“I can help with things,” she replied, less than explanatory. “Things like this.” A gesture with a grease-smeared palm at the cameo. “Or perhaps if you need a body out in the street with you. Or just a device,” she added hastily, reading my immediate protest with startling ease.
I thought quickly. I had not promised to change my mind, and she did not demand it. “Is that your offer, then?”
“It is.”
Well, it was a sight more reasonable than I could expect. I nodded. “Fine. But ’tis your duty to be sure what I ask of you and what the Veil demands are never in contest, do you hear me?”
She nodded.
“And if Hawke ever asks you, you know nothing,” I added.
Her eyebrows rose in unconcealed amusement. “Him? Talk to the likes of me? Only if I’ve done something worth a haranguing. And then it’d come mostly by them other whips.”
That was what I was afraid of. “Be serious,” I told her.
“I’ll be very careful,” she said on a great big sigh, as if I wrenched the commitment from her. “But you’ve no worry. I work hard and get the run of my way down here. Mostly.”
“Fair enough.” It was the best I could hope for. “Then ’tis done.”
“Shake on it.” Maddie Ruth spit in her palm, offered it for shaking.
Ah, lovely. Lower-class honor. I mimicked her gesture, spitting in my palm the same as her, and clasped my hand to hers. The press of damp flesh was enough to have me cringing in amused distaste.
I’d put my hand in worse, really. A bit of saliva never hurt a body.
She pumped my hand once, as hard as a man might, and promised, “I’ll start work on this.”
“Do you require equipment?” I hadn’t seen anything I might ordinarily ascribe to a laboratory.
“Nah.” A tossed off shrug. “Just something to see the fine bits. I’ve a microscope Flip found left behind an old druggist’s shop after the owner kicked off, and he gets me what I need when I need it.”
A good lad to have about, that Flip. “Thank you,” I told her. Now, I needed to begin the next step in what was not quite a plan so much as a budding theory. In Ishmael’s turn of phrase, there was a hang-in-chains to locate.
I had a small idea of where to begin.
Chapter Eleven
This time, I made my way to the collector’s station with no interruptions. Part of this small victory may have come from the lateness of the hour. Most out would be intent on achieving whatever entertainments they chose for the evening than on idling about.
The rest, them what made it their business to watch for easy prey in the dark and fog, would take note of my collector’s appearance. Those of us who made our living by the wall had a certain inimitability quite difficult to ignore.
If the manner with which we strode through the streets of London low did not give the less intelligent pause, the appearance of the fog-preventatives and hand-tooled respirator covering much of my face would. Even low pads tended to err on the side of caution when a body wore such items in plain view.
Only the terminally unwise assaulted a collector in less than a group, and good fortune to any who attempted to locate a group of men willing to try.
I used this to my advantage on those nights when I would much rather focus on the task at hand than wander through the stews making contacts from the residents and working girls there.
I felt rather calm, which surprised me—though I quickly came to believe this a remnant of the opium I had been given. That it came from Hawke’s own fingers was an undeniable fact I was trying very hard not to dwell on.
Delivering medicinal tar was not as intimate a task as my imagination was determined to paint it.
It did allow me, however, a measure of peace that I struggled to maintain without. I walked fearlessly through the fog-stifled streets until I arrived at my destination and did not allow myself to wander across mental landscapes I swore I’d have no truck with.
Hawke’s efforts, Zylphia’s punishments, these were among those thoughts I stifled.
These concerns, these aimless worries, would only detract from the greater goal. I entered the abandoned train station that had become the collectors’ base of operations, strode through the fog leaking through the long-since shattered windows to pool across the empty floor. The lanterns affixed on either end of the open space offered just enough light to indicate that I was alone in the vacant station. It was a rare enough thing to cross the paths of other collectors, but not unheard of.
I did not even know how many of us there were, though I was assuredly the only woman among them. My presence continued to be the fodder of gossip and rumor; a fact I had long grown to enjoy, as my identity remained a thing of mystery.
The faintest current of air pushed the fog along, curling it into wisps and fingers of lamplit gray as it clung to my knees. It did not reach high enough to dampen the papers on the old brick facing at the far end, but some nearer the bottom did tend to show a bit of rot around the edges.
I pushed my fog-prevention goggles atop my head, the better to read the often cramped handwriting scrawled across the various bits of paper affixed to the wall. The yellow lens of one half of the eye protection allowed me to see clearer through the fog than most, though it tinted the world in the same shade. The other lens had long since cracked—in a scuffle with the very same murderer I hunted now.
All things come around full circle, it seemed. I would take the coin I’d need to repair the glass out of his arrogance, as well.
I glossed over many of the notices. It took some recalibrating of my own awareness, but for the first time in my years of collecting, I ignored the ones that called for living delivery, debts collected or items found and looked instead for those demanding assassination.
It was not an act that settled comfortably upon me. I had always maintained two rules: I did not collect children, and I did not murder, for coin or otherwise.
The former because I had seen firsthand the terrible price children paid for such machinations. My first collection had culminated in the rescue of young girls taken by them what should know better.
The latter because I was no murderer.
To kill a man, to lose one’s soul by taking another’s, had never been worth the coin offered. Beyond that, purses so heavy as to warrant the death of the mark were also usually challenged by other collectors. I sought for one, in specific, and knew just how to find him.
There were two demands for death upon the wall that night, and the coin was enough to make even my eyes go round.
Yet it was the third call for the retrieval of a man, a notice that suggested capture alive for justice was preferable but deceased with proof of identity tolerable, that garnered my interest.
Jack the Ripper.
It was not the first time I had ever seen a collection notice for the man, though ’twas the first I’d seen with his newly claimed moniker upon it. He was quite a sight more infamous now.
A man worth the time to claim. I could not be the only collector to think so, though only one would leave the notice upon the wall. That the paper was not yet marked meant it was fresh.
There was no purse attached, which surprised me, only an indication that one should request audience with the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee for reward.
The Committee had formed only last September, bolstered by businesses concerned that the murders committed by the one they’d formerly called Leather Apron were affecting trade. A cold-hearted motive, but one that spurred men into action. If I recalled the articles correctly, one George Lusk had been nominated the chairman of the committee.
His would be the first avenue by which I would gain information.