“Have you been talking with someone?” he asked. “That does not seem like your sort of intuition.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It just came to me in the writing.”
“Ah. In any event, what difference does it make, ultimately? They’re all politicals. Such men would have no interest in a fellow cutting up whores, because it advances no revolutionary cause. They are a hard breed.”
“Indeed. However, all those men, no matter of what faction, have one thing in common, which I would term ‘fear of raid.’ They are haunted by raids, have memory of raids, have themselves escaped raids. The raid spells their apprehension, execution, imprisonment, or exile. It means that all they stand for is destroyed. Theirs is a dangerous universe and a fragile one. So does it not stand that they would have an escape from such a place? They are not the sort to be caught like rats in a trap. Come, let’s examine.”
We walked into the unlocked building, entering by way of that side door onto Dutfield’s Yard, finding ourselves in a dingy corridor, which in one direction, back, seemed to lead to a printing shop from the mechanistic sounds, and in other direction, toward the street, where a kind of foyer must have offered a stairway that presumably led to the large meeting hall upstairs. There the workers were bellowing out a hymn to worker solidarity much sung in radical nests across Europe. It was so loud its vibrations seemed to be banging hard off walls and wood. Instead of joining the chorus of heroes, I took Dare to a door just a bit down the corridor toward the foyer. It, too, was unlocked, after the anarchists’ happy assumption that property is theft and no hindrance should be placed in the way of those in need. I was certainly in need. This in turn took us down a few steps into a cellar, which contained what cellars contain: crates, rusted tools, refuse, scrap, rat holes, spiderwebs, dust, the smell of dankness.
“Hardly a highlight of one’s London tour,” said the professor.
“Let’s see, however, if it contains treasure, which may be found in the most unlikely of spots.”
We poked about, undisturbed. It was rather dark, so the going was somewhat difficult as we bumped and bumbled about until I said, “Hello, what’s this?”
I pointed to the cement floor, where squibs of candlewax had accumulated, as if much illumination had been required on this one spot.
“Very Sherlock Holmes of you, sir,” he said. In a second I pushed aside the nearest crate and found it easy enough going. It slid three feet to the right and, when moved, revealed a ragged but ample hole chopped into the cement, though all its excavation debris had been carefully swept away. The two nubs of a ladder stuck beyond the edge of the hole.
“I would say tunnel. Isn’t this interesting? Built, I’m sure, to save the anarchists from goons hired by the tsarist secret police or foreign agents being hunted by our own Special Branch. Wouldn’t you think that a brilliant tactical mind like the colonel’s would have understood the high theoretical possibility of such a structure existing and looked for it? Perhaps that is why he chose this spot, knowing a secret escape was possible.”
“Capital thinking,” said the professor. “It existed theoretically, now it exists actually. By God, this is a wonderful discovery.”
“Shall we see where it leads?”
“We have a moral obligation to do so.”
I went first. It was not a long descent, perhaps ten feet, and it led to no vast underground chamber but into what appeared to be a kind of abandoned sewage containment, though of ample height and width for a man to nearly stand. One would expect a lantern at the base of the ladder to assist the escapees, and there it was, a primitive candle-powered implement whose contribution to illumination would be more helpful to morale than practicality. As the professor eased his way down, I found matches carefully wrapped against moisture, unwrapped them, ignited one, wincing at the flare, set the wick aflame, then closed the glass front of the piece, which magnified its vividness somewhat. Lifting it in my left hand, I exposed the gap in the ancient terra cotta through which the anarchists had battered their way to gain access; sweeping the lantern about, we saw that the length of space ran about ninety feet or so. At the same time, the miasma of abomination rose to our noses, for at one time this was a privy, to Romans, to medieval Londoners, who knew? Perhaps it contained Samuel Pepys’s shit or Messrs. Johnson and Boswell’s. It was said London was undergirded by abandoned tunnels and chambers; the anarchists had simply encountered one and put it to use against emergency. We were not alone, however, for then we heard the skittering or chittering or scrabbling or whatever word may be used to describe the sound of large numbers of rats. We had entered their kingdom, though the firelight drove them away from us, not from fear, I’m guessing, for what would five hundred such creatures fear from us, but because the blaze of light disturbed their delicate darkness-adjusted eyes.
I pointed to the end of the vault. “It’s a big crapper,” I said. “Romans and Normans must have shat here. I’m guessing that comes out in some abandoned building in Fairclough Street.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Professor, who had fully entered the place. “The colonel dips in the side door while the pony cart driver runs for aid on the street, and first a few, then a lot of, anarchists spill from the main door. He’s vanished in seconds, makes his way to the exit, and is out unseen very quickly. From here it’s but a ten-minute walk to Mitre Square, where he has ample time to track and do his horrors to Kate Eddowes. Yes, this is a brilliant discovery, Jeb, and it will do well to enhance the accuracy and drama of your piece.”
“Yes,” I said, “but here is my problem. This is the only secret passage in any of the murder sites. I have examined them exhaustively. Neither Buck’s Row nor Hanbury Street, certainly not Mitre Square with its several passageways out, and nothing in Miller’s Court could be construed as a secret passage. Only here. What is interesting is that, as you and I have just proved, there is no limiting provision for size in achieving passage. Full-grown men fit quite nicely. So the most elementary and the only empirical point of your profile—Jack’s slightness—is thereby disproved. That, furthermore, is the only empirical index to his identity. All the rest are cognitive, based upon inference of what he knew, what he learned, what his skills would be. But the whole theorem rests upon the conviction that his size was essential to the commission of the crimes. Yes, he was slight, but it had nothing to do with anything. A man my size or even yours could have escaped after killing all five without difficulty.”
“Possibly, then, I was wrong. I seem to have been right in all other interpretations, if I recall correctly.”
“Indeed. It comes to nothing, does it? Oh, unless one knew that the colonel was slight, and inserted that condition into the profile as a means of specifying him among the others.”
“I must say, this seems an odd direction.”
“I have learned some things since last we spoke, which will perhaps explain the oddness of my tangent. I have learned, for example, that under your commanding personality and capability to light up a room, you are an angry man. You have been exiled from the polite society of academics and intellectuals on account of unsavory rumors concerning your behavior. They now shun you and pay you no attention.”
“I bear them no animosity, I assure you. Our ideas diverged. They’re too reformist, and they find me too cynical. It was always an uneasy fit.”