The smile left Holmes's face. He was suddenly serious.
'May I see the letter?' he asked.
It was written in red, and the name at the bottom
was 'Jack the Ripper'. I still remember something of
what it said:
I love my work. My knife is nice and ready for the next
job. I can't wait to rip again.
Holmes turned to Lestrade. 'What are you doing to
stop this murderer?' he asked. 'It is clear that he will
kill again very soon.'
'Every extra policeman that we have will be in
Whitechapel at night,' Lestrade said. 'And we have a
little surprise for Jack the Ripper.' He looked at us
importantly. 'Some of our best and bravest
policemen will be dressed in women's clothes,' he
said. 'We will stop at nothing to catch this criminal.'
There was a moment's silence. Then Holmes and I
looked at one another and we both began to laugh.
We could not stop.
Lestrade turned very red. 'I see you are amused by
murder,' he said. 'You do not wish to work with us.
Well, I am a busy man. I must leave you. Goodbye,
Mr Holmes. Goodbye, doctor.'
Holmes stopped laughing immediately.
'Inspector,' he said, 'I want very much to work with
you. Let us meet this afternoon to discuss our plans.'
This made Lestrade much happier.
When he had left, I said to Holmes, 'You have
laughed at the police, but what ideas do you have
about these crimes? Who do you think the murderer
is?'
'I do not know who he is, Watson,' he told me, 'but I
believe I know what kind of man he is. He is far too
intelligent, too extraordinary a killer for our good
friend Lestrade and his policemen in dresses to
catch. No, he shall be mine. He is the criminal that I
have waited for. To destroy him will be the greatest
success of my life. I dream of it, Watson! I must
destroy him! I cannot fail!'
He was shaking with excitement. I had never seen
him like this before.
That afternoon he went to Scotland Yard. When he
came home, he was very quiet. Next day he
appeared dressed in old, dirty clothes.
'I am going to Whitechapel,' he told me. 'As you
know, I have rooms in several parts of London. For
the next three days I shall live among the poor
people of White chapel. Nobody will know who I am.
I shall talk to them and listen to everything that they
tell me.'
'May I come with you?' I asked, but he said, 'No,
Watson, you may not. If there is a murder, I shall send
for you. I shall need your help, old fellow, have no
fear of that!'
I spent a lonely evening in Baker Street. I was asleep
when, at half past two in the morning, a cab arrived
to take me to Whitechapel. Another woman had
met a violent death.
As I travelled through the dark, empty streets, London
seemed a strange and ghostly place - it lay there like
the body of a great animal, not sleeping but dead.
The driver took me east, towards the poorest parts of
the city.
He stopped in a narrow lane off Leadenhall Street. I
saw a group of policemen standing under a light,
and went up to them. Holmes was not there, but I
was introduced to the police doctor. He offered to
show me the body.
'I know you are a doctor,' he said, 'but I must warn
you. You have never seen anything like this before.'
He led me to a dark corner, where something lay
covered on the ground. He held up a light for me to
see and pulled back the cover.
No words can describe the awfulness of what I saw
then, For a moment my head felt light, I began to
shake and was afraid I would fall. The thing on the
ground had been a woman, but it was not a woman
now. It was no more than blood and meat, cut open
and ripped up with a terrible, unnatural violence. I
knew now why the killer called himself Jack the
Ripper.
The doctor covered the body, and I walked back to
the group of policemen.
'Have you seen Mr Holmes?' I asked one of them,
'Oh yes, sir,' he said. 'He was here with Inspector
Lestrade.
They carne straight from the other murder.'
'The other murder!' I cried. 'Has there been more than
one murder tonight?'
'Why yes, sir. Did you not know?'
At that moment I heard the sounds of a horse
corning into the lane, and a cab appeared.
'Get in, Watson!' a voice shouted, and Holmes
helped me into the cab.
'He has escaped,' he told me. 'We followed him, but
we have lost him.' His face was sad and tired. 'I want
to show you something interesting. Then we can go
home.'
The cab took us to a dark and dirty yard.
'The first woman died here,' Holmes said.
A policeman was standing in the yard. Holmes took a
light from him and shone it on the wall.
'Look at this, Watson,' he said.
These words were written on the wall:
No Time To Rip
'It is the murderer's hand-writing,' Holmes said. 'The
same as in the letter that Lestrade showed us.'
'What is happening?' I cried. 'I cannot understand
what this killer wants.'
'He wants everybody to be afraid of him,' Holmes
told me. 'He wants to be the most evil killer in the
world. He had to kill two women tonight, because he
did not have time to cut and rip the body of the first.
I think he heard somebody corning, and he had to
leave the body and run. Then he