“Yes, an early clipper outta Canada ought to settle us all in for a long winter,” suggested Alastair.
Philo Keane nodded. “Might even cut down on crime.”
“Still…highly unlikely that icy Chicago conditions will ever cool the passions, heh?”
“May I quote you on that?” asked Carmichael.
“You may.” Alastair gave a fleeting thought to how he’d had the Phantom of the Fair frozen near to death before disposing of him in the deep. A wild, crazed notion flit behind this thought, that somehow Denton survived his drowning in Lake Michigan. But this was impossible.
“What’s got you newsies all up in arms?” Philo asked Carmichael, snatching the copy of the Herald from Alastair’s grip. They awaited a carriage as Philo got the gist of the article on page one. It read in part,
An innocent dove of Chicago, a young girl of a mere fourteen, named Anne Chapman, has joined others now collectively being called “The Vanished”-victims of some fiendish butcher, possibly a man of the Yards, possibly a knacker. Young Chapman was found murdered and floating in the Chicago River near the Wabash Street Bridge, horribly disfigured. In fact, gutted like a slaughtered animal, her entrails taken off by her killer for what reason no one in authority can say. It was subsequently determined by Chicago Police investigators that Chapman is the granddaughter of Senator Harold J. Chapman and his wife, Anne Sr., who has undergone rigorous medical treatment since learning of young Annie’s awful fate. The girl’s parents grieve her passing and a closed casket wake is being held at Scrimlure’s Funeral Emporium, 248 North Irving Park Road, 7 P.M. Tuesday evening, funeral to follow 9 A.M. Wednesday.
“How much bloody speculation and latitude do your editors give you, Carmichael?” asked Philo. “Do you know how many butchers work in this city?”
“They call us hog-butcher to the nation, so yeah…I got some notion.”
Philo slammed the rolled newspaper into his palm. “You fools in the press’re going to get someone hung before day’s end.”
“We don’t create the news or mobs, Keane. We can only report the brewing storm. Nature and human nature in particular creates the storm.”
“You fan the damn flames!”
Carmichael only shrugged, then added, “We sell papers. You know that.”
“And this damnable, confounded headline calling it the work of the Phantom?” asked Ransom.
“Yeah,” agreed Philo, poking a finger in Carmichael’s chest. “The victim has her head intact and was not set aflame!”
“That’s likely no comfort to her loved ones, Philo.” Ransom got into a cab and Philo climbed in beside him.
“Share the cost?” asked Philo.
“Sure, but I’m going to the station house. Still have some contacts there, and these vanishings began some time ago. Need to check some missing persons reports.”
“On other vanished people?”
“On other vanished children, Philo. These poor missing appear to’ve been snatched off the street at random. Possibly kept like animals until starved. According to cops working the case, the last one turned up like Chapman…dead and gutted. Her name was Millie Edeh, aged eleven.”
“Another little girl?”
“If it is the same monster, he does not discriminate; several boys of the same or close age have also gone missing.”
“Bloody hell, and the papers’re just getting it now?”
“Yes, well who’s story is it now? Senator Chapman’s granddaughter’s involved.”
“Are you saying the Chicago press doesn’t care if the victims are unknowns, say, homeless children?”
“What rock do you live under, Philo? It’s not the press doesn’t care if homeless children go away-by any means-but society’s wish!”
This silenced Philo for a moment. “And have all these young victims gone missing their entrails?”
“Entrails, organs, fleshy protrusions, eyes-”
“Enough!” said Philo.
Ransom gritted his teeth and shrugged. “We may well have a cannibal-killer on our hands.”
“A man eater?”
“A child eater.”
“You think he’s cooking up their entrails?”
“What else does a madman do with entrails than to boil ’em and consume ’em?”
“Like so much sausage?”
“Do you have another theory?”
“Perhaps he feeds his dogs thus.”
“Yeah…there is that possibility.”
“So how’re you feeling now, Alastair, now that you’ve had time to reflect on events?”
“Events?”
“The end of the Phantom, of course. Taking out the garbage, I think you called it.”
“Ahhh…you mean, how do I feel about myself?”
The carriage slowed to a standstill over the brick street outside the Des Plaines Street station house.
“Yes, now that you’ve set the scales right?”
“Set the scales right? I am the scales, Philo, in the end…setting myself up the avenger?”
“I suppose, yes. But you are evading my question: how do you feel?”
“How do I feel?”
“About yourself, my friend?”
“Philo, my father left me with little, but he often said the only material thing you can gain, lose, or possess that is of any consequence is how you feel about yourself.”
“Wise man…and so?”
“In that regard, I’ve come a long way toward liking myself.”
“A small miracle to hear you say it.”
“Yes, something isn’t it? Small miracle. Something to thank myself for on this fine day. Nonetheless…it would seem that the ugliness of our species intends to keep me pacing if only I were employed.”
“You’ll land on your feet, somehow.”
Alastair alighted the carriage and grabbed the copy of the Herald. “No doubt I’ll be calling on your skills with that Night Hawk all too soon, heh?”
“Whatever are you saying, Rance?”
“Pinkerton Detective Agency has offered me a position as one of their operatives.”
Alastair quickly made for the station-house steps as the carriage, carrying Philo off, pulled away. Philo hung from the window of the hansom, shouting, “Great news! And you’ve gotten my Night Hawk back?”
“Unofficially confiscated.”
“Alastair, you’re a magician and a gentleman, and my knight! I crown thee Sir Alastair Ransom of the Kingdom of Chicago!”
“Do I get a brandy with that?”
CHAPTER 7
From the outside, the old stone structure called the Des Plaines Police Headquarters looked as cool and peaceful as any mausoleum, bathed as it were in a blue halo of gaslight, its yellow brick exterior reflecting back like gold. Despite the horrors of untold crimes filling the files and murder books inside, the edifice could be taken for a church if only a steeple were added, Alastair thought, pushing through the door, making his way into the mayhem. Clutter and noise hit him. Two uniforms had a wild man on the floor, attempting to cuff the rowdy drunk. The desk sergeant pleaded, at wit’s end with some woman, saying “I kin do naught-a-thing to solve yer outhouse plumbing problem, my dear lady-”
“Then what bloody good’re you coppers and the taxes I pay?”
“-and had you any sense, you’d know that no one kin turn rock to running water, so without a description down to the length of his nose, or a bloody name’n’address, would you kindly be leavin’ now?” Alastair instantly realized how much he’d missed his sour, old second home. Then he realized how little thought he’d actually given it other than the unusual weightlessness over his heart, where his badge used to be.
Other cops whisked from desk to desk, but everyone froze when Jed Logan shouted Alastair’s name over the din. A sudden silence descended over the station house as word went around that Alastair had come home. Even the complaining woman at the front desk and the man in cuffs silenced.
Sergeant of the watch came down from his high seat and around his desk, braving any blow that might come his way, and as if seeing the pope, stepped up to Ransom to shake his hand.
“What’s this?” asked Ransom. “What’re ya all gone daft?”