Read Chapter 21: The Carriage Chase

The club’s back door spat them out into a service alley that stank of coal dust and sour milk. Edward’s boots slipped on wet cobbles as he caught Sarah’s arm. “He went left—toward Piccadilly.”

She didn’t argue. They ran.

The alley opened onto a narrow side street where gas lamps struggled against the fog. A black hansom cab stood fifty yards ahead, its horse stamping, the driver already pulling the reins. The scarred man—Halloran, or whoever he was—had one hand on the cab door, his face half-turned, caught in the lamplight. The scar ran from temple to jaw, and for half a heartbeat Edward saw the man’s eyes lock onto his.

Then Halloran climbed in and slammed the door.

“Cab!” Sarah’s voice cut through the noise. She was frantically waving at a second cab approaching from the opposite direction. The driver pulled up, startled, and she was inside before the wheels stopped turning. Edward scrambled in after her, and the cab lurched forward before he had both feet under him. He landed hard on the bench, shoulder hitting the frame. “Follow that hack—the black one, straight ahead!”

The driver swore, cracked his whip, and they were off.

Edward pressed his face to the glass. The black cab had a lead of maybe two hundred yards, its rear lamp a blurred orange coin through the fog. “He’s heading for the Embankment.”

“Or he’s not.” Sarah’s voice was tight. “He could double back through the market.”

“Then we lose him.” Edward’s jaw ached. He realized he’d been clenching his teeth all the way through the alley and the street and the scramble into the cab. His lungs burned. But the panic had gone, replaced by something colder. If Halloran shook them, the man would vanish, leaving him a fugitive with nothing but drafts he couldn’t prove were real. “Driver—faster, damn you!”

The cab jumped forward. The horse’s hooves hammered against stones as they took a corner hard. Sarah was thrown against him, and she grabbed his arm to steady herself. Her fingers dug in with surprising strength.

“He stopped,” she said.

Edward looked. The black cab had pulled up at a corner where a flower seller’s stall had collapsed across the road, spilling wilting roses across the wet street. Halloran’s driver was shouting at the flower seller. Halloran himself was getting out.

“He’s on foot.”

Edward was moving before the cab stopped moving. He shoved the door open and hit the pavement at a run. Sarah followed—he heard her boots on stone, then her voice. “Wait, Edward—he’s armed.”

Edward didn’t wait.

Halloran had crossed the road and was cutting through a narrow gap between two buildings, a break between a pawnbroker’s and a closed tailor’s shop. Edward gained ground. He closed the gap to sixty feet. Forty. Halloran glanced back once, and the lamplight caught him again—those eyes, bright and knowing, like a man watching a play he’d already seen. Then Halloran turned and ran again.

Edward chased him through the gap, out into another street, this one broader, busier. A butcher’s cart clipped his shoulder as he crossed. He stumbled, regained his footing, and saw Halloran climbing the steps of one of a row of tall, narrow houses. He didn’t stop at any of them—he was climbing a chain of iron railings, then pulling himself onto a low slate roof.

“He’s going up,” Edward shouted to Sarah, who had just emerged from the gap. She waved at the driver of the butcher’s cart, shouting something Edward couldn’t hear, but he didn’t wait for her. He grabbed the railing and climbed.

The slate was slick. Edward got to his knees, found a footing, and rose to a crouch. Halloran was twenty feet ahead, moving across the roof with practiced ease. He was heading for a gap between his building and the next, a jump that looked too wide in the dark. Edward judged it. Something like nine feet. Ten maybe, if the angles were lying.

Halloran ran for the edge and jumped.

He cleared the gap with room to spare, landed, rolled, and came up running. Edward reached the edge a moment later. He didn’t stop to think about the drop to the street below, the crushing dark waiting on either side. The chase had reduced him to pure momentum.

He jumped.

His boots hit the opposite roof a foot short of the lip. For a terrifying half second his arms pinwheeled over open air. Then Sarah’s hand caught his coat collar and yanked him forward onto the slate. He nearly pulled her down with him. They lay there for a breath, gasping.

“He’s still moving, wave at her.

“Down,” Sarah said. “He’ll double back.”

They scrambled across the roof toward a fire escape that creaked under their weight. Edward went first, boots ringing on iron. The ground floor rush of the city hit them again—smell of horses, rotting vegetables, coal smoke—as they reached the bottom and ducked into the shadow of the butcher’s stall.

The black cab was still there, unattended now, its driver gone after Halloran or into the crowd. The street was a carnival of noise, but Edward kept his eyes on the cab’s silhouette, dark in the fog. It didn’t move. The horse stood patient, steam curling from its nostrils.

“Wait,” Sarah said, too late—Edward was already moving, walking toward the cab at a measured pace rather than a sprint. He didn’t know why he walked. Maybe because running hadn’t worked. Maybe because he had been acting like the man he used to be, the one who ran at stories with his chin down and his fists up.

This was different. This was precision.

He reached the cab’s door.

It swung open.

Inside: faint smell of stale tobacco, leather, and something else. Something faint and chemical, like the ink that had stained Halloran’s drafts. Edward stepped in, searching the seats. Nothing between the cushions. The floor mats were clean. Then he noticed the driver’s seat. On the side closest to the door lay a single glove.

He picked it up. Sheepskin, well made, the kind a clerk would wear to keep his hands clean on the way to and from work. And the cuff—

The cuff was stained. A dark, dried smear the color of a bruised plum. Edward raised it to his nose. Not oil. Not soot.

Pigment.

He held the glove palm-up in the lamplight from the street. The smear caught the light and shifted from blue-black to a deeper, ink-true color.

The ink.

He was still staring at it when Sarah arrived. She stopped, her breath catching, and he saw her face go pale. “What is it?”

“This is his glove.” Edward’s voice sounded far away. “He left it here. When he climbed out, he left it.” He looked at her. “This is his handwriting on his drafts, in my ink.”

Sarah’s jaw tightened. “He has access to your supplies.” She said it slow, like she was turning it over. “He knew every detail of your drafts until you started withholding them.”

“He knew I had burned his letter. He knew when I took the drafts to the police. He knew I was meeting Sam.” Edward’s grip on the glove tightened. “He’s not following the letters. He’s following the ink.”

He dropped his hand. The glove dangled at his side, a small dark thing. He felt heavy, suddenly, like the chase had drained what little strength he had left.

“He’s not running from me, Sarah.” Edward heard the cold settling into his bones. “He’s raising the stakes. He left this for me to find.”

Sarah’s hand came down on his arm, a steady pressure against the fabric. She was watching the street, the flow of people, the driver who had returned to the black cab and was climbing back onto his seat. “Then Mary Kelly’s time is running shorter than we thought.”

Edward nodded. The street swam before him—lamps and fog and the endless anonymous faces. One of them would come for Mary if Edward failed. One of them was watching them now, perhaps, with that same bright, knowing eye.

He pocketed the glove.

“We need a safe place to work.”