"I fear so. I haven't even tuppence left."

Malcolm did not look foward to arriving at Spaldergate with the news that he'd discovered the identity of Jack the Ripper and located both Marcus and Benny Catlin, only to loose them all in the chaos of a street meeting. Margo would spit like an Irish wildcat, after he'd dismissed her from the search back on Fleet Street. And the Ripper Watch Team's work was not yet done for the night, which loomed endlessly ahead of them. They still had to stand watch over the Whitehall torso mystery, to determine whether that unfortunate victim could also be laid at Jack the Ripper's doorstep. Malcolm resigned himself to yet another stressful night of short sleep and kept walking.

Jenna unlocked the door to the little house in Spitalfields with shaking fingers, then stepped back to give Marcus room to pass. He and Noah carried Ianira upstairs, fumbling for the treads in the darkness while Jenna hunted for the gaslight. Once she'd lit it, they made better progress up the stairs. Noah called down, "I'll change clothes and pick up the girls from the Mindels."

Jenna nodded wearily. Shortly, Noah left the house in disguise as Marcus' sister once again, returning with the children and Dr. Mindel, who hurried upstairs to treat Ianira. Jenna followed, dreading Ianira's return to consciousness. She found Dr. Mindel bent over the cassondra, making worried noises, while Artemisia and Gelasia clung to their father in the far corner, eyes wide and frightened as they gazed at their mother for the first time in three years.

"Drugged, you say?" Dr. Mindel muttered, peering under her eyelids. "Such a hideous thing to do to a helpless lady. Her pulse is strong, though, and her breathing is regular. She should sleep quietly until the drug wears off." He rummaged in a satchel and came out with a small jar of salve, which he smoothed onto her wrists where the ropes had roughened her skin. "There is no way to guess how long the dose will last. When she wakes, please come for me."

"Thank you, Dr. Mindel," Noah said quietly. "We will."

The doctor left and Jenna met Noah's gaze. "There isn't much else we can do, is there?"

"No."

Marcus took the children across the narrow hallway to their little room and put them to bed. Noah rested a hand on Jenna's shoulder. "You'd better get some rest, Jenna. You're exhausted and you don't want to risk the baby."

Jenna nodded. There wasn't really anything else anyone could do, except wait for Ianira to regain consciousness and pray she was sane when she did. Jenna left the room blinking back tears and went quietly to bed, where she couldn't get the image of those dismembered bodies out of her mind, or that blonde woman's head sitting on a work table beside a dark-haired man's skull, left lying as casually as last week's empty milk bottles.

She wished she'd paid more attention to the various theories about the Ripper's possible occult connections. Clearly, Dr. John Lachley was a practicing occultist, not just a theorist and scholar. There'd been symbols painted on those hideous brick walls, symbols of occult magic, satanic ritual, God knew what else. Lachley was a renowned physician and lecturer, a member of the Theosophical Society and a man of means, with royal connections. No wonder the police couldn't find Jack the Ripper. They were searching for some depraved East Ender, a foreigner, not a well-respected member of society.

She could all too easily imagine Inspector Abberline's reaction or Sir Charles Warren's if anyone told the police they were up against a madman with ties to the royal family. A man who had perverted all notions of ancient Druidic rites, including the taking of trophy heads. Jenna shuddered, recalling his hideous lecture and the monstrous excitement in his eyes when talking about such things. And she had actually planned to film the Ripper murders! She and Carl, both. What innocents they'd been. Foolish innocents.

The world was full of madmen like John Lachley, killers looking for power, men like John Caddrick, her father. Jack the Ripper had built himself a hideous house beneath the streets, filling it with death. Jenna curled protectively around her abdomen, where Carl's baby was growing, and vowed that her child would never become a victim of the slaughterhouse her father had built. Jenna would see his monstrous construction torn to the ground and her father dead, first. Even if she had to pull the trigger.

Weeping softly in the blackness of a Spitalfields night, Jenna Caddrick listened helplessly to the hushed whispering from Ianira's room across the hall.

As John Lachley's cab rattled its way up the approach to Battersea Bridge, his thoughts rushed and tripped across one another like spawning fish. He was eager to reach the end of the journey and discover what really lay beyond the "gate." Despite the images in the dead woman's fantastical camera, he could not truly imagine the world which had produced such marvels. Anxious and impatient, he tried to steady his hands, but they would not remain decently calm. He gripped more tightly the case hiding Miss Nosette's severed head and craned forward to see how much farther it was to the end of the bridge. Soon...

God grant him patience, for soon could not come quickly enough.

Full dark settled inexorably across London's rooftops and chimneys as the cab jockeyed for position in the long queue of carriages and wagons crossing the river. On the far shore, Lachley could just make out Battersea Park's miniature lake where, on summer days, children chased ducks and swans or floated little armadas of handmade boats. There were no children in the park tonight, nor anyone else, for that matter, save a few modest carriages and the occasional hansom or barouche for hire. Black smoke pouring from Battersea's chimney pots snaked its way upward to merge with the ominous darkness of yet another rainstorm threatening to the east. Low clouds raced all along the southern bank of the river. From their vantage point on Battersea Bridge, lightning flared and flashed across the distant rooftops of Surrey and Bermondsey and damp wind slashed at Lachley's coat and hair through the open carriage, threatening to rip his hat loose. He secured it with an irritable jerk and checked his pocketwatch impatiently. It was now nearly eight and the journalist had guessed the "gate" would go at about eight-fifteen.

The cab finally tilted down the descent from the bridge and swung past the dark dampness of Battersea Park, cutting off in a right-hand turn which took them toward the long, lazy river bend which formed Battersea's western border. Once they reached Octavia Street, it wasn't difficult to suss out which house was Spaldergate. Carriages and hansom cabs lined the kerbs, disgorging elegantly dressed ladies and immaculate gentlemen and their servants, dozens of people arriving for what neighbors must imagine was an elegant dinner party.

He ordered the cabbie to stop well back from the line of arriving carriages and paid the man, waiting until the battered cab had rattled away down the street before moving toward Spaldergate, himself. Hidden in the shadows, he watched the arrivals through narrowed eyes. If people were still returning to the house, the gate couldn't be open yet. He settled his back against a tree trunk, biding his time, more than anxious to step through the gate but forcing himself to wait until the last possible moment. He did not want to risk being detained by the gate's operators. At length, a final carriage arrived, disgorging its passengers, a portly gentleman who was saying to the lady with him, "Hurry up, Abby, we'll miss the gate!"

At last!

Lachley stole softly down the pavement in their wake, then slipped into Spaldergate's side yard and found a wooden gate set into the high wall. Beyond, he discovered a vast and overgrown garden. Lachley eased into a clump of shaggy rhododendrons and peered into the garden, expecting he knew not quite what, a miniature version of a railway station, perhaps, with a gate leading into somewhen else, or perhaps the iron hulk of some inexplicable and infernal machine. The high stone wall ran right round the sprawling garden, its far reaches just visible in the gaslight from lamps spaced evenly along a patterned stone walkway. His brows rose at the extravagance, so many gaslights illuminating a mere garden, and one that was improperly maintained, at that. The walkway ended abruptly at the rear wall, as though some fuedal war lord had erected a fortress keep straight across an ancient Roman highway. Had that bitch Nosette lied? Was there no "gate" after all? No route into the distant future?