Ripping Time

"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 go

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 ru

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-a

"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 i

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 Co

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 Je

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 Je

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 spi

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 Je

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 Brita

Then the door finished opening and he was there in the doorway, the man who had shot Je