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bending over the body. “Oh, my word, it is a child. Who could have done such a thing? Do you know how she died, Swanson?”
    “Won’t know until the postmortem, Stead, you know that,” the inspector said peremptorily. “We just brought her up and have no statement to make.”
    “She is clad only in a chemise and bloomers. Another piece of humanity lost in the machinations of the slave trade.”
    “It is just like you, Stead,” Swanson said, “to start editorializing before you get the facts. There is no proof that this girl was a victim of the trade. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. The whole purpose of their operation would be to get a girl safely and in one piece to France, or wherever it is they send her.”
    Cyrus Barker, who up until that moment had neither spoken nor moved, knelt down, pulled the handkerchief from his pocket, and delicately wiped the sewer muck from the thin neck of the little corpse. The throat was a battleground of bruises and pale, graying flesh.
    “Strangled,” he pronounced. “Two-handed, by the look of it. I’ll hazard a guess that the neck bones are snapped—the child is so small.” He set the handkerchief in a ball on the cobblestones beside her.
    “We haven’t met before. William T. Stead,” the newspaperman said, putting out a hand. “And you are?”
    Barker looked at the hand warily, as if it were a cobra about to strike, then took it in his own. “Cyrus Barker. Private enquiry agent.”
    Stead repeated the name for the benefit of his photographer, who had taken out a notebook and was now scribbling it down.
    “It isn’t often the Yard works with private agents,” the editor noted. “How did you become involved in this case?”
    “He’s not,” Swanson spoke up, anxious to take control of the situation. “Mr. Barker is investigating a child’s disappearance in the area. I called him in because I thought this might be the child in question, but it is obvious this one has been dead for some time.”
    “Barker. Barker…” Stead snapped his fingers. “You’re the chap who advertises in our rival The Times. ”
    “I hardly call The Times the Pall Mall Gazette ’s rival, Mr. Stead,” Barker said drily.
    “Touché, Mr. Barker,” he responded, flashing a strong set of teeth. “‘A touch, a touch, I do confess.’”
    “Hamlet, act five, scene two,” Barker murmured.
    “Very good, sir. An educated detective. Truly a rarity.”
    I thought Barker was going to correct him and say that he was a private enquiry agent, but instead he said modestly, “Self-educated, I’m afraid. My assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, is the Oxonian.”
    I thought it politic to follow the photographer’s example and take notes, so I merely tipped my hat to him, and took out my notebook.
    “Marvel upon marvel. It’s a wonder that the Yard has not snapped up such talent. Actually, no, I suppose it isn’t.”
    “All right, Stead, move along,” Swanson ordered. “We don’t have time for idle chitchat. This corpse must go to the morgue.”
    We all stepped back as the mortuary cart was wheeled down the street toward us by a constable. The lifting of the body released a fresh wave of effluvia, and Stead turned away with a grunt. He handed my employer a card.
    “I should like to interview you for an article sometime,” he said.
    “I decline to speak about myself, sir, but if it relates to a case and is a matter of public record, certainly. I do not approve of all you do but appreciate the campaign you ran to get Gordon relief in Khartoum, though it proved too late for Gordon himself.”
    “The man deserved better than the shabby treatment Gladstone’s government gave him.”
    “Is it usual for an editor of your prominence to stalk the streets of the East End?” Barker asked. “Surely you have men for that.”
    “Oh, gaggles of them,” he replied, “but this is a personal crusade. Scotland Yard wishes to sweep the issue of the white slave trade under the carpet, as