13 March 1898
Some news at last! I had almost begun to doubt my original conclusions, so quiet has the city become. But just before dinner tonight, a message came that Mr. Collins was waiting to see me and I dared to hope. When he was shown into the library, his expression lifted my hopes even higher. And when he told me his tale . . .
He has, as I’ve recounted before, been keeping company in the bars and streets of the Ward, where the workers and the poor live, where the mysterious bloodless body was found, listening for any unusual stories. The few leads he had been able to pass along so far had proven to be no more than drunken ramblings, but tonight’s tale promises to be different.
It seems that one of his cronies has as an acquaintance a woman who makes her living as a whore (sad to say, even this most respectable of cities is plagued by her kind). According to Collins’s friend, a group of whores meet from time to time to discuss the revolting details of their profession and warn each other of police efforts to stop their trade. One of the subjects of their latest gossip was a client who had visited several of them. A man of middling years and foreign extraction, he was reputed to be generous with his money and considerate in his treatment of them. Yet they were all, according to Collins’s informant, surprised to discover that none of them could remember the precise details of the transaction.
I suggested that this was hardly surprising, considering the drunken state in which many of these women must exist, but Collins insists that his friend was adamant that several of these harlots restricted their imbibing only to their leisure hours. There were other oddities about their encounters with this customer that mystified them. Several recounted falling prey to an unusual lassitude after his visits, and one or two specifically stated that, though they believed that they had performed the usual acts of intercourse, they found no physical evidence of it, though such was usually to be discovered in their dirty sheets.
Upon the completion of this story, I paid Mr. Collins as usual and sent him out with instructions that I would be willing to pay to interview on of these whores. Collins, of course, has no idea what my true suspicions are (he seems to believe that I seek some damaging information about a business rival) and my name is never to be mentioned in connection with his inquiries.
After he left, I sat down to write this. Reviewing these words—and the previous evidence that led me to pursue this line of inquiry—I am more convinced than ever that I am right.
I hear Henry at the door, with no doubt yet another of his business schemes. As much as it relieves me to leave my wealth in such good hands, I sometimes wish he held my research into the occult secrets of the world in as much respect as my fortune. For what is another bank, or company, or rail line, when compared to the reward I now seek?