Death In Hyde Park (12 page)

With so many other well-dressed ladies around her, Nellie did not feel at all out of place in her velvet finery, although she was not entirely comfortable when Jack insisted that they tour the India Exhibit. This was a circus-like coterie of snake-charmers, jugglers, exotic (and smelly) leopards, and veiled women dancers with bare navels and bare feet, the latter much applauded by a great crowd of drunken men. In fact, by now Nellie had rather got the idea that Jack preferred the gaudy excitement and bawdy silliness of Earl’s Court to the earlier elegance of the Carlton. But perhaps that was simply the American in him. She had not known many Americans, but she had the idea that they thrived on excitement, as Jack certainly seemed to do.

She decided that this was definitely the case when he bought more champagne, and then tickets on the Big Wheel, and they found themselves sailing up and up into the cool dark night, the bright lights and sparkling music wafting eerily up out of the fog below.

“Not as tall as the Ferris wheel in Chicago,” Jack said critically, and began to rock their carriage to see how far he could make it swing, until Nellie squealed with fear. “But I guess it’ll do.” He smiled down at her and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “Hell,” he said. “I
know
it’ll do.”

Nellie shivered with pleasure, and when Jack bent to kiss her, it was easy to kiss him back, gently at first and then fiercely, with a passion she had not realized was in her. And when the ride was over, he took her hand and led her to the exit, and into a cab, and there was more kissing, far more than Nellie (for she did not have nearly the experience she pretended) had ever before allowed. And within a very short while they were at her door and she was clinging giddily to his arm and fumbling for her key, and he was taking it from her and letting them both into the little house.

And then he was pulling her dress off her shoulders, not at all gently, and yanking off his shirt and trousers. As his intention became clear, she tried to push him away, crying “No, no, please, no!” with a mounting fright, as much at the urgency of her own whirling desire as at the brutal roughness of his hands and mouth. But he pulled her to him as if her resistance only fueled his passion, and as he pushed her onto the bed, still crying out in protest, she realized how incredibly strong he was. There was no use in fighting, for he would do just as he willed. He would take what he wanted, without restraint.

Everything became very blurry after that, and when Nellie woke in the gray light of an early morning, she had a savage headache, her mouth was as dry as a desert, and her body ached as if it had been assaulted—as, to tell truth, it had. She lay for a moment, not quite remembering what had happened, and then sat up in bed, clutching the rumpled sheets around her nakedness.

Jack was gone, but there was a pencilled note on the dresser, in a sprawling, careless script. “Dear Nell,” it said. “Thanks for the evening. Remember, if you happen to see Miss Conway, let her know I’d give anything to talk to her. Yrs, JL”

Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, Nellie, still naked, stood for a very long time with the note in her hand. Then she took it to the fireplace, where she knelt down and put a match to it, watching as it flared into an orange flame, then fell into a heap of black ash. By the time the last spark had died, there was a hard ache in her throat and her eyes were swimming with tears. She had the feeling that something very precious had been taken from her, and she had received nothing in return.

CHAPTER TEN

 
 
 
 
Adam Gould sat on a wooden chair in a dark cage in a small room in the depths of Holloway Prison. Across from him, on another wooden chair on the other side of the wire barricade, sat Mr. Morley, of Masters, Morley, and Dunderston, the solicitor sent to him by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. Morley was thin as a broom-straw, stiff-necked and nearly bald, and with a dour and depressed demeanor. He felt—no, he
knew,
and gloomily asserted as much—that nothing short of a miracle could save Adam from the retributive power of the law.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times,” he added in a sour whisper, as if he did not wish to be overheard by the guard, who stood not ten paces away. “Anarchists are trouble. And, sir, you have asked for it. Hanging about the offices of the
Clarion,
consorting with known Anarchists. Nothing good can come from the Anarchist principle, I say, and that’s the short and the long of it.” He sniffed contemptuously. “Nothing, to put it in the fewest possible words.”

Adam sighed, for Morley had never been a man to put anything into the fewest possible words, and his political persuasions were already very well known. Like most of those involved with the trade unions, he felt that the Anarchists were nothing but inept bunglers, and dangerous in their ineptitude. “What I want to know,” Adam said patiently, “is whether you’ve heard anything from Miss Conway.”

“No, and not likely to, either,” Morley rejoined, in a low, dispirited tone, as if oppressed and deadened by the burden of his gloom. He took out a large white handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud honk. “Infernal places, prisons,” he muttered. “Dank and musty. Not good for the lungs, nor for the heart, nor for the spirit. In short, not good at all. In fact, I do truly believe that each time I am forced to come here, I—”

“I hope that Miss Conway will attempt to contact me,” Adam said crisply, attempting to stem the flow of words, “if only to let me know that she is safe. You will give me her message, I trust.”

“Safe!” harrumphed Morley with an ill grace, pocketing his handkerchief and straightening his cuffs. “Took to her heels like a common vagabond, did she not? Disappeared into the crowd without a thought for anyone’s safety and welfare but her own, as I heard the tale. Anarchists!” he hissed. “Nothing but trouble from them, especially the women. And that’s what got you into this difficulty in the first place, isn’t it, Gould? Hanging about with that Anarchist woman? You might have had better sense.”

Adam sighed. He had worked with Morley on the Taff-Vale matter, and knew that the man was a solicitor, not a barrister, and thus could not represent him in court. Instead, Morley would consult a barrister, present his instructions for the handling of Adam’s case, and pay the barrister’s fee, which would be charged, along with his own, to the ASRS. He straightened his shoulders and took a different, more professional tack. “Well, then, Morley, p’rhaps we should get down to business. Have you learnt the charge? What do they say I’ve done?”

“Have I learnt the charge, he asks. Have I learnt the charge?” Mr. Morley rolled his eyes heavenward in mute appeal to a higher power, then pulled his brows into a stern frown and focused his gaze upon Adam. “Very well, sir,” he growled. “The charge against you, sir, is made under the Explosive Substances Act of 1883. You are accused of the possession of explosives with intent to endanger life. If you are convicted, you are likely to be sentenced to fifteen to twenty years of penal servitude.” He waggled his finger at Adam. “Little good you will do the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants if you should be found guilty. Precious little good you are doing them
now
.”

Possession of explosives? Adam felt a great surge of relief at this news. He had expected to be charged, if at all, with something vague and difficult to refute—conspiracy or consorting with known criminals or some such. But this? He chuckled.

“Possession of explosives,” he said carelessly. “Well, that’s easy, Morley. I’ve never possessed an explosive of any sort in my entire life.”

“Not at all ‘easy,’ sir,” Morley said with a darkly sarcastic emphasis, “when they have the evidence. The
evidence,
sir, which I have seen with my own eyes.” He looked down, pursuing something on his sleeve, a flea, probably. “Ah!” he cried, catching it. He held up his fingers, pinching hard. “Ah-ha!” he cried again, triumphantly. “Got you, you little fiend!”

“Evidence?” Adam asked, frowning. “They can have no evidence, unless—” He stopped. The police could have no evidence unless they had themselves manufactured and planted it, something to which they had been known to resort, although they were rarely called to account for the deception. His heart sank down into his boots. “What is this evidence, Morley?”

Morley paused, fixing him with a long and penetrating stare. Into the silence intruded the sound of a woman’s heartbroken weeping—a visitor, she must be, since women were confined in another part of the prison. Somewhere a chain clanked, and a rusty hinge squeaked. To Adam, they seemed the sounds of doom.

Morley cleared his throat and, giving each word a sternly judicial weight, said, “The evidence, sir, as you know very well, is the ginger-beer bottle containing nitric acid—according to the chemist’s report—which was found in your rooms, and which I myself have seen.”

“Know very well!” Adam exclaimed angrily, half-rising from his seat. “Know very well, you say? I know nothing of the kind. An explosive bottle may have been found in my rooms, but
I
did not put it there!”

Morley pulled his mouth down. “Nothing short of a miracle,” he said in a funereal voice. “That, sir, is what it will take to gain you your freedom. Therefore, I counsel you to pray for a—”

“It was put there by the police, I tell you!” Adam cried hoarsely. “And I depend on
you,
Morley, to find me a barrister who will prove that I am innocent of this trumped-up charge.”

“Depend on me, sir?” Morley’s expression became even more ominously funereal, and he once more dropped his voice to a whisper. “I will certainly do my utmost on your behalf, since the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has employed my firm to assist in your case. But you must not expect miracles, not at all. In fact, I should say that the chances for your acquittal, under the present circumstances, are virtually—”

“By God, you
will
do your utmost!” Adam shouted, now on his feet and pushing his face against the wire barricade. “I am innocent, Morley. You know it, and you’ll prove it, or I’ll—”

A guard emerged out of the darkness behind him. “Here,” he said severely. “We can’t ’ave this.” He seized Adam by the collar of his prison shirt and yanked him backward. “This interview is done. Back to yer cell wi’ ye.”

Morley straightened his lapels, as if he had been physically assaulted. “I will do my utmost,” he said, speaking with gravely offended dignity. “In the meantime, sir, I most heartily counsel you to pray. You should depend not upon the power of earthly men, who must all certainly fall short of perfection, but upon the mercy of the Almighty. You must—” The rest, thankfully, was lost in the clanging of the cage door and the vituperative mutterings of the guard as he roughly escorted Adam down the passageway and back to the prison block.

A few minutes later, Adam was alone in the damp darkness of his cell, sitting on the wooden plank that served as a bed, his face in his hands, thinking despairingly of what Morley had told him.

He had been seized in the Anarchist newspaper where the Hyde Park bomber had been employed, in the company of the bomber’s comrades. Some sort of bomb had been discovered in his rooms, and he had been charged with the possession of explosives. In the current climate, in the after-math of what must have been a plot to assassinate the King, such a charge was tantamount to a charge of treason. Furthermore, his persecutors would draw no distinction between an Anarchist and a trade unionist; both would be tarred alike with the same awful brush. And that incompetent fool of a solicitor, who believed the police lies, would be of no help at all. He had been given a certain ticket to doom.

And he was not the only one. In a cell down the passageway sat Ivan, and some little distance away, Pierre. No doubt explosives had been found in their rooms, as well, and they were charged as he was. When they came to court, they would all three share the same miserable fate.

And this was not the only thing that tore at Adam’s heart. Somewhere out there in the great, gray inhospitable city was Lottie, alone, a fugitive from the police. She couldn’t go home to her mother, or to any of her comrades, for no doubt the police had planted spies at every place she was known to frequent. Where would she go? How would she survive? Adam shivered as he thought of the ugly things that could happen to a woman, the terrible things that happened every day to women who were alone and undefended on the streets of London.

But then he took heart, and smiled a little. He could not believe that Lottie would allow herself to become a victim. She was far too clever and too resourceful to come to serious harm, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was even now attempting to find a way to help him. The image of her dark, dancing eyes, the dazzling impudence of her smile, seemed almost to lighten the darkness of his cell. He had no idea how she had managed to escape from her little loft office—across the roof perhaps, although that seemed impossible. But Lottie was never constrained by what others considered impossible. Lottie had the heart of a man, and the courage of a man, and a man’s daring.

And the body and soul of a woman, he thought with a little smile. He lay back on the wooden plank and let himself dream of Lottie.

A few paces down the passageway, Ivan Kopinski was also lying on his wooden plank. Jails were not new to him, and he had long ago learned that a man who exercised both his body and his mind during his imprisonment was far likelier to survive it than one who did not. Consequently, he allocated his time, alternately, between stretching exercises and running in place, and mental exercise. Just now, he was rigorously reviewing a certain period of his past, casting his mind month by month over the five years he had spent studying the writings and work of his mentor, Prince Peter Kropotkin. He found that he could name all of Kropotkin’s many writings, in the order of their publication, and could mentally compose a brief synopsis of each, including its major arguments. He could also recall where he had been when he read these, and what he had been doing, and how they had changed his thinking. It was an excellent exertion, and he smiled with satisfaction. During his next period of mental exercise, he would review the works of Bakunin, another of his teachers.