Chapter Twenty Eight
“James, you have to go to a doctor!” Anne insisted, as she had been since the inventor had ordered the hansome’s driver to head straight to the cobbler’s shop, shaking her out of the shock of coming face to face with her own killer.
“Later.” He replied, which Anne acknowledged was an improvement. He’d ignored most of her attempts to get his attention completely.
“No! If you don’t treat that soon, it could get infected. At the very least you need to clean it out and bandage it properly!”
James threw open the door to the shop, not bothering to respond to Anne’s demands. He jerked to a stop, reaching up to grab the paddle he kept above the door, when a figure moved in the dark shadows of the room. “Who’s there?” He demanded.
“Calm down, Jimmy! Calm down!” Elbert’s voice drifted out, the man fiddling with the heavy switch of the electric lamp James had constructed for himself. The light flickered to life, dimly lighting the room and the face of Anne’s cousin. “You look like you had a rough night.”
“Very.” James agreed. He limped over to the desk, ignoring that yet another plate of food from his larder was filling it, and fell into the chair beside it. He planted the damaged ankle onto the desktop. “Anne can tell you how to patch this up. Do it quickly.”
“Um… right.” Elbert responded. He slid on his monocle, looking askance at Anne who sighed.
“Emily was attacked. James managed to save her, but a policeman half bashed his head in. That happened while he was being dragged home.”
“I’ll explain the rest later, as we travel. For now, patch me up.” James demanded.
Both cousins looked at him, wanting to demand where they were going to be traveling too, but Anne decided to not take the chance of his patience waning and the engineer attempting to run off on a bloody foot, and instead began yelling instructions into Elbert’s head. James didn’t cry out, or show signs of feeling pain, when the rogue boiled a needle and some thread with which he sewed up the wound. “How’s that looking Anne?” He asked, after spreading one of the few salves Anne had insisted James carry over on an earlier trip over the wound and bandaged it up.”
“Very good, Elbert. You’d have made a right decent physician.”
He chuckled and admitted. “I’ve been one, a time or two.”
“Charming.” James muttered, rising from the chair and walking across the room to the stairs. He was limping only slightly, the only concession to pain he’d made since meeting the Lord an hour ago. Anne and Elbert chased after him, concerned.
“Gov, why don’t you lay out on this here cot? Climbing stairs with a bum foot isn’t going to be pleasant, trust me.” Elbert urged. All he got in response was an impatient grunt. Both followed James as he scaled the stairs.
The inventor walked, not towards the bedroom like Anne had hoped, but to the small pedestal covered with a cloth. Anne gasped while Elbert looked on confused. James opened a drawer and pulled out a metal contraption, sneering at a destroyed cabinet across the room. “Never drink when a gun is around Elbert. You make bad choices.” James observed.
“What are you talking about a gun… oh?” Elbert stepped back involuntarily as the dust cloth was thrown aside, and James lifted his dart launcher off of its stand. James pulled off the arrangement of metal and gears on the top, replacing it with the one from the drawer. He pressed down on a slide, and a loud clank sounded. “What… is that, Jimmy?”
“It’s a weapon I designed and then decided was too dangerous.” James replied, pulling a leather holster, designed to rest snuggly under a gentleman’s arm, out of the same drawer the ammunition box had come from. He slipped it on. “I am reassessing my opinion.”
“You can’t mean to go after him!” Anne cried out. “James, you’d be a murderer!”
“Been accused of being that a lot, lately.” The scientist observed, holstering the clockwork gun and grabbing a pair of tall riding boots that had been tossed nearby on some earlier occasion. “I suppose it’s time to try it out.” He said as he stomped one foot into the hard leather sole.
“Gov, I know you’re angry…”
“Angry?” James hissed, spinning around. “Angry? Oh, I’m far more than angry.” James growled.
“James…”
“No, Anne, this has got to end.” James stated grimly, sliding the boot still in his hands over the injured foot. “I resisted, I fought, and I explained away my responsibility but, in the end, it seems I am destined to have to finish this. If not for me, then for the girl who I failed… and the woman I love.”
Anne gasped, taking her own shocked step back as a blush rose on her face. Elbert frowned. “I’m all for you and Anne being happy, and revenge sounds a treat, but this is a Lord you’re talking about! I thought you said we couldn’t get away with it.”
“I am past caring.”
Elbert moved out of James’s way as the taller man pushed by, chasing him down the stairs with Anne floating after both men. “But…”
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“No ‘buts’ Elbert. This ends tonight.” James said, pouring out the bags of his property, grabbing up his long frock coat, and sliding the screwdriver and compass into its pockets. Absently he grabbed both necklaces, slipping them over his head with the habit of over a month of ownership. “You know the area he lives in, right?”
“Yes…”
“Lead me to his house. I’ll do the rest.”
“No! I forbid it!” Anne all but screamed. “James, Emily will be okay. You heard how he was speaking. He’ll leave her be if you don’t interfere with him any longer. Just let the matter lay.”
“And what about you?”
Anne sighed and swallowed. “I’m dead James. Killing him won’t change that.”
“No, it won’t.” James agreed. “But it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.”
The inventor tried to push towards the door, but this time Elbert barred his path. “Hold on there, sunny Jim. Let’s think about this.”
“I’ve been thinking… too much.” James declared. “It’s time to act.”
Elbert nodded. “That may well be true, but you need to plan a caper like this.”
“Elbert!”
“No Anne… He’s right.” Her cousin said softly. “This bastard killed you, and almost killed that pretty little slip of nothing, Emily.”
“But…”
“And Alice… you left right after we got her doctoring, but I saw her home.” Elbert continued, interrupting Anne. “She has a little blond bit of sunshine at her home, a girl of no more than five. This Lord… Jack… would have left her an orphan. Its sheer luck that none of Jack’s victims… either Jack’s victims… had left little ones to suffer before now! You know what it’s like to be with just a mother, Anne, but you can’t imagine how it feels to be abandoned by her. I can, and if she had been dead that would only have been worse.”
The rogue turned to James again. “That being said, what’s your plan? Charge into the man’s house, all fire and brimstone? That’s a right quick way to die, considering the man is sure to have servants. Either they’ll stop you afore you get a shot off, or you’ll be hung by witness reports alone.”
“I don’t…”
“Care… you said that.” Elbert nodded. “Course, that’s now. What about when you’re standing on the gallows, with Anne here weeping next to you. Though, seeing as she’s haunting you I guess you’ll both go to heaven together… and have no doubt, I’m sure god will judge you favorably for killing the bastard.”
“However, if you’d use the brain god saw fit to bless your oversized head with, you might see an option that could lead to a clean escape.”
James frowned and considered the man a moment. “You sound like you already have one.”
“I just might.” He agreed. “That is, assuming you’re willing to make a stop first.”
Thirty minutes later they were standing in an alley only a handful of blocks away from Lord Thompson’s house. Elbert, who stood in front of both Anne and James, for the entire world like a teacher giving instruction, asked “What do you see?”
“An Alley.” James growled. “What’s the point of…?”
“Now now… Do I or Anne interrupt you when you explain things?” Elbert chided.
“Frequently.”
“Well, if you didn’t run on so…” Elbert muttered. “Anyway, look at my feet.”
“Why would I… That’s a sewer cover.” James said, realization dawning. “You lost him in an alley, didn’t you?”
“That I did.” Elbert nodded. “The stupid thing is it was a dead end. I went back the next morning, figuring the wanker might have been hiding in one of the buildings when I damn near tripped over one of the things. It was ajar, you see.”
“He’s using the sewers!” James exclaimed. “That’s how he’s getting away and moving about unnoticed while wearing a bloody mask!”
“Excuse me… but are they really big enough for him to use to travel?” Anne demanded. “Whitechapel is easily two miles walk from here, if not more.”
“Yes, actually.” James nodded. “They were built so that men could easily move through, for the periodic cleaning they need. Many sections go so far as to have walkways that stay above the muck, for the most part, for safety. And they spread out all through London.”
“How do you know that?” Anne asked.
“I wrote a small paper on them for a class at Cambridge.” James admitted. “I never thought it’d be useful, though.”
“Myself, I found out 'cause I had to escape a rich man’s house through a sewer hatch. Seems the blighter did a spot of undeclared shipping, which was a boon since I was with his daughter without permission, so to speak.” Elbert commented. “Which caused me to think, if I was going to be a killer, preying on the streets of London, why wouldn’t I build a similar hatch?”
“And with the compass it’ll be fairly easy to avoid getting lost!” James said. “Brilliant!”
“With that wound, though, I’m not sure you want to go tramping around the sewers.” Anne observed.
“No worries, Anne.” Elbert commented. “I might have, just on the off chance such a thing would be needed, checked the underground near here. It seems that the rich get everything in life, including nicer sewers. He won’t have to go mucking about in slime and refuse.”
“I’m going.” James stated while pulling out the screwdriver he’d pocketed. He began prying up the cover. “I want you to go back to the shop Elbert.”
“What? I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.” James stated, shaking his head. “I need you to go to Emily if I’m not back by morning and tell the police what we know. If I’m killed, I want the police to know why.”
“Do you think that’ll achieve anything?”
“No… but we have to try.”
“But who’ll watch your back?”
“Anne.”
“So, you suddenly remember I’m here, then.” She snarled. “After ignoring me for the better part of several hours. Why should I help you kill yourself?”
“The idea is for you to help me not die.” James commented dryly. “And frankly, you can’t stop me.”
“And Elbert isn’t.” Anne sighed. “If you get yourself killed…I’ll…”
James smiled. “I’ll just have to make sure not to die.”
“I still think I should go with you.” Elbert said.
“If you come, and we fall, no one will be around to protect Emily. He’ll assume she knows what we do, and try to silence her. No, one of us has to stay, and this is my fight. Fate, it seems, demands it.”
Elbert frowned, but reluctantly nodded. “I’ll be waiting for you at the shop. You’d better not keep me waiting, James.”
“Why Elbert… you do know my real name… try to remember it.”
“Bah… get going!”
James dropped into the sewers, his feet coming down on the brick-and-mortar walkway inches above the river of noisome waist flowing by. He pulled the compass out of his pocket and considered it, then set off in the direction closest to what he wanted.
Fifteen minutes and two wrong turns later, the compass began to spin. “Now what?” Anne demanded.
James, frowning, pulled out the candle medallion Anne had made. “Candle Light.” He intoned, peering around at the ceiling. “Where is the…”
“What if he doesn’t have one of these secret hatches James?” Anne asked. “This is a fools…” She sighed as he walked around a corner, still gazing up at the ceiling. She heard him exclaim happily and moved faster.
She found him already scaling a ladder, crudely built and obviously not part of the original masonry. “James! Don’t!”
“I’m doing this Anne, you can’t stop me.” James growled. The hatch, for there was indeed one, was cracked slightly open. Light could be seen through it.
James lifted his hand and pushed it open, pulling himself through it. Anne, frustrated, called out “Shouldn’t I go first! What if he’s up there?”
James winced and began to look around himself desperately. All he saw before pain exploded in his head was a foot out of the corner of his eye as it drove into his temple. Then he saw nothing.