Page 70 of If Looks Could Kill
Mike made an excellent searching companion.
He suggested places I would never have thought to look.
I knew Pearl had no money, but Mike pointed out that she could have gotten money somehow.
Might she leave town? We went to train platforms and carriage stops, and quizzed workers there.
Nobody could say they had seen her, but neither could they say for certain they hadn’t.
New York was just too big for that. We tried diners and cafés, libraries and museums. I even took Mike back to the Curiosity Musée, but the ballyman dropped his usual patter upon seeing me and told me coldly that Salvationites were no longer permitted, dime or no dime.
And don’t think I could fool him by coming here without my uniform.
Nice to know that even my face was occasionally memorable.
And that was that. I was out of ideas and out of time. My feet were sore, my hands were cold, and my heart was in the gutter. It was over, Pearl was lost, and tomorrow morning I’d leave.
We were almost to his aunt and uncle’s home, and when we got there, it would be bed, sleep, and in the early morning, a train to catch.
At the corner of Bowery and Spring, a familiar voice shattered my reverie.
“Extra, extra! Late-night edition!”
I hurried forward with Mike at my heels. Sure enough, it was a face I knew.
“Oscar!” I cried. “For shame! At this hour of the night? Why aren’t you in bed?”
That very young man of the press turned and looked at me. “Oh. Hey. Miss Theresa.”
“Tabitha,” I told him.
“?’Swat I said. Miss Hallelujah. You’re not getting your forty winks neither.” He turned to Mike. “Take your bundle somewhere, bub, ’stead of leaving her here to jaw at me.”
It took me a moment to realize that I was the “bundle” in question.
Mike worked hard not to laugh. “Move it along, shorty.”
“Oscar,” I said, “have you started night classes at the Mission School yet?”
Oscar scowled. “I already toldja. I ain’t doing it.”
“You need to,” I told him. “What will you do when you outgrow selling papers?”
“Retire to a palace.” His eyes lit up. “Tonight I’ll make a million bucks. Know why?”
I admitted I did not know why.
“Jack the Ripper!”
My stomach sank. “Oh no,” I said. “Has he killed anyone else?”
“Have they caught him?” asked Mike.
“Better than that,” Oscar told us. “He’s here . In the city. Holed up somewhere on Tenth Street. Me and my mates are gonna go find out where tonight. After I sells my papers.”
Mike and I gaped at each other. Tenth Street buzzed at the edge of my memory.
I pulled a penny from my pocket. “Let me see that paper, Oscar.”
Mike watched me. “I didn’t know you were interested in the London killings.”
I quickly scanned the front page. “Isn’t everyone curious about it?”
I couldn’t see any headline that suggested the infamous killer. Then my eyes caught the word “Whitechapel” under the heading DR. TWOMBLETY IN TOWN .
Dr. Francis Twomblety, the eccentric American physician who was arrested in London suspected of the Whitechapel murders, arrived on the French steamship La Bretagne yesterday. He was shadowed to a boardinghouse in West Tenth Street by two of Inspector Byrnes’s detectives.
I scanned the rest: “… fugitive from Justice… cannot be arrested here… the fiend who so successfully eluded the London police… an inveterate hatred for women.”
The stealthy figure behind these diabolical killings might be someone named Dr. Francis Twomblety ? He could have any name at all, I reminded myself. Jack the Ripper was an enigma. Francis Twomblety sounded like someone who might extract one’s aching tooth.
But perhaps any actual, specific name might fall flat. The fiend of Whitechapel was more myth than man. To unmask him was to defang him also. God willing.
Mike took the paper from me and read the article, then looked back at me through narrowed eyes. “Tabitha,” he said suspiciously, “what are you thinking?”
My heartbeat thumped in my veins.
“Arrived yesterday,” I whispered. “Shadowed to West Tenth.”
We work at punishing the men. The men who hurt women.
What might happen if you fused Fearless Pearl with Fanatical Medusa, then let her learn Jack the Ripper was in town ?
Mike peered at the article again. “He’s only a suspect, Tabitha.”
“That’s not the point,” I told him. “Whether he did it or no, if Pearl thinks he did, she might go there. She thinks she’s on a mission.”
“Like a true Salvation Army girl,” he observed wryly.
God in heaven, I prayed. It’s tonight or never. I leave in the morning. If you want me to find her, I need a sign tonight, and this is all I’ve got. Is this article the sign of where you want me to go?
It can’t be, said a voice in my head. It can’t be.
It’s patent insanity.
“What if she’s there, Mike?” I said. “I have to check. I have to make sure.”