The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

The women scattered.

The street gangs had come hunting for the sailor with half crowns.

Bell had not seen a bobby since he entered the slum and did not expect to meet one now. They came at him from two directions. It took a moment to realize they were separate groups who had spotted him simultaneously and would fight for the right to attack him. Swinging spiked pickax handles, short, thin, scarred, and tattooed men and boys exploded into bloody battle. The winners dispersed the losers with a bombardment of dead dogs and rats, stomped the fallen with nail-studded clogs, and charged Isaac Bell.

Bell had already fished the derringer out of his seabag. Waiting for the leaders to close within fifteen feet, he braced against the recoil and fired one barrel. The hail of lead pellets knocked the legs out from under four men leading the charge. The remainder gazed into the as-yet-unfired second barrel and cocked their skinny arms to throw their clubs.

Bell fired his second barrel and ducked the only club they managed to launch. His hands flew. He broke the gun open, pulled the spent shells, loaded in fresh ones, flicked it shut, and took deliberate aim.

A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye made him jump back and protect his head as the body of another dead animal plummeted down from a rooftop. The scuttlers charged. Bell fired, backed into a wall, and fired again. In New York, he would expect Number 4 lead shot at point-blank range to send the toughest Gophers fleeing—the same for a mob of strikebreakers in Colorado. The scuttlers were more hopeless, more accustomed to pain, or more anesthetized by booze, and when the bird shot only penetrated a half inch into their flesh, they charged again, bloody and limping.

Bell tried to reload. The lead scuttler swung a spiked club.

Hands busy on the gun, eyes on the threat, Bell stepped into the charge, kicked hard, snapped the barrels shut, fired twice, and reloaded. The man he kicked was writhing at his feet. Two more were down on the greasy cobblestones, pawing at their legs and trying to stand. Bell took aim and walked toward the rest.

There was ice in his eyes, and even the bravest broke and ran.

Bell vaulted a wooden fence. He had seconds before they regrouped.

He tore through twisted rows of reeking backyards, vaulted another fence, sidestepped an open sewer, and emerged in a section of the dense slum where no one had heard the gunfire. Or maybe they had, for the lane he found himself in was empty of people, and the silence was so deep that he could hear the hollow roar of gingham looms shaking wooden floors behind the high stone walls that guarded the mills.

An old woman poked her head from a window with no glass.

Staring at Bell, she disappeared, then reappeared in an alley. She edged closer, stepped into the lane, then edged back, restless as a cat. She was tiny, her wrinkled skin pale, her hair white. Bell stepped toward her. She glanced about fearfully but stood her ground. When she opened her mouth to speak, he saw she had no teeth. That lack could be what slurred her tongue so badly that he could barely hear her. Addiction to laudanum—a tincture of opium suspended in alcohol—was the likelier cause, and laudanum would also explain her restlessness.

“What did you say?”

“London Emily. I hear you’re giving two-and-six fer London Emily.”

“So did everybody in Angel Meadow.”

“I’m London Emily.”

“A dozen ladies told me the same. How can I believe you?”

“’Cuz I know what they don’t.”

“What’s that?”

“I know what yer gonna ask me.”

Intrigued, though not yet hopeful, Bell said, “Go on. What do you think I want to ask you?”

“Jack the Ripper.”

Bell shook his head. “Everyone knows that London Emily ran from the Ripper.”

The old woman stepped closer to Bell and spoke in a stronger voice. “Not in Manchester.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never told a soul. He’d-a found out.”

Isaac Bell moved subtly to corner the old woman. Would she scream when he showed her Barlowe’s sketch of a face that had been emblazoned in her memory before the Ripper attacked and long after the night of mind-rending terror? Would she run at the sight of the man who nearly killed her?

He pulled the stiff protective envelope from his seabag and carefully slid the sketch from it. London Emily fixed her eyes on it. She stiffened under her shapeless shawl. She stared. She broke into a toothless smile.

“Do you recognize him, Emily?”