And the rest: the hatred of the Afghan woman, easily generalized. The calmness in the face of the close-by cut to throat and the gush of crimson it produced. It was all there.

“And what have we learned?” asked the colonel.

“Nothing of note,” I lied. “He is indeed a brave man. Do you know much of his background, may I inquire?”

“Welsh-born, Sandhurst grad, third son of a Methodist minister, not much money in the family but a strain, clearly visible in the colonel, of brilliance. Now doing nothing but dictionary work, whereas in a sane world he’d be a cabinet minister.”

I nodded, though tried to hide how disturbed I was by the unassailable logic I had uncovered that the bravest of the brave was indeed Jack the Ripper.

“Now I shall be off, Mr. Jeb. Jeb, what kind of name is that, by the way? It seems I’ve given up some confidential information to a man whose name I do not even know. Come now, sir, at least explain yourself.”

“It’s a journalistic trope,” I said. “I was called as a youth various things, sometimes even Sonny. But I was in the register as a junior, even if my father was a drunkard and I cared not to be known by his name, so to some I went forth by his initials, which were G.B. My sister, a wonderful girl, could not keep the two letters apart, and in her mouth they elided into Jeb. So that is me, and for the record, sir, since you have asked, the moniker would be Shaw, George Bernard Shaw.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The Diary

Undated

Egress

I slipped out of the court, down the narrow passageway

and took my right to whatever street it was.

I cannot remember

though it was but hours ago. Had a plague come

as I was to work, and had it taken the rest of humanity?

It seemed I walked for days through the gray drift of the inclement,

my eyes squinted against the sting of the dagger-like drops,

a shiver running through my body as it tried to adjust to the cold.

Emptiness and echo everywhere, bits of paper blowing loose and tattered,

a dog with slattern ribs and no hope in its rheumy eyes, the smell

of garbage, shit, piss, and of course blood riding the cold breeze.

But in time, I saw them. One, then two, then three or four,

humans, that is, gradually assembling to face the day and whatever hell that meant.

I saw a teamster drive six mighty steeds down the street to deliver barrels of whatever,

I saw a copper standing vigilant, on duty however ineffectual, I saw a scatter of children,

full of energy and long and fast of leg, perhaps off to school or mischief,

I saw a mum or two, in a hansom carriage I saw a gentleman, maybe that was a Judy off the next block, maybe the small hunched gentleman a barrister or a barrister’s clerk,

a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a tinker, a tailor, a beggarman, a thief.

None of them so much as acknowledged me.

And why should they? After all, I was one of them.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Jeb’s Memoir

I told Professor Dare about my confirmation that the colonel had shown signs of the dyslexia condition that was the primal clue in his quest and that, as predicted, he had emerged from a morally nourishing humanitarian background.

“For my part,” I said, “I was not checking on you. I just had to know. It is unsettling to put such suspicion against so heroic a man. Something in me finds it unsavory.”

“Would you adjudge that physical bravery trumps deep moral evil? Is that your position?”

“No, of course. That not being so, however, does not make it anything to celebrate.”

“All right. I concur. Let us be sure, then. Have you another mechanism by which he may be tested?”

“No, of course not. It’s just that—” Then I said, “You would not say that unless you did.”

“Something has occurred to me. It’s somewhat dangerous, I suppose, and neither of us is particularly heroic.”

“Enter his rooms and search when he is absent?”

“I haven’t the spice for that, and I doubt you do, either. We are not cracksmen but amateurs, particularly in the action department.”

“True enough. So have you come up with something Sherlock Holmes might have conjured?”

“That damned fellow again. I must read that book you seem to think so highly of. As for this trick, it’s rather too basic for this Holmes’s elegant genius. You must merely ask yourself. It’s there, if you ponder rigorously. When is he vulnerable? When might his guard be down? When would he be unlikely to pull knife and cut his way out of an issue?”

I thought. I thought. I thought.

“His opium habit,” I finally said. “The drug puts him in a dream state. He may babble or confess or scream in guilt or cry in remorse. We do not force it upon him, he welcomes it and sees it as routine. But I could be there.”

“Is it in you to do so?”

I knew nothing of opium, its element, its practices, its dangers. But at the same time, I could not proceed with leverage against a man who had a VC without more proof that I believed in.

“I will find it in myself,” I said.

I was not without resources. I tutored with Constable Ross, assuming correctly that in his experience on the streets and within London’s lowest dives, rookeries, brothels, beer shops, gambling halls, and dogfighting arenas would be an acquaintanceship with opium dens. I was right, and thus armed, I waited outside and down the street on a bleak block on the margins of the Dockland for the colonel to show up, as the professor had insisted he would. Indeed he did, his banty stride giving him away, his energy in contrapuntal rhythm to the grimness of the spot somewhat amazing.

It was so West End melodramatic that I felt I was viewing something lit for the boards. He slid against a wood door in an otherwise blank brick wall and knocked, and just like onstage, a slot opened in the door, his identity was confirmed, a code was exchanged, and he was admitted.

“All right,” said Ross, who’d accompanied me on this trip to the demimonde as a buttress against my own terror, “now wait for him to get his pipe going, for the first calming effects to take hold, and then approach.”

“Indeed,” I said. “Damn, it’s cold.”

“It is, but soon you’ll forget the outer world. Now repeat to me what I have said.”

“I must partake of the first and even the second draw. The Chinaman will be watching. If I don’t, thugs will beat me and toss me out. From that point on, I can choose to not inhale but merely hold and release the vapor into the air and cut my consumption remarkably and only half descend into madness. I will feel effects, no doubt, dizziness, mild hallucinations, color exchanges, shape-changing, but nothing a man with a strong mind can’t handle.”

“What else?”

“Ahh”—drawing a blank, and then—“oh yes, the drug will hit me like a rugby tackle. I cannot avoid that, as I have no tolerance. It’s not Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup. I must not panic and instead let it take me. The stuff liquefies under heat, so one must be careful not to spill the pipe, as it will be a giveaway.”