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"Let it come to us," he said
"So your plan is to use the boy as bait," said the doctor "Because he has heard voices inside his head"
"Only as the last, desperatered Warthrop clearly intimidated him
"There is a flavor of desperation about it," Warthrop returned
"For myself," intoned Pelt in his sonorous voice, "I am heartened by the news of this attack--if it was an attack; I do not say that it was, Pellinore--for it’s the only news that I’ve heard fro? I’ that fits our subject’swaved his hand "ThatThe city will suppress all that it can now to avoid panic and political eet within a hundred yards of police headquarters"
"If any representative of the third estate can, though, it is Riis," said Dobrogeanu
"Speaking of Riis, where the devil is he?" wondered Torrance
"It would be terrible, would it not," Gravois said with a sparkle in his dark eyes, "if he, the one indispensable cog in our machine, should have fallen victiht," huffed Pelt
"I aist," returned Gravois easily "It is hts"
Riis had survived the night, of course He appeared near , when the discussion had petered out to an errant co pauses in between The day, as if in spite, grew darker The buildings across Fifth Avenue brooded in seray on the sidewalk Von Helrung smoked two puffs fro, he ju the extinguished stogie rolling across the Persian carpet Gravois picked it up and slipped it into his pocket
"Warthrop," the Danish journalist said, shaking the doctor’s hand "You look terrible"
"It’s a pleasure to see you again too, Riis"
"I meant no offense If it’s any co out of Mulberry Street, the kind that is carted away in a hearse"
"Thank you, Riis; I feel much better now"
Riis s, you had better break out your box of red pins Your beast has been quite busy There have been three, perhaps four, ists He pointed out the spots on thestabbed it with his symbolically colored pins "I say ‘perhaps’ because one is a disappearance, from the Bohemian quarter No body has turned up, but the circu criteria you described Witnesses report a terrible s eyes, and, in one remarkable report froray wolf upon a nearby rooftop"
"A wolf?" echoed Torrance
"It is a shape-changer," von Helrung said "Fully supported by the literature"
"Yes, catalogued under fiction," Warthrop responded conteed "The others are clearly the work of our man--or whatever it is Reh above the street Two upon tenement roofs, the third impaled upon a stovepipe above a restaurant there"--he nodded toward the pin--"in Chinatown That one is particularly striking, I thought, if for no other reason but the sheer force it would take to drive such an object through a hulanced at the doctor Was he thinking the saged trunk of a shattered tree rising from Pierre Larose’s desecrated corpse?
"All weretheir eyes and the skin on their faces," Riis continued "It had been stripped froical precision All were found nude" He sed, for the first time a bit overcome He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow
"And all three were young The oldest was the only son of a Chinaust The boy was fifteen and quite se"
"The weakest,""The est was found at Mulberry Bend, only a few blocks froirl She was seven She suffered by far the worst mutilations I will spare you the details"
No one spoke for aasked softly, "Their hearts"
"Yes, yes," Riis nodded "Ripped from their chests--and when I say ‘ripped,’ I do mean ripped Flesh flayed open, ribs snapped in two, and the hearts the placed a consoling hand on his shoulder, a hand that Riis iht I had seen every horror iinable in the slums of this metropolis Starvation, drunkenness, depravity Deprivation and despair that rivals the worst of the hetto But this This"
"It is only the beginning," von Helrung said so we know of More victims will be found this day, I fear"