"Got it," Melvyn gasped out, voice shaking slightly.

"I would suggest we leave the area at once," Malcolm said urgently, glancing back as several men and women burst from the staircase, locked in a bitter argument that threatened to turn violent momentarily.

"Agreed," Melvyn nodded, heading back for Middlesex Street at a brisk walk.

A clock from one of the many breweries in the district, Margo wasn't sure which one, tolled the hour. Midnight. An hour before the first murder, plus another forty minutes until the second one. Moving in utter silence, the Ripper Watch Team headed for Leadenhall Street and the Bank of England, where their carriage would be waiting to take them back to Spaldergate. Margo glanced once over her shoulder into the dark maze of alleys that formed the Ripper's killing ground and held back a shudder.

Jack the Ripper had already posted his first letter to the editor.

Tomorrow morning, the Daily News would publish it.

Skeeter reached the bottom of the bone-dry gully slightly behind Kit. Before either of them could call a greeting, Paula gave a glad cry. She came hurtling out from behind a sheltering boulder and threw herself straight into Kit's arms. "Oh, God, Kit Carson! I've never been so happy to see anybody in my whole life! And Skeeter Jackson!"

"What's happened?" Kit asked tersely, fishing for a clean bandanna. Paula dried her eyes with it, gulping to control tears of sheer relief at her rescue.

The Time Tours guide with the surgeon answered through clenched teeth. "Bastards jumped us from cover, when Paula's horse threw a shoe. I was trying to reshoe the nag when they started shooting."

"Then you haven't caught up with Joey Tyrolin, yet?" Kit asked sharply.

Paula shook her head. "No. And we won't, either. Mr. Samuelson and I were bringing back the bad news."

"Too right," Samuelson growled. "Little bastard and his porter emigrated on us! They jumped a train before we could catch up and headed east. The drovers and other guides are trying to trace them, but they bought a ticket for Chicago, so they could jump off anywhere between here and Illinois. Or keep going, switch trains in Chicago and head for the East Coast."

Skeeter kicked disgustedly at a clod of dirt. "Great. Now what, Kit?"

The grizzled scout shoved his hat back and wiped sweat from his brow. "We hold a council of war."

Skeeter certainly didn't have any better ideas.

Dominica Nosette was so excited she could scarcely stand still. At last! John Lachley and James Maybrick together on the same street! The night was windy, full of rainshowers and sudden gusts that whipped Dominica's skirts against her ankles and rattled her bonnet around her ears, but Dominica scarcely noticed. Her tiny video camera rode next to her ear, mounted underneath the concealing brim of her bonnet. The lens recorded everything in front of her, whichever way Dominica turned her head, and the camera was specially fitted with low-light and infrared technology to record video signal in even the darkest alleyways. An infrared light source in the fake fruit fastened to her bonnet illuminated a wide fan in front of her, switched on whenever she pressed the plunger inside her pocket. She'd been holding it down steadily for the past five minutes, eyes riveted to the two men who conferred briefly under a grimy street lamp, one of the few scattered through the East End. The directional microphone in her bonnet picked up their low-voiced conversation and broadcast it to her earplug.

"The woman lives in this house," Lachley's voice said. "Eddowes is her name, Kate Eddowes, a dirty whore."

Maybrick's voice, breathless with sick excitement, answered. "I want her, John, I want to rip her..."

"Not until I have my letters."

"Of course..."

Dominica finally knew what was contained in the letters John Lachley sought. She and her partner had managed to make a photocopy of Long Liz Stride's priceless missive, telling her precisely why John Lachley was stalking these women to death. The queen's grandson, the firstborn son of the Prince of Wales, in the direct line of succession, had been indiscreet. Highly indiscreet. With a male prostitute, no less. If proof of that indiscretion fell into the wrong hands, Eddy would be ruined, possibly even jailed. And John Lachley's career as Eddy's spiritual advisor would come to a disastrous end. Classic motive and response. Except, of course, that Lachley was a psychopath and was using another psychopath as a weapon to rid himself of all witnesses.

Poor Kate Eddowes. She and her lover had returned to London on Friday from Kent and the hop harvest, a return Dominica and Guy had videotaped.

"I'll get a room over at the casual ward, Shoe Lane, luv," Eddowes had told Kelly. "We won't be apart long. You rest, now, and see to that cough."

Dominica had followed her down to Shoe Lane, capturing for posterity her fateful conversation with the casual ward's superintendent. "Oh, I'll get money, right enough. I know the Whitechapel murderer, I do. I'll collect that reward being offered by the newspapers!"

But if Kate Eddowes knew, she'd done nothing about it, contacting neither the police nor the newspapermen who were offering rewards of up to a hundred pounds—a literal fortune to someone like Catharine Eddowes—for information on the Ripper. She avoided constables, shunned reporters, and walked the streets as always, drinking what she earned and staring into shadows, clearly trying to drink her way through her terror or perhaps trying to drink her way to enough courage to finally act. Dominica thought pityingly that she was doubtless too frightened to come straight out and say, "Look, here, I've got a letter from the queen's grandson in my pocket and I think he's your killer..."

Prince Albert Victor was, of course, safely away in Scotland with his grandmother, just now, providing him with an ironclad alibi for the murders of Stride and Eddowes. Dominica doubted the prince even knew what Lachley was doing, although he might guess. Perhaps that was why he'd fled to Scotland, leaving his spiritual advisor behind in London.

When the night of September 30th arrived, Dominica and Guy followed Lachley from his home in Cleveland Street, then lost him for more than an hour in the teeming streets of Wapping. "Where the deuce did he get to?" Guy Pendergast muttered as darkness descended over London's rooftops.

"Where the devil does he always get to? Wherever it is, I intend to find out!"

"To do that, pet, we'll have to find him again. Of course, we can always pick him up at Dutfield's Yard."

"I plan to videotape much more of his activities this evening than that! We'll go to Catharine's doss house," Dominica decided. "Surely he'll show up there?" And that was exactly where they caught up to him, in the company of James Maybrick, at long, bloody last.

"We'll find Eddowes, first, if we can," Lachley muttered, his voice whispering electronically in Dominica's ear. "She's too bloody dangerous to leave wandering the streets any longer."

Lachley and Maybrick set out, stopping at public house after public house, searching for the doomed Kate Eddowes. Dominica, of course, knew exactly where Eddowes was—at least, where she'd be at eight o'clock, or thereabouts. Lachley wandered, by chance, directly into her path just in time to see events unfold in Aldgate High Street. He watched in open-mouthed disbelief and rising fury as two police constables incarcerated the woman he had waited two entire weeks to kill.

Catharine Eddowes was drunk. So drunk she could hardly stand up. Wailing like a fire engine and giggling, one would've thought her a girl of twelve. The sight of a forty-six-year-old prostitute whooping her way into Bishopsgate Police Station, carrying a letter in her pocket that could destroy everything Lachley had worked for, had murdered for, very nearly put the man over the edge. He stood across the street from the police station, hidden in shadows, soaking wet from the gusting rain, and closed his gloved hands into fists so tight, his hands trembled. The look of murderous rage in his face left Dominica momentarily shaken. When he stepped close to Maybrick, the words he hissed at his accomplice sent a shiver up her back.