her fiancé—freelance time guide Malcolm Moore—eased open the gate beside the International Workingmen's Association. A lively concert was underway, spilling Russian music out into the streets. Malcolm held the gate as Margo slipped into the long alleyway leading back to Dutfield's Yard. The Ripper Watch Team followed silently, carrying miniaturized equipment they would use to film Long Liz Stride's brutal murder. Their satchels were heavy, carrying three times the equipment needed for the previous two murders. This was only the first stop of three the team would make tonight, placing low-light cameras and microphone systems in Dutfield's Yard, on a certain stairway landing in Goulston Street, and in Mitre Square.

While Margo and Malcolm stood guard, the team members placed their tiny cameras, hiding them where they would not be discovered by the police, some at the entrance to the alley and others back in the yard. Margo glanced every few moments at the windows of the crowded hall, convinced someone would spot them and demand to know what they were doing down here, but no one noticed. It gave Margo an insight into how the Ripper had been able to strike so frequently in the heart of a crowded slum. The people of Whitechapel, like those in many another overpopulated city, turned their attention inward to their own business and feared to pry too directly into the business of neighbors, particularly with a deranged killer walking the streets.

Margo drew a deep breath of relief when the Ripper Watch Team finally finished and she was able to lead them all back to the street once more.

"Very good," Malcolm said quietly, easing the wicker pedestrian gate closed, "that's the first one. Now, Mitre Square is this way."

Malcolm led the way toward the soon-to-be infamous site that Margo and Shahdi Feroz had first visited only two weeks previously. They had noticed, during their study of the killing zone, that the Ripper had left his fourth victim within sight of both a policeman's house and a Jewish synagogue. Tonight, Catharine Eddowes would walk straight into that killing zone, where her life would end violently. Margo shivered in the darkness and thrust away memories of her own mother's brutal murder, concentrating instead on their surroundings and her primary task of guarding the Ripper Scholars from footpads and gangs.

The overwhelming sense of Whitechapel by night was a region of utter darkness punctuated randomly by brightly lit pubs which drew residents like moths. Their attraction was due as much, Margo suspected, to the cheerfulness of the light and the sense of safety it gave, as to the gin and ale. They walked down entire city blocks without passing a single working gas lamp, skirted past alleyways and side streets which loomed like black caverns in the night, inhabited by God alone knew what. Sounds came drifting to them, scuffles and muffled arguments. Children lurked underfoot by the hundreds, crowding into doorways and open landings of stairwells, their eyes following the Ripper Watch team with hungry intent.

Pubs were packed with rough workmen and drab women carrying hungry-eyed children, all swilling alcohol and talking uproariously, faces puffed and reddened from drink. Outside the pubs, women walked endlessly up and down, pausing only briefly in the doorways, drifting from one pub to another soliciting customers at the Britannia, the Princess Alice, The City Darts and the Alma, at King Stores and the infamous Ten Bells, Mary Kelly's favorite haunt for plying her trade.

Stepping out onto Commercial Road was a shock, by comparison. From where they stood on the corner, all the way down to Mile End highway, stretched a raucous hive of bright-lit pubs, shops with dim gaslights still flickering, street preachers surrounded by heckling crowds, a waxworks displaying reproductions of the latest Whitechapel murder victims—children with pennies clutched in grubby fingers struggling to gain admittance—a suit salesman pitching the quality of his wares to a crowd of avid listeners, and drifts of sailors up from the docks, swilling gin and ogling the women. Despite the lateness of the hour, the Saturday night street stunned Margo with its noise and throngs of merrymakers, intent on forgetting the horror stalking the lightless roads nearby.

One of the Watch Team's experts, Dr. Shahdi Feroz, studied the street carefully as they pushed their way west, toward the border with The City of London and Mitre Square. Margo edged closer to her. "Is it usual for people to pretend like nothing's happening?"

Shahdi flicked her gaze up to meet Margo's. A slight vertical line appeared between her brows. "It is not surprising. It has been two weeks since the last killing, after all. People with no choice but to stay in this place persuade themselves the terror is over, or at least they drink and pretend it is. You have noticed the darker streets are nearly empty?"

"Yes, I was just thinking about that. Frightened people are drawn to the light and bustle." She nodded down the roaring thoroughfare. "I guess they're hoping to find safety in numbers. Not that it will do any good."

"For most, it will. Very few of these people will be up and about between one and two A.M., when the murders will occur. And even the prostitutes are trying to be cautious," she motioned with one slim, Persian hand, "staying near the lighted pubs or Saint Botolph's Church."

Margo shivered. "Not even buying a knife will help poor Liz."

"No."

They pushed past the end of Commercial Road, gaining Adgate, and turned off for Mitre Square. Once again Margo and Malcolm stood watch at each of the two ways into the secluded little square, while the Ripper Watch Team rigged their miniaturized equipment behind a temporary construction fence which closed off one interior corner of the square. Catharine Eddowes would die just outside that fence. Margo watched closely through the dark alleyway known as Church Passage, which ran beneath an overhanging building, turning the little lane into a tunnel between Mitre Square and the street beyond. Rough workingmen could be heard laughing and singing at pubs. Women's voices drifted past, some openly brazen, accosting potential customers. Others were hushed with fear as they whispered about the killer, wondering what to do to protect themselves and their families.

Most of the women in the East End weren't prostitutes, any more than most of the men were pickpockets and thieves; but these women had no way of knowing the killer loose amongst them wouldn't be attacking "honest women." They were all frightened, as unaware as the police of the psychology that drove psychotic serial killers like James Maybrick and his unknown accomplice. Who that man was, the team hoped to learn tonight. They also hoped to discover which of the killers was the rabid anti-Semite.

As soon as the equipment was in place, Malcolm led the way once more, moving north and east again, across Houndsditch and past Middlesex Street, over to Goulston Street and the landing of the Wentworth Model Buildings. The tenement was noisily occupied, which made the installation hazardous. Malcolm slipped up the dark staircase past the landing and stood guard above while Inspector Conroy Melvyn worked alone to fix the tiny, button-sized camera and transmitter in the upper corner of the landing. A raucous burst of voices from above sent both the up-time police inspector and Malcolm plunging back down to street level, sweating profusely.