“I’ll do it,” said Will.

Rune grinned through a face-load of ostrich a l’orange. “I knew that you would,” said he.

At considerable length, their vast repast concluded, even down to the wallaby in wild woodbine and the zebra in a basket, Rune called for the bill. He then took issue over the cost and quality of each and every item on it. He called for the manager and took him to task about the quality of the champagne. Then he produced a small bone, which he claimed to be a rat’s pelvis, that he said had lodged in his throat during his consumption of the terrapin terrine. He issued protests and threats of litigation and eventually settled “out of court” for twenty guineas compensation up front and at once.

“A job well done,” said Rune as he and Will left the Café Royal, never again to return.

“Was that really necessary?” Will asked. “Mr Holmes was paying for the meal.”

“I know,” said Rune. “But Holmes is a friend and the champagne was inferior.”

Will and Rune walked together along the Strand. It was after midnight now. There had been rain earlier but it had since cleared up, leaving only puddles which reflected the glow of the neon lights shining from the bow-fronted windows of the exclusive shops. An electric carriage slid soundlessly past. Within the glazed dome, fashionable fellows joked with painted ladies of the night-time calling.

At Piccadilly Rune and Will halted.

“I am going on to my club now,” said Rune. “The Pussycat in Greek Street. Perhaps you would care to join me?”

“I think I’ll return to our lodgings,” Will said. “Think things over. Come up with some sort of plan. I have the envelope of case notes. I have all sorts of stuff about Jack the Ripper on file in my palm-top. Most of it is probably rubbish, but you never know. I might come up with something.”

“Good boy,” Rune patted Will upon the shoulder. “Although you do not have faith in me, I have faith in you. Together we will triumph. This is just the beginning, but it will facilitate the end.”

Will nodded thoughtfully.

“As surely as the errant bicycle is viewed through the veil of cucumber,” said Rune, “then so does the spotty youth of time dwell upon the doorknob of pasta. Muse upon these truths.”

Will shook his head.

“Good night,” said he.

“Good night,” said Rune, “and see you on the morrow.”

And so they parted company, Rune, chuckling to himself and steering his sizeable slippers in the direction of the Pussycat Club, and Will heading back to their present humble lodgings in Shoreditch.

Will sat long into the night, a lighted candle as his elbow, his palm-top on his knee and many cockroaches hurrying about their business all around him. He trawled the pages of his files on Saucy Jack. He came up with the usual suspects, shook his head at the conspiracy theories, made notes of all that he considered relevant. He leafed through the case notes, deciphering with difficulty the spidery cursive penmanship of the hardly literate constables and the observational findings of the coroner. At length, when his eyelids began to droop, Will closed up his palm-top, shook vermin from his bed and tucked himself into it still fully clothed.

He blew out the candle and lay in the darkness, wondering where all this might lead to. Concluding that he didn’t have the faintest idea, he eventually fell into a deep but troubled sleep.

Sunlight awakened Will. He yawned and stretched and plucked away the web that a spider had woven over his face. Will smiled somewhat at this. There was no explaining Hugo Rune. The guru’s guru always demanded first-class treatment, even though he was never prepared to actually pay for it. But still he thought nothing of sleeping in the poorest of accommodation. Although similarly he thought nothing at all about actually paying for that either. The man was an enigma. Charlatan or sage? Will really didn’t know. But he certainly had charisma. And charisma is ultimately what sorts out the somebodies from the nobodies.

“Are you awake?” Will asked and he turned to view the wretched pallet of the perfect master. The perfect master however was not to be seen. And his wretched pallet showed no signs of having been slept upon.

“Didn’t get back,” said Will to himself. “Well, he said nothing about us doing a moonlight flit last night, so I assume he must have stayed at his club.”

Will rose and washed his face in a bowl of cold and doubtful-looking water and then he took himself downstairs. There was always the possibility that he could charm the landlady into offering him some breakfast. Not that he felt particularly hungry. Last night’s gargantuan feast still padded his stomach. Will paid a visit to a communal toilet of terrible aspect and, once hastily done with his ablutions there, removed himself from the boarding house to stretch his limbs in the street.

It was a long walk to Rune’s club and Will did not have the fare for a hansom cab, let alone one of the new electric flyers. So he stood in the doorway of the rooming house, taking in the morning air and the sights and sounds and smells of Victorian London.

“Read orl abowt it! Read orl abowt it!” A paperboy flourished papers. Will recognised the paperboy, the lad who had accosted him upon his undignified arrival in the time machine.

“Good morning, young Winston” said Will. “We meet again.”

“Gawd lop off me love truncheon,” said the lad. “I remember you, guv’nor. Care for a paper. It’s the Shoreditch Sun. First with the news, and the best news there is. And a lady in a corset on page three.”

“No thanks,” said Will.

“Please yourself then. Read orl abowt it!” he bawled once again. “Hideous murder in Whitechapel. Ripper strikes again.”

“What?” went Will.

“Ripper strikes again!” bawled the lad.

“Not so loud,” said Will. “But that isn’t right. A sixth murder. That’s not right.”

“Hideous murder,” bawled the lad. “Blood and guts all over the place. Police as ever baffled.”

“Give me a newspaper,” said Will.

“Halfpenny,” said Winston.

Will dipped into his pocket and brought out a silver threepenny bit.

Winston snatched it from his hand and trousered it with haste.

“Sorry, no change,” he grinned, handing Will a newspaper.

Will unrolled the broadsheet and cast his eye over the headline and the words that were printed beneath it.

TERRIBLE MURDER IN WHITECHAPEL

Ripper claims sixth victim

Will read the dreadful details. A gentleman had taken his leave from a well-known house of ill repute, after a dispute with the madam of that establishment regarding her charges. He had then apparently been pursued through the night-time streets by Jack the Ripper and brutally done to death. The chase had been witnessed by several gatherers of the pure,[15] who were working the nightshift. The actual murder had not been witnessed. The body had been later found by a patrolling constable.

“Upon the arrival of the corpse at Whitechapel Police Station, the victim had been positively identified by Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, who was there playing whist with the station sergeant.

“‘I knew the murder victim,’ he told our reporter. ‘He owed me five guineas. His name was Hugo Rune.’”

The newspaper fell from Will’s fingers and drifted down into the gutter.

His world was suddenly all in little pieces.

Hugo Rune was dead.