On Monday night Whitechapel was full of policemen,
all ready to catch Jack the Ripper. Nothing
happened. Only Lestrade enjoyed this.
'You have failed, Mr Holmes,' he said. 'Your idea was
very clever, but you made one mistake. You forgot
to tell the murderer about it!'
Holmes and I took a cab back to Baker Street. We
were both too tired to talk then, but later that day I
said, 'Holmes, what did happen? What went wrong?'
'We did not really fail. Moriarty could not kill anyone
because we were there. But 1 badly wanted to
catch him at his work, and there I failed.'
'He was there, then?'
'He was there. He saw what I had done, and realized
that he could not kill a woman that night.'
'Then you did not fail! We have beaten him.' Holmes
shook his head slowly. 'No, Watson. We have not
beaten him yet. Think how angry he must be! I have
stopped him once, and now he will try harder to kill
me. He will go on with his planned murders, and he
will do everything possible to make sure that he
succeeds.'
'But Holmes, how do we ... ?'
'Remember, he kills, waits a week, kills again and
then waits three weeks. So he will kill again next
weekend. 1 must talk to Lestrade. But tonight,
Watson, we shall amuse ourselves at the theatre.'
He would say no more, but that night, while we were
at the theatre, he disappeared from my side without
a word. 1 did not even see him leave, and for several
days I neither saw him nor heard from him. Then, at
dinner time on the night when we had hoped to
catch Jack the Ripper at his work, he suddenly
appeared again in Baker Street.
'Holmes!' I cried. 'Where have you been?'
'Don't worry, old fellow.' He sat down by the fire. 'I
have been keeping Moriarty busy and playing
games with him. He has chased me all over the
country, but, as you see, I am still alive. I shall tell you
my adventures some other time. Lestrade will be
here in a minute to discuss tonight's plan.'
When Lestrade arrived, he did not seem at all
pleased to see us.
'So, another of your clever little plans, Mr Holmes,' he
said coldly. 'Do you really think we shall see the killer
tonight?' 'He will be at work tonight,' Holmes replied.
'The only question is, shall we be ready for him? I
suppose you have done everything that I ordered
you to do?'
'We are ready for him.'
'Then let us go. We must not keep Jack the Ripper
waiting.' It was a cold, windy night, and we were
grateful for our thick coats as we sat in the cab. It
took us to the big police station in Commercial
Street. Hundreds of policemen were waiting there to
begin the night's work. Holmes and I sat down to
wait, too.
After some time I said to Holmes, 'This waiting is
terrible. 1 wish we could do something.'
'We can,' he replied.
'When a crime is reported. Until then we can only
wait. The murderer could be anywhere out there.'
Holmes picked up a piece of paper and a pencil.
'He could.
But I think I know where he is. Look at this.' This is what
he showed me:
'The letters E, S, C and N are Eddowes, Stride,
Chapman and Nicholl, the last four women he has
murdered,' Holmes said. 'The diagram shows the
place where each died.'
'And X, I suppose, is some unknown woman, the one
that he plans to kill tonight,' I said. 'But how do you
know where to put the X on your diagram?'
'Look again, Watson,' Holmes said with a smile.
Suddenly, I understood. 'It is a letter M!'
'Yes, Watson. M for murder, M for .. .' 'Moriarty!
Holmes, do you mean to say ... ?'
'Yes. He is writing his name in blood upon the face of
Whitechapel. And, as you see, I know where he will
try to kill tonight, and where I shall go to meet him.'
'Not without me,' I said. 'I must come with you.' We
left the police station just before midnight.
For the first time, 1 walked through the narrow streets
of east London, streets that I had seen before only
through the window of a cab. People think that
murders happen in dark, empty streets. That is not
always true. A strange and horrible fact about the
streets where Jack the Ripper murdered women is
that they were busier and better lit than most other
London streets. They were full of pubs and cheap
hotels. At all hours the streets were full of people who
were too poor to find a bed anywhere, drunks
looking for a bar that never closed, and all kinds of
criminals. Finally, there were the women - those
women who work only at night, when their more
honest sisters are asleep.
I studied medicine in London, and while I was a
student I saw something of the low-life of our capital.
I was, after all, a healthy young man, and young
men must amuse themselves. But I had never seen
women like these. Holmes stopped several to
question and to warn them, and I looked at their
faces carefully. They were old at the age of twenty,
dirty, diseased and hopeless. One thing was clear to
me - they were not like other women. Does it matter,
I began to think, if Jack the Ripper kills women like
these? Death by his knife is quick. It cannot be worse
than the slow and painful death from disease which
most often