‘About six feet, lofty beggar, with dark hat and suit, looked like a gentleman. He was worried, but. Gold signet ring on the left little finger with a diamond in it big as a hatpin.’
‘Was he a pimp?’
‘Nah, and she’s no whore,’ objected Bert. ‘I should know, I’ve carried enough. Only people who can afford taxis, almost.’
‘No, she’s not one of them,’ agreed Cec. ‘She made a mistake, that’s all. Some bloke ain’t acted square. He’s podded her and then left her, and she must have a respectable family, because she said she could go home now. You remember, mate? She wouldn’t have said that unless she came from a good home, and they didn’t know.’
‘Yair, she was frantic,’ said Bert. ‘We said that you wouldn’t tell ’em.’
‘Nor shall I,’ agreed Dr MacMillan. ‘I shall tell them that she is here, but not what brought her here. One can get blood poisoning from any breach in the skin. A rose thorn would do. What else can you recall about the man who brought her to you?’
‘Nothin’ much else. Black hair, I reckoned, and a toffy look. Eh, Cec?’
Cec, overcome by his unaccustomed eloquence, nodded.
‘Yair, and I reckon we’ve seen him before.’
‘Where?’
‘Might have been in the cab, might have just been on the street — have a feeling that it was somewhere around Lon. or Little Lon. . Cec, does that toffy mug ring a bell?’
‘Nah, mate. You musta been on your pat.’
‘We don’t usually work together, see. Cec has a truck. But she’s laid up with piston trouble so we’re doing a double shift. Nah, I can’t remember. Why do you want to know?’
‘To inform the police, of course,’ stated Dr MacMillan quietly. ‘He must be found and put in jail. If she dies, he is a murderer. Butchers! They batten on the respectability of these stupid girls — it’s always the innocent and deceived that get caught — and they mutilate them, charging ten pounds for the savagery that a cannibal wouldn’t stoop to, and then they dump them like so much garbage to bleed out their lives in the gutter. Nothing is too bad for such men — nothing. If I could but lay a hand on them myself I’d inoculate them with bacteria, and watch how they liked trembling and shrieking their lives away down to an agonising, filthy death.’
‘Not the jacks, though,’ mumbled Bert. ‘Not the cops. .’
‘And why not? You are essential witnesses.’
‘Yair, but Cec and me don’t have no cause to love the jacks.’
‘I am not asking you to love them, nor will they be concerned with your petty crimes. You will come down to Russell Street with me this afternoon and you will tell them everything you know, and I will answer for it that you will walk out again. Do you understand?’
They understood.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Bert and Cec tailed Dr MacMillan into the police station, under the red brick portal, and came before the desk-sergeant on his high pedestal.
‘I am Dr Elizabeth MacMillan, and I have an appointment to see a Detective-inspector Robinson.’
‘Yes, madam,’ said the desk-sergeant. ‘He’s expecting you. These are your people, sir,’ he added to a soberly dressed young man sitting beside him. They followed him along a corridor and into a small, bleak office painted institution green. It contained a desk, a filing cabinet, and four hard chairs. The cable-car clanged outside. At his signal, they all sat down and there was a moment’s silence while he took down a folio ledger and unscrewed a black fountain pen.
‘Your names, please,’ he said in a carefully unmodulated voice. The man was colourless, with mid-brown hair, mid-brown eyes, and nothing noticeable about him at all. They gave their names. When he heard ‘Albert Johnson’ and ‘Cecil Yates’ he grinned.
‘The red-raggers, eh? Still fighting the capitalist menace? Been to Russia yet? With a lot of property reasonably suspec- ted to be unlawfully obtained?’
Cec stared mournfully at Dr MacMillan.
Bert, glaring at the policeman, snarled, ‘Your time will come. Oppressor of the widow and orphan, upholder of the exploiter. .’
‘That will do,’ interposed Dr MacMillan. ‘I spoke to you, officer, if you recall, about these gentlemen. They behaved, in relation to this wretched girl, with notable gallantry and gentleness. I have assured them that they are required only to state what they have observed about this butcher of an abortionist, and I would not be forsworn.’ She fixed the uncomfortable detective with her eye, and he flinched.
‘That’s right, madam, you are quite correct. Now, tell me all about the man.’
Bert, assisted by Cec, repeated the description, and the detective lost his indifference. He flicked over the pages in the ledger and read aloud, ‘Six feet tall, cropped hair, swarthy complexion, signet ring on his left hand.’
‘Yair,’ agreed Bert. ‘We couldn’t see his hair because he had his hat on, but I reckoned that it was black, or very dark brown, like shoe polish. And a little smear of a moustache, just a line on the upper lip.’
‘That’s him,’ said the detective. ‘He’s been involved in this racket for three years — or that’s as long as we’ve known about it. We call him Butcher George. The first victim was a girl called Mary Elizabeth Allen, found dead in the Flagstaff Gardens, dumped out of a car by a man of that description. Good girl, by the way. The next was a common prostitute known as Gay Lil, real name Lillian Marchent, found dying in a gutter in Fitzroy Street. She said that the job was done by a man called George Fletcher and gave a similar description. Course, you can’t rely on the word of a girl like that. .’
‘O can’t ye?’ demanded Dr MacMillan, her accent becoming more Scottish as she lost her temper. ‘I’ve worked with enough of ’em to know you can trust ’em just as fine as anyone — they’re human women, for the Lord’s sake! Lil’s death is just as much a tragedy as the good little girls’—they all die the same, Detective-inspector.’
Dr MacMillan saw that Bert, Cec and the policeman were all regarding her with the same puzzled stare. She concluded that men were all alike, one side of the law or the other, and held her tongue. The detective-inspector read on.
‘Third was a married woman — eight kids she had — and she got home before she bled to death. Left her husband a note saying that George had charged her ten pounds and she was sorry. Man answering to that description seen leaving the house. That was six months ago. And now your girl — when do you reckon it was done?’
‘Two or three days ago.’
‘And will she live?’
‘I hope so. I can’t tell,’ sighed Dr MacMillan. The detective-inspector leaned back in his chair.
‘We don’t know enough. It’s always hard to find ’em, because their victims protect ’em. To a girl in that situation, even death seems better than continuing pregnant, with social ruin staring her in the face. And some of them are quite competent. Some even use ether and have an operating-room. Some, like this bastard — beg pardon, madam — force themselves on the girls before they do the procedure.’
Cec growled, and Bert demanded, ‘If you’ve got all this proof, why don’t you catch him?’
‘No clues, he gets rid of the ones who die.’
‘And the ones that live won’t say a word. They com- mitted a crime by having the abortion, I understand,’ said Dr MacMillan. ‘We see enough of them at the hospital. Bleeding like pigs, infected, mutilated, torn and sterile for life, they all insist that it was a hot bath, or a horse-ride, or a fall down some steep stairs. Very well, officer. Thank you for seeing us.’
‘Here, you’re going to do nothin’?’ protested Bert. The detective-inspector turned a weary face towards him.
‘Why don’t you mobilise the comrades?’ he suggested tonelessly. ‘This George is somewhere in the city, near where you picked up this poor girl. Keep your eyes open, you may see him again.’