“Yes, yes, of course if you like,” said the man.   Stepping forward again he gasped from shock, as for the first time he could make out the features of Dr. Meiklejohn, and saw that despite his soft, cultured voice, the doctor was indeed a freak.   His face a horrid mass of weeping sores and ugly gashes.   As though for many years he had been the victim of some weird South African malady.   The man could not help recalling his earlier thoughts of the Elephant man, and wondered whether the doctor had also fallen victim to some grotesque, debilitating disease.

“I had fled down here after each of the other occasions,” continued Meiklejohn, “but this time, unbeknown to me, I was followed.   Young Sheila had seen me with her mother and came after me.   Quite an accomplishment really, all this way without me ever once suspecting that I was being followed….”

He paused for a moment, bowed his head as though sleeping, then looked up at his visitor again and said, “I hurriedly changed into a clean suit I had concealed in the warehouse earlier that night.   I had just finished changing when I heard the sound of movement behind me.   I started to turn, too late, and felt a thud on the back of my head, then was overwhelmed by darkness.   When I came to, who knows how much later, I found myself in chains….”

The man gasped from shock, for the first time noticing that the reason for the doctor’s awkward posture was not some physical deformity, but heavy steel manacles attached to his arms and legs.

“But where did she…?” began the man, cut off in mid sentence as Dr Meiklejohn explained, “Many years ago, when the United States still traded in slaves, this wharf was used as a stopover point for slavers to purchase goods to barter to Africa for Negroes to transport back to the USA.   When slavery was outlawed, the slavers left behind these chains and other remnants of their trade.”

“You mean to say she did this to you just for sleeping with her mother?” asked the man in astonishment.

“No, not sleeping with her,” corrected Sheila, startling the visitor, who had not realised that she had entered the warehouse behind him.   “Not sleeping with her … Killing her!”

“Killing her?” repeated the man, suddenly recalling why the name Mary Jane had sounded so familiar to him.   “Mary Jane Kelly!” he thought.

“Killing her and slicing her up like a butcher slicing meat,” cried Sheila holding up a lethal-looking scalpel.   “With this!”

“But you’ve had your revenge!” screamed the doctor, struggling frantically against the manacles that bound him in place, as the teenage girl advanced toward him, still holding the gleaming scalpel in her hands.

“Yes, many times,” agreed the girl, making the man back away in terror, as he realised what had really caused the horrid mutilation of the doctor’s face.   “And I’ll have it many times more.   In the years ahead!”

“Please, please help me!” shrieked Dr Meiklejohn, but the man had already started to back away for fear the girl would come after him.

But he had no cause for alarm.   Sheila was intent only on her victim, knowing that even if the man went to the police he could never locate the dilapidated warehouse again without her help.   Not that the police were likely to believe him anyway if he went to them with a wild tale about a thirteen-year old girl who had Jack the Ripper chained up in a disused warehouse, brutally torturing him with the same scalpel he had used to murder five East End prostitutes in late 1888.

THE END