Read Ripper for Free Online

Chief Inspector.”
    Both men held their gaze a little longer, and then with ColonelStanley waiting at the door, Abberline and Washington entered the lair of the man that had become the inspiration for one of the most horrific fictional characters ever—Dr. Jekyll, and his alter ego Mr. Hyde, who it seems became the very real—Jack the Ripper.
    *   *   *
    Abberline immediately felt the heat inside of the building and knew it not to be all natural. He was stunned to realize thatthe building was actually being heated, or better still, he thought, humidified. He looked at the men as they spread out on the lower floors of the warehouse with their Lee-Metford ten-shot repeating rifles at the ready. He saw that several of the men carried heavy fire, American-made Winchester Model 1887 single-barrel shotguns. He saw that Colonel Stanley and a few of his men were standing nearseveral tables that stretched a hundred feet in length. As he and Washington approached he saw that the ridged tops of these tables were filled with dirt.
    “They’re gone,” Stanley said as he grabbed a handful of the dirt and then let it sift through his fingers. Then he angrily slapped at the thick, rich soil. “They’ve all been removed. They cannot have acted so quickly after the murder … unlessthey knew they were leaving tonight!”
    Abberline watched Stanley as he moved off to join the rest of his men. As Washington started to follow, the chief inspector reached out and took him by the arm.
    “Look at this,” he said, reaching for something he had spied in the dark earth inside the table Stanley had been standing at.
    “What is it?” Washington asked.
    Abberline held up the long, thin stalkof a plant that had been partially hidden in the soil. He held it to his nose and sniffed. “I don’t know, but it does have a familiar smell to it.” He held the stalk out so the inspector could also smell the strange, yet familiar aroma of the plant.
    “Yes, but like you I cannot place it.”
    Abberline let the stalk fall back into the moist earth and then turned and examined the immediate area aroundthem. There were bags of pig and cow dung and fifty barrels of fresh water. There were gardening tools and other instruments he did recognize upon an adjoining table. Then he looked up into the high rafters of the warehouse and saw the massive skylights that came nowhere near the age of the building itself. The answer dawned on him.
    “A greenhouse.”
    “Sir?” Washington asked.
    “This whole buildingis nothing but a massive greenhouse.”
    Suddenly a shout and then several curses were heard from a far corner of the warehouse. Both men turned and ran in the direction of the frightened and angry voices. When they arrived at the scene they were stunned, as were the red-clad soldiers at the sight they were witnessing.
    “Oh, God,” Washington said when he saw what stopped the soldiers dead in theirtracks.
    As Colonel Stanley hurried over he saw two of his men, soldiers that had seen more than their share of military action, bent over double as they vomited up their evening meals.
    “Why have you stopped searching, what is—?”
    The question died in the colonel’s mouth as he saw the two severed heads sitting on either side of the staircase banister. They had been viciously jammed onto the twinrailings with such brute force that the wood had been shoved through the top of their heads. One was a bearded man in his early twenties and the other a woman, complete with tattered hat still on her head with the wooden post sticking through its top.
    “Colonel,” the sergeant major said holding out a piece of paper. “This was nailed into the head of the man.”
    Abberline was shocked to see a nailstill protruding from the forehead of the bearded victim. Without investigation he knew the young man to be one of his men. He had to turn away as the colonel took the note.
    “What does it say?” Abberline asked, finally feeling that the heavy-caliber