Page 93 of Marry in Haste
“You think that’s where he’ll be?” Cal felt a surge of excitement. Whitechapel was just a short distance from Whitehall.
Radcliffe nodded. “They have small children, don’t forget, so they can’t stay just anywhere. I’ve sent men to the aunt’s house.”
Cal’s jaw dropped. “But I—” He broke off.
“Wanted to be in at the kill? Understandable, but we can’t risk losing him. There’s a rabbit warren of lanes and alleys around the aunt’s house. I’ve sent a dozen armed men. Don’t worry, you’ll get the credit for his capture.”
“I don’t care about that,” Cal said impatiently. “I just wanted to lay hands on the bastard myself.”
Radcliffe gave him a cool look. ‘Revenge for Bentley, yes. But you know as well as anyone that the work we do is a team effort, and no one man matters, as long as the outcome is the one we want.”
Cal glanced at the clock. “When did they leave?”
“An hour ago. They’ll be in position by now. We should hear one way or the other sometime in the next hour or so.” He produced a bottle and two glasses from a drawer in his desk. “Brandy?”
Cal nodded. If he had to wait and do nothing, he might as well have a drink.
An hour crawled past.
Radcliffe had busied himself with paperwork. Cal did hisbest to tamp down on his impatience. He tried to read a newspaper but couldn’t concentrate. After all this time, a hunt across the Continent and England, to have to wait tamely in an office while other men captured that swine...
When the clock softly chimed the passing of the second hour, Cal stood up. “We should have heard something by now. I’m going to Whitechapel.” Radcliffe opened his mouth to forbid it, but Cal held up his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay well back and out of your men’s hair. I know better than to interfere in an operation, but I want to be there when he’s taken into custody—to see him and be certain he’s the man I saw. And if something goes wrong, I might be able to help.”
Radcliffe frowned.
“It’s dark. I’ll be invisible in the background. You know I can do it.”
After a moment Radcliffe nodded. “Very well, but stay well back.”
***
It started to drizzle around ten. Cal, propped up against a cold and grimy brick wall in the shadows of a dim and noisome alleyway, pulled his coat collar up and wished he’d had a little more of that brandy. The rain sputtered to a halt just after midnight.
Radcliffe’s men had reported that the little house in Whitechapel had contained three women, a huddle of small children and only one man—the weaver. Joe Gimble—the Scorpion—was nowhere to be found. The women tried to pretend they knew nothing about his whereabouts—had never heard of him, in fact—but they weren’t very skilled liars. And were obviously frightened.
Two of Radcliffe’s men had remained inside the house, waiting for Gimble’s return. The rest of the men melted into the shadows, posted at every approach to the house, watching and waiting. Cal lurked in a dark alleyway, his every sense primed for the appearance of the man he’d pursued for so long.
The alleyway reeked, the odors of the filth and rubbish of the streets intensified by the rain.
Despite the rain and cold and the late hour, the streets were far from empty: a rag and bone man pushing his cart, a pieman, workers, prostitutes, beggars, drunks and thieves—the usual rabble of the poorer streets of London.
Cal scanned every face. He’d donned enough disguises to look beyond the obvious—even the women. But the only face he recognized was that of the drunk he’d interviewed weeks before, the skeletal wreck of a man whose hands shook so badly he could barely hold the gin bottle he now hugged to his chest. A new gin bottle.
The man glanced at him, stared, reeling and befuddled, as if he recognized Cal from somewhere but couldn’t place him, then staggered on. He was in even worse shape than he’d been when Cal saw him last. He stumbled into a narrow alley that Cal knew from previous investigation was a dead end, and collapsed in a heap.
As the hours passed Cal became increasingly certain that Gimble wasn’t going to return. Someone must have warned him.
Radcliffe joined him around fourA.M.and told him to go home. “There’s no point in you hanging around all night. Go home. My men will stay on for as long as it takes. If there’s a development I’ll let you know.”
Cal was cold, wet, tired and dispirited. The investigation was out of his hands and only stubbornness was keeping him here. “All right, but keep an eye on that drunk.” He indicated the huddled shape collapsed in a corner of the alley. “He’s not Gimble, but he’s a former Rifleman and I don’t trust coincidences.”
***
It was almost five in the morning when Cal entered Ashendon House again. The gaslights in the entrance burned low. He shrugged off his wet coat and hung it on a hook in the cloakroom, then made his way upstairs. Then paused.
Which room was his bedchamber? The half-dozen or so times he’d stayed at Ashendon House in the past, he’d had a small bedchamber on the third floor. Now...
Deciding that the new servants would probably have puthim in his father’s old room, he made his way there. He opened the door and glanced in. The room was unoccupied but a lamp had been lit, a fire was burning in the grate and the bed had been turned down.
