I, Ripper

“No, of course not. It’s just that—” Then I said, “You would not say that unless you did.”

“Something has occurred to me. It’s somewhat dangerous, I suppose, and neither of us is particularly heroic.”

“Enter his rooms and search when he is absent?”

“I haven’t the spice for that, and I doubt you do, either. We are not cracksmen but amateurs, particularly in the action department.”

“True enough. So have you come up with something Sherlock Holmes might have conjured?”

“That damned fellow again. I must read that book you seem to think so highly of. As for this trick, it’s rather too basic for this Holmes’s elegant genius. You must merely ask yourself. It’s there, if you ponder rigorously. When is he vulnerable? When might his guard be down? When would he be unlikely to pull knife and cut his way out of an issue?”

I thought. I thought. I thought.

“His opium habit,” I finally said. “The drug puts him in a dream state. He may babble or confess or scream in guilt or cry in remorse. We do not force it upon him, he welcomes it and sees it as routine. But I could be there.”

“Is it in you to do so?”

I knew nothing of opium, its element, its practices, its dangers. But at the same time, I could not proceed with leverage against a man who had a VC without more proof that I believed in.

“I will find it in myself,” I said.

I was not without resources. I tutored with Constable Ross, assuming correctly that in his experience on the streets and within London’s lowest dives, rookeries, brothels, beer shops, gambling halls, and dogfighting arenas would be an acquaintanceship with opium dens. I was right, and thus armed, I waited outside and down the street on a bleak block on the margins of the Dockland for the colonel to show up, as the professor had insisted he would. Indeed he did, his banty stride giving him away, his energy in contrapuntal rhythm to the grimness of the spot somewhat amazing.

It was so West End melodramatic that I felt I was viewing something lit for the boards. He slid against a wood door in an otherwise blank brick wall and knocked, and just like onstage, a slot opened in the door, his identity was confirmed, a code was exchanged, and he was admitted.

“All right,” said Ross, who’d accompanied me on this trip to the demimonde as a buttress against my own terror, “now wait for him to get his pipe going, for the first calming effects to take hold, and then approach.”

“Indeed,” I said. “Damn, it’s cold.”

“It is, but soon you’ll forget the outer world. Now repeat to me what I have said.”

“I must partake of the first and even the second draw. The Chinaman will be watching. If I don’t, thugs will beat me and toss me out. From that point on, I can choose to not inhale but merely hold and release the vapor into the air and cut my consumption remarkably and only half descend into madness. I will feel effects, no doubt, dizziness, mild hallucinations, color exchanges, shape-changing, but nothing a man with a strong mind can’t handle.”

“What else?”

“Ahh” – drawing a blank, and then – “oh yes, the drug will hit me like a rugby tackle. I cannot avoid that, as I have no tolerance. It’s not Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup. I must not panic and instead let it take me. The stuff liquefies under heat, so one must be careful not to spill the pipe, as it will be a giveaway.”

“Very good, sir,” said Ross.

“And you’re sure I’ll write ‘Kubla Khan’ when I emerge?” I said.

Ross didn’t get my little witticism and only said, “I don’t know about that, sir.”

We waited another twenty minutes and no more customers arrived.

“All right, sir, now’s the time, there’s the good chap.”

“See you in a bit, or so I hope,” I said.

“You’ll be fine.”

I drew my mac tight, my hat low, and headed across the cobblestones to the doorway, pushing my way through low drifts of fog that had blown in from seaward. It was getting more West End by the moment. Excellent job on the dry ice for fog, Mr. Jones!

I slid in the doorway and rapped three, then two, then waited. The police intelligence was good, and in a few seconds the slot opened and I saw a pair of slanted eyes.

“Bawang hua,” I said, which means, I believe, “flower king.”

More good intelligence. The slot snapped shut, the door opened. I slid in, hammered immediately by the drifting pall of fume in the red air, as all the lanterns were tinted in that hellish shade.

“A pipe, old man, and none of that for-shite Turkish sludge. Your finest Persian silk, if you please.” It was gibberish to me, but again Ross had advised well. The Chinaman looked me up and down, but I’m guessing to him occidental faces were as formulaic as Oriental faces are to Englishmen, and at any rate he could not classify me as miscreant, so had only the density of my brown tweed to go on, which he found acceptable. Then he led me down the hall where a Laskar brute who looked as if he chopped heads for a hobby sat grimly under a sign that said PIPES AND LAMPS ALWAYS CONVENIENT. A beaded curtain hung in a doorway to the left, and he led me through it.