“The name of a street. The backcourt where he’s holed up.”
“And you know this . . . how?”
“The bleeder came in here yesterday. Looking for Stackpole. So don’t I send for my man, and Yee follows him.”
Tennant eyed her levelly. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his money clip. He removed three notes and fanned them across the tea table.
“Three pounds now. Two more if your information proves accurate.”
Sal scowled. “Five quid’s not—”
“You realize I can have you arrested for withholding evidence? Come now, Sal.” Tennant tsked. “Don’t be greedy.”
She smoldered for a bit, then snatched up the bills. “Rawlings took the Blackwall ’bus clear across the Commercial Road to Charing Cross. Then he footed it to Denmark Street.”
“In St. Giles?”
“That’s right. The bloke slipped through an alley into the pokey lane behind it. Denmark Court.”
O’Malley said, “And you’ll be telling us the house number?”
Sal shook her head. “Yee wasn’t quick enough. But Denmark Court is a dead end with a handful of houses. Rawlings went into one of them.” She waved the notes at the sergeant. “For three lousy quid and two more only promised, you don’t get it on a silver plate.”
They left Sal’s and returned to the Commercial Road, where O’Malley spotted the blue sign of the Blackwall omnibus stop.
Tennant raised his hand. “A hansom will be quicker.”
After they settled into the cab, O’Malley said, “Are wethinking Rawlings has the girls stashed in a house in St. Giles and takes them on to the club?”
“It’s a convenient distance.” Tennant rapped for the cabbie’s attention and said, “Pall Mall.” When O’Malley looked at him, the inspector said, “We’ll test the route from the Topkapi to St. Giles.”
When they reached the club, Tennant asked the cabbie, “What’s the most efficient route from here to Denmark Street in St. Giles?”
The man scratched under his brim with his whip handle, considering. “Haymarket to Shaftsbury to Charing Cross Road, and Bob’s your uncle, guvnor. You’re there.”
“Take us.”
Tennant paid off the driver when they reached their destination in St. Giles.
The neighborhood was one of London’s worst rookeries, where disease and delinquency ran rampant. Terraced brick houses leaned into each other along narrow streets. Tennant and O’Malley passed secondhand clothing stalls, gin shops, and reeking fishmongers’ barrows, glistening with herring for a halfpenny each. Ragged, soot-smeared children flogged limp cabbages and bits of kindling from curbside baskets.
“Sweet, suffering Jesus,” O’Malley muttered. “St. Giles is bleaker than the worst of Dublin’s slums.”
They found the alley to Denmark Court, but Tennant walked on. “Let’s not go blundering in,” he said. “Not just yet, Paddy.”
“The lane’s just wide enough for a four-wheeler to transport the girls.”
Tennant spotted a sign that read,FIRST FLOOR OFFICES TO LET, WAREHOUSING IN THE REAR.
“I wonder.... Give me a name, Sergeant. Someone with a keen eye and an iron backside who can sit all day in a records’ office.”
O’Malley grinned. “That’s Williams to the life. He alwaysprefers parking it to legging it, and the man’s a human ferret. He’ll winkle it out if there’s something to be found.”
“Let’s get him on the property conveyance records for St. Giles. Give him a list of names. Rawlings, Sidney Allen, Charles Allingham, Doctor Scott, and Lionel Bruce.”
“You’re thinking someone owns that house on Denmark Court.”
Tennant looked around. “Have you spotted a constable on this beat?”
