The Dark Descent, page 40
It was there that Holstrom saw him, looking “as if he’d just got a terrible shock.” Holstrom was alarmed—and as it happened felt a special private guilt—but could hardly get a word out of him, though he made several attempts to start a conversation, choosing uncharacteristically neutral topics. Once, he remembered, Simister looked up and said, “Do you suppose there are some things a man simply can’t escape, no matter how quietly he lives or how carefully he plans?” But his face immediately showed he had realized there was at least one very obvious answer to this question, and Holstrom didn’t know what to say. Another time he suddenly remarked, “I wish we were like the British and didn’t have standing in buses,” but he subsided as quickly. As they neared the downtown terminus Simister seemed to brace up a little, but Holstrom was still worried about him to such a degree that he went out of his way to follow him through the terminus. “I was afraid something would happen to him, I don’t know what,” Holstrom said. “I would have stayed right beside him except he seemed to resent my presence.”
Holstrom’s private guilt, which intensified his anxiety and doubtless accounted for his feeling that Simister resented him, was due to the fact that ten days ago, cumulatively irritated by Simister’s smug prejudices and blinkered narrow-mindedness, he had anonymously mailed him three books recounting with uncompromising realism and documentation some of the least pleasant aspects of the Nazi tyranny. Now he couldn’t but feel they might have helped to shake Simister up in a way he hadn’t intended, and he was ashamedly glad that he had been in such a condition when he sent the package that it had been addressed in a drunken scrawl. He never discussed this matter afterwards, except occasionally to make strangely feelingful remarks about “what little things can unseat a spring in a man’s clockworks!”
So, continuing Holstrom’s story, he followed Simister at a distance as the latter dejectedly shuffled across the busy terminus. “Terminus?” Holstrom once interrupted his story to remark. “He’s a god of endings, isn’t he?—and of human rights. Does that mean anything?”
When Simister was nearing an iron fence a puzzling episode occurred. He was about to pass it to the right, when someone just ahead of him lurched or stumbled. Simister almost fell himself, veering toward the fence. A nearby guard reached out and in steadying him pulled him around the fence to the left.
Then, Holstrom maintains, Simister turned for a moment and Holstrom caught a glimpse of his face. There must have been something peculiarly frightening about that backward look, something perhaps that Holstrom cannot adequately describe, for he instantly forgot any idea of surveillance at a distance and made every effort to catch up.
But the crowd from another commuters’ express enveloped Holstrom. When he got outside the terminus it was some moments before he spotted Simister in the midst of a group jamming their way aboard an already crowded bus across the street. This perplexed Holstrom, for he knew Simister didn’t have to take the bus and he recalled his recent complaint.
Heavy traffic kept Holstrom from crossing. He says he shouted, but Simister did not seem to hear him. He got the impression that Simister was making feeble efforts to get out of the crowd that was forcing him onto the bus, but, “They were all jammed together like cattle.”
The best testimony to Holstrom’s anxiety about Simister is that as soon as the traffic thinned a trifle he darted across the street, skipping between the cars. But by then the bus had started. He was in time only for a whiff of particularly obnoxious exhaust fumes.
As soon as he got to his office he phoned Simister. He got Simister’s secretary and what she had to say relieved his worries, which is ironic in view of what happened a little later.
What happened a little later is best described by the same girl. She said, “I never saw him come in looking so cheerful, the old grouch—excuse me. But anyway he came in all smiles, like he’d just got some bad news about somebody else, and right away he started to talk and kid with everyone, so that it was awfully funny when that man called up worried about him. I guess maybe, now I think back, he did seem a bit shaken underneath, like a person who’s just had a narrow squeak and is very thankful to be alive.
“Well, he kept it up all morning. Then just as he was throwing his head back to laugh at one of his own jokes, he grabbed his chest, let out an awful scream, doubled up and fell on the floor. Afterwards I couldn’t believe he was dead, because his lips stayed so red and there were bright spots of color on his cheeks, like rouge. Of course it was his heart, though you can’t believe what a scare that stupid first doctor gave us when he came in and looked at him.”
Of course, as she said, it must have been Simister’s heart, one way or the other. And it is undeniable that the doctor in question was an ancient, possibly incompetent dispenser of penicillin, morphine and snap diagnoses swifter than Charcot’s. They only called him because his office was in the same building. When Simister’s own doctor arrived and pronounced it heart failure, which was what they’d thought all along, everyone was much relieved and inclined to be severely critical of the first doctor for having said something that sent them all scurrying to open the windows.
For when the first doctor had come in, he had taken one look at Simister and rasped, “Heart failure? Nonsense! Look at the color of his face. Cherry red. That man died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Robert Bloch
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
Robert Bloch was a correspondent of Lovecraft and became a supernatural horror writer for Weird Tales, a science fiction writer, a mystery writer, then a film writer. “Bloch epitomizes the horror dimension of today’s pop culture,” says one major reference book. His novel, Psycho, appears on Stephen King’s ten-best list and the film made by Alfred Hitchcock is a classic. He has published more than a dozen story collections principally horrific. His earliest stories, such as “The Shambler From the Stars,” are Lovecraftian but his characteristic work has as its hallmark abnormal psychology and absurd irony. He is a master of the pun. “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” is arguably his best story, an ironic blend of psychology and the supernatural, a monster story, a story that reinforces our belief in supernatural evil and connects it cleverly to evil in the real world. While later Bloch is often psychological horror (some of his best effects occur in mystery novels such as The Scarf), this story suggests the same moral universe as Harlan Ellison’s “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” Bloch was the first winner of the Grand Master Award for Life Achievement at the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975.
1
I looked at the stage Englishman. He looked at me.
“Sir Guy Hollis?” I asked.
“Indeed. Have I the pleasure of addressing John Carmody, the psychiatrist?”
I nodded. My eyes swept over the figure of my distinguished visitor. Tall, lean, sandy-haired—with the traditional tufted moustache. And the tweeds. I suspected a monocle concealed in a vest pocket, and wondered if he’d left his umbrella in the outer office.
But more than that, I wondered what the devil had impelled Sir Guy Hollis of the British Embassy to seek out a total stranger here in Chicago.
Sir Guy didn’t help matters any as he sat down. He cleared his throat, glanced around nervously, tapped his pipe against the side of the desk. Then he opened his mouth.
“Mr. Carmody,” he said, “have you ever heard of—Jack the Ripper?”
“The murderer?” I asked.
“Exactly. The greatest monster of them all. Worse than Springheel Jack or Crippen. Jack the Ripper. Red Jack.”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said.
“Do you know his history?”
“I don’t think we’ll get any place swapping old wives’ tales about famous crimes of history.”
He took a deep breath.
“This is no old wives’ tale. It’s a matter of life or death.”
He was so wrapped up in his obsession he even talked that way. Well—I was willing to listen. We psychiatrists get paid for listening.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Let’s have the story.”
Sir Guy lit a cigarette and began to talk.
“London, 1888,” he began. “Late summer and early fall. That was the time. Out of nowhere came the shadowy figure of Jack the Ripper—a stalking shadow with a knife, prowling through London’s East End. Haunting the squalid dives of Whitechapel, Spitalfields. Where he came from no one knew. But he brought death. Death in a knife.
“Six times that knife descended to slash the throats and bodies of London’s women. Drabs and alley sluts. August 7th was the date of the first butchery. They found her lying there with thirty-nine stab wounds. A ghastly murder. On August 31st, another victim. The press became interested. The slum inhabitants were more deeply interested still.
“Who was this unknown killer who prowled in their midst and struck at will in the deserted alleyways of nighttown? And what was more important—when would he strike again?
“September 8th was the date. Scotland Yard assigned special deputies. Rumors ran rampant. The atrocious nature of the slayings was the subject for shocking speculation.
“The killer used a knife—expertly. He cut throats and removed—certain portions—of the bodies after death. He chose victims and settings with a fiendish deliberation. No one saw him or heard him. But watchmen making their gray rounds in the dawn would stumble across the hacked and horrid thing that was the Ripper’s handiwork.
“Who was he? What was he? A mad surgeon? A butcher? An insane scientist? A pathological degenerate escaped from an asylum? A deranged nobleman? A member of the London police?
“Then the poem appeared in the newspapers. The anonymous poem, designed to put a stop to speculations—but which only aroused public interest to a further frenzy. A mocking little stanza:
I’m not a butcher, I’m not a Yid
Nor yet a foreign skipper,
But I’m your own true loving friend,
Yours truly—Jack the Ripper.
“And on September 30th, two more throats were slashed open. There was silence, then, in London for a time. Silence, and a nameless fear. When would Red Jack strike again? They waited through October. Every figment of fog concealed his phantom presence. Concealed it well—for nothing was learned of the Ripper’s identity, or his purpose. The drabs of London shivered in the raw wind of early November. Shivered, and were thankful for the coming of each morning’s sun.
“November 9th. They found her in her room. She lay there very quietly, limbs neatly arranged. And beside her, with equal neatness, were laid her breasts and heart. The Ripper had outdone himself in execution.
“Then, panic. But needless panic. For though press, police, and populace alike waited in sick dread, Jack the Ripper did not strike again.
“Months passed. A year. The immediate interest died, but not the memory. They said Jack had skipped to America. That he had committed suicide. They said—and they wrote. They’ve written ever since. But to this day no one knows who Jack the Ripper was. Or why he killed. Or why he stopped killing.”
Sir Guy was silent. Obviously he expected some comment from me.
“You tell the story well,” I remarked. “Though with a slight emotional bias.”
“I suppose you want to know why I’m interested?” he snapped.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
“Because,” said Sir Guy Hollis, “I am on the trail of Jack the Ripper now. I think he’s here—in Chicago!”
“Say that again.”
“Jack the Ripper is alive, in Chicago, and I’m out to find him.”
He wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t a joke.
“See here,” I said. “What was the date of these murders?”
“August to November, 1888.”
“1888? But if Jack the Ripper was an able-bodied man in 1888, he’d surely be dead today! Why look, man—if he were merely born in that year, he’d be fifty-seven years old today!”
“Would he?” smiled Sir Guy Hollis. “Or should I say, ‘Would she?’ Because Jack the Ripper may have been a woman. Or any number of things.”
“Sir Guy,” I said. “You came to the right person when you looked me up. You definitely need the services of a psychiatrist.”
“Perhaps. Tell me, Mr. Carmody, do you think I’m crazy?”
I looked at him and shrugged. But I had to give him a truthful answer.
“Frankly—no.”
“Then you might listen to the reasons I believe Jack the Ripper is alive today.”
“I might.”
“I’ve studied these cases for thirty years. Been over the actual ground. Talked to officials. Talked to friends and acquaintances of the poor drabs who were killed. Visited with men and women in the neighborhood. Collected an entire library of material touching on Jack the Ripper. Studied all the wild theories or crazy notions.
“I learned a little. Not much, but a little. I won’t bore you with my conclusions. But there was another branch of inquiry that yielded more fruitful return. I have studied unsolved crimes. Murders.
“I could show you clippings from the papers of half the world’s greatest cities. San Francisco. Shanghai. Calcutta. Omsk. Paris. Berlin. Pretoria. Cairo. Milan. Adelaide.
“The trail is there, the pattern. Unsolved crimes. Slashed throats of women. With the peculiar disfigurations and removals. Yes, I’ve followed a trail of blood. From New York westward across the continent. Then to the Pacific. From there to Africa. During the World War of 1914-18 it was Europe. After that, South America. And since 1930, the United States again. Eighty-seven such murders—and to the trained criminologist, all bear the stigma of the Ripper’s handiwork.
“Recently there were the so-called Cleveland torso slayings. Remember? A shocking series. And finally, two recent deaths in Chicago. Within the past six months. One out on South Dearborn. The other somewhere up in Halsted. Same type of crime, same technique. I tell you, there are unmistakable indications in all these affairs—indications of the work of Jack the Ripper!”
“A very tight theory,” I said. “I’ll not question your evidence at all, or the deductions you draw. You’re the criminologist, and I’ll take your word for it. Just one thing remains to be explained. A minor point, perhaps, but worth mentioning.”
“And what is that?” asked Sir Guy.
“Just how could a man of, let us say, eighty-five years commit these crimes? For if Jack the Ripper was around thirty in 1888 and lived, he’d be eighty-five today.”
“Suppose he didn’t get any older?” whispered Sir Guy.
“What’s that?”
“Suppose Jack the Ripper didn’t grow old? Suppose he is still a young man today?
“It’s a crazy theory, I grant you,” he said. “All the theories about the Ripper are crazy. The idea that he was a doctor. Or a maniac. Or a woman. The reasons advanced for such beliefs are flimsy enough. There’s nothing to go by. So why should my notion be any worse?”
“Because people grow older,” I reasoned with him. “Doctors, maniacs and women alike.”
“What about—sorcerers?”
“Sorcerers?”
“Necromancers. Wizards. Practicers of Black Magic.”
“What’s the point?”
“I studied,” said Sir Guy. “I studied everything. After a while I began to study the dates of the murders. The pattern those dates formed. The rhythm. The solar, lunar, stellar rhythm. The sidereal aspect. The astrological significance.
“Suppose Jack the Ripper didn’t murder for murder’s sake alone? Suppose he wanted to make—a sacrifice?”
“What kind of a sacrifice?”
Sir Guy shrugged. “It is said that if you offer blood to the dark gods they grant boons. Yes, if a blood offering is made at the proper time—when the moon and the stars are right—and with the proper ceremonies—they grant boons. Boons of youth. Eternal youth.”
“But that’s nonsense!”
“No. That’s—Jack the Ripper.”
I stood up. “A most interesting theory,” I told him. “But why do you come here and tell it to me? I’m not an authority on witchcraft. I’m not a police official or criminologist. I’m a practicing psychiatrist. What’s the connection?”
Sir Guy smiled.
“You are interested, then?”
“Well, yes. There must be some point.”
“There is. But I wished to be assured of your interest first. Now I can tell you my plan.”
“And just what is that plan?”
Sir Guy gave me a long look.
“John Carmody,” he said, “you and I are going to capture Jack the Ripper.”
2
That’s the way it happened. I’ve given the gist of that first interview in all its intricate and somewhat boring detail, because I think it’s important. It helps to throw some light on Sir Guy’s character and attitude. And in view of what happened after that—
But I’m coming to those matters.
Sir Guy’s thought was simple. It wasn’t even a thought. Just a hunch.
“You know the people here,” he told me. “I’ve inquired. That’s why I came to you as the ideal man for my purpose. You number amongst your acquaintances many writers, painters, poets. The so-called intelligentsia. The lunatic fringe from the near north side.
“For certain reasons—never mind what they are—my clues lead me to infer that Jack the Ripper is a member of that element. He chooses to pose as an eccentric. I’ve a feeling that with you to take me around and introduce me to your set, I might hit upon the right person.”
“It’s all right with me,” I said. “But just how are you going to look for him? As you say, he might be anybody, anywhere. And you have no idea what he looks like. He might be young or old. Jack the Ripper—a Jack of all trades? Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer—how will you know?”
“We shall see.” Sir Guy sighed heavily. “But I must find him. At once.”
“Why the hurry?”
Sir Guy sighed again. “Because in two days he will kill again.”
