“What I want,” Maybrick growled, “is what I didn’t get with the whore in Dutfield’s Yard.”
Lachley, equilibrium restored by their semi-miraculous getaway and a change of disguise, laughed again, harsh and wild as the rain-lashed night. “All right, damn your eyes, we’ll just go along and see! The fastest route from here,” he peered at their surroundings, “would be down Houndsditch from Aldgate.”
As they were currently in Aldgate High Street, it was a matter of perhaps two minutes’ walk to reach Aldgate proper, then they swung sharply northward up the long reach of Houndsditch, moving away from the Minories to the south. The clock on a distant brewery up in Brick Lane chimed the half hour. One thirty A.M. and his blood was high, the terror of having nearly been caught now transformed into a feral sort of euphoria. Pure excitement flowed through his veins, hot and electrically charged, as though he’d just taken a dose of his arsenic. Sir Jim was invincible, by God! All he asked was to get his hands on that other bitch he’d been promised. He’d cut her with all the wildly charged strength in him, rip her to pieces and leave some jolly little rhyme for the City Division’s bumbling fools to puzzle over. His brother Michael, who could rhyme like anything, sat in his lovely rooms over in St. James’s writing songs the whole sodding country was singing. If Michael could do it, so could he. He’d think up a right saucy little rhyme to tantalize the police, maybe stir up more trouble with the Jews. Yes, a truly fine way to cap off the evening . . .