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nodded gravely.
    “You three,” William said, “you’re like him . Ain’t you?” He gestured at the body again, using the hand that held the broken cane’s head.
    The boy in the lead shook his head, but it was the larger boy who answered. “We’re sorry for what happened to Fredericka,” he said solemnly, with an unmistakable British accent. “This man may have been a part of our world… but we aren’t like him.”
    William merely stared up at the three boys, measuring them. They knew about his poor, lost Fredericka. His cheeks burned. “I don’t know what’s in that velvet bag,” he said firmly, somberly, “and I’m sure I don’t want to. This is over. You go your way. And me and Helen, we’ll try to go ours. Fair enough?”
    All three boys nodded. After a moment, they backed away, turned, and ran from the alley, taking their mysterious velvet bag with them.
    William arose from his knees, and Helen leaned against him. He supported her with his left arm and she allowed him to collect her weight. She was trembling. He felt the hot weight of the pistol in her apron.
    For the first time, he wondered how Helen had gotten to the alley. She lived with her family on the other side of the wharves, some fifteen blocks away. It was the middle of the night. William himself had been staking out the alley for weeks, hoping to catch Magnussen when and if he returned to the scene of poor Fredericka’s murder. Amazingly, the man had returned, just as bold as brass, walking as if he owned the whole street, or even the whole damn world. William had thought he’d been ready for him, but he had not been prepared for the man’s devilish, otherworldly powers.
    But Helen had. She hadn’t wasted time on words. She had shot him dead, in cold blood.
    But how had she known? How had she arrived in just the nick of time, pistol in hand, to kill the man responsible for her sister’s death? It was no small mystery. For now, however, there was no time to discuss it.
    William dragged Magnussen’s body into the shadows and covered it with trash. He’d have to return later to dispose of the corpse. Fortunately, the riverfront was only a few blocks down the hill. The piers would be deserted at this hour. The murderer’s body might be found in the days to come, floating on the muddy river current, but then again maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, William didn’t care.
    Silently, William walked Helen home. Neither spoke, despite the questions that hung in the air. For now, all that mattered was that it was over. Justice—at least the base version of it that was within their meager grasp—had been served. Whoever or whatever the awful old man had been, he was dead. Fredericka was avenged.
    It didn’t bring her back, and the two of them had to live forever with the stain of murder on their souls, but for now William thought he could live with that.
    He just hoped Helen could too.
     

    William married Helen less than a year later. Their courtship had been brief but intense, forged in the crucible of their shared experience on that fateful night. They learned that age old truth—that a mutual secret is one of the strongest intimacies, and their secret was indeed terrible and binding. They had both lost someone dear to them, and both had participated in avenging that dear one. In the years that followed, William never regretted what had happened, but he knew that Helen did, in her deepest heart. After all, it had been her hand that had held the pistol. She had ended another person’s life. William wished it had been his finger on the trigger, just so that he could have spared Helen the responsibility. He was harder than her, and could have lived with it.
    And yet, amazingly, they rarely spoke of it. It was the event that had brought them together, but as the years passed, it began to seem more like something that had happened in a dream. The only time it was ever fully real to William was on the rare sleepless night, when the world was