At first it appeared there’d be trouble with Mary Jane’s door. How was I to enter it? The door was eternally locked, I guessed by the mechanical magic of a spring-driven mechanism, and I was no lock picker and it was late in life to pick up new skills, especially those as recondite as slipping a betty into the tumblers and turning them. Besides, no one in my circle would know such a thing, and how would I find a teacher?

Since the construction was rather flimsy, I judged a good shove might cause it to give way, but you could never predict how wood split; it might crack like a rifle shot as I broke through it, and wake up all of Miller’s Court, so I’d find myself at the end of an ad hoc vigilante committee rope, dangling off the chimney and making the area by far more famous than it deserved. I assumed that Mary Jane had the key, and I wondered about hiring a fellow to pick her pocket, a trade that was not uncommon in London. Yet that possibility came fraught with difficulties, as in where would I find one of those fellows, why would he not suspect me (I could tell him I was a spurned lover meaning to give her a thump when she got home, but once my atrocity had been delivered, he would be smart enough, would he not, to add two plus two and point me out to the coppers, or at least furnish them with a description that didn’t involved a mysterious Jew man with a gold chain and a beak nose!).

No, no, that would never work. But by nightfall—my third foray into Miller’s Court—I solved the case, verily like Sherlock Holmes. Since the court was empty—it was ten, most of the girls were out on the street but hadn’t brought John home yet; most of the poor folk who were forced to endure the squalor out of lack of other opportunities were well abed—I felt free enough to examine more carefully. Mary Jane’s room was first on the right as you passed out of the entry passageway, but beyond it was a nook or gap where the privy, dustbin, water pump, and trough were set. If you dipped into the nook, you encountered two windows in the wall of Mary Jane’s room, one located in close proximity to the door on the ajoining wall. It occurred to me that through the window, one could easily reach the inside latch of the door and spring it.

I drifted close, made as if to drop a thing and bent to pick it up so as to justify my coming to a halt at that particular spot to unseen watchers, and as I arose, I made the astonishing discovery that the window was absent a pane. I put a quick hand through the opening, moved the curtain, and though it was dark, I could see within easy reach the latch, with its pull button for withdrawing the bolt, a common feature on perhaps 3.9 million of London’s 4 million doors.

I let the curtain fall and, without a haste denoting bad intentions, meandered toward the passageway, checked to see it was clear of incomers, and exited to Dorset Street. I knew I had found my way into Mary Jane’s place for the privacy I so urgently required.

Upon reaching the street, I turned right and continued down Dorset, now and then pausing to scan behind me, not out of worry but out of general principle. Nothing untoward obtained. And so I crossed Dorset, reversed direction and returned to Commercial, and ambled slowly back to the Ten Bells, in hopes that I might see my darling again.

She was not there. It was odd. Not at the Bells, not on the street, not on her back in her room, doing her duty. Where had the angel gone? I puzzled, worried that she had reunited with Joe Barnett and they’d gone off to get married or something. I found it a rather crushing possibility. And then I saw her. She was with a fellow, not unlike me, dowdier perhaps, but clearly of the largely anonymous middle class, a clerk or tradesman or mechanic, out for his night of purloined bliss on the power of coin he’d not turned over to the missus. The two of them chatted amiably as they wended toward paradise, passing me without noting me, and were on to their tryst and I to my thoughts.

Suppose, then, I worried, on the night hence when all was set for, I penetrated and she was not there? She and Joe were at the pier in Brighton or walking a country lane outside Dublin, as I had heard the Irish trill in her voice. Or some bully had coshed her and run off with her purse and she was nursing a lump in some charity ward. All could happen as easily as not, and that was the problem of orienting to a particular place and time. You could not control the comings and goings of others. The possibility simmered in my stomach like an undigested lump of beef, turning sour in the bile. Agh, the frustration in it jabbed me immensely, and the prospect of losing all the careful planning and reconnoitering I had invested in the effort irritated me considerably. It occurred to me that instead of my careful plan, I might have to improvise another. I determined to put one together now so that I didn’t have to, come the night in question, on the fly.

I reasoned that, were I in this neighborhood on the hunt for Mary Jane and I encountered her absence, the next place to go was the Bells, as it seemed to represent a coagulation of girls. The barman might recognize me, as unlikely as that might seem, for he was a man who daily encountered three hundred faces, but the place was so widely windowed, I could pass by on the outside and determine if the Judys at rest inside for refreshment might soon exit. Noting one, I could wait until she moved, and I saw in my mind’s eye a play like the others: I approach, utter a banal “how do ye do?”, receive an invitation to accompany, and begin a mosey down this part of Commercial, which, though closest to 29 Hanbury, was still virgin territory for Jack. Where would I take her, where was my goal? As I wandered back down Commercial after parsing it for signs of ladies of the trade—they were there, as usual, in abundance—and after passing the lofty and majestic Christchurch, which was the Bells’ next-door neighbor across Fournier, I passed another block and came across a nice little alley. I examined it. Ah, excellent. It was obscure, another brick passageway that almost certainly went undocumented on all but the most precise maps. Peeking into it, I saw how easily I could lure my theoretical Judy into it to do her job, and there do my job. It might be better, even, for so close to Commercial—it would be the closest yet to a throbbing concourse—it could have the impact I so desired and needed. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind for Mary Jane, but it would do, and it served the purpose of calming my apprehension.

Well satisfied with the day’s labor, I headed back to other duties. Whatever happened, I believed, I was well prepared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Jeb’s Memoir

I had my thumb splayed across the twin hammers of the Howdah, which I gripped by the wooden forearm under the double barrels. I could easily crank them back, and that momentum would drive my hand to grip and triggers, and I could dispatch Jack in under a second if it came to that.

Dare and I approached, and I felt my heart hammering against my chest, my breath hot and dry in my nostrils, the bitter cold of the rain having vanished in the urgency of the action unfolding in which I was a key player.

He stood over her, leaning against the brick wall, while she seemed to have fallen to her knees. Were we too late? Had he already unleashed the death strokes, and had she in turn tumbled to earth to spurt dry of blood in the falling rain while he looked down, watching her die? That was what the scene suggested to me, and it filled me with rage.