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Chapter 8

Malcolm Moore had done a great deal of hard work during his career as freelance time guide. But nothing had come even remotely close to the bruising hours he’d put in setting up a base camp in a rented hovel in Whitechapel Road, guiding scholars and criminologists through the East End from well before sunup until the early morning hours, sleeping in two- and three-hour snatches, assisting them in the task of learning everything the scholars and Scotland Yard Inspectors wanted to know before the terror broke wide open on the final day of August.

The last thing Malcolm expected when the Britannia cycled near dusk, just nine hours before the first Ripper murder was what he found in the Spaldergate parlour. Having rushed upstairs from his work with the scholars ensconced in the cellar, he stood blinking in stupid shock at the sight of her. “Margo?”

“Malcolm!” His fiancée flung herself toward him, arms outstretched, eyes sparkling. “Oh, Malcolm! I missed you!”

The kiss left his head spinning. Giddy as a schoolboy and grinning like a fool, Malcolm drew back at last, reluctant to break away from the vibrant warmth of her, and stared, amazed, into her eyes. “But Margo, whatever are you doing here?”

“Reporting for duty, sir!” she laughed, giving him a mock salute. “Kit worked it out with Bax,” she said in a rush, eyes sparkling. “I’ll be guiding for the rest of the Ripper Watch tour, whatever you think I can handle, and Doug Tanglewood came through to help out, too, your message asking for assistance came through loud and clear!”

Malcolm grinned. “Bloody marvelous! It’s about time those dratted johnnies at Time Tours listened to me. How many additions to the Team did you bring through?”

Margo grimaced expressively.

“Oh, dear God,” he muttered, “that many?”

“Well, it’s not too bad,” Margo said guardedly. “Dr. Shahdi Feroz finally made it in. Mostly, it’s those reporters. Guy Pendergast and Dominica Nosette. I don’t know which is worse, honestly, the scholars or the newsies. Or the tourists,” she added, rolling her eyes at the flood of Ripperoons crowding into Spaldergate’s parlour.

“That, I can believe,” Malcolm muttered. “We haven’t much time to get them settled. Polly Nichols is scheduled to die at about five o’clock tomorrow morning, which means we’ll have to put our surveillance gear up sometime after two A.M. or so, when the pubs close and the streets grow a little more quiet. Daren’t put up the equipment sooner, someone might notice it. It’s not likely, since the wireless transmitters and miniaturized cameras and microphones we’ll be setting up are so small. Still and all… Let’s get them settled quickly, shall we, and take them downstairs to the vault. We’ve a base camp out in Whitechapel, but the main equipment is here, beneath Spaldergate, where we’ve the power for computers and recording equipment.”

Margo nodded. “Okay. Let’s get them moving. And the sooner we get those reporters under wraps, the better I’ll feel. They don’t listen at all and don’t follow rules very well, either.”

Malcolm grunted. “No surprise, there. The tourists the past few weeks have been bad enough, trying to duck out on their tour guides so they can cheat and stay long enough to see one of the murders. I expect the reporters will be even more delightful. Now, let’s find Mrs. Gilbert, shall we, and assign everyone sleeping quarters…”

An hour later, Malcolm and his fiancée escorted the newly arrived team members down into the vault beneath the house, where a perfectly ordinary wooden door halfway across a perfectly standard Victorian cellar opened to reveal a massive steel door that slid open on pneumatics. Beyond this lay a brightly lit computer center and modern infirmary. The scholars greeted one another excitedly, then immediately fell to squabbling over theories as well as practical approaches to research, while the newly arrived reporters busied themselves testing their equipment. Technicians nodded satisfactorily at the quality of the images and sound transmitted by cable from the carefully disguised receiving equipment on the roof of the house above this bubble of ultra-modern technology.

While the scholars and journalists worked, Margo quietly brought Malcolm up to date about events on the station. The news left Malcolm fretting, not just because the station was in danger if the riots continued, but because there was literally nothing he could do to help search for Ianira or her family while trapped on this side of the Britannia Gate. “I’ve heard about the Ansar Majlis,” Malcolm said tiredly, rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose. “Too much, in fact.”

“You had friends on TT-66, didn’t you?” Margo asked quietly, laying one gentle hand on his sleeve.

Malcolm sighed. “Yes. I’m afraid I did.”

“Anyone…” she hesitated, looking quite abruptly very young and unsure of herself.

Malcolm stroked her cheek. “No, Margo. No one like that.” He drew her close for a moment, blessing Kit for sending her here. He’d have to turn around and send her into danger out on the streets, he knew that, it was part of the dream which burned inside her and made her the young woman he loved so much; but for the moment, he was content merely to have her close. “Just very good friends, guides I’d known for years.”

She nodded, cheek rubbing against the fine lawn of the expensive gentleman’s shirt he’d put on to greet the new team members. “I’m sorry, Malcolm.”

“So,” he sighed, “am I. How much of the station had they managed to search before you had to leave?”

Margo’s description of search efforts on station was interrupted by the shrill of the telephone on the computer console behind them. Hooked into a much more antique-looking telephone in the house above, it was a direct link between the outside world and the vault. Malcolm pulled reluctantly away and snagged the receiver. “Yes?”

It was Hetty Gilbert, co-gatekeeper of the Time Tours Gatehouse. The news she had was even worse than Margo’s. All color drained from Malcolm’s cheeks as he listened. “Oh, dear God. Yes, of course. We’ll come up straight away.”

“What is it?” Margo asked breathlessly as he hung up again.

“Trouble. Very serious trouble.” He glanced at the monitor where, a few hours from now, they hoped to record the identity of Jack the Ripper. Weeks, he’d put in, preparing for that moment. And now it would have to wait. Reluctantly, Malcolm met Margo’s gaze again.

“What is it?” Margo demanded, as if half-afraid to hear the answer.

“We have a tourist missing,” he said quietly. “A male tourist.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yes. His name is Benny Catlin. The Gilberts are asking for our help with the search teams. Evidently, he has already killed someone in a brutal shooting at the Piccadilly Hotel. A Time Tours driver is in critical condition, should be arriving within minutes for surgery. He managed to telephone from the hotel before he collapsed.”

The animated excitement of the anticipated search for the Ripper’s identity drained from Margo’s face. Malcolm hated seeing the dread and fear which replaced it. Missing tourist… any time guide’s worst nightmare. And not just any tourist, either, but one who’d already committed murder in a quiet Victorian hotel. A missing and homicidal tourist, search teams combing London at the beginning of the Ripper’s reign of terror… and back on the station, riots and murders and kidnappings… Malcolm met Margo’s frightened gaze, read the same bleak assessment in her eyes which coursed through his entire being. Margo’s budding career as a time scout, her dreams, were as much on the line as his own. Malcolm hadn’t seen Margo look so frightened since that horrible little prison cell in Portuguese Africa.

Wordlessly, he took her hand, squeezed her fingers. “We’d better get up there.”

They headed upstairs at a dead run.

***

John Lachley hadn’t planned to walk down past the Royal Opera, tonight.

But he’d emerged from his lecture at the Egyptian Hall to find the street blocked by an overturned carriage, which had collided with a team of drays, spilling the contents of a freight wagon and several screaming, hysterical ladies into the street, more frightned than injured. Glancing impatiently at his pocket watch, he’d determined that there was time, after all, before meeting Maybrick at his surgery in Cleveland Street, and rendered medical assistance, then pushed his way through the crowd and snarled traffic in search of a hansom he might hire.

It was sheer, blind chance which sent him down toward the Opera, where a rank of cabs could normally be found waiting for patrons. Sheer, bloody chance that had sent him straight into the path of a young woman who appeared from the murk of the wet night, gabbling out a plea for help. John Lachley had been at the wrong end of many an attack from vicious footpads, growing up in the East End, a target for nearly everyone’s scorn and hatred. Rage had detonated through him, watching an innocent young man struggle with a knife-wielding assailant, fighting for his life.

So Lachley drew the pistol he’d concealed for the night’s work with Maybrick and strode forward, ridding the street of this particular vermin with a single shot to the back of the skull. He expected the young man’s shock, of course, no one reacted well to having blood and bits of brain spattered across his face, and he even expected the young woman’s distraught reaction, nearly fainting under the strain of their close call.

But he did not expect what happened when he sounded the beautiful young woman’s pulse. The words came pouring out of her, in flawless Greek, ancient Greek, even as she snapped rigid, straining away from him: Death hangs on the tree beneath the vault… down beneath the bricks where the boy’s sightless skull rests… and six shall die for his letters and his pride…

This girl could not possibly know about the letters, about Tibor, about Morgan’s skull, sitting as a trophy atop the flame-ringed altar, or the massive oak on which the little bastard had died. But she did. And more, she had prophesied that five others should die for the sake of Eddy’s accursed letters…

Who?

He couldn’t even hazard an educated guess. But he intended to find out. Oh, yes, he most certainly intended to find out. He reacted with the swiftness a childhood in the East End had taught him, brought up the pistol to eliminate the young man whose life he’d just saved. “Sorry, old chap. Nothing personal…”

He discharged the gun at the same instant the shaken young man realized Lachley’s intent. The blood-spattered man flung himself violently sideways, trying to save himself. The bullet grazed the side of his skull, sending him reeling, wounded, to the ground. Lachley snarled out an oath and brought the pistol up to fire again, while the girl screamed and fainted—

“Jenna!”

The shout was from almost directly in front of him. Lachley jerked his gaze up and found a wild-eyed woman in a shabby dress racing toward him, twenty yards away and closing fast. She had an enormous revolver in one hand and was pointing it right at Lachley. With only a split-second to decide, Lachley loosed off a wild shot at the approaching woman to delay her and snatched up the unconcious girl at his feet. A gunshot ripped through the damp night and a bullet whipped past his ear, knocking his top hat to the street. Lachley swore and bolted with his prize, flung her across one shoulder and ran down toward Drury Lane and SoHo’s maze of mean, narrow streets.

He fully expected to hear the hue and cry sounded as constables were summoned; but no cry came, nor did any footsteps chase after him. Lachley slowed to a more decorous pace, discovering he was halfway down Drury Lane, and allowed his pulse to drop from its thunderous roar in his ears. With the panic of flight receding, rational thought returned. He paused for a moment in a narrow alley, shaking violently, then mastered himself and drew deep, gulping lungfuls of wet air to calm the tremors still ripping through him. Dear God… What was he to make of this?

He shifted the unconscious girl, cradled her in both arms, now, as though he were merely assisting a young lady in distress, and stared down at her pallid features. She was a tiny little thing, delicate of stature. Her face was exquisite and her rich black hair and olive cast of skin bespoke Mediterranean heritage. She’d gabbled out her plea for help in English, but the words spoken in shock—almost, he frowned, in a trance—had been the purest Greek he’d ever heard. But not modern Greek. Ancient Greek, the language of Aristotle and Aristophanes… yet with a distinctive dialectic difference he couldn’t quite pin down.

He’d studied a great deal, since his charity school days, educated as a scholarship pupil at a school where the other boys had tormented him endlessly. He’d learned everything he could lay hands on, had drunk in languages and history the way East End whores downed gin and rum, had discovered a carton of books in the back of the school’s dingy, mouldering library, books donated by a wealthy and eccentric patroness who had dabbled in the occult. John Lachley’s knowledge of ancient languages and occult practices had grown steadily over the years, earning him a hard-earned reputation as a renowned SoHo scholar of antiquities and magical practices. Lachley could read three major ancient dialects of Greek, alone, and knew several other ancient languages, including Aramaic.

But he couldn’t quite place the source of this girl’s phrasing and inflections.

Her half-choked words spilled through his memory again and again, brilliant as an iron welder’s torch. Who was this insignificant slip of a girl? As he peered at her face, stepping back out into Drury Lane to find a gaslight by which to study her, he realized she couldn’t be more than twenty years of age, if that. Where had she learned to speak ancient Greek? Ladies were not routinely taught such things, particularly in the Mediterranean countries. And where in the names of the unholy ancient gods which Lachley worshiped had she acquired the clairvoyant talent he’d witnessed outside the Opera House? A talent of that magnitude would cause shockwaves through the circles in which Lachley travelled.

He frowned at the thought. Revealing her might prove dangerous at this juncture. Surely someone would miss the girl? Would search for her? No matter. He could keep her quite well hidden from any search and he intended to exploit her raw talent in every possible way he could contrive. His frown deepened as he considered the problem. It would be best to drug her for a bit, keep her quietly hidden at the top of the house, locked into a bedroom, until he could determine more precisely who she was, where she’d come from, and what efforts would be made to locate her by the young man and the poorly dressed woman with the revolver.

Beyond that, however…

Lachley smiled slowly to himself. Beyond that, the future beckoned, with this girl as the instrument by which he viewed it and Prince Albert Victor as the key to controlling it. John Lachley had searched for years, seeking a true mystic with such a gift. He’d read accounts in the ancient texts, written in as many languages as he had been able to master. His fondest dream had been to find such a gifted person somewhere in the sprawling metropolis that was capitol city to the greatest empire on earth, to bring them under his mesmeric control, to use their powers for his own purposes. In all his years of searching, he had found only charlatans, like himself, tricksters and knaves and a few pathetic old women mumbling over tea leaves and cut crystal spheres in the backs of Romany wagons. He had all but lost hope of finding a real talent, such as the ancient texts had described. Yet here she was, not only vibrantly alive, she’d quite literally run straight into his arms, begging his help.

His smile deepened. Not such a bad beginning to the evening, after all. And by morning, Eddy’s letters would be safely in his hands.

Really, the evening was turning out to be most delightful, an adventure truly worthy of his skills and intellect. But before he quite dared celebrate, he had to make certain his prize did not succumb to shock and die before he could make use of her.

Lachley’s hands were all but trembling as he carried her through increasingly poorer streets, down wretched alleyways, until he emerged, finally, with many an uneasy glance over his shoulder, onto the broad thoroughfare of the Strand, where wealth once again flaunted its presence in the houses of the rich and the fine shops they patronized. He had no trouble, there, flagging down a hansom cab at last.

“Cleveland Street,” he ordered curtly. “The young lady’s quite ill. I must get her to my surgery at once.”

“Right, guv,” the cabbie nodded.

The cab lurched forward at an acceptably rapid pace and Lachley settled himself to sound his prize’s pulse and listen to the quality of her breathing. She was in deep shock, pulse fast and thready, skin clammy and chill. He cradled her head almost tenderly, wondering who the young man with her had been and who had attacked them. A Nichol footpad, most likely. They prowled the area near the Opera, targeting the wealthy gentlemen who frequented the neighborhood, so close to the slums of SoHo. That particular footpad’s fatal loss, however, was his immense gain.

The cab made excellent time, bringing him to his doorstep before she’d even regained consciousness from her dead faint. Charles answered the bell, since fumbling for his key was too awkward while carrying her. His manservant’s calm facade cracked slightly at the sight of his unconscious prize. “Whatever has happened, sir?”

“The young lady was attacked by footpads on the street. I must get her to the surgery at once.”

“Of course, sir. Your scheduled patient has arrived a little early. Mr. Maybrick is waiting in the study.”

“Very good, Charles,” Lachley nodded, leaving the butler to close and lock the door. James Maybrick could jolly well wait a bit longer. He had to secure this girl, quickly. He carried her back through the house and set her gently onto the examining table, where he retrieved his stethoscope and sounded her heartbeat. Yes, shock, right enough. He found blankets, elevated her feet, covered her warmly, then managed to rouse the girl from her stupor by chafing her wrists and placing warm compresses along her neck. She stirred, moaned softly. Lachley smiled quietly, then poured out a draught of his potent aperitif. He was lifting the girl’s head, trying to bring her round sufficiently to swallow it, when Charles appeared at the door to the surgery.

“Dr. Lachley, I beg pardon, sir, but Mr. Maybrick is growing quite agitated. He insists on seeing you immediately, sir.”

Lachley tightened his hands around the vial of medicine and forcibly fought back an unreasoning wave of rage. Ill-timed bastard! I’ll bloody well shoot him through the balls when this night’s business is done! “Very well!” he snapped. “Tell him I’ll be there directly.”

The girl was only half-conscious, but more than awake enough to swallow the drug. He forced it past her teeth, then held her mouth closed when she struggled, weak and trembling in his grasp. A faint sound of terror escaped from between ashen lips before she swallowed involuntarily. He got more of the drug down her throat, then gave curt instructions to the waiting manservant. “Watch her, Charles. She’s quite ill. The medicine should help her sleep.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Move her to the guest room as soon as the medicine takes hold. I’ll check on her again after I’ve seen Mr. Maybrick.”

Charles nodded and stepped aside to let him pass. Lachley stormed past, vowing to take a suitable vengeance for the interruption. Then he drew multiple calming breaths, fixed in place a freezing smile, and steeled himself to suffer the slings and arrows of a fortune so outrageous, even the bloody Bard would’ve been driven to murder, taking up arms against it. One day, he promised himself, I shall laugh about this.

Preferably, on the day James Maybrick dropped off a gallows.

Meanwhile…

He opened the door briskly and greeted the madman waiting beyond. “My dear Mr. Maybrick! So delighted to see you, sir! Now, then, what seems to be the trouble this evening…”

Beyond James Maybrick’s pasty features, beyond the windows and their heavy drapes and thick panes of wavy glass, lightning flickered, promising another storm to match the one in Lachley’s infuriated soul.

Kit Carson knew he was a hopelessly doting grandfather when, twenty-four hours after Margo’s departure for London, he was seriously considering going through the Britannia the next time it opened, just to be near her. He missed the exasperating little minx more than he’d have believed possible. The apartment they shared was echoingly empty. Dinner was a depressingly silent affair. And not even the endless paperwork waiting for him at the Neo Edo’s office could distract him from his gloom. Worse, they’d found no trace of Ianira Cassondra, her husband Marcus, or the cassondra’s beautiful children, despite the largest manhunt in station history. Station security hadn’t been any more successful finding the two people who’d shot three men on station, either, despite their being described in detail by a full two dozen eyewitnesses.

By the next day, when the Wild West Gate cycled into Denver’s summer of 1885, tempers amongst the security squads were running ragged. Ianira’s up-time acolytes—many of them injured during the rioting—were staging protests that threatened to bring commerce in Little Agora to a screeching halt. And Kit Carson—who’d spent a fair percentage of his night working with search teams, combing the rocky bowels of the station for some trace of the missing down-timers—needed a drink as badly as a dehydrated cactus needed a desert rainstorm in the spring.

Unshaven and tired, with a lonely ache in his chest, Kit found himself wandering into Frontier Town during the pre-gate ruckus, looking for company and something wet to drown his sorrows. He couldn’t even rely on Malcolm to jolly him out of his mood—Malcolm was down the Britannia with Margo, lucky stiff. A sardonic smile twisted Kit’s mouth. Why he’d ever thought retirement would be any fun was beyond him. Nothing but massive doses of boredom mingled with thieving tourists who stripped the Neo Edo’s rooms of everything from towels to plumbing fixtures, and endless gossip about who was doing what, with or to whom, and why. Maybe I ought to start guiding, just for something to do? Something that didn’t involve filling out the endless government paperwork required for running a time-terminal hotel…

“Hey, Kit!” a familiar voice jolted him out of his gloomy maunderings. “You look sorrier than a wet cat that’s just lost a dogfight.”

Robert Li, station antiquarian and good friend, was seated at a cafe table outside Bronco Billy’s, next to the Arabian Nights contruction crew foreman. Li’s dark eyes glinted with sympathetic good humor as he waved Kit over.

“Nah,” Kit shook his head, angling over to grab one of the empty chairs at Robert’s table, “didn’t lose a dogfight. Just missing an Imp.”

“Ah,” Robert nodded sagely, trying to look his inscrutable best. A maternal Scandinavian heritage had given the antiquarian his fair-skinned coloring, but a paternal Hong Kong Chinese grandfather had bequeathed Li his name, the slight almond shape of his eyes, and the self-ascribed duty to go inscrutable on command. “The nest empties and the father bird chirps woefully.”

Kit smiled, despite himself. “Robert?”

“Yeah?”

“Save it for the tourists, huh?”

The antiquarian grinned, unrepentant, and introduced him to the foreman.

“Kit, meet Ammar Kalil Ben Mahir Riyad, foreman of the Arabian Nights construction team. We’ve just been discussing pre-Islamic Arabian artwork. He’s worried about the Arabian Nights tourists, because they’re going to try smuggling antiquities out through the gate and he wanted to know if I could help spot the thefts.”

“Of course,” Kit nodded, shaking hands across the table and greeting him in Arabic, of which he knew only a few words. The foreman smiled and returned the greeting, then his eyes turned serious. “I will stay only a moment longer, Mr. Carson, our work shift begins again soon.” He hesitated, then said, “I wish to apologize for the problems some of my workers have caused. I was not given any choice in the men I brought into TT-86. Others did the hiring. Most of us are Suni, we have no quarrel with anyone, and even most up-time Shi’ia do not agree with this terrible Brotherhood. I did not know some of the men were members, or I would have refused to take them. If I could afford to send away those who started the fighting, I would. But it is not in my power to fire them and we are already behind schedule. I have docked their wages and written letters of protest to my superiors, which I will send through Primary when it opens. I have asked for them to be replaced with reliable workers who will not start riots. Perhaps,” he hesitated again, looking very worried, “you could speak with your station manager? If the station deports them, I cannot be held responsible and my superiors will have to send reliable men to replace them, men who are not in the Ansar Majlis.”

“I’ll talk to Bull Morgan,” Kit promised.

Relief touched his dark eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Carson. Your word means a great deal.” He glanced at Robert and a hint of his smile returned. “I enjoyed very much discussing my country’s ancient art with you, Mr. Li.”

“The pleasure was mine,” Robert smiled. “Let’s meet again, when you have more time.”

They shook hands, then the foreman took his leave and disappeared into the crowds thronging Frontier Town. Robert said, “Riyad’s a good man. This trouble’s really got him upset.”

“Believe me, I’ll take it up with Bull. If we don’t stop this trouble, there won’t be a station left for Riyad to finish working on.”

Robert nodded, expression grim, then waved over a barmaid. “Name your poison, Kit. You look like you could use a dose. I know I could.”

“Firewater,” Kit told the barmaid. “A double, would you?”

“Sure, Kit.” She winked. “One double firewater, coming right up. And another scotch?” she added, glancing at Robert’s half-empty glass.

“No, make mine a firewater, too.”

Distilled on station from God alone knew what, firewater was a favorite with residents. Tourists who’d made the mistake of indulging had occasionally been known to need resuscitation in the station infirmary. As they waited for their drinks to arrive, a slender young man in black, sporting a badly stained, red silk bandana, reeled toward them in what appeared to be the terminal stages of inebriation. His deeply roweled silver spurs jangled unevenly as he staggered along and his Mexican sombrero lay canted crookedly down over his face, adding to his air of disconsolate drunkenness.

“I’d say that kid’s been tippling a little too much firewater, himself,” Li chuckled.

The kid in question promptly staggered against their table. Robert’s drink toppled and sloshed across the table. A lit candle dumped melted wax into Robert’s plate and silverware scattered all over the concrete floor. The caballero rebounded in a reeling jig-step that barely kept him on his feet, and kept going, trailing a stench of whiskey and garlic that set both Kit and Robert Li coughing. A baggage porter, bent nearly double under a load of luggage, trailed gamely after him, trying to keep his own course reasonably straight despite his employer’s drunken meanderings through the crowd.

“Good God,” Kit muttered, picking up scattered silverware as Robert mopped up the spill on the table, “is that idiot still drunk?”

“Still?” Robert Li asked as the waitress brought their drinks and whisked away the mess on the table.

“Yeah,” Kit said, sipping gingerly at his firewater, “we saw him yesterday. Kid was bragging about winning some shooting competition down the Wild West Gate.”

“Oh, that.” Robert nodded as the drunken tourist attempted to navigate thick crowds around the Denver Gate’s departures lounge. He stumbled into more people than he avoided, leaving a trail of profanity in his wake and more than a few ladies who made gagging noises when he passed too close. “Yes, there’s a group of black-powder enthusiasts from up time going through this trip, mostly college kids, some veteran shooters. Plan to spend several weeks at one of the old mined-out ghost towns. They’re running a horseback, black-powder competition, one that’s not bound by Single Action Shooting Society rules and regulations. Paula Booker, of all people, came in the other day, told me all about it. She’s taking a vacation, believe it or not, plans to compete for the trophy. Bax told the tour organizers they had to take a surgeon with ’em, in case of accidents, so Paula made a deal to trade her skills in exchange for the entry fee and a free gate ticket.”

Kit chuckled. “Paula always was a smart lady. Good for her. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years.”

“She was all excited about the competiton. They can’t use anything but single-action pistols in up-time sanctioned competitions any more, which kind of takes the variety out of a shooting match that’s supposed to be based on actual historical fact.”

Kit snorted. “I’d say it would. Well, if that idiot,” he nodded toward the wake of destruction the drunken tourist was leaving behind him, “would sober up, maybe he’d have a chance of hitting something. Like, say, the side of a building. But he’s going to waste a ton of money if he keeps pouring down the whiskey.”

Li chuckled. “If he wants to waste his money, I guess it’s his business. I feel sorry for his porter, though. Poor guy. His boss already needs a bath and they haven’t even left yet.”

“Maybe,” Kit said drily, “they’ll dump him in the ghost town’s gold-mining flume and scrub him off?”

Robert Li lifted his glass in a salute. “Here’s to a good dunking, which I’d say he deserves if any tourist ever did.”

Kit clinked his glass against his friend’s and sipped, realizing as he did that he felt less lonely and out of sorts already. “Amen to that.”

Bronco Billy’s cafe was popular during a cycling of the Wild West Gate because its “outdoor” tables stood close enough to the departures lounge, they commanded a grand view of any and all shenanigans at the gate. Which was why Robert Li had commandeered this particular table, the best of the lot available. They spotted Paula in the departures lounge and waved, then Kit noticed Skeeter Jackson working the crowd. “Now, there’s a kid I feel for.”

Robert followed his gaze curiously. “Skeeter? For God’s sake, why? Looks like he’s up to his old tricks is all.”

Kit shook his head. “Look again. He’s hunting, all right. For Ianira and Marcus and their kids.”

Robert glanced sidelong at Kit for a moment. “You may just be right about that.”

Skeeter was studying arrivals intently, peering from face to face, even the baggage handlers. The expression of intense concentration, of waning hope, of fear and determination, were visible even from this distance. Kit understood how Skeeter felt. He’d had friends go missing without a trace, before. Scouts, mostly, with whom the odds had finally caught up, who’d stepped through a gate and failed to return, or had failed to reach the other side, Shadowing themselves by inadvertently entering a time where they already existed. It must be worse for Skeeter, since no one expected resident down-timers to go missing in the middle of a crowded station.

Kit sat back, wondering how long Skeeter would push himself, like this, before giving up. Station security already had. The wannabe gunslinger approached the ticket counter to present his ticket and identification. He had to fish through several pockets to find it.

“Joey Tyrolin!” he bellowed at a volume loud enough to carry clear across the babble of voices to their table. “Sharpshooter! Gonna win me tha’ shootin’ match. Git me that gold medal!”

The unfortunate ticket agent flinched back, doubtless at the blast of garlic and whiskey fired point-blank into her face. Kit, who’d been able to read lips for several decades, made out the pained reply, spoken rapidly and to all appearances on one held breath: “Good-evening-Mr.-Tyrolin-let-me-check-you-in-sir-yes-this-seems-to-be-in-perfect-order-go-right-on-through-sir…”

Kit had never seen any Time Tours employee check any tourist through any gate with such speed and efficiency, not in the history of Shangri-La Station. Across the table, Robert Li was sputtering with laughter. The infamous Mr. Tyrolin, weaving on his cowboy-booted feet, turned unsteadily and peered out from under his cockeyed sombrero. He hollered full blast at the unfortunate porter right behind him. “Hey! Henry or Sam or whoever y’are! Get m’luggage over here! Li’l gal here’s gotta tag it or somethin’…”

The poor baggage handler, dressed in a working man’s dungarees and faded check shirt, staggered back under the blast, then ducked his head, coughing. His own hat had already slid down his brow, from walking bent double. The brim banged his nose, completely hiding his face as the unlucky porter staggered up to the counter and fumbled through pockets for his own identification. He presented it to the ticket agent along with Mr. Tyrolin’s baggage tags and managed, in the process, to drop half his heavy load. Cases and leather bags scattered in a rain of destruction. Tourists in line behind him leaped out of the way, swearing loudly. The woman directly behind the hapless porter howled in outrage and hopped awkwardly on one foot.

“You idiot! You nearly broke my foot!” She hiked up a calico skirt and peered at her shoe, a high-topped, multi-buttoned affair with a scuff visible across the top where a case had crashed down on top of it. Tears were visible on her face beneath the brim of her calico sunbonnet. “Watch what you’re doing, you fumble-fingered moron!”

The porter, mouthing abject apologies, was scrambling for the luggage while the ticket clerk, visibly appalled, was rushing around the counter to assist the injured tourist.

“Ma’am, I’m so dreadfully sorry—”

“You ought to be! For God’s sake, can’t you get him out of the way?” The unfortunate porter had lost his balance again and nearly crashed into her a second time. “I paid six thousand dollars for this ticket! And that clumsy jackass just dropped a trunk on my foot!”

The harried ticket agent was thrusting the porter’s validated ticket into the nearest pocket she could reach on his dungarees, while waving frantically for baggage assistance and apologizing profusely. “I’m terribly sorry, we’ll get this taken care of immediately, ma’am, would you like for me to call a doctor to the gate to see your foot?”

“And have them put me in a cast and miss the gate? My God, what a lot of idiots you are! I ought to hire a lawyer! I’m sorry I ever signed that stupid hold harmless waiver. Well don’t just stand there, here’s my ticket! I want to sit down and get off my poor foot! It’s swelling up and hurts like hell!”

Time Tours baggage handlers scrambled to the porter’s assistance, hauling scattered luggage out of the way so the irate, foot-sore tourist could complete her check-in procedure and hobble over to the nearest chair. She sent endless black and glowering glares at the drunken Joey Tyrolin and his porter, who was now holding his employer’s head while that worthy was thoroughly sick into a decorative planter. Another Time Tours employee, visibly horrified, was fetching a wet cloth and basin. Paula Booker and the other Denver-bound tourists crowded as far as possible from Joey Tyrolin’s corner of the departures lounge. Even Skeeter Jackson was steering clear of the mess and its accompanying stench.

“Oh, Kit,” Robert Li was wiping tears, he was laughing so hard. “I feel sorry for Joey Tyrolin when he sobers up! That lady is gonna make his life one miserable, living nightmare for the next two weeks!”

Kit chuckled. “Serves him right. But I feel sorrier for the porter, poor sap. He’s going to catch it from both of ’em.”

“Too true. I hope he’s being well paid, whoever he is. Say, Kit, I haven’t had a chance to ask, who do you think the Ripper’s going to turn out to be?”

“Oh, God, Robert, not you, too?” Kit rolled his eyes and downed another gulp of firewater.

“C’mon, Kit, ’fess up. Bets are running hot and heavy it turns out to be some up-timer. But I know you. I’m betting you won’t fall for that. Who is it? A deranged American actor appearing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Mary Kelly’s lesbian lover? Francis Tumblety, that American doctor who kept women’s wombs pickled in jars? Aaron Kosminski or Michael Ostrog, the petty thief and con artist? Maybe Frederick Bailey Deeming, or Thomas Neil Cream, the doctor whose last words on the gallows were ‘I am Jack—’? Or maybe a member of a Satanic cult, sacrificing victims to his Dark Lord? Like Robert Donston Stephenson or Aleister Crowley?”

Kit held up a hand, begging for mercy. “Please, enough! I’ve heard all the theories! I’d as soon believe it was Lewis Carroll or the queen’s personal physician. The evidence is no better for them than for anybody else you’ve just named. Personally? If it wasn’t James Maybrick, and the case against him is a pretty good one, if you don’t discount the diary as a forgery—and the forensic and psychological evidence in favor of the diary are pretty strong—then I think it was a complete stranger, someone none of our Ripperologists has identified or even suspected.”

“Or the Ripperoons who think they’re Ripperologists,” Li added with a mischievous glint in his eye. Every resident on station had already had a bellyful of the self-annointed “experts” who arrived on station to endlessly argue the merits of their own pet theories. “Well,” Robert drawled, a smile hovering around the corners of his mouth, “you may just be right, Kit. Guess we’ll find out next week, won’t we?”

“Maybe,” Kit chuckled. “I’d like to see the faces of the Ripper Watch Team if it does turn out to be somebody they’ve never heard of.”

Robert laughed. “Lucky Margo. Maybe she’ll take pictures?”

Kit gave his friend a scowl. “She’d better do more than take a few snapshots!”

“Relax, Grandpa, Margo’s a bright girl. She’ll do you proud.”

“That,” Kit sighed, “is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Robert Li’s chuckle was as unsympathetic as the wicked twinkle in his eyes.

When, Kit wondered forlornly, did he get to start enjoying the role of grandpa? The day she gives up the notion of scouting, his inner voice said sourly. Trouble was, the day Margo gave up the dream of scouting, both their hearts would break. Sometimes—and Kit Carson was more aware of the fact than most people—life was no fair at all. And, deep down, he knew he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Neither would Margo. And that, Kit sighed, was one reason he loved her so much.

She was too much like him.

God help them both.

Ianira Cassondra did not know where she was.

Her mind was strangely lethargic, her thoughts slow and disjointed. She lay still, head aching, and knew only cold fear and a sickening sense of dislocation behind her eyelids. The smells and distant sounds coming through the fog in her mind were strange, unfamiliar. A harsh, acrid stink, like black dust in the back of her throat… a rhythmic ticking that might have been an old-fashioned clock like the ones in Connie Logan’s shop or perhaps the patter of rain against a roof… That wasn’t possible, of course, they couldn’t hear rain in the station.

Memory stirred, sharp and terrible despite the lassitude holding her captive, whispered that she might not be in the station. She’d been smuggled out of TT-86 in Jenna Caddrick’s steamer trunk. And something had gone terribly wrong at the hotel, men had come after them with silenced, up-time guns, forcing them to flee through the window and down the streets. She was in London, then. But where in London? Who had brought her to this place? One of the men trying to kill them? And why did she feel so very strange, unable to move or think clearly? Other memories came sluggishly through the murk. The attack in the street. Running toward the stranger in a top hat and coat, begging his help. The belch of flame and shattering roar of his pistol, shooting the assassin. The touch of his hand against her wrist—

Ianira stiffened as shock poured through her, weak and disoriented as she was. Goddess! The images slammed again through her mind, stark and terrible, filled with blood and destruction. And with that memory came another, far more terrible: their benefactor’s pistol raised straight at Jenna’s face, the nightmare of the gun’s discharge, Jenna’s long and terrible fall to the pavement, blood gushing from her skull…

Ianira was alone in London with a madman.

She began to tremble and struggled to open her eyes, at least.

Light confused her for a moment, soft and dim and strange. She cleared her vision slowly. He had brought her to an unknown house. A fire burned brightly in a polished grate across from the bed where she lay. The room spoke of wealth, at least, with tasteful furniture and expensive paper on the walls, ornate decorations carved into the woodwork in the corners of the open, arched doorway leading to another room, she had no idea what, beyond the foot of her bed. Gaslight burned low in a frosted glass globe set into a wall bracket of polished, gleaming brass. The covers pulled up across her were thick and warm, quilted and expensive with embroidery.

The man who had brought her to this place, Ianira recalled slowly, had been dressed exceedingly well. A gentleman, then, of some means, even if a total madman. She shuddered beneath the expensive covers and struggled to sit up, discovering with the effort that she could not move her head without the room spinning dizzily. Drugged… she realized dimly. I’ve been drugged.… Fear tightened down another degree.

Voices came to her, distantly, male voices, speaking somewhere below her prettily decorated prison. What does he want of me? She struggled to recall those last, horrifying moments on the street with Jenna, recalled him snarling out something in her own native language, the ancient Greek of her childhood, realized it had been a curse of shock and rage. How did a British gentleman come to know the language of ancient Athens and Ephesus? Her mind was too slow and confused to remember what she had learned on station of Londoners beyond the Britannia Gate.

The voices were closer, she realized with a start of terror. Climbing toward her. And heavy footfalls thudded hollowly against the sound of stairs. Then a low, grating, metallic sound came to her ears and the door swung slowly open. “—see to Mr. Maybrick, Charles. The medication I gave him will keep him quiet for the next several hours. I’ll come down and tend to him again in a bit, after I’ve finished here.”

“Very good, sir.”

Their voices sounded like the Time Tours Britannia guides, like the movies she and Marcus had watched about London. About—and her mind whirled, recalling the name this man had spoken, the name of Maybrick, a name she recognized with a chill of terror—about Jack the Ripper…

Then the door finished opening and he was there in the doorway, the man who had shot Jenna Caddrick and brought Ianira to this place. He stood unsmiling in the doorway for a long moment, just looking down into her open eyes, then entered her bedroom quietly and closed the door with a soft click. He turned an iron key in the lock and pocketed it. She watched him come with a welling sense of slow horror, could see the terrible blackness which hovered about him like a bottomless hunger…

“Well, then, my dear,” he spoke softly, and pulled a chair close to sit down at her side. “I really didn’t expect you to awaken so soon.”

She would have cowered from the hand he rested against her temple, had she been able to move. The rage surrounding this man slammed into her senses. She cried aloud, as though from a physical blow.

“No need to be afraid, my dear. I certainly won’t be harming you.” He laughed softly, at some joke she could not fathom. “Tell me your name.”

Her tongue moved with a will of its own. “Ianira…” The drugs in her veins roared through her mind, implacable and terrifying.

“Ianira? Where are you from? What last name have you?”

They called her Cassondra, after her title as priestess of Artemis. She whispered it out, felt as well as saw the surprise that rippled through him. “Cassondra? Deuced odd surname. Where the devil did you come from?”

Confusion tore through her. “The station—” she began.

“No, not the bloody train station, woman! Where were you born?”

“Ephesus…”

“Ephesus?” Shock tore through his eyes again. “You mean from the region of Turkey where that ancient place used to be? But why, then, do you speak Greek, when Turkestani is the language of that part of the world? And how is it you speak the Greek of Pericles and Homer?”

Too many questions, blurring together too quickly… He leaned across, seizing her wrist in a brutal grip. “Answer me!”

She cried out in mortal terror, struggled to pull away from the swamping horror of what she sensed in his soul. “Artemis, help me…” The plea was instinctive, choked out through the blackness flooding across her mind. His face swam into focus, very close to hers.

“Artemis?” he whispered, shock blazing through his eyes once more. “What do you know of Artemis, the Many-Breasted Goddess of Ephesus?”

The pain of his nearness was unendurable. She lapsed into the language of her childhood, pled with him not to hurt her, so…

He left her side, allowing relief to flood into her senses, but was gone only for a moment. He returned with a leather case, which he opened, removing a heavy, metal tube with a needle protruding from one end. “If you are unable to speak with what I’ve given you already,” he muttered, “no power of hell itself will keep you silent with this in your veins.”

He injected something into her arm, tore the sleeve of her dress to expose the crook of her elbow and slid the needle in. New dizziness flared as the drug went in, hurting with a burning pain. The room swooped and swung in agonizing circles.

“Now then, Miss Cassondra,” the voice of her jailor came through a blur, “you will please tell me who you are and where you come from and who the man was with you…”

Ianira plunged into a spinning well of horror from which there was no possible escape. She heard her voice answer questions as though in a dream, repeated answers even she could not make sense of, found herself slipping deep into prophetic trance as the images streamed into her mind, a boy hanging naked from a tree, dying slowly under this man’s knife, and a pitiful young man with royal blood in his veins, whose need for love was the most tragic thing about him, a need which had propelled him into the clutches of the man crouched above her now. Time reeled and spun inside her mind and she saw the terrified face of a woman, held struggling against a wooden fence, and other women, hacked to pieces under a madman’s knife…

She discovered she was screaming only when he slapped her hard enough to jolt her from the trance. She lay trembling, dizzy and ill, and focused slowly on his eyes. He sat staring down at her, eyes wide and shocked and blazing with an unholy sort of triumph. “By God,” he whispered, “what else can you do?”

When she was unable to speak, he leaned close. “Concentrate! Tell me where Eddy is now!”

The tragic, lonely young man flashed into her mind, surrounded by splendour such as Ianira had never dreamed might exist. He was seated at a long table, covered with gleaming silver and crystal and china edged in gold. An elderly woman in black Ianira recognized from photographs presided over the head of the table, her severe gaze directed toward the frightened young man.

“You are not to go wandering about in the East End again, Eddy, is that understood? It is a disgrace, shameful, such conduct. I’m sending you to Sandringham soon, I won’t stand for such behavior…”

“Yes, Grandmama,” he whispered, confused and miserable and frightened to be the object of her displeasure.

Ianira did not realize she had spoken aloud, describing what she saw until her jailor’s voice shocked her back into the little room with the expensive coverlets and the gas lights and the drugs in her veins. “Sandringham?” he gasped. “The queen is sending him to Scotland? Bloody hell…” Then the look in his eyes changed. “Might be just as well. Get the boy out of the road for a bit, until this miserable business is finished. God knows, I won’t risk having him connected with it.”

Ianira lay trembling, too exhausted and overwhelmed by horror to guess at her fate, trapped in this madman’s hands. He actually smiled down at her, brushing the hair back from her brow. “Your friends,” he whispered intimately. “Will they search for you?”

Terror exploded. She flinched back, gabbled out the fear of pursuit, the gunmen in the hotel, the threat to her life from faceless men she had never met… Fear drained away at the sound breaking from him. Laughter. He was staring down into her eyes and laughing with sheer, unadulterated delight. “Dear God,” he wheezed, leaning back in his chair, “they daren’t search for you! Such a bloody piece of luck! No doubt,” he smiled, “someone influential was disquieted by what you can do, my dear lady. Never fear, I shall protect you from all harm. You are much too precious, too valuable a creature to allow anyone to find you and bring you to grief.” He leaned close and stroked the back of her hand. “Mayhap,” he chuckled, “I’ll even take you to wife, as an added precaution.”

She closed her eyes against horror at such a fate.

He leaned down and brushed his lips to hers, then murmured, “I’ve work to do, this evening, my lovely pet, very serious work, which must take me from your side. And you must rest, recover from the shocks to your system. Tomorrow, however…” He chuckled then stroked her brow, the chill of her wet cheek. “Tomorrow should prove most entertaining, indeed.”

He left her, drugged and helpless, in the center of the bed and carefully locked the door behind him. Ianira lay weeping silently until the medication he had given her dragged her down into darkness.

They didn’t intend to stay long.

In fact, they hadn’t intended to take the train to Colorado Springs with the rest of the tour group, or ride all the way out to the derelict mining camp in the mountains far to the west of the train station, not at all. Not with Artemisia and Gelasia asleep in a big, awkward trunk, sedated and breathing bottled oxygen from the same type of canisters they’d sent with Ianira into London. Marcus, terrified for his children’s safety, had packed away a spare oxygen bottle for each of the girls, just in case something went wrong. And it had. Badly wrong.

They’d been followed through the Wild West Gate.

Just as Noah had predicted.

“His name’s Sarnoff,” Noah Armstrong muttered, pointing him out with a slight nod of the head. “Chief of security for a real bad sort named Gideon Guthrie. And Guthrie’s specialty is making people disappear when they’re too much of a threat. Real sweet company, Jenna’s Daddy keeps. We can’t do a damned thing yet. If we bolt now, he’s just going to follow us. Then he’ll choose the time and place, when there aren’t a truckful of witnesses nearby. But if we head for that mining camp with the rest of the shooting competition tour, he’ll have to follow us, with all those up-time witnesses lurking everywhere. Then we can choose the time and place, jump him when he’s not expecting it.”

“I can stick a knife through his ribs,” Julius offered, glaring out from under the calico bonnet he’d donned in his role doubling for Jenna.

The detective said sharply, “No, not here!” When Julius looked like arguing, Noah shot a quelling look at the down-time teenager. “Too many witnesses. If we have to explain why murder is really self-defense, it’ll just give the next death squad they send after us the chance they need to hit us while we’re cooling our heels in the station’s jail. So we wait until we’re up in the mountains. Marcus, you’ll be riding with the baggage mules when we leave the train station. Keep the trunk with the girls at the very back of the mule train. It’s a long ride out there, so we’ll have to switch out the oxygen canisters partway. Tell the other porters the mule’s thrown a shoe or something, just get that trunk open and switch out the bottles. They’ll both sleep until sometime tonight, but they’ll need air in a few hours.”

So that was what they did, Marcus trembling at the thought of the danger to his little girls. And he had no assurance that Ianira was safe, either, that no one had followed her to London. He bit one lip, wishing desperately they had all been able to go through one gate together as a family. But Jenna Caddrick and Noah Armstrong had argued the point forcefully.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t brought anything like enough supplies to take his precious children all the way out to the rugged mining camp where the shooting competition was to be held. They’d planned for Marcus and the girls to bolt out of Denver, to ditch the tour and take a train east into the Great Plains which he had seen in so many cowboy movies. They would hide in one of the big cities like Chicago or St. Louis for three or four cycles of the Wild West Gate, just long enough for Noah to eliminate any threat which might come through from up time on the next cycle of the gate.

Then they could slip back onto the station, after Noah had gone back up time, taking to the legal authorities the proof which the detective had brought onto the station. Only when the men responsible for the murderous attacks had been jailed, would Marcus and his little family be safe again. And Julius, too. The teenage leader of Shangri-La’s Lost and Found Gang had come through the Porta Romae, same as Marcus had. Julius was playing his part as Jenna’s double with superb skill, laying a false trail for their pursuers to follow. His act at the departures lounge, dressed as an aggrieved lady tourist bawling about her injured foot had convinced onlookers, while Noah, acting the role of the drunken Joey Tyrolin, had drawn all attention away from Marcus, who’d needed to remain anonymous until safely on the other side of the gate.

Marcus had taken Julius’ own station identification, so he could act as “Joey Tyrolin’s” baggage porter to disguise his own identity. Julius had used a fake ID produced by the ever-resourceful Noah Armstrong. Jenna Caddrick had furnished it, as well as the money for the Denver Gate tickets. Marcus’ throat closed, just thinking of the risk Noah and Jenna and young Julius were running to keep his family safe. Ianira and his children had never seemed so fragile to Marcus, never more precious to him. They had agreed to the charade, because they’d had no other choice.

But Marcus had never ridden a horse in his life. And while he had once been accustomed to the burning brilliance of a Mediterranean sun, he’d lived for several years in the sunless world of TT-86. Despite the broad-brimmed hat which shaded his face, by the time they were an hour out on the trail, Marcus was sunburnt, sore in more places than he’d realized his body possessed, and miserably homesick for the station and his wife and his many ’eighty-sixer friends.

“We’ll go through with the itinerary we set up,” Noah Armstrong told them on the trail. “That way, the bastard following us will think we haven’t twigged to who he is. Any edge we can find, we need.” Dressed in a cowboy’s gear, Noah Armstrong was more difficult than ever to pigeonhole as a man or a woman. Each time Marcus thought he’d gathered enough clues to decide, the up-time detective did or said something which threw all his theories into chaos again.

Marcus had seen individuals like Noah Armstrong before, in the slave markets of Rome. Ambiguous in the way their bodies grew into adulthood, developing into neither man nor woman, such people were exceedingly rare in nature. But they were pitifully common on auction blocks. Boys in Roman slave markets were routinely castrated as children to preserve a child’s sexless features and mannerisms, so they would grow into eunuchs. Neither male nor female, such artificially created eunuchs were valuable slaves. But those born that way fetched astronomical prices in Roman slave pens. Marcus had seen one such slave fetch half a million sesterces at auction—ten times the going rate for a highly educated scribe or Greek tutor. Romans, Marcus had learned over the years, were avaricious collectors. And the more unusual the item, or the individual, the greater the status in claiming its ownership. Whoever Noah was, the detective was luckier than he or she knew, to’ve been born up time, not down the Porta Romae.

As they rode out of Colorado Springs with dust from the horses’ hooves hanging on the hot air, Julius frowned slightly under his calico bonnet brim. “Do you want me to go ahead and enter the shooting contest, then? I’ve watched a lot of movies, but I don’t really know how to shoot a black-powder pistol.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Armstrong reassured Marcus’ young friend. “I’ll show you how to load and operate the pistols tonight at camp, and I’ll teach you to fire them. You don’t have to shoot well enough to win or even qualify. Just make it look good, that’s all we need. Long before the competition’s over, we’ll have nailed this bastard Sarnoff, so we can go back to Denver. When we’ve eliminated him, I’ll want you to go with Marcus and the girls to the nearest train station. As soon as the men responsible for this have been arrested, I’ll send word and we can bring everyone home again.”

It sounded so simple…

But Marcus had learned the hardest way possible that nothing in life was ever simple, least of all a high-stakes game in which religion, political power, and human life were the stakes. During the long hours it took them to reach the mining camp, refurbish the ghost town to a livable state, and set up the shooting course, with Marcus periodically checking on his precious little girls to be sure they still slept and breathed comfortably in their snug cocoon, Marcus couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder every few minutes, expecting disaster to strike them down at any moment.

He searched the faces of the others on the tour, the eager college-age kids who had gathered for a try at the medal, the older shooters who’d clearly been at this sport longer than the kids had been alive; he studied the guides supplied by Time Tours, the baggage handlers and mule drovers who tended the line of stubborn, slack-eared mules which had toted the equipment and personal baggage of the entire competition; and wondered what it must be like to be free to come and go as one pleased through the up-time world, through any gate, so long as the money was there to pay for a ticket. And each time the silent, hired killer who’d come through the gate with them glanced sidelong at Julius and himself, Marcus sweat into his dungarees and swallowed back sour fright.

Some of the tourists were talkative, laughing and bragging or sharing stories about other competitions they’d participated in. Some of them talked about re-enactments of historical battles involving thousands of people and weapons ranging from pistols to full-sized cannons. Marcus had seen cannons only in photographs and movies. Other tour members were loners, keeping to themselves, cleaning and oiling their guns regularly, working hard at tasks assigned to get the competition’s complex course of fire laid out and the buildings refurbished, speaking little and wolfing down their supper in silence at mealtime. Impromptu sing-alongs and amateur musicians provided entertainment for those with the desire to socialize.

There was even—and their happiness left Marcus feeling more lonely and isolated than ever—a young couple who planned to marry during the competition. They had brought along a wedding dress, a bridesmaid, a best man, an officiant, and photographer for the happy occasion. The photographer snapped pictures of everything and everyone in sight with a digital camera, much to the irritation of Noah Armstrong. The one person in the tour Marcus avoided like plague was Paula Booker, the station’s cosmetic surgeon. She was preoccupied, at least, by the fun of her vacation, and paid little attention to the baggage handlers where they sat in the shadows, eating their meal in silence.

But when Artemisia and Gelasia woke up from their long, drugged sleep, all hell broke loose—and Paula Booker recognized him. Her eyes widened in shock and she opened her mouth to speak… then closed it again, looking abruptly frightened. She understands, he realized with a jolt of hope, she understands we are in danger, even if she is not sure of the cause.

Meanwhile, the whole camp had erupted and the baggage manager, who was not an ’eighty-sixer, but an up-timer hired by the tour organizers, demanded to know what insanity had prompted him to bring two toddlers off the station. The uproar echoed off the black-shadowed mountains hemming them in.

Nearly stammering under the close scrutiny of Sarnoff, aware that Noah Armstrong’s hand was poised on the grip of a pistol at the detective’s side, Marcus offered the only explanation he could: “I am a down-timer and we are never allowed off the station, sir. My little girls have never seen the sun…”

It was true enough and more than a plausible reason. In fact, several women burst into tears and offered the sleepy girls candy and ribbons for their hair while other tourists, irate at such a notion, vented their wrath on the head baggage handler, protesting the cruelty of enforcing a law that didn’t even permit down-timers’ children to leave the station.

“It’s not healthy!” one woman glared at the hapless Time Tours guides, men who lived full time down the Denver Gate, rarely returning to the station. They did not recognize him, thank all the gods. One woman in particular, the wedding photographer, was thoroughly incensed. “I’ve never heard of such an awful thing in all my life! Not letting little children go through a gate for some real sunshine! When I get home, you can believe I’m writing my congresswoman a nasty letter about this!”

Julius, playing the part of Cassie Coventina, added, “You certainly can’t expect two little girls to sleep in that disgusting, filthy livery stable!” The disguised down-timer boy glanced at him, giving him and the children a winning smile, “They can stay in my cabin tonight. Every night, in fact. I’ve got plenty of room.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said with an exhausted, grateful smile.

So the girls moved into Julius’ protective custody and Marcus and Noah watched the killer sent to stalk them, tracking him during their every waking moment, and Paula Booker followed them silently with her gaze, biting her lip now and again, clearly wanting to approach him and fearing to jeopardize his life, or perhaps her own, by doing so, while all of them, killer included, waited for the chance to strike. The man stalking them was too clever to wander off alone, where one or more of them could have sent him back to whatever gods had created him. They couldn’t strike in front of witnesses any more than he could, but the chance everyone was waiting for came all too soon, during the endurance phase of the shooting games.

Marcus, burned to lobster red by the sun, was assigned the job of riding shadow on Julius’ heels for this portion of the competition. The “endurance round” involved riding a looping, multiple-mile trail through the sun-baked mountains around the dusty gold-mining camp. The competitors were to pause at predetermined intervals to fire at pop-up targets placed along the trail like ambushes. Noah, deeply wary of Julius riding alone through the wild countryside, told Marcus quietly, “I want you to trail him, just far enough behind to stay in earshot. I’ll trail you, same way.”

Marcus, heart in his throat, just nodded. He couldn’t keep his hands from trembling as he mounted his stolid plug of a horse and urged the animal into a shambling trot. He set a course that took him away from camp on a tangent, allowing him to loop back around and pick up Julius’ trail just beyond the first ridge outside camp.

The sun blazed down despite the earliness of the hour. At least Julius’ persona, Cassie Coventina, had drawn one of the early slots for riding the endurance course, so it wasn’t too unbearably hot, yet. Dust rose in puffs where Marcus’ horse plodded along the narrow, twisting trail. He urged the nag to a slightly faster shamble until he caught sight of “Miss Coventina” ahead, riding awkwardly in a high-pommeled side saddle. Marcus eased back, cocking his head to listen, reassured when Julius began to whistle, leaving him an audible trail to follow. Marcus glanced back several times and thought he caught a glimpse of “Joey Tyrolin” once or twice through the heat haze behind him.

Saddle leather squeaked and groaned under his thighs. Marcus began to sweat into his cotton shirt. He worried about the girls, back at camp, even though they were surrounded by fifteen adoring women who weren’t riding the endurance trail until later in the afternoon, or who were part of the wedding and weren’t competing at all. The mingled scent of dust and sweating horse rose like a cloud, enveloping his senses and drawing his mind inexorably back to the years he’d spent as a slave working for the master of the chariot races and gladiatorial games and bestiaries at the great Circus Maximus. The scent of excited, sweating race horses and dust clogged his memory as thoroughly as the scream of dying animals and men—

The sharp animal scream that ripped through the hot morning was no memory.

Marcus jerked in his saddle. Blood drained from his face as the scream came again, a horse in mortal agony. Then a high, ragged shriek of pain, a human shriek, tore the air… and the booming report of a gun firing shook the dusty air…

Marcus kicked his horse into a startled canter. He wrenched at the gun on his hip. From behind him, a clatter of hooves rattled in a sudden burst of speed. Noah Armstrong swept past as though Marcus’ horse were plodding along at a sedate walk. Another gunshot split the morning air. Then Marcus was around the bend in the trail and the disaster spread out in front of him.

Julius was down.

His horse was down, mortally wounded.

Dust rose in a cloud along the trail, where Noah pursued whoever had shot down Marcus’ friend. He hauled his own horse to a slithering halt and slid out of the saddle, then flung himself to the young Roman’s side. Julius was still alive, ashen and grey-lipped, but thank the gods, still alive…

“Don’t move!” Marcus was tearing at the boy’s clothing, ripping open the dress he wore as disguise. The calico cotton was drenched with dark stains that weren’t sweat. The bullet had gone in low, missing the heart, plowing instead through the gut. The boy moaned, gritted his teeth, whimpered. Marcus was already stripping off his own shirt, tearing it into strips, placing compresses to staunch the bleeding. In the distance, a sharp report floated back over the rocky hills, followed by three more cracking gunshots. Then hoofbeats crashed back toward them. Marcus snatched up his pistol again. Noah Armstrong appeared, riding hell for leather toward them. Marcus dropped the gun from shaking hands and tied the compresses tighter.

The detective slithered out of a sweaty saddle and crouched beside the fallen teenager. “Hold on, Julius, do you hear me? We’ll get you back to camp. To that surgeon, Paula Booker.”

“No…” The boy was clawing at Noah’s arm. “They’ll just kill you… and Marcus… the girls… he’ll kill you…”

“Not that one,” Noah said roughly. “He’s dead. Shot the bastard out of his saddle. Left him for the buzzards.”

“Then they’ll send someone else!”

If they hadn’t already…

The unspoken words hung in the air, as hot and terrifying as the coppery smell of Julius’ blood. “Please…” Julius was choking out the words, “you can’t afford to take me back. I’ll only slow you down. Just get the girls and run, please.…” Marcus tried to hush the frantic boy. Guilt ripped through him. He’d allowed Julius to help—this was his fault. “Please, Julius, do not speak! You have not the strength. Here, can you swallow a little water?” He held his canteen to the boy’s lips.

“Just a sip,” Noah cautioned. “There, that’s enough. Here, help me get him up. No, Julius, we have to go back to camp anyway, to rescue the kids. You’re coming with us, so don’t argue. Marcus, we’ll put him on your horse.” The detective glanced up, met Marcus’ gaze. “He’s right, you know. They will send someone else. And someone after that.”

“What can we do?” Marcus felt helpless, bitterly afraid, furious with himself for bringing his young friend into this.

“We leave Julius with the camp surgeon, that’s what. As soon as we get back to camp, you get the girls and take them back to the livery stable with you. During the confusion, you and I will leave camp with the kids. Take our horses and our gear and ride out. By the time they figure out we’re gone, we’ll be far enough away to catch a train out of the territory.”

Marcus swallowed exactly once. “And go where?” he whispered.

“East. Way East. To New York.” Noah held Marcus’s gaze carefully, reluctance and regret brilliant in those enigmatic eyes. “And eventually,” the detective added softly, “to London. Jenna and your wife will be there. We’ll meet them.”

Three years from now…

Marcus looked down into his young friend’s ashen face, his pain-racked eyes, and knew they didn’t have any choice. Three years in hiding… or this. When next Ianira saw their children, just hours after dropping them off at daycare, from her perspective, Artemisia would be nearly seven, Gelasia almost four. Gelasia might not even remember her mother. Ianira might well never forgive him. But he had no choice. They couldn’t risk going back to the station, not even long enough to crash through the Britannia Gate. And crashing it was the only way they could get through the Britannia, because there wasn’t a single ticket available for months, not until after the Ripper Season closed. Marcus bowed his head, squeezed shut his eyes. Then nodded, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “Yes. We will go to London. And wait.” Three entire years . . .

Wordlessly, he helped the detective lift Julius to Marcus’ saddle. Wordlessly, he climbed on behind his dying friend, steadied him and kept the boy from falling. Then turned his horse on the dusty, blood-spattered trail and left Julius’ groaning, gut-shot mount sprawled obscenely across the path. A sharp report behind him, from Noah’s gun, sent his pulse shuddering; but the agonized sounds tearing from the wounded horse cut off with that brief act of mercy. He tightened his hands around the sweaty wet leather of his reins.

And swore vengeance.

Jenna woke to the sensation of movement and the deep shock that she was still alive to waken at all. For a moment, the only thing in her mind was euphoria that she was still among the breathing. Then the pain hit, sharp and throbbing all along the side of her skull, and the nausea struck an instant later. She moaned and clenched her teeth against the pain—which only tightened the muscles of her scalp and sent the pain mushrooming off the scale. Jenna choked down bile, felt herself swoop and fall…

Then she lay propped across something hard, while she was thoroughly sick onto the street. Someone was holding her up, kept her from falling while she vomited. Memory struck hard, of the gun aimed at her face, of the roar and gout of flame, the agony of the gunshot striking her. She struggled, convinced she was in the hands of that madman, that he’d carried her off to finish her or interrogate her…

“Easy, there.”

Whoever held her was far stronger than Jenna; hard hands kept her from moving away. Jenna shuddered and got the heaves under control, then gulped down terror and slowly raised her gaze from the filthy cobblestones. She lay propped across someone’s thigh, resting against rough woolen cloth and a slim torso. Then she met the eyes of a woman whose face was shadowed by a broad-brimmed bonnet which nearly obscured her face in the darkness. Through the nausea and pain and terror, Jenna realized the woman was exceedingly poor. Her dress and coat were raggedy, patched things, the bonnet bedraggled by the night’s rain. Gaslight from a nearby street lamp caught a glint of the woman’s eyes, then she spoke, in a voice that sounded as poor and ragged as she was.

“Cor, luv,” the woman said softly, “if you ain’t just a sight, now. I’ve ’ad me quite a jolly time, so I ’ave, tryin’ t’ foller you all the way ’ere, an’ you bent on getting yourself that lost and killed.”

Jenna stared, wondering whether or not the woman had lost her mind, or if perhaps Jenna might be losing hers. Mad, merry eyes twinkled in the gaslight as a sharp wind picked up and pelted them with debris from the street. The shabby woman glanced at the clouds, where lightning flared, threatening more rain, then frowned. “Goin’ t’catch yer death, wivout no coat on, and I gots t’find a bloody surgeon what can see to that head of yours. It’s bled a fright, but in’t as bad as it seems or likely feels. Just a scrape along above the ear. Bloody lucky, you are, bloody lucky.” When Jenna stared at her, torn by nausea and pain and the conviction that she was in the hands of yet another down-time lunatic, the madwoman leaned closer still and said in a totally different voice, “Good God, kid, you really don’t know me, do you?”

Jenna’s mouth fell open. “Noah?”

The detective’s low chuckle shocked her. Jenna had never heard Noah Armstrong laugh. They hadn’t found much to laugh about, since their brutal introduction three days previously. Then she blinked slowly through the fog in her mind. Three days? But Noah and Marcus had gone down Denver’s Wild West Gate. Or rather, would be going down the Wild West Gate. Tomorrow morning, on the station’s timeline. Noah Armstrong shouldn’t be here at all, on the night of Jenna’s arrival. The night before Noah and Marcus were due to leave the station for Denver…

Mind whirling, Jenna asked blankly, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

The detective was pulling off a shabby black coat, which served to protect Jenna’s head from the cold, damp wind. When Jenna touched gingerly, she found rough, torn cloth tied as makeshift bandages. They were wet and sticky. Noah said, “Let me carry you again, kid. You’re just about done in from exhaustion and shock. I’ll get you someplace safe and warm as soon as I can.”

Jenna lay in a daze as Noah gently lifted her and started walking steadily eastward. “But—how—?”

“We came across from New York, of course. Hopped a train in Colorado and lost ourselves nice and thoroughly in Chicago and points east.” The detective’s voice darkened. “That down-timer kid from the station, Julius? He was disguised as you, Jenna, dressed in a calico skirt, wearing a wig.” Noah paused, eyes stricken in the light streaming from a nearby house window. “They shot him. My fault, dammit, I shouldn’t have let that kid out of my sight! I knew Sarnoff would follow us, I just didn’t figure he’d slip ahead and ambush the kid so fast. We got him back to the camp surgeon, but…”

“No…” Jenna whimpered, not wanting to hear.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. He didn’t make it. Poor bastard died before we could slip out of camp. I had a helluva time getting us out in the middle of the uproar, with Time Tours guides and the surgeon demanding to know exactly what had happened.”

Jenna’s vision wavered. “Oh, God…” She didn’t want to accept the truth. Not that nice kid, the down-timer she’d met in the basement under the Neo Edo hotel. Julius was younger than she was.… Her eyes burned and she nearly brought up more acid from her stomach as she fought not to sob aloud. How many people were going to die, trying to keep her alive?

Then she remembered Ianira. “Oh, God! Ianira!”

Noah’s stride faltered for just a moment. “I know.” The detective’s voice was rough. “I tried to follow him, the instant I knew you weren’t critically wounded. But he disappeared into that rat’s maze of streets down in SoHo. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the same thing we did. I had to get us out of there fast, after all the shooting left that hit-man dead in front of the Opera House. The door man and some people in a passing carriage went shouting for a constable.”

“But—but Noah, he’s got her—”

“Do you have any idea who he was?”

She gulped down terror, tried to think past the memory of that gun levelled at her face, that mad, calm voice telling her it was nothing personal. “He said he was a doctor. Ianira found him, while I was struggling with that killer. I think he was down by those columns.”

Noah nodded. “That’d be the Opera House, it’s just down the way from where you were attacked.”

“He took Ianira’s pulse and she… she went into shock. Tried to get away from him, starting ranting something that sounded awful. In ancient Greek. Whatever she said, he understood it and his face… he snarled at her. I’ve never seen such hatred, such murderous fury…”

Noah’s quiet voice intruded. “That’s damned odd, don’t you think?”

Jenna just shivered and huddled closer to the detective’s warmth. “He looked at me. Just looked at me and said, ‘Sorry, old chap, nothing personal,’ and shot me.”

“Damned odd,” Noah muttered. “Doesn’t sound like an up-time hit at all.”

“No.” Then, voice breaking, “We have to find her! I let him… let him take her away…”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t argue! For Christ sake, Jenna, you’ve been on the run for three solid days, in shock from the murders in New York, and the shock of being pregnant and shooting a man to death in TT-86, and you damned near got shot at the Piccadilly Hotel, then almost knifed to death in front of the Opera, then some lunatic down-timer shot you in the head, and you blame yourself? After all that? Kid, you did one helluva job. And you’re not even a pro. I am. And I screwed up royally. I didn’t manage to grab you aside at Spaldergate House, damn near got caught stealing a horse to follow the carriage you took, and still arrived at the Piccadilly Hotel too damned late to do you any good. And by the time the shooting started outside the hotel, I’d tied that damned horse up a block down the street and had to chase after you on foot, in these heavy, damned wet skirts. Kid, I fucked up, plain and simple, and ended up letting that guy shoot you and kidnap Ianira. Don’t you dare blame yourself, Jenna Caddrick. You did one helluva job getting her out of that hotel in one piece.”

Very quietly and very messily, Jenna began to cry down the front of Noah’s rough woolen dress.

“Aw, shit…” Noah muttered, then speeded up. “I gotta get you out of this raw air.” Noah braced her head against a solid shoulder, easing the coat to protect her face from the cold, and hurried through the darkened city. Occasional carriages rattled past, a greyed-out blur to Jenna’s overtaxed senses. Pain, dull and endless, throbbed through her head. Nausea bit the back of her throat, without letup. God, if I really am pregnant, please let the baby be all right…

At least half an hour later, Noah Armstrong carried Jenna into a snug little house near Christ Church, Spitalfields. Marcus, who seemed to have aged terribly since the last time she’d seen him, greeted them with a cry of fear. “What has happened? Where is Ianira?”

Noah spoke curtly. “Jenna ran into bad trouble, getting away from the gatehouse. I’ve got to carry her upstairs to bed. Heat a water bottle and bring up some extra blankets, then go out and ask Dr. Mindel to come. Jenna’s been shot, not seriously, but she needs medical attention and she’s in shock.”

“Ianira?” Marcus whispered again.

The detective paused. “She’s alive. Somewhere. It’s complicated. A man helped them, shot one of the hit-men. But when he touched her, she went into prophetic trance and whatever she said, it really upset him. He shot Jenna without warning and was about to finish her off when I finally caught up. He took a potshot at me and I fired back, but missed, dammit, and he grabbed Ianira and took off down Drury Lane. I’m sorry, Marcus. We’ll find her. I swear it, we will find her.”

The ex-slave had gone ashen, stood trembling in the shabby house they’d rented, eyes wet and lips unsteady. At a slight sound behind him, he turned his shaken gaze downward.

“Daddy?” A beautiful little girl of about seven had appeared in the doorway from the back of the house. “Daddy, did Noah bring Mama?”

Jenna had to grasp Noah’s shoulders as the whole room spun. Ianira’s little girl, Artemisia… only she was too old, much too old, and Marcus had aged, as well, there was grey in his hair and she didn’t understand…

“No, Misia,” Marcus choked out, going to his knees to hug the little girl close. “Noah and Jenna tried, honey, but something went wrong and a bad man took Mama away. We’ll find her, sweetheart, we’ll look all through London and find her. But Jenna’s been hurt, trying to protect your mother, and we have to help her, now. I need to go for a doctor, Misia, and Noah has to watch Jenna until the doctor comes, so we all need you to help us out, tonight, okay? Can you watch Gelasia for us, make sure she’s had her milk and biscuits?”

The little girl nodded, wide eyes wet and scared as she stared up at Jenna.

“This is Jenna,” Noah said gently. “She helped me save your mommy’s life tonight. The bad men we ran away from a long time ago chased her, honey, then another man hurt her and took your mother. I’m sorry, honey. We’ll get her back.”

No child of seven should possess eyes like Artemisia’s, dark as mahogany and too wise and haunted for her age, eyes which had, like her mother’s, seen far too much at far too early a point in life. She disappeared into the back of the house. Marcus said raggedly, “I will bring the hot water bottle, then go for Dr. Mindel.”

“Good. And take my Colt Thunderer with you. Put it up, when you get back, someplace where the girls can’t reach it.”

Marcus took Noah’s revolver and disappeared into the kitchen.

Noah carried Jenna up a narrow, dark staircase that smelled of dampness and recent, harsh soap. “Noah?” she whispered, still badly shaken.

“Yeah?” The detective carried her into a neat, heartlessly plain bedroom and settled her gently into a deep feather bed.

“Why… why is Artemisia so much older? I don’t understand…”

Noah dragged off the wet, bedraggled bonnet which hid the detective’s face, pulled blankets up across her, then gently removed Jenna’s makeshift bandages and peered anxiously at the side of her head before pouring out a basin of water and wetting a cloth to sponge away dried blood, all without answering. Jenna found herself staring into Noah’s eyes, which had gone dark with an even deeper sorrow Jenna didn’t want to know the reasons for. Noah met her frightened stare, paused, then told her.

“You’re too foggy to work it out, aren’t you? The Denver Gate opens into 1885. The Britannia opens into 1888. It’s been three years for us, kid. There wasn’t any other way.”

The whole bed came adrift under Jenna’s back. She found herself a foggy stretch of time later floating in a grey haze while Noah very gently removed her clothing and eased her into a nightshirt, then replaced the blankets. Jenna slowly focused on the detective’s haunted eyes. “Three years?” she finally whispered, her foggy mind catching up at last. “My God… Even if we find her… Ianira’s little girls won’t even know their own mother. And poor Ianira… God, three years of their lives, gone…”

“I know.” Quiet, that voice, filled with regret and hushed pain. “Believe me, we wanted there to be some other way. There wasn’t.” The detective kept talking, voice low, giving Jenna a lifeline to cling to while her world swung in unpredictable circles all over again. “We’ve been in London for nearly two-and-a-half years, now. Waiting for you. I showed up at Spaldergate tonight, hoping to catch your attention, but… You know how that ended.”

The shock, the misery of what Jenna had caused, was too much. She squeezed shut her eyes over hot tears. What else could I have done? Could any of us have done? They could’ve brought the girls through with Ianira, at least. But Noah’d been right to guess hit men would be sent through both gates after them. If they had brought the little girls through with Ianira, none of them would have escaped the Piccadilly Hotel alive. There really hadn’t been any other choice. Knowing that didn’t help much, though, with Ianira missing somewhere in this immense city, in the hands of God alone knew what kind of madman, and those beautiful little girls downstairs, unable to remember the mother they’d waited three years to meet again and deprived of her once more by violence and death. None of them had expected Marcus and the children to have to stay down time in Denver long enough to catch up to the Britannia Gate.

The knowledge that none of them were safe, yet, after everything they’d already been through, was a pain too deep to express. So Jenna just lay there, staring blankly at the stained ceiling, waiting for the doctor to arrive while Noah slipped a hot water bottle under the blankets to warm her and brought a basin full of hot, steaming water that smelled strongly of disinfectant to wash the gash in her head. She was grateful that Noah Armstrong had managed, at least, to set up a hiding place in London, ready and waiting for her. Outside, lightning flared and thunder rumbled through the dismal streets of Spitalfields as rain poured from leaden skies.

Their safe haven was at least well hidden by grinding poverty. It was probably the last place on earth her father’s hired killers would think to look for them. London’s violent and poverty-stricken East End during the middle of the Ripper horror…

When Dr. Mindel finally arrived, he praised Noah’s “nursing” and sutured up Jenna’s scalp, then fed her some foul-tasting medicine that left her drifting in darkness. The final awareness to impinge on her exhausted mind was the sound of Marcus in the hallway, talking quietly with Noah, with the cold and granite sound of murder in his voice as they made plans to find his missing wife.

Then she drifted into pain-free oblivion and knew no more.

Malcolm tilted his pocketwatch toward the light of a gas lamp on the street corner, putting the time at half-past eight when he alighted from his hansom cab at the corner of Bow and Hart Streets. Clouds, shot through with lightning, swirled in thick drifts and eddies above the rooftops, muting the sounds of a boisterous Thursday evening with the imminent threat of more rain. Although they were past the official end of the annual London social season, cut short yearly when Parliament adjourned each August twelfth, not everyone was fortunate enough to escape London immediately for their country homes or the rural estates of friends. Business matters had to be wound up and some gentlemen remained trapped in London year-round, particularly those of the aspiring middle classes, who had acquired the tastes and pursuits of the wealthy without the means of fleeing London at the end of the social season.

As a result, cultured male voices the length of Bow Street could be heard discussing theater and dinner plans, birds they planned to shoot on favorite grouse moors up in Scotland now that grouse season had opened, or the ladies who inhabited the country houses they would visit during the fall’s leisurely hunting seasons, beginning with grouse, graduating to partridge and pheasant, and ending lastly—but perhaps most importantly—with the noble fox.

Also drifting through the damp night came the light laughter of women Malcolm could not actually see, whose carriages rattled invisibly past in the murk that was not quite rain but not quite fog, either. The jingle of harness and the sharp clopping of horse’s hooves struck the lime-rock gravel bed of the street with a thick, thumping sound, carrying the hidden ladies off to bright dinner parties. Carefully orchestrated affairs, such dinners were designed to bring together eligible young ladies and equally eligible gentlemen for the deadly serious purpose of finding suitable spouses for the unmarried daughters of the house.

It being a Thursday evening, many such dinner parties throughout the ultra-fashionable west end would be followed by musical and other soirees, theater or the opera, and after that, the final, few elegant balls of the year, at which silk-clad young ladies still unmarried and desperate would swirl across dance floors and sip wine with smartly dressed young gentlemen until three in the morning, with a fair number of those young gentlemen equally desperate to find an heiress, even from a fortune made in trade, God help them all for having to stoop to such measures, just to bolster the finances of blue-blooded but cash-poor noble houses.

Above the jingle of harness as carriages rattled past, filtering through the sounds of gay laughter and merrymaking, came other, more plaintive cries, the calls of flower girls and eel-pie vendors hawking their wares to the genteel folk who frequented this fashionable district on such evenings. Malcolm could just make out one such girl, stationed beneath the nearest street lamp where she would be most visible in the drizzle and murk. She held a heavy tray of carnations and pinks suspended from cords around her neck. Her dress, damp in patches from the raw night, was made of cheap, dark cotton, much mended and several years out of fashion. The toes of the shoes peeping out from beneath her skirts had been cut open to accommodate the growth of her feet.

As Malcolm watched, three gentlemen emerged from the darkness and paused briefly to purchase boutonnieres for their lapels. They strolled on toward Malcolm, nodding and smiling as they passed, locked deep in conversation about the best methods of cubbing the young foxes and adolescent fox hounds once cub season opened. Malcolm nodded in return, wishing them a pleasant, “Good evening” as they crossed Bow Street and moved past the looming edifice of the Royal Opera House down Hart Street in the direction of Covent Garden Theater.

Then he was alone again on the pavement, turning over in his mind everything the Spaldergate staff had learned about Mr. Benny Catlin’s disappearance. Foul play was now the major fear consuming everyone at Spaldergate. Catlin’s abandoned luggage, the corpse in Catlin’s hotel room, and the wounded Time Tours carriage driver had led police constables straight to Spaldergate House, asking about the body at the Piccadilly Hotel and a second grisly corpse found outside the Royal Opera. The police, comparing witness descriptions, had concluded that the Piccadilly Hotel shooting and the Opera House shooting had been committed by the same desperate individual.

The Time Tours driver injured at the Piccadilly Hotel had, thank God, arrived at the gatehouse unconscious but still alive, driven by one of the gatehouse’s footmen dispatched to fetch him back. Catlin’s luggage had been impounded, but the footman had managed to secure Catlin’s bloodstained gloves from the room before police could arrive, giving the Spaldergate staff at least some chance of tracing Catlin with bloodhounds. Weak from shock and blood loss, the wounded driver had barely been alive by the time he’d been rushed downstairs to surgery.

A massive police manhunt was now on for the missing Mr. Catlin and for anyone who might have been involved in the fatal shootings. Marshall Gilbert, gatehousekeeper, was faced with the worst crisis of his career, trying to assist the police while keeping the secrets of Spaldergate House very much under wraps.

Malcolm dreaded the coming night’s work and the lack of sleep this search would mean. At least—and he consoled himself with the prospect—he wouldn’t be searching alone. For good or ill, Margo would be assisting him. He needed her close, tired and soul-sore as he was from weeks spent plunged into the misery of the East End, preparing for the coming horror.

When two hansom cabs traveling close behind one another pulled up and halted at the corner of Bow and Hart, Malcolm pocketed his watch and moved rapidly forward to greet the occupants alighting on the pavement. “Ah, Stoddard, very good, I’ve been awaiting your arrival. Miss Smith, I’m so dreadfully sorry about this trouble, I do wish you had reconsidered coming along this evening. Madame Feroz, frightfully decent of you to accompany her, I know the demands upon your time are keen. And this must be Mr. Shannon?”

The man who had jumped to the pavement behind Spaldergate’s stable master, hanging slightly back as Malcolm greeted Margo and Shahdi Feroz in turn, was a temporal native, a stringy, tough old Irishman in an ill-cut suit. He was assisting another passenger to alight, a striking young woman in very plain garments. The girl’s skirt was worn but had been made of good quality cloth when new, and her coat, also faded, was neat and clean. Her hair was a glorious copper in the gaslight, her face sprinkled with far too many freckles for her to be considered a beauty by Victorian standards. But she had a memorable face and a quiet air of utter and unshakable self-confidence. She’d wrapped one hand around the leash of a magnificent Alsatian or—had Malcolm been in America—a beautiful black-and-tan German Shepherd dog with bright, intelligent eyes.

The grizzled Irishman, who was doubtless far stronger than his slight frame suggested, shook Malcolm’s hand. “That’s me, sir, Auley Shannon. This is me granddaughter, Maeve Shannon, Alfie’s ’er dog, trained ’im she did, ’er own self, won’t find a better tracker in London.”

“Malcolm Moore,” he smiled in return, offering his hand. “My pleasure, Mr. Shannon, Miss Shannon.”

The inquiry agents whom Stoddard had been sent to fetch shook Malcolm’s hand firmly. Miss Shannon kept her dog on a short leash, even though the animal was immaculately behaved, sitting on his haunches and watching the humans with keen eyes, tongue lolling slightly in the damp air.

Malcolm turned to Spaldergate’s stable master. “Stoddard, you have the gloves that were found when poor Mr. Catlin disappeared from his hotel?”

“I do, sir.” He produced a small cloth bag, inside which nestled a gentleman’s pair of kid gloves. Relatively fresh blood stains indicated that they had, in fact, been on Catlin’s person when the shootout at the Piccadilly Hotel had occurred and Catlin had rendered life-saving first aid, just as the wounded driver had described via telephone before losing consciousness.

Malcolm nodded briskly. “Very good. Shall we give the dog the scent, then? I’m anxious to begin. Poor Miss Smith,” and he bowed to Margo before returning his attention to the Shannons, “is understandably distraught over her fiancé’s absence and who can blame the dear child?”

Margo was doing a very creditable job, in fact, of imitating someone in deep distress, shredding her own gloves with jerking, nervous movements and summoning tears through God-alone knew what agency. “Please, can’t you find him?” Margo gasped out, voice shaking, one hand clutching at Mr. Shannon’s ill-fitting jacket sleeve.

His granddaughter spoke, not unkindly. “Now, then, get ’old of yourself, miss, wailin’ and suchlike won’t do ’im a bit o’ good an’ you’re like t’give yourself a fit of brain fever.”

“Maeve,” her grandfather said sharply, “the lady ’as a right to be upset, so you just give Alfie the scent an’ mind your tongue! Or I’ll give yer me German across yer Hampsteads, so I will.”

“You an’ what army, I’m wonderin’?” she shot right back, not cowed in the slightest by her grandfather’s uplifted hand. “Give Alfie a sniff o’ them gloves, now,” she instructed Stoddard briskly.

“Where were the chap last spotted?” the elder Shannon wanted to know as the dog thrust an eager nose into the gloves held out to him.

Malcolm nodded toward the opera house across the road. “There, between the Opera and the Floral Hall. The doorman caught a glimpse of him engaged in what he described as a desperate fight with another man and ran to fetch the constables he’d just seen pass by. This other man was evidently shot dead and abandoned by Mr. Catlin in his terror to escape. Probably one of those desperate, criminal youths in one of those wretched, notorious Nichol gangs. Their depredations have all London in an uproar. God help us, what are we coming to when young boys no older than fourteen or fifteen roam the streets as armed thugs and break into homes, stealing property and dishonoring women—” he lifted his hat apologetically to the ladies “—and attacking a man in front of the Floral Hall, for God’s sake? The last time anyone saw Mr. Catlin, he was down Bow Street that way, just past the Floral Hall, fighting for his life.”

“Let’s cross, then,” Maeve Shannon said briskly, “an’ we’ll give Alfie the scent off them gloves again when we’ve got right up to where ’e were at the time.”

They dodged carriages and ghostly, looming shapes of horses across the road, carriage lamps and horses’ eyes gleaming in the raw night. Clouds of white vapour streamed from the horses’ distended nostrils, then they were across and the copper-haired girl held the gloves to her dog’s nose again while her grandfather tapped one impatient foot. The shepherd sniffed intently, then at a command from his trainer began casting along the pavement. A sharp whine reached them, then Alfie strained out into the road, following the scent. The dog paused at a dark stain on the cobbles, which, when the elder Shannon crouched down and tested it, proved to be blood.

Margo let out an astonishing sound and clutched at Malcolm’s arm. “Oh, God, poor Benjamin…”

“There, there,” Mr. Shannon soothed, wiping his sticky hand on a kerchief, “it’s most like the blagger wot attacked ’im, ’oo bled on these ’ere cobbles. Police took ’is body away to the morgue, so it’s not like as to be Mr. Catlin’s blood. Not to fret, Miss, we’ll find ’im.”

Miss Shannon said, “Alfie, seek!” and the dog bounded across the road and headed down a drizzle-shrouded walk which passed beneath the graceful colonnaded facade of the Royal Opera House. The dog led the way at a brisk walk. Malcolm and Philip Stoddard, escorting Margo and Shahdi Feroz solicitously, hastened after them. The darkened glass panes of the Floral Hall loomed up from the damp night. The high, domed roof of the magnificent glasshouse glinted distantly in the gaslights from the street, its high, curved panes visible in snatches between drifting eddies of low-blown cloud.

The eager Alsatian, nose casting along the pavement as the dog traced a scent mingled with thousands of other traces where gentlemen, ladies, horses, dogs, carters, and Lord knew what all else had passed this way today, drew them eagerly to Russell Street, where Alfie cast sharp left and headed rapidly away from Covent Garden. They moved down toward the massive Drury Theater, which took up the better part of the entire city block between Catherine Street and Drury Lane. The drizzling fog swirled and drifted across the heavy stone portico along the front, with its statue at the top dimly lit by gaslight from hanging lamps that blazed along the entrance. Malcolm worried about the scent in weather like this. If the drizzle turned to serious rain, which rumbled and threatened again overhead, no dog born could follow the scent. The deluge would wash it straight into the nearest storm sewer. Which, upon reflection, might be why the dog was able to follow Catlin’s trail so easily—most of the competing scents had been washed away, by the night’s earlier rainstorm.

God alone knew, they needed a piece of luck, just now.

More carriages rattled past in the darkness, carrying merry parties of well-to-do middle-class theater goers to the Drury’s bright-lit entrance. Voices and laughter reached across the busy thoroughfare as London prepared for yet another evening of sparkling gaiety. The straining shepherd, however, ignored Catherine Street altogether and guided the way down Russell Street along the huge theater’s left-hand side, where a portico of Ionic columns loomed like a forest of stone trees in the darkness. Malcolm felt his hopes rise at the dog’s sharp eagerness and ability to discern Catlin’s trail. Good idea, Margo, he approved silently, grateful to her for thinking of a bloodhound when the rest of them had been struck stupid with shock.

Their footsteps echoed eerily off tall buildings when the dog led them straight down Drury Lane. The fact that Benny Catlin had come this way suggested to Malcolm he had been forced away by someone with a weapon. The Royal Opera House, Drury Lane Theater, and the Covent Garden district stood squarely in a well-to-do, middle-class neighborhood, eclipsed in finery only by the wealthiest of the upper-class districts to the west. But once into Drury Lane itself, wealth and even comfort dropped away entirely. As the eager shepherd drew them down the length of that famous street, poverty’s raw bones began to show. These were the houses and shops of London’s hard-working poor, where some managed to eke out moderate comfort while others descended steeply into want and hunger.

Piles of wooden crates stood on the pavements outside lower-class shops, where wagons had made daytime deliveries. The deeper they pressed into the recesses of Drury Lane, which dwindled gradually in width as well as respectability, the meaner and shabbier grew the houses and the residents walking the pavements. Pubs spilled piano music and alcoholic fumes into the streets, where roughly clad working men and women gathered in knots to talk and laugh harshly and stare with bristling suspicion at the well-dressed ladies and frock-coated gentleman passing in the company of a liveried servant, with an older man and younger woman of their own class controlling a leashed dog.

Malcolm made mental note of where the pubs lay, to locate potential witnesses for later questioning, and pressed his arm surreptitiously against the lump of his concealed pistol, making certain of it. Margo, he knew, also carried a pistol in her pocket, as did Philip Stoddard. He wished he’d thought to ask Shahdi Feroz whether or not she was armed, but this was neither the time nor the place to remedy that lack. Preternaturally aware of the shabby men and women watching them from shadows and from the lighted doorways of mean houses and rough pubs, Malcolm followed the eager dog and his mistress, listening to the click of their footfalls on the pavement and the scrape and scratch of the dog’s claws.

Whatever Benny Catlin’s motive, whether flight from trouble or the threat of deadly force taking him deeper into danger, it had carried him the length of Drury Lane. The dog paused briefly and sniffed again at a dark spot on the pavement. This time, Mr. Shannon was not able to explain away the spots of blood so glibly. Margo clutched at Malcolm, weeping and gulping back evident terror. Malcolm watched Shannon wipe blood from his hand again, knowing, this time, it must be Benny Catlin’s blood, and was able to console himself only with the fact that not enough had been spilled here to prove immediately fatal. But untended, with wounds of unknown severity… and perhaps in the grip of footpads who would kill him when they had obtained what they’d forced him here for…

Grimly, Malcolm signalled to continue the hunt. Even Shahdi Feroz’s eyes had taken on a strained, hopeless look. The Ripper scholar clearly knew Catlin’s odds as well as Malcom did.

They reached the final, narrow stretches of Drury Lane where Wych Street snaked off to the left, along a route that would eventually be demolished to create Aldwych. That upscale urban renewal was destined to gobble up an entire twenty-eight acres of this mean district. They kept to the right, avoiding the narrow trap of Wych Street, but even this route was a dangerous one. The buildings closed in, ill-lit along this echoing, drizzle-shrouded stretch, and still the Alsatian shepherd strained eagerly forward, nose to the pavement. When they emerged at last into the famous Strand, another juxtaposition of wealth in the midst of slums, their first sight was St. Mary le Strand church, which stood as an island in the middle of the broad street.

Philip Stoddard muttered, “What the devil was after him, to send him walking down this way in the middle of the night?”

Malcolm glanced sharply at the stable master and nodded warningly toward the Shannons, then said, “I fear Miss Smith is greatly distressed.”

Margo was emitting little sounds of horror as she took in their surroundings. She had transferred her act to the Ripper scholar and clung to Shahdi Feroz’ arm as though to a lifeline, tottering at the end of her strength and wits. “Where can he be?” Margo was murmuring over and over. “Oh, God, what’s happened to him? This is a terrible place, dreadful…”

Auley Shannon glanced over his shoulder. “Could be another answer, guv, if ’e never got clean away from th’ blokes wot attacked ’im outside the opera. Alfie’s ’eadin’ straight for ’olywell Street. Might’ve been brought down ’ere for reasons I’d as soon not say in front o’ the ladies.”

A chill touched Malcolm’s spine. Dear God, not that.… The dog was dragging them past Newcastle Street directly toward the cramped, dark little lane known as Holywell, which ran to the left of the narrow St. Mary le Strand church on a course parallel to the Strand. On the Strand itself, Malcolm could just see the glass awning of the Opera Comique, a theater sandwiched between Wych and Holywell Streets, reachable only through a tunnel that opened out beneath that glass canopy on the Strand. The neighborhood was cramped and seemingly picturesque, with exceedingly aged houses dating to the Tudor and Stuart periods crowding the appallingly narrow way.

But darkened shop windows advertising book sellers’ establishments the length of Holywell were infamous throughout London. In the shops of “Booksellers’ Row” as Holywell was sometimes known, a man could obtain lewd prints, obscene books, and a pornographic education for a mere handful of shillings. And for a few shillings more, a man could obtain a young girl—or a young boy, come to that, despite harsh laws against it. The girls and young men who worked in the back rooms and attics of these nasty, crumbling old shops had often as not been drugged into captivity and put to work as whores, photographed nude and raped by customers and jailors alike. If some wealthy gentleman, with or without a title, had requested a proprietor on Holywell Street to procure a young man of a specific build and coloring, Benny Catlin might well have been plunged into a Victorian hell somewhere nearby.

Although the shops were closed for the night and certainly would have been closed when Benny Catlin had passed this way earlier in the evening, women in dark skirts were busy carrying out hasty negotiations with men in rough workingmen’s garments. Several of the women cast appraising glances at Malcolm, who looked—to them—like a potential wealthy customer passing by in the close darkness, despite the presence of ladies with him.

“What does Mr. Shannon mean?” Margo whispered sotto voce. “What is it about Holywell Street that’s so awful he won’t say?”

Malcolm cleared his throat. “Ah… perhaps some other time might be better for explanations, Miss Smith? I rather doubt that what Mr. Shannon referred to is what has actually happened.” Malcolm wished he could be as certain as he sounded, but he had no intention of requiring Margo to play out her role by displaying complete hysterics over the notion of her fiancé having been sold to someone to be photographed and raped by a dealer in pornographic literature.

The rough-clad women watching them so narrowly were clearly trying to judge whether or not to risk openly approaching him with their business propositions. Had Malcolm been quite alone, he suspected he would have been propositioned no fewer than a dozen times within fifty paces. And had he been quite alone, Malcolm’s hand would never have left the pocket concealing his pistol. A man dressed as Malcolm was, venturing unaccompanied into the deep, semi-criminal poverty of Holywell, would be considered fair game by any footpad who saw him. There was more safety in numbers, but even so, Malcolm’s hand never strayed far from the entrance to his pocket.

When Malcolm spotted a woman lounging by herself against a bookshop wall, standing directly beneath a large, projecting clock that stuck out perpendicularly from the building, he paused, carefully gesturing the ladies on ahead with Mr. Stoddard. A gas street lamp nearby shed enough light to see her worn dress, work-roughened hands, and tired face beneath a bedraggled bonnet.

“Good evening, ma’am.”

She stood up straighter, calculation jumping into her eyes. “Evenin’, luv. Whatcher’ wantin’, then?”

“I was wondering if you might have seen someone pass this way earlier this evening? A gentleman dressed much the same way I am? My cousin’s gone missing, you see,” he added at the sharp look of distrust in her face. “I’m quite concerned over my cousin’s safety and his fiancée, there, is in deep distress over it.” He gestured toward Margo, who was clinging to Shahdi Feroz and biting her lip, eyes red and swollen. He must remember to ask her how she managed to conjure tears on command.

“Yer cousin, eh? Well, that’s diff’rent, innit?” She shrugged. “Right about when might ’e ’ave gone by, luv?”

“Half-eight or shortly thereafter.”

“I weren’t ’ere at ’alf-eight, tonight nor any other. I got a job at the Black Eagle Brewery, I ’ave, what I gets up at six o’clock of a morning for, t’ earn shilling an’ sixpence a week, an’ I don’t leave brewery ’ouse til nigh on ’alf-nine of a night. Weren’t ’ere at ’alf-eight, luv.”

A shilling and sixpence. Eighteen cents a week, for a job that started at six a.m. and ran fifteen hours or more a shift. It was little wonder she was out here on the street after dark, trying to earn a few extra pence however she could. He sighed, then met her narrow-eyed gaze. “I see, madame. Well, thank you, anyway.” He held up a shining silver florin. “If you could think of anyone who might have been hereabouts at that hour?”

She snatched the coin—nearly two weeks’ wages—from his fingers. “G’wan down to Davy’s, ask round there. Pub’s open til all hours, anybody could’ve seen ’im. Ain’t like we see gents every night o’ th’ week, these parts.”

“Indeed? Thank you, ma’am, and good evening.”

He was aware of her stare as he rejoined the ladies and followed the straining Alfie at the end of his leash. By dawn, the story of the missing gent and his grieving fiancée would be news from one end of the district to the other. With any luck, word of Benny Catlin might yet shake loose—particularly in the hopes of a cash “donation” for information given. Meanwhile, Alfie was whining and straining in the direction of Davy’s Pub at the end of Holywell Street where it rejoined the Strand once more. Music and laughter reached up the narrow lane as they approached the busy public house, brightly lit by a multitude of gas lamps. Its windows and placard-plastered walls advertised Scotch and Irish Whiskeys… Wainey, Comb, and Reid fine ales… favorite brands of stout… and, of course, Walker’s.

Malcolm wasn’t dressed for mingling in such a crowd, but Auley Shannon was. He nodded slightly at Malcolm, then disappeared into the packed pub. Malcolm waited patiently with Margo and Shahdi Feroz and the others, noting the location of another pub, The Rising Sun, across the road where Wych Street emerged just the other side of Davy’s. Beyond, in the wide avenue that lay beyond the conjunction of the two narrow, old streets, lay the ancient facade of St. Clement Danes Church, another island church built in the center of the Strand. Its high steeple was topped with what appeared to be a miniature, columned Greek temple, barely visible now between drizzle-laden clouds and streaks of jagged lightning.

And in another of London’s abrupt transitions, where glittering wealth shared a line of fenceposts with criminal poverty, where the narrow Wych and Holywell Streets intersected the Strand, a sharp line of demarcation divided the dark poverty-stricken regions behind them, separating it from the expensive, well-to-do houses and shops right in front of Malcolm, shops and houses that stood in a stately double row to either side of the street, lining the Strand, itself. Such abrupt changes from deepest poverty to startling wealth, within half-a-block of one another, placed destitute men and women with no hope at all side-by-side with socially ambitious businessmen and their ladies, ensconced in fine houses, with servants and carriages and luxuries their neighbors could never aspire to owning through any means except thievery.

And thievery was exactly how many a denizen of SoHo obtained such items.

Studying the intersection and judging the lay of the land and the inhabitants of the various buildings within view, Malcolm realized they’d need to field a good-sized search party through this area just to question all the potential witnesses. Five minutes later, Shannon emerged from Davy’s, looking hopeful. “Blokes are suspicious o’ strangers,” he said quietly, “an’ rightly so, what wiv coppers lookin’ t’nick ’alf the blokes in there, I’d reckon, but I pointed out Miss Smith, ’ere, give ’em the bare bones of what’s ’appened. Got a few of ’em t’thaw a bit, seein’ the lady cryin’ and all. Must be ’alf a dozen blokes said they saw a bloke wot might’ve been ’im.” He paused, with a glance toward Margo, then cleared his throat. “Wot they saw was a woman walk past, Mr. Moore, carryin’ a wounded gentleman. Walkin’ quick-like, as if to find a surgeon. Blokes remembered, on account of that poor streetwalker, Martha Tabram, ’oo got ’erself stabbed to death August Bank ’oliday, an’ on account of it were so queer, seein’ a woman in a patched dress and ragged bonnet, carryin’ a gentleman in a fine suit wiv a shabby old coat wrapped round ’is head.”

Malcolm paled, even as Margo blanched and clutched at Shahdi Feroz. “Odd,” Malcolm muttered, “How deuced odd.”

“You’ve the right o’ that, sir.”

“It’s unlikely a woman would have attacked Mr. Catlin. Perhaps she found him lying on the street, injured, and was, indeed, carrying him to safety with a surgeon. Mr. Catlin was a slightly built young man, after all, and wouldn’t have proved difficult to lift and carry, for a stout woman.” Margo nodded, wiping tears from her face with the back of one gloved hand. “Mr. Shannon, Miss Shannon, lead on, please. Let’s see how much farther this trail will take us.”

As it happened, that was not much farther at all. Alfie crossed the Strand right along the front of the old Danish church, where the street curved around to the south. Tailors’ establishments and boot sellers’ shops advertised their wares to wealthy families able to afford their trade. But where Millford Lane cut off to the south near the rear corner of St. Clement Danes, the skies cut loose with a stinging downpour of rain and Alfie lost the trail. The dog hesitated, cast about the wet pavement in confusion and ever-widening circles, and finally sat back on its haunches, whining unhappily while runoff poured, ankle deep, past their feet in the gutters. Maeve pulled her coat collar up around her neck, then bent and patted the dog’s shoulder and ruffled its wet, clamped back ears, speaking gently to it.

Malcolm noted the presence of a few hansom cabs along the Strand, waiting hopefully for customers from amongst the wealthier gentlemen Malcolm could see here and there along the street, some of them escorting well-dressed ladies out to carriages under cover of taut umbrellas, and said, “Well, perhaps Mr. Catlin’s benefactress hired a cab?”

It was, at least, worth the asking, although he doubted a woman as shabbily clad as the one the men in Davey’s pub had described would’ve been able to afford the cost of a hansom cab fare.

Miss Shannon patted her dog’s wet side and glanced around. “Pr’aps, sir. I’m that sorry, I am, ’bout the rain. ’E’s a good tracker, Alfie is, but no dog born wot’ll trace a man through a downpour like this.”

“I fear not. Very well,” Malcolm said briskly, “we shall simply have to proceed along different lines. Mr. Shannon, I believe the terms of our agreement include pressing inquiries amongst potential witnesses at whatever point your fine Alsatian lost the trail? If you and your granddaughter would be so good as to assist us, I feel we might yet make good progress this evening. Try the cabbies, there, if you please. Stoddard, if you’ll broach the denizens of the Rising Sun Pub, I’ll endeavor to strike up a conversation with some of the gentlemen out for the evening’s merriment and dinner parties. Ladies, if you would be so good as to secure a hansom cab? I hope we may need one shortly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course, Mr. Moore.”

“Right, sir. Let’s give ’er a go, then, Maeve.”

Over the course of the next half-hour, Malcolm spoke with dozens of gentlemen and their stout, respectable wives, the latter dressed in satins and bonnets with drooping feathers under widespread umbrellas, inquiring politely about an ill-dressed woman assisting a wounded gentleman of their class. The answers he received were civil, concerned, and entirely negative, which left Malcolm increasingly frustrated as well as thoroughly soaked. Lightning flared overhead, sizzled down to strike chimney pots and church steeples with crashes of thunder that sent the well-dressed citizenry scrambling for doorways and covered carriages.

They couldn’t stay out in this kind of weather any longer, searching.

London was a vast maze of streets and lanes. The number of places an unwary time tourist could go fatally astray would have sobered the most optimistic of searchers. Malcolm hurried back down the Strand, calling for Stoddard and the Shannons. They rejoined Margo and Shahdi Feroz, who had secured the services of the nearest hansom cab and were huddled inside it, out of the downpour. None of the others had found so much as a trace, either.

“There’s nothing more to be done, here, in this weather,” Malcolm shouted above the crash of thunder.

Margo’s performance inside the hansom cab, weeping distraughtly and leaning against Shahdi Feroz, left Mr. Shannon clearing his throat in sympathy. Maeve Shannon stepped up onto the running board and leaned in to put a comforting hand on Margo’s shoulder, said something too low for Malcolm to hear, at which Margo nodded and replied, “Thank you, Miss Shannon. Thank you…”

“I’m that sorry, I am, miss, but I’m sure it’ll come right.” Maeve smiled at Margo, then stepped back down to the pavement and called her dog to heel. Malcolm handed over Mr. Shannon’s fee for the night’s work and a bonus for Maeve’s unexpected sympathy to Margo, which he felt deserved recognition of some kind. The Shannons might be accustomed to the harshness of life in Whitechapel, where they kept their inquiry agency, but they were good and decent people, nonetheless. The inquiry agent and his granddaughter wished him luck and hurried off into the downpour with Alfie trotting between them, seeking shelter from the rising storm. Malcolm sighed heavily, then secured a cab of his own to follow Margo and Shahdi Feroz back to Spaldergate, and settled down for a clattering ride through night-shrouded streets. Stoddard, riding silently beside him, was grim in the actinic glare of lightning bolts streaking through London’s night sky.

Somewhere out there, Benny Catlin was known, to someone.

Malcolm intended finding that someone. All it required was a bit of luck added to the hard work ahead. In the swaying darkness of the hansom, Malcolm grimaced. This was not a good time for reminding himself that before Margo had come into his life, Malcolm’s luck had run to the notoriously bad. Malcolm Moore was not a superstitious man by nature, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that on this particular hunt, luck just might not be with him.

He could only pray that it had been with Benny Catlin.

If not, they might yet locate him in a morgue.

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Framed