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benefactor had improved upon. I felt like a blessed Pygmalion, or a more fortunate Daedalus, destined for a seat on Mount Olympus!
    Once again, Davyss pounded at my door in the very earliest of the morning hours on the Saturday of our next performance, September 8th. I had to wrestle myself out of my blankets to let him in. He had three vials of blood, all marked number two. His manner was far more subdued, almost peaceful.
    “The number two should prove to have some interesting results,” he said. “Interesting indeed.”
    “Since we have three vials,” I replied, “I will test them, and then find suitable music.”
    He smiled. “It does not matter what piece she plays, as long as she plays with blood full of raw passion.” With that, he disappeared into the gloom. Dawn colored the horizon.
    I got to work right away. The number two made Christine’s music rage. Even mellow, melodic pieces came out jagged and hateful. I chose a piece for her to play to match the furor in the blood. Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor, Op 48, No 1.
    Our next performance drew an even greater audience. The theatre owner was ecstatic. After Christine’s wrathful playing, I found myself in the foyer near Mrs. Reid. “They have found another body in Whitechapel, murdered in a similar fashion.” The woman’s face was positively colorless. “My poor husband cannot sleep. Truth be told, neither can I, with this murderous madman on the loose.”
    I glanced up to see Davyss listening intently, a little smile playing on his face.
    I could not wrest my gaze from my benefactor’s self-satisfied visage. Suddenly I had an explanation for his strange visitations and the warm vials. The blood, number one and number two, it had come from the women killed in Whitechapel. And Davyss had murdered them.
    Cold horror drowned me until my heart froze solid in my chest.
    “Is there a problem, Mr. Lewand?” Davyss asked.
    I shook my head, glanced away. Futile were my attempts to swallow all of the shock and loathing I was feeling. I could scarcely breathe.
    ***
    For the next few weeks, gin rode on my back like a devil with a switch. Every time I thought to call the police or contact Inspector Reid, the devil would strike me. No escape. I would drown with Davyss in a swamp of blood. And still, whenever my Christine would play, I found myself moved because we had captured the lightning and sorrow and emotion of life. To experience such passion was only the turn of a key away.
    Rarely sober, my mind began to play tricks on me. I would awake to hear Christine playing a piece, but no, that was impossible. She sat empty of music, no ones or zeroes for her cylinders to interpret, bathed in the blood of Whitechapel women.
    One night I woke in the pitch black of my basement, a horrible notion filling me that something was very amiss. I lit a candle only to find the space in front of my piano empty. My first thought made me utter a syllable of despair. Someone had crept in and stolen Christine.
    No. I found her in the corner, her three-toed foot soaking in the perpetual puddle that covered that side of my room. I wheeled her back to the piano, wondering why in my drunken stupor I had moved her. I dried her foot carefully.
    Another night, I woke to the sound of her gears moving. This time, she was in front of the door, fingers reaching, toes pressing, playing at a piano that wasn’t there until her gearing unwound completely. The music in her back was Chopin’s Funeral March . I tightened the lever at her neck and adjusted her leg again. A malfunction in the knee hinge must have inadvertently pushed her to the door.
    Our next performance was on Sunday, September 30th, and again, in a far larger venue.
    I looked in the newspapers for another murder, but none came. I knew the reason. Davyss would wait until the evening before our concert to give Christine fresh blood. With my silence, I may as well have been murdering the women myself.
    I still had some of the sad