'Not without me,' I said. 'I must come with you.' We
left the police station just before midnight.
For the first time, 1 walked through the narrow streets
of east London, streets that I had seen before only
through the window of a cab. People think that
murders happen in dark, empty streets. That is not
always true. A strange and horrible fact about the
streets where Jack the Ripper murdered women is
that they were busier and better lit than most other
London streets. They were full of pubs and cheap
hotels. At all hours the streets were full of people who
were too poor to find a bed anywhere, drunks
looking for a bar that never closed, and all kinds of
criminals. Finally, there were the women - those
women who work only at night, when their more
honest sisters are asleep.
I studied medicine in London, and while I was a
student I saw something of the low-life of our capital.
I was, after all, a healthy young man, and young
men must amuse themselves. But I had never seen
women like these. Holmes stopped several to
question and to warn them, and I looked at their
faces carefully. They were old at the age of twenty,
dirty, diseased and hopeless. One thing was clear to
me - they were not like other women. Does it matter,
I began to think, if Jack the Ripper kills women like
these? Death by his knife is quick. It cannot be worse
than the slow and painful death from disease which
most often ends their short lives.
We returned to the police station after one o'clock. I
was tired and sick at heart. Lestrade did not stop
talking, telling us that we should catch no murderers
that night.
Suddenly, Holmes jumped up and walked out into
the street.