The old man frowned. “Ink? I do not import the ink from China, sirs.”

“Not to import, my good man. Rather, to burn it into my skin. I would like a tattoo, you see, and I’m sure that in your days you’ve drawn more than a few for a lost traveler.”

The old man’s frown remained for a moment and then dissipated into a shrug.

“Afraid, good sir,” he said, “that you are in error. Here I sell spice. Not the skin paintings.” He raised his bony right hand, which shook as he raised it. He held his arm straight out, and Arthur could see the twitching of the man’s fingers. “Afraid I could not draw one, if even I attempt it.” Finally the man lowered his hand.

There was no way this man could hold a hot needle steady enough to ink a tattoo without forever scarring the customer.

“Pardon me,” said Arthur, the excitement puffing out of him through a deep sigh. Without another word, he led Bram outside the shop. Though they had been inside for only a short while, they each felt a shock of daylight and fresh air as they stepped back on to the street. The spice smell tingled Arthur’s nose hairs as it was sucked away by the wind.

“But I would swear,” he said after a moment, “that they must have come by here. They must have, Bram, it’s the only path that makes sense!”

“She might have found a willing tattooist in any public house between the river and Whitechapel Road,” replied Bram. “Or she might have asked any passing sailor on the street to perform the service. There’s no way to deduce where she went, my friend.”

Arthur considered the problem deeply. Was Bram in the right? Was there truly no way, given the faint information they had, to deduce the thoughts and actions of those girls? If that was true, then the whole process of detective work that Arthur had described in two dozen ripping tales was fraudulent. He had everything he needed to piece the matter together, Arthur felt so in his bones. If he could not do it, then he wouldn’t merely be a failed detective-he’d be a failed writer as well. He and Holmes would go down as charlatans together. Arthur’s “science of deduction,” the ability to reason one’s way through the darkest horrors of the human experience, would prove but a dreadful sham. A penny lie, and not worth so much as that.

Another strange thought came to Arthur’s mind as he stood on St. George, just below the Wellclose Square. Was this how it felt to be one of his readers? To be lost in the middle of the story, without the slightest of notions as to where you were headed? Arthur felt horrible. He felt as if he had no control of events as they unfolded. What trust his readers must put in him, to submit themselves to this unnerving confusion, while holding out hope that Arthur would see them through to a satisfying conclusion. But what if there were no solution on the final page? Or what if the solution were balderdash? What if the whole thing didn’t work? His readers took a leap, did they not? They offered up their time and their money. And what did the author promise them in return?

I am going to take care of you, he wanted to say to them. I know it seems impossible now, but it will all work out. You cannot see where I’m going, but I can, and it will delight you in the end.

Trust me.

And so many had honored Arthur with their trust.

He took the map from his pocket. He pulled it wide and sat down on the curb.

Bram gave a look of displeasure. “Arthur, it must be filthy down there-”

“She hadn’t a clue where she was going, man! That’s the key. If you knew nothing about this area, where would you go?” Arthur traced his fingers across the map as if it were written in braille.

“We walked directly from the Metropolitan Station to the docks, and I didn’t see any other spicers along the way.”

Arthur looked hard at the map.

“We walked to the docks directly,” he said. “Directly! That’s it!”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“We walked to the docks directly, by taking the most direct route, because you knew how to get here! But Sally would not have known the most direct route. Remember how I stopped at Wellclose Square and started off to the left?”

“Yes,” said Bram, beginning to put it together himself. “The street opened out that way. But it doesn’t actually lead toward the docks, it only leads east and back up to Cable Street.”

“But I didn’t know that!” said Arthur with great excitement. “Without you there to correct me, I would have headed into the square!”

He leaped to his feet. He was almost run over by a broad four-wheeler as he dashed into the street. The baying horses missed him by only a few inches. The carriage driver shouted something that sounded like an obscenity, though Arthur wasn’t paying enough attention to hear precisely what the man had said. He turned around and raced back north up Leman Street, away from the docks. Bram ran just behind him.

In the center of Wellclose Square, the Danish Church rose two stories above the Neptune Street Prison to its left. A flophouse for sailors, run by the Methodist Mariners Church, lay east of the square, beside the London Nautical School. Looking over the run-down inhabitants of the square, Arthur couldn’t help but think that the whole of the East End conformed to the square’s odd architectural organization: church, then prison, then slum; church, then prison, then slum.

Between the throngs of dark-faced sailors, Arthur spied another Oriental shop across the square. He ran to it eagerly.

But inside, he found the shopkeeper little more help than the previous one. Though of Eastern descent, the man did not administer tattoos. Arthur left dejected, again shaken in his faith.

“I cannot bear it, Bram. We reasoned it out. My logic is incontrovertible. The steps, as I’ve described them, are orderly and sequential. As sure as two and two make four, Sally Needling came into this square. It is too reasonable to be untrue.”

Arthur sat down again on the cold dirt. He leaned back against the side wall of the mariners’ boardinghouse. Two small windows dotted the wall above his head. They were surrounded by wooden placards announcing the rules of the house: “All sailors welcome,” said one. “Orientals welcome” and “Alcohol is forbidden on the premises,” said others. A warm glow came from inside, illuminating the placards and casting a red backlight on Arthur’s hat.

Bram stood before Arthur and gave him a pitying look.

“I’m sorry, my friend. Perhaps reason ends at the Tower, and in the slums of East London we have only madness to guide us.

“Let us go back home,” Bram continued, “and get a good night’s rest. You look exhausted. Perhaps tomorrow some thought will have burst into your mind which-” Bram stopped speaking. His next words appeared caught in his mouth, before he then swallowed them back down. He had the queerest expression on his face that Arthur had ever seen.

“Bram? Is something the matter?”

“Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. Fuck.” Bram looked positively bewitched.

Arthur sighed, leaning his head against the wall and folding his hands across his lap.

“I’m aware that we’re among sailors here,” he gently chastised his friend, “but that hardly means you have to speak like one.”

Bram responded with a cackle. Arthur was growing concerned. Had Bram suddenly lost his wits?

“I can’t believe my own eyes,” said Bram through his laughter. “Arthur, stand up.”

With a shake of his head, Arthur ascended to his feet. He dusted the dirt off his coat with a few pats of his hand.

“Now, turn around.”

Arthur turned around and faced the wall of the mariners’ flophouse.

Not six inches from his face was a pen-and-paper drawing of a threeheaded crow. It was tacked to one of the wooden placards on the wall, the one that announced “Orientals welcome.” The drawing was identical to the one Arthur held in his coat pocket.