I, Ripper

We both laughed. Over our adventure, an enjoyable comradery had sprung up, which was perhaps why I reacted so angrily to Harry Dam’s calumny. Dare was every bit as ironical as I, every bit as radical, every bit as aware of the pomp and circumstance of empire and the core of rot it concealed, but a little bit more cold-blooded. He never grew angry at the ugliness of what hid in plain sight before much of London’s sleepy eyes; he only enjoyed a dark chuckle now and then. He was truly the Holmesian ideal.

“Here,” he said, “you may as well take this now. It’s quite cumbersome.”

With that, he opened his cape, did some dipping and unbuckling, and passed something over to me. It was quite heavy, an object in a leather pouch, the leather pouch in a nest of strapping. I felt it deposited on my lap and was astounded that its weight appeared far more than its size indicated. I bent, peeled through the leather strapping, got to the object concealed in the pouch, and while at first it made no sense to me in the low light of a far-off gas lamp, it gradually resolved itself into more or less known forms.

“Good heavens,” I said, genuinely shocked, “a gun.”

“Yes, it is. Damned big one, too, I’m told.”

I saw that it had a kind of curved wooden hand grip, and by that, I pulled it partly out of its sheathing and realized it had double hammers over double barrels. It was only a foot long or so, and thus its messages were contradictory. The part I’d pulled had a rifle quality, or perhaps shotgun, as there was a hinge and latch by means of which one could break it and insert shells; but there was no stock, only the thick, curled wooden grip. It had no barrel length, either, which disqualified it further from the rifle or shotgun category.

“Howdah … you do?” the professor said merrily.

“Er, I don’t—”

“It’s called a Howdah pistol,” he said. “Evidently I had an uncle who spent his life and fortune accumulating heads to hang in a hall in his home. Pointless, if you ask me, unless the heads were human, but alas, none was. He died, perhaps under wildebeest hooves, and it came to my father, and when he died, it came to me along with other knickknacks of dubious usefulness. I’ve had it in an upstairs room for years.”

“Is it a hunting gun?”

“After a fashion. It’s not for when you are hunting them, however, but when they are hunting you.”

I said nothing, not following.

“In India, they hunt tiger from little compartments cinched about an elephant’s back. Sahib need not walk in brushy, punishing jungle as he draws near his quarry. He rides in comfort, as befits the raj. But the tiger is smart. Sometimes he climbs a tree and, knowing he’s hunted, will wait concealed in the branches until the elephant passes by. He’s not stupid. He knows he has no quarrel with the elephant. He knows who his enemy is, so he leaps into the compartment up top and readies for lunch. In those closed circumstances, the rifle is too clumsy to maneuver. Sahib pulls his Howdah pistol from its scabbard, cocks both hammers, and, as the tiger lunges, fires two immense bullets down its throat. Sahib and Memsahib live to eat mango chutney another night and have many tales to tell.”

“It’s a last-ditch sort of thing,” I said, finally grasping the concept through the irony.

“Indeed. And what better to have along if, by chance, we jump Jack and he jumps back. I doubt we can argue him into dropping his knife, brilliant though we may be, so it’s on you to cock and fire. The caliber is something called 5-7-7 Kynoch, whatever that means, but the size of it will certainly dissuade Jack from further fuss.”

“It’s loaded?”

“Half the weight is the ammunition, my friend.”

“I don’t know if I could shoot a man,” I said.

“The knife in his hand and the smile on his face will convince you otherwise. Furthermore, it’s much better to have it and not need it than the opposite.”

Strapping the belt together, I realized it was meant to be slung over one shoulder so that it dangled under the other. Affecting this process, after accommodating my jacket and mac to it, I found it nested comfortably enough there, although its weight was not borne by any part of my body but rested on the bench.

Then we settled back. We were nestled in a copse of trees at the center of the square, near the statue of Hoxton, whoever in hell’s name he happened to be; no Bobby could see us unless he came through the square itself, and Professor Dare assured me they never did.

“The rich,” he said, “need no extra patrol. They are quite safe behind their walls of rectitude.”