Ripping Time

Dominica Nosette looked petulant, but nodded. Slowly, her partner agreed, as well, grumbling and visibly irritated, but compliant. At least for the moment.

"Good. I'd suggest we analyze the tapes we've got for further clues. Inspector Melvyn, if you would rewind one of the backup copies while the master tape and other backups continue ru

As they viewed the footage again, Shahdi Feroz pursed her lips thoughtfully. "He is familiar to me. The face is not quite right, but the voice... I have heard it somewhere. I would swear that I have." She shook her head, visibly impatient with her own memory. "It will come to me, I am certain. There are so many I have studied in so many different places and time, over the past few years. I spent several weeks in London, alone, looking into occult groups such as the Theosophical Society and various Druidic orders. And if he is a friend to James Maybrick, he, too, may be a Liverpudlian, not a Londoner. But I know that I have seen or heard him before. Of that, I am completely certain."

What Shahdi Feroz might or might not have remembered at that moment would never be known, however, because the telephone rang with the news that Malcolm and the search teams had returned for the night. There was no news of Be

"What's wrong, Malcolm?" Margo whispered after he'd hugged her close and buried his face in her hair.

"Oh, God, Margo... we are in a great deal of trouble with Catlin."

She peered up into his eyes, alarmed by the exhaustion she found there. "What now?"

"The men who were killed? At the hotel and the opera? They're not down-timers, as we'd all assumed. Not Nichol gang members or any other native footpads."

Margo swallowed hard. "They're not?"

He shook his head. "No. The constables of the Metropolitan police asked Mr. Gilbert and me to come to the police morgue, to see if we might be able to identify either man, since Mr. Catlin had been a guest in Spaldergate for a brief time." He paused fractionally. "Margo, they're up-timers. Baggage handlers from TT-86. Gilbert recognized them, said they came through with your group, he saw them earlier in the evening hauling steamer trunks out to carriages for the newly arrived tour group. Then they vanished, abandoned a wagonload of luggage and half-a-dozen tourists at Paddington Station and went haring off on their own. The Spaldergate footman in charge of the wagon thought perhaps they were reporters who'd slipped through as baggage handlers and tried to follow, but lost them within minutes and returned to help the stranded tourists."

Margo rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I don't get it, Malcolm," she moaned softly, "why would a couple of baggage handlers ditch their jobs to chase halfway across London and try to murder a graduate student at the Picadilly Hotel?"

"And failing that, chase him all the way to the Royal Opera?" Malcolm added. "I don't know, Margo. I haven't the faintest bloody idea. It simply makes no rational sense."

"Maybe Catlin's involved somehow with organized crime?" Margo wondered with a shiver.

"God knows, it could be anything. I don't want to think about it for a while. What's the news from the Ripper Watch?" he added quietly, drawing her closer to him and burying his lips in her hair once again.

"You're not go

Malcolm's face, wet from the rain that had been falling again, drew down into a whole ladder of exhausted lines and gullies. "That bad?"

"Bad enough." She told him what they'd just discovered, down in the vault.

Malcolm let out a low whistle. "My God. A ruddy pair of them? And you're sure the other chap isn't Catlin?"

"Not unless he brought a plastic surgeon with him. And knows how to walk on stilts. This guy's a lot taller than Be

"Well, that's one breath of good news, anyway. Whatever's up with Catlin, he's not a psychopathic serial murderer."

"No," Margo said quietly. "Given what's happened on station, though, and what you just found out about the guys he killed tonight, quite frankly, I'd feel better if Catlin had turned out to be the Ripper."

"My dear," Malcolm sighed, "I wish it weren't so distressing when you're right."

To that, Margo said nothing at all. She simply guided her weary fiancé up to bed and did what she could to help them both forget the night's horrors.

Chapter Eleven

Kit Carson was in the back room of the Down Time Bar & Grill, doing his best to beat Goldie Morran at pool—and losing his shirt, as usual—when Robert Li appeared, dark eyes dancing with an unholy glee.

"What's up?" Kit asked warily as Goldie sank another ball in the corner pocket with a rattle like doom.

The antiquarian gri

"Heard what?" Goldie glanced up before pocketing another fifty bucks of Kit's money. "We didn't get a riot when Primary opened, did we?"

"No," Robert allowed, eyes twinkling. "But you're not go

Kit scowled. "Oh? Don't tell me. Some up-time group of nuts sent an official protest delegation to the station?"

Li's eyes glinted briefly. "As a matter of fact, they did, but not about Jack the Ripper or his victims."

Kit grunted. A vocal group calling themselves S.O.S.—Save Our Sisters—had been lobbying for the right to intervene and save the London prostitutes the Ripper would kill, despite the fact that it wasn't possible to alter important historical events. Their argument went that since these women were nobodies, the effort ought to at least be made, but Kit didn't see how, since Jack the Ripper was one of the most important murder cases in the past couple of centuries.

"Well," Kit said as Goldie lined up another shot, "if it's not the S.O.S. or some group like Jack is Lord, what is it?"

Robert gri

Kit just grimaced. "Why am I not surprised?" Behind him, another fifty bucks of his hard-earned cash dropped into a little round hole. He winced. "But," he added hopefully, "that's not what you came to tell us, is it?"

Li's glance was sympathetic as Goldie dropped yet another ball with a fateful clunk, into a side pocket this time. "Well, no, actually. That news is even better."

Goldie glanced up from lining up her next shot. "Oh, my. Something even better than a bunch of nuts who want to protect the non-existent rights of down-time terrorists?"

Li nodded. "Yep. Better, even, than the arrival of an Angels of Grace Militia Squadron. First thing they did was pick a fight with the idiots agitating for the release of the Brothers in jail. A big fight. Wrecked three kiosks, a lunch stand, and the costume Co