Free Riptide by Michael Prescott

men, and all that.
    Hare had expected to read of the foreigner’s arrest in the first news accounts of the murder at the East River Hotel. Instead he encountered quite a different story.
    The dead woman had been found in the morning by the hotel staff. She was known as a regular patron of the establishment, a certain Carrie Brown.
    But the man who had lodged with her was not in police custody. He had disappeared. Only his name was known, or at least the name signed in the hotel registry: C. Kniclo.
    The police had surmised how Kniclo made his escape. He could not have left via the hotel’s main door, locked as it was after midnight. Apparently he opened a trapdoor in the ceiling of his room, which led to the roof; bloodstains were found on the scuttle. From the roof he descended to the street via a fire escape. Later that night a bloodstained man matching Kniclo’s description appeared in the lobby of the Glenmore Hotel a few blocks away. Told there were no accommodations, he tried to use the lavatory to wash up, but was ejected from the premises.
    Kniclo must have regained consciousness only to find himself covered in blood in a room with a murdered woman. Rather then panicking as expected, he had proved distressingly resourceful.
    His disappearance was bad enough. Worse was speculation in the press that Kniclo might not be the killer at all. It was suggested that he had left the hotel earlier, and that some other party had attacked Carrie Brown when she was alone in her room. Accordingly, suspicion had fallen on the other guests of the hotel that night, especially those who had lodged on the fifth floor. This included “Mr. Wilson,” the impromptu alias Hare adopted when the hostess, Mary Miniter, filled in the registry.
    There was nothing to connect Hare to the name Wilson, but Mary Miniter had gotten a good look at him, and from news accounts it was obvious she was talking to the authorities. She could provide them with a good description. He had admitted to being a Brit. If the steamer records were searched, and the authorities in London were contacted...
    The damnably elusive Mr. Kniclo had put a crimp in a Hare’s plans, opening the door to exactly the hysteria he had hoped to avoid.
    The headline of the New York Times on April 25 framed the matter concisely.
     
    Choked, Then Mutilated
    A Murder Like One of ‘Jack the Ripper’s’ Deeds.
    Whitechapel’s Horrors Recorded in an East Side Lodging House.
     
    The Herald , not to be outdone, countered with its own headline.
     
    Ghastly Butchery by a ‘Jack the Ripper’
    Murder and Mutilation in Local Whitechapel Almost Identical with the Terrible Work of the Mysterious London Fiend
    Strangled First, Then Cut to Pieces
     
    Not only did the press trumpet this alarum, but the police seemed to take the connection to Whitechapel quite seriously. The coroner told reporters that the crime could be the work of “the fiend of London.” There were rumors of transatlantic cables flying between the New York Police Department and New Scotland Yard. A manhunt was underway throughout the city, far surpassing the effort that would be made in any ordinary slaying.
    It was ironic. He had come to the States to escape the attention of the authorities, and on his first night he had stirred up a new hornets’ nest. And all for a gray-haired crone who in a saner world would never be mourned. A crone, he learned to his amusement, who was known to her few friends as “Old Shakespeare” for her habit of reciting doggerel.
    It was said Old Shakespeare came to New York seeking fame on the stage; failing in this ambition, she gave herself up to drink and debauchery. Well, she occupied the limelight now.
    The situation was grave. All thirty-five hundred members of the NYPD had been mobilized to search every hotel and flophouse for anyone who’d lodged at the East River Hotel on the night of April 23.
    After leaving the scene of the crime, Hare took a room at a doss-house four blocks