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century! But that great electrical wonder, apparently, had its dangerous weaknesses.Earlier that year he had been visited by a man called Dangerfield, one of the directors of the Eastern Telegraph Company, who had suspected that all was not well with the cables coming into Britain at Porthcurno, on the Cornish coast.
    Napier moved uneasily. Was it any longer a prudent thing to trust to cabled messages? They came in the anonymity of code, so that one couldn’t say, for instance, ‘Ah! Abu Daria’s handwriting gets no better!’ It would as well to check by other means that the three agents remained free from harm.
     
    Killer Kitely crouched beside the window in the unfurnished room and listened to the shouts and curses of the mob in the narrow street outside. What light there was glinted on the shards of glass on the bare wooden floor. One piece of brick had drawn blood just below his left eye.
    Curse it! Curse them! Why had he turned round when that cringing skivvy of a butler had appeared on the scene? They’d got that cocky little jackanapes Box on the trail, and he was there, outside, in East Dock Street with a pack of bobbies and a gin-sodden mob from the alehouses and the rows of flea-ridden brick cottages.
    What was that? A vibrant groan from outside in the street – crash !They were trying to break the front door down. Well, it was a very special front door, lined with sheets of iron. He’d quit this cursed place as soon as he was ready. It had been worth it. A hundred pounds in gold, the gaffer had given him.
    Someone was shouting. Shouting through a megaphone. What was he saying?
    ‘Kitely! This is Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard. Come out, with your hands above your head. We’ll give you five minutes only!’
    What’s that? A cheer? A cheer for Box from those half-starved , consumptive labourers and dockers? What had that busy little bantam ever done for them, or for their thin wives and barefoot children? But they were all after his blood, cursethem, just because he’d blasted their favourite toff to kingdom come. Well, before he made himself scarce, perhaps they’d like a dose of the same medicine….
    Box, standing with Sergeant Knollys among a knot of uniformed policeman on the opposite side of East Dock Street, looked critically at the blank windows of the mean house where Killer Kitely lay hidden. This row of houses down near Shadwell Basin contained Joseph Kitely’s lair. Box had ringed the whole side of the street with police, so that all normal exits were covered. But there was more to this warren of derelict houses than met the eye. He turned to a stolid, bearded man of thirty or so who was standing motionless beside him, surveying Kitely’s lair through field-glasses.
    ‘I don’t like the feel of this, Sergeant Porter,’ said Box. ‘Kitely’s taking too much time to come out. He’s up to something . I know all about these houses. They’re joined by tunnels through the cellars, and they go right down to the docks. I want you to go now, Sergeant, to Old Field Court. There are gratings there, in the area of number six. Take Sergeant Knollys here with you. See if you can find Sergeant Ruskin – he’s here, somewhere – and tell him to go with four constables to Connaught Lane, just past Samuelson’s warehouses. There’s a tunnel entrance there. Kitely might emerge through either of those exits.’
    Sergeant Porter saluted, and he and Knollys disappeared down an alley. There was no point in waiting any longer, thought Box. It was time to storm Kitely’s citadel. He put the megaphone to his lips.
    ‘Joseph Kitely—’
    His words were immediately drowned by a deafening report that echoed along the narrow street. A bright flash of flame lit up one of the shattered ground-floor windows of the besieged house. At the same time one of the bystanders screamed and spun grotesquely off the pavement into the carriageway. Kitely had fired into the crowd from his lair.
    In the