'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 ends their short lives.
We returned to the police station after one o'clock. I was tired and sick at heart. Lestrade did not stop talking, telling us that we should catch no murderers that night.
Suddenly, Holmes jumped up and walked out into the street.
I followed him.