I, Ripper

“Hiya, pal,” said Harry, rising, putting out a big American hand. It must have been his straw boater’s hat on O’Connor’s desk, for only an American would wear a boating hat where there were no boats to be found. He had a big, raw-boned face and a winning smile under a droopy red mustache, which displayed spadelike, rather gigantic teeth. He was wearing an Eton rowing blazer edged in white, a white shirt, a deep blue cross-hatched waistcoat, a tie of color (red), trousers of white with dark blue stripes, and white shoes and socks. Was there a regatta? Was he going picnicking with a lady on the Thames, or perhaps coxswaining a boat in the big tilt against Balliol’s eight? I put it all on loathsome American crudity; as a people, they seem to lack any sense of tradition and are utterly incapable of reading the cues and learning from what they see. They’re entirely bent on results or, rather, money. What they like they take and make their own, regardless.

“Nice coat,” he said as we shook. “Can I get the name of your tailor?”

“Alas,” I said, “a German madman.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I like the sort of belted, harnessed look that thing has. Is it for some kind of fishing?”

“Hunting jacket,” I said. “Vented shoulders, gives one more flexibility on the turning shots. It’s said the coloration dumbfounds the grouse, but even if their brains are the size of a pea, they cannot be that dim.”

“You never know. Good shooting?”

I had no idea. I’d never done it, would never do it. “Quite jolly,” I said.

“Now, fellows,” said O’Connor, “glad to have us together for our little chat. Jeb, as I’ve been telling Harry, I’m proud of what you fellows have done. You’ve lit this place up and set the pace for the whole town. We’re driving the story, and all the other rags are following us. And I know, if anything breaks fast and sudden-like, whichever of you is here will get it first, hard and straight. And we’ll continue to drive, which means we’ll continue to sell, which means my investors will shut up and leave me in peace.”

Neither Harry nor I said a thing.

“However,” said O’Connor, “I don’t mind telling you, we have a problem.”

He paused. We waited. He took up and sucked on his cheroot, and its glow inflamed as he drew air through it, then exhaled a giant puff of smoke.

“The problem is: Where is he?”

“In hell, hopefully,” I said.

“Good for the world, bad for the Star. These greedy investors I have, they’re like opium addicts. They get a whiff of the profits when something this bloody-wizard big happens, they want that to be the norm. So they put the squeeze on. You have no idea what I go through.”

It occurred to me that it was quite wrong to hope for the killer to strike again as an aid toward boosting sales, but that was the reality of the business; O’Connor had no moral problem stating it so baldly, and the American wasn’t about to make a speech, so I kept my own mouth sealed tightly.

“Boss, do you want me to go out and slice up a dolly?” said Harry, and we all three laughed, for it somewhat ameliorated the anguish in the room.

“No, indeed,” said O’Connor. “The lawyers would never approve. But I want us to put our heads together and come up with an angle that we can push to heat things up again. The rings gag was a start, but there’s more we can do. That’s what this meet is about.”

It never occurred to me. Covering the killer was enough; the idea of generating news, presumably of some sort of fabricated nonsense, struck me as appalling. Yet again, because I am who I am and lack certain moral strengths, and because I had gotten so much out of the killer’s campaign against Whitechapel’s Judys, I said nothing.

Dam mentioned something about a special edition that put the pictures of the two victims on the front page, to be run in black borders, with comments from the various children.

“Not going to do it, I’m afraid,” said O’Connor. “Our readers don’t want maudlin, they want mayhem. They want the red stuff sticky on their hands.”

We batted it around for a bit, nice and easy-like, and I popped up with a few absurdities – what would the day’s leading intellectuals, such as Mr. Hardy, Mr. Darwin, Mr. Galton, think, for example.

But the chat ran down sadly, and gloom filled the room. And then – hark, the herald angels sing!

“I got it,” said Harry. “Yes, I do. Okay, what’s this missing? It’s even missing here in this room, and we’re talking around it.”

Silence, not of the golden sort.

“It’s a story,” said Harry finally. “It needs a villain.”

“Well, it’s got a villain,” I said. “We just have no idea who it is.”

“But he’s not a character. He’s an idea, a phantom, a theory, an unknown. Sometimes he’s ‘the fiend’ and sometimes ‘the murderer,’ but he has no personality, no image. We can’t get a fix on him. It’s not enough that he’s an Ikey, even if the folks do hate their Ikeys. He’s still blurry, indistinct.”

“I don’t—” I started to say.

“He needs a name.”

It was so absurdly simple, it brought conversation to a halt.