The Other Teddy Roosevelts (2 page)

“No, that will be all.”

The officer saluted, and when he left Hughes turned back to Roosevelt.

“What are your plans now, Theodore?”

“I have two more speeches to give on ornithology,” answered Roosevelt, “and one on naval warfare, and then I board the boat for home on Friday.”

“Let me tell you something about the murder you saw today,” began Hughes.

“Thank you for letting me finish my breakfast first,” said Roosevelt wryly.

“We have a madman loose in Whitechapel, Theodore,” continued Hughes.

“That much is obvious.”

“We knew that before today,” said Hughes.

Roosevelt looked up. “This wasn’t his first victim?”

“It was at least his second.” Hughes paused. “It’s possible that he’s killed as many as five women.”

“How can he still be at large?”

“We can’t watch every Whitechapel prostitute every minute of the day and night.”

“He only kills prostitutes?”

“Thus far.”

“Were they all this brutally mutilated?”

“The last one—a girl named Polly Nichols—was. The first three suffered less grievous damage, which is why we cannot be sure they were all killed by the same hand.”

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you,” said Roosevelt. “I certainly don’t envy you.” He paused. “Have you any suspects so far?”

Hughes frowned. “Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

Roosevelt shrugged. “As you wish. But the subject of Saucy Jack is closed. Either you confide in me or I can’t help.”

Hughes looked around the half-empty dining room, then lowered his voice. “All right,” he said in little more than a whisper. “But what I tell you must go no farther than this table. It is for you and you alone.”

Roosevelt stared at him with open curiosity. “All right,” he said. “I can keep a secret as well as the next man.”

“I hope so.”

“You sound like you’re about to name Queen Victoria.”

“This is not a joking matter!” whispered Hughes angrily. “I am convinced that the man who has been implicated is innocent, but if word were to get out…”

Roosevelt waited patiently.

“There are rumors, undoubtedly spread about by anarchists, that are little short of sedition,” continued Hughes. “Scandalous behavior within one’s own class is one thing—but murders such as you witnessed this morning…I simply cannot believe it!” He paused, started to speak, then stopped. Finally he looked around the room to make certain no one was listening. “I can’t give you his name, Theodore. Without proof, that would be tantamount to treason.” He lowered his voice even more. “He is a member of the Royal Family!”

“Every family’s got its black sheep,” said Roosevelt with a shrug.

Hughes stared at him, aghast. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You think royalty can’t go berserk just as easily as common men?”

“It’s unthinkable!” snapped Hughes. He quickly glanced around the room and lowered his voice again. “This is not Rome, and our Royals are not Caligula and Nero.” He struggled to regain his composure. “You simply do not comprehend the gravity of what I am confiding in you. If even a hint that we were investigating this slander were to get out, the government would collapse overnight.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Roosevelt.

“Absolutely.” The small, dapper policeman stared at Roosevelt. “I would like to enlist your aid in uncovering the
real
murderer before these vile rumors reach a member of the force who cannot keep his mouth shut.”

“I don’t believe you were listening to me,” said Roosevelt. “My ship leaves on Friday morning.”

“Without you, I’m afraid.”

Roosevelt frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Hughes handed the envelope he’d been given across the table to Roosevelt.

“What is this?” demanded Roosevelt, reaching for his glasses.

“A telegram from your President Cleveland, offering us your services in the hunt for the madman.”

Roosevelt read the telegram twice, then crumpled it up in a powerful fist and hurled it to the floor.

“Grover Cleveland doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about your murderer!” he exploded.

Hughes looked nervously around the room and gestured the American to keep his voice down.

“He just wants to keep me from campaigning for his Republican opponent!”

“Surely you will not disobey the request of your president!”

“I can if I choose to!” thundered Roosevelt. “He’s my president, not my king, a difference that I gather was lost on you when you manipulated him into sending this!” He glowered at the telegram that lay on the floor. “I knew he was worried about Harrison, but this is beyond the pale!”

“I apologize,” said Hughes. “I wanted a fresh outlook so badly, I seem to have overstepped my…”

“Oh, be quiet,” Roosevelt interrupted him. “I’m staying.”

“But I thought you said—”

“Americans rise to challenges. I’ll rise to this one. I’m just annoyed at the way you went about securing my services.” He frowned again. “I’ll show that corrupt fool in the White House! I’ll solve your murder
and
get back to the States in time to help Ben Harrison defeat him in the election!”

“You’ll stay?” said Hughes. “I can’t tell you what this means! And of course, I’ll help you in any way I can.”

“You can start by checking me out of this palace and finding me a room in Whitechapel.”

“In
Whitechapel
?” repeated Hughes with obvious distaste. “My dear Theodore, it simply isn’t done.”

“Well, it’s about to
get
done,” said Roosevelt. “I saw the way the onlookers stared at you, as if you were the enemy, or at least a foreign power. If they’re going learn to trust me, then I’ve got to live like they do. I can’t look for a killer until dinnertime, then come back to the Savoy, don a tuxedo, and mingle with the rich and the powerful until the next morning.”

“If you insist.”

“I do. I just want time to send a wire to my wife Edith, explaining why I won’t be on the ship when it docks.”

“We can send for her, if—”

“American men do not put their wives in harm’s way,” said Roosevelt severely.

“No, of course not,” said Hughes, getting hastily to his feet. “I’ll send my carriage by for you in an hour. Is there any other way I can assist you?”

“Yes. Gather all the newspaper articles and anything else you have on these murders. Once I’ve got a room in Whitechapel, I’ll want all the material sent there.”

“You can have everything we’ve got on Saucy Jack.”

“Some name!” snorted Roosevelt contemptuously.

“Well, he does seem to have acquired another one, though it’s not clear yet whether he chose it himself or the press gave it to him.”

“Oh?”

“Jack the Ripper.”

“Much more fitting,” said Roosevelt, nodding his head vigorously.

***

My Dearest Edith:

I’m having Mr. Carlson hand-deliver this letter to you, to explain why I’m not aboard the ship.

Let me first assure you that I’m in perfect health. My extended stay here is due to a pair of conscienceless culprits—the President of the United States and someone known only as Jack the Ripper.

The latter has embarked on a rampage of murder that would shock even our own Western shootists such as Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo. You do not need to know the details, but believe me when I say that this fiend must be brought to justice.

An officer from Scotland Yard has read of my experiences in the Dakota Bad Lands and asked Grover Cleveland to “loan” me to the British until these murders have been solved—and Cleveland pounced on such an excuse to remove me from the upcoming campaign.

With luck, I’ll have things sorted out and solved in time to see Ben Harrison give his victory speech in a little less than two months.

My best to Alice and little Ted.

Your Theodore

***

Roosevelt sat on a rickety wooden chair, his back to the window, thumbing through Hughes’ files.

It was clear that Polly Nichols was a Ripper victim. He doubted that the three who preceded her—Emma Smith, Ada Wilson, and Martha Tabram—were. They’d been brutally murdered, but the
modus operandi
differed appreciably from the two most recent killings.

The files were very circumspect about the Royal who had come under suspicion, but Roosevelt deduced that it was Prince Eddy, more formally Albert Victor, son of the Prince of Wales and, quite possibly, the future King of England.

Roosevelt put the papers down, leaned back on his chair, and closed his eyes. It just didn’t make any sense. It would be as if Grover Cleveland had walked into a Washington slum and killed a pair of women and no one had recognized him. It was true that Prince Eddy was a dissolute and depraved man, and Roosevelt held him in total contempt—but there was just no way he could walk fifty yards in any direction, in or out of Whitechapel, without being recognized.

He removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, and then stood up. It was time to stop hypothesizing and go out and meet the residents of the area. He needed to talk to them, get to know them, and learn
their
opinions, which, he was sure, would be worth more than the police’s.

He walked over to a decrepit coat rack, then paused and smiled. He crossed the room to his steamer trunk, opened it, and a few moments later was dressed in the fringed buckskin he wore at his Dakota ranch. (It had been designed by his favorite New York haberdasher, since all the Dakotans were busily trying to look like New Yorkers.) He took off his shining black shoes and pulled on a pair of well-worn boots. Then he tucked a knife and a pistol into his belt.

He considered a coonskin hat, but decided to wear a stetson instead. He looked at himself in the fly-specked mirror and grinned in approval. As long as he was going to be identified as an American the moment he opened his mouth, he might as well dress like one.

He walked out the door of his shabby building and was immediately aware that he had become an object of notoriety. Every pedestrian within sight stopped to stare at him. Even horse-drawn carriages slowed down as they passed by.

He grinned at them, waved, and began making his way to the Black Swan, next to where Annie Chapman’s body had been found. A number of curious onlookers had followed him, and most of them entered the tavern when he did.

He walked up to the bar, staring approvingly at his image in the mirror that faced him.

“I didn’t know the circus had come to Whitechapel!” laughed a burly man who was standing a few feet away.

Roosevelt smiled and extended his hand. “Theodore Roosevelt. Pleased to meet you.”

“Hey, you’re a Yank!” said the man. “Ain’t never met one before.” He paused and frowned. “Don’t rightly know if I like Yanks.”

“Them the duds you fight Indians in, guv?” asked another.

“We don’t fight Indians any more,” answered Roosevelt.

“Killed ‘em all, did you?”

“No. Now we live side by side with them.”

“I heard they was all killers,” said the burly man. “They go around cuttin’ people’s heads off.”

“Most of them are pretty decent people,” said Roosevelt, seeing an opportunity to bring up the subject he wanted to discuss. “And even the bad ones couldn’t hold a candle to your Saucy Jack.”

“Old Jack?” said the burly man with a shrug. “He’s off the deep end, he is. Mad as a hatter and ten times as vicious.”

“Has anyone here seen him?” asked Roosevelt.

“The only people what’s seen him is lying in the morgue chopped up in bits and pieces,” said a woman.

“They say he eats their innards,” offered another, looking scared as she downed her drink.

“He only goes after women,” added the burly man. “Men either fight too hard or don’t taste so good.”

“Maybe your women should go armed,” suggested Roosevelt.

“What good would it do?” responded a woman. “If you’re with a John, you don’t need no weapon—and if you find you’re with old Jack, you ain’t got time to use it.”

“That’s muddled thinking,” said Roosevelt.

“Who are you to come in here and tell us how to think?” said the burly man pugnaciously.

“I’m a friend who wants to help.”

“Not if you don’t live in Whitechapel, you ain’t,” said the man. “We ain’t got no friends except for them what’s stuck here.”

“You didn’t give me a chance to answer,” said Roosevelt. “Yes, I live in Whitechapel.”

“I ain’t never seen you around,” said a man from the back of the tavern.

“Me neither,” chimed in another.

“I just arrived.”

“This ain’t a place where you ‘arrive’, Yank,” said the burly man. “It’s a place where you get dumped while the rest of London pisses on you.”

“Bloody right!” said another of the women, “I’ll bet the coppers are probably cheering for old Jack. Every time he strikes, there’s less of us for them to worry about.”

“If the police won’t hunt him down, we’ll have to do it ourselves,” said Roosevelt.

“What do you mean—
ourselves
?” said the burly man. “You ain’t one of us! What do you care?”

“All right-thinking men should care,” responded Roosevelt. “There’s a crazed killer out there. We have to protect society and bring him to the bar of justice.”

“What kind of man dresses like a dandy and wants to hunt down Jack the Ripper? It just don’t make no sense.” He glared at the American. “You sure you ain’t a writer for one of them magazines—them penny dreadfuls, here to make a hero out of old Jack?”

“I told you: I want to hunt him down.”

“And when he jumps you, you’ll point out that it’s not fair to hit a man with spectacles!” guffawed the burly man.

Roosevelt removed his glasses, folded them carefully, and set them down on the bar.

“There are many things I don’t need glasses for,” he said, jutting out his chin. “You’re one of them.”

“Are you challenging me to a fight, yank?” said the burly man, surprised.

“Personally, I’d much rather fight the Ripper,” said Roosevelt. “But it’s up to you.”