Read Chapter 16: The Debt Collects

The knock came at half past nine, a rhythmic triple that Edward had heard a thousand times in courts and cheap lodgings—the knock of a man who believed himself owed something.

Edward did not rise from his chair. The candle beside him guttered, its flame leaning toward the window where a draught slipped through the frame. He had not slept since the auction. The letter addressed to him, plucked from a dead man's coat, sat folded in his breast pocket like a second heart.

The knock came again. Harder.

"Mr. Graves." The voice was not a shout but a carrying tone, the kind used by men who expected doors to open for them. "We've business."

Edward opened the door to find Sam the fence filling the frame, his bulk wedged between the jamb like a solution looking for a problem. Behind him, two shadows detached themselves from the wall—not men, exactly, but shapes that had learned to stand upright. Sam's collectors. They wore caps pulled low and said nothing.

"Mr. Graves," Sam said again, stepping inside without invitation. His coat smelled of tobacco and the river. "You've been a difficult man to find."

"I've been busy."

"Busy." Sam savoured the word, rolling it across his teeth. "Busy writing letters, I hear. Busy attending auctions. Busy watching fires." He settled onto Edward's only chair, the wood groaning beneath him. "But not busy paying your debts."

Edward remained standing. Whatever ground he surrendered now, he would not get back.

"I've had expenses," he said.

"Expenses." Sam nodded slowly, as if weighing the word. "I understand expenses. I've got expenses too. My men, they got expenses. Their families, they got expenses." He leaned forward, hands on his knees. "Your debt, Mr. Graves, has acquired interest. It does that, debts. Like weeds. Like rumours."

"How much?"

Sam told him. The number was worse than Edward had feared, nearly double what he owed. He kept his face still.

"I don't have that."

"No." Sam's voice dropped, losing its musical quality. "But you have something else. You have letters, Mr. Graves. Letters that Inspector Abberline would find very interesting indeed."

The room seemed to tighten. Edward felt the walls press closer, the candle flame shrink to a pinprick.

"I don't know what you mean."

Sam reached into his coat. Edward's gut clenched, but the fence produced only a folded sheet of newsprint—the *Chronicle*'s morning edition. He tossed it onto the table.

"The Ripper letters," Sam said. "Everyone's talking about them. How they predicted the fire. How they're coming faster now." He tapped the paper with a thick finger. "And how the man who wrote them might be the man who's killing."

"Those letters go through the police."

"So they do. But people talk, Mr. Graves. Clerks talk. Constables talk. They talk in pubs, in brothels, in the queues outside the morgue." Sam smiled, showing teeth that were too even for a man of his trade. "And one of them talked to a friend of mine about a reporter who was asking too many questions, then started getting answers before anyone else. Before the police themselves."

Edward said nothing. Silence was a currency too, and he was nearly spent.

"I'm not asking for more money," Sam said. "I'm asking for information. You know things about this killer. Things you haven't printed. Things you haven't told Abberline."

"I don't know who he is."

"No." Sam rose, and the room seemed to shrink further. "But you know where he'll strike next. You've been one step ahead of him, or he's been one step behind you. Either way, you're in his pocket. And I want to be in yours."

Edward's hand drifted toward the letter in his breast pocket, the one from the dead auction winner. The killer had known where the man would be. The killer had left a letter for Edward, a taunt, a breadcrumb. What did Sam want with such knowledge?

"Sell it to the papers," Sam continued. "That's my trade, Mr. Graves. I don't just fence goods. I fence stories. You give me what you know, I sell it to the highest bidder, and your debt is cleared."

"And if I refuse?"

Sam turned to his men, who had not moved from the door. "Then I suppose I'll have a conversation with Inspector Abberline. I understand he's been looking for someone to blame. Someone who's been writing letters that get people killed." He paused. "Someone whose handwriting matches the notes found in the ashes of that sugar refinery."

The words hit Edward like a physical blow. The scrap of paper he'd found in the fire—his own drafting hand, half-burned. He'd assumed the killer had taken it from his room. But how would Sam know about it?

"You were watching the fire," Edward said slowly. "You were there."

"I was where I needed to be." Sam's smile widened. "The burnt man, the one they pulled out—he owed me money too. Imagine my surprise when I heard he'd been following you, then turned up dead in a building you were watching." He shook his head. "Coincidence, Mr. Graves. I don't believe in it."

Edward's mind raced. Sam was dangerous, but he was also an opportunity. The fence had eyes across the East End, informants in places Edward could never reach. If anyone could track the killer's movements, it was a man who traded in secrets.

And Edward had nothing else to offer.

He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the letter from the auction. Sam's eyes tracked it greedily.

"This came to me tonight," Edward said. "From a man who was killed for having it." He held it just out of reach. "The killer is going to strike again. Soon. He's following my letters, but he's also ahead of them. He knew about the fourth letter before I'd finished drafting it. Which means he's not reading the copies at the police station. He's reading my drafts."

Sam's brow furrowed. "Someone in your building?"

"My room has one lock. No one's broken it." Edward paused, letting the implication settle. "But someone's been inside. Someone who knows my habits. Someone who reads over my shoulder without me noticing."

"You think it's someone you know."

"I think it's someone who knows me." Edward stepped closer, dropping his voice. "The killer burned down a building I staked out. He killed a man who'd been following me. He left a letter on that man's body addressed to me. He's not just copying my work, Sam. He's working with it. He's one step ahead because he knows the story before I've written it."

Sam considered this. "You want me to find out who's been in your room."

"I want you to find out who's been watching me. You have eyes everywhere. Someone's seen something—a figure in the alleys, a face at the window, a man asking questions about a reporter who writes letters." Edward placed the auction letter on the table between them. "That's your payment. The killer's next move. But you'll get the rest when you bring me a name."

Sam stared at the letter. Then he laughed, a low sound that rattled his chest.

"You're offering me a debt," he said. "A new one, in place of the old."

"I'm offering you a story. The biggest one of the year. The Ripper letters, the sugar refinery, the man who died at the auction." Edward kept his voice level. "The killer's name, when we find it. That's worth more than any debt I owe you."

Sam picked up the letter, turning it over in his thick fingers. "And the police? Abberline?"

"He'll hang the killer when we find him. He'll take the credit. But you'll have the story first." Edward extended his hand. "Do we have a deal?"

Sam looked at Edward's hand for a long moment. Then he took it, his grip crushing and brief.

"A name," Sam said. "I'll have something for you by Thursday. But if you're lying to me, Mr. Graves—if this letter is cheap paper with cheap words—I'll go to Abberline myself. And I'll bring your drafting notes as a gift."

He gestured to his men, and they filed out into the night. Edward closed the door behind them, then pressed his forehead against the wood, breathing hard.

The letter from the auction was gone, handed over to a man who would sell it to the highest bidder. But the killer had written it for Edward to read. What would happen when Sam's buyers published it, when the killer saw his own words in print?

Edward crossed to his desk and pulled open the drawer where he kept his drafts. The pile was thinner than he remembered. He counted the pages, then counted again.

Three pages were missing. The fifth letter, the one he'd been drafting when the auction invitation arrived—the one laying out a location he hadn't yet selected.

The killer had been in his room again. And he'd taken the next piece of the story.

Edward stood in the candlelight, the draft of the sixth letter clutched in his hand, and realized he had just sold a dead man's words to a fence who would sell them again. The killer would see them. The killer would know where the story was going.

And Edward would have to write faster than the monster reading over his shoulder.