Death In Hyde Park

And then he saw her. She was dressed in the garb of a Russian girl, in a white, full-sleeved blouse and dark skirt with an embroidered apron, a red babushka tied under her chin. But no matter what costume she had been wearing, Indian or Russian or Egyptian, Adam would have recognized that dear, familiar form and graceful motion anywhere in the world. He thrust up his arm and shouted against the clamor of shouting voices, the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the confusion of noisy lorries in the street. “Lottie! Lottie!”

For a split second, she turned to look up at him, her face pale, her eyes wide and anxious and full, it seemed to him, of guilt. Guilt? Not his Lottie! Never Lottie! He thought her glance had met his and felt in his heart that she had seen him. But no, perhaps she had not, for she had already turned in the other direction. She was pushing swiftly against the current of moving people, away from him, toward the covered courtyard at the other end of the block, where the Black Maria waited to take the convicted Anarchists to the prison where they would begin their sentence. And she was not alone, or that was Adam’s blurred impression. She seemed to be in the company of a strongly-built, dark-haired man in a dark jacket and green cloth cap. They moved side by side through the surging crowd with an easy, companionable familiarity and what seemed to be a common purpose. Who was the man? Was he one of her comrades? What was their object? What did they intend to do?

And then suddenly Adam’s heart jumped into his throat and he knew (although he had no way of knowing) that Lottie and the dark-haired man, together, meant to free Ivan and Pierre. The two of them were bent on doing, outside the law, what Lord Sheridan and Edward Savidge had not been able to do within it. They intended to free the men who now faced ten years of penal servitude for a crime they had not committed, the innocent men who should have gone free, as he was free.

But how? Were Lottie and her companion armed? Were there other comrades with them, or others aiming to meet them in the yard? How did they mean to overpower the guards? Suddenly, he was struck by the almost paralyzing fear that their desperate plan would place Lottie in grave danger. Having lost one of their three Anarchists to the jury’s acquittal, the warders and the police, who were armed with guns, would be in no mood to deal gently with anyone who attempted to interfere with them. At the worst, they might shoot her. At the least, they would capture her and take her immediately to jail. And if Lottie were innocent of everything else she might have been accused of, she would certainly be found guilty of attempting to free the prisoners.

Suddenly, Adam’s paralysis vanished, and he sprinted after them. Whatever Lottie and her companion meant to do, he would join them. Freedom meant nothing at all to him if he could not share it with Lottie.

Adam Gould was not the only one who saw Lottie and recognized her. Nellie had emerged from the Old Bailey with Kate, and the two of them stood on the steps just outside the doors, looking through the gathering darkness for a cab.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to walk to Ludgate Circus,” Kate was saying, her voice concerned. “There’s too large a crowd here, and half of them will be wanting a cab, just as we are. We might wait for Charles, but he may want to go off with Edward Savidge. I hope you’re not too tired for a bit of a walk.”

“I’m not, really,” Nellie said, taking a deep breath of the misty air, which seemed almost sweet in contrast to the hot, heavy atmosphere of the courtroom, redolent of cigars and men’s sweat. “I feel very well.”

Nelie was grateful to Kate, in fact, for asking her to come to the Old Bailey. It had been much better for her to concern herself with the welfare of the three men on trial than to sit in her room at the Rehearsal Club, alternatively hating Jack London and feeling sorry for herself. If nothing else, the defendants’ desperate plight had taken her mind off her own. Why, for three or four whole hours, she hadn’t once thought about being pregnant, or wondered how she was going to manage. She-

“Oh, look, Nellie,” Kate said, pointing to their right. “There’s Adam Gould, over there. Let’s go congratulate him on his acquittal. I don’t know him, but you do-you can introduce us.”

Nellie looked where Kate was pointing, and just as she did, she saw Adam violently thrust up his arm. “Lottie!” he cried loudly, standing on his tiptoes and looking intently out over the crowd. “Lottie!”

Swiftly, Nellie turned in the direction of Adam’s searching glance. She saw a dark-haired man in a green cap and a young Russian girl with a red babushka over her head and a basket on her arm. The pair was pushing against the jostling press of people, hurrying in the direction of the courtyard between Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey. Was the girl Lottie? Adam apparently thought so, although from this distance, Nellie couldn’t be sure.

But then the pair, the man and the girl, passed under a gas street lamp, and with a sudden shocking jolt that almost seemed to knock the breath out of her, Nellie recognized the man.

“Kate,” she gasped, pointing. “There! It’s Jack London!”

Kate looked. “And that’s Charlotte Conway with him, Nellie! I’m sure of it!”

As Kate spoke, Adam gave another loud cry and bolted down the stone steps. After that, it was all a wild confusion of shouting and pushing and scrambling as he attempted to shove his way through the crowd in pursuit of Lottie and Jack. Nellie would have gone after him, but Kate seized her arm.

“Let them go, Nellie,” she said firmly. “Leave it to Adam to catch her.”

“But what of him?” Nellie cried, desperately trying to pull away. “What of Jack London? I have to catch her, Kate. I have to warn her! I can’t let him do to her what he did to me!”

“There’s nothing you can do, Nellie,” Kate said in a low voice, putting a sisterly arm around her shoulders and pulling her apart from the press of people. “Perhaps it isn’t what you’re thinking, and there’s nothing of that sort between them. Or perhaps, if Lottie has been with Jack for a time, the damage is already done. Either way, she won’t welcome your interference. And you certainly don’t want to confront him, do you?” She tipped up Nellie’s chin, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Nellie bit her lip, thinking distractedly. Kate was right about one thing-she couldn’t push her way through the milling crowd to catch up with Jack and Lottie. And she suddenly realized that she didn’t want to. Did she want to confront him? Perhaps, once she was sure she was carrying his child. But not yet, and certainly not now, in this public place, where she would be bitterly conscious of hundreds of eyes, watching, hundreds of ears, listening. She had to talk to Lottie, though-she could not allow her friend to be deceived and betrayed by that man, as she had been. But how would she find her to warn her? If not here and now, where and when?

There was nothing to be done for the moment. But Nellie suddenly realized, as she allowed her friend to lead her down the steps and into the darkening street, that she knew exactly how and where to find Jack London.

And with an anguished certainty, she knew where she would find Lottie, as well.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Flight is lawful, when one flies from tyrants.

Racine,

Phaedra, 1677

Dmitri Tropov, alias Vladimir Rasnokov (among a great many other aliases), had not attended the Anarchists’ trial, although he lingered near enough to Old Bailey to gain a clear idea of what was going on. He had felt that his presence in the courtroom might present an unpleasant complication, and from what he could gather from the bailiffs and barristers who wandered in and out of the Bell & Bailey, the pub nearest the court, his instinct had been entirely correct. If Charles Sheridan had noticed and recognized Vladimir Rasnokov among the spectators in the courtroom, the defense counsel might have attempted to summon him to the witness box, in spite of the Crown’s pleading of public-interest privilege.

Tropov had no intention of revealing to an English court, however, the exact nature of his association with Ivan Kopinski. Besides, such proceedings were, in his experience, an utter waste of time. In Russia, when the police did their work properly, trials were unnecessary-unless, of course, the State wished to make some point or other, such as reminding the people who was in charge, or making an example of someone. To Tropov, the English notions of the jury of peers, presumption of innocence, and adversarial procedure seemed alien and unfamiliar-and foolishly utopian, especially when it came to dealing with crimes committed by the underclass. He had no doubt, however, that in the case of the Anarchists, the Crown would not hesitate to set aside such judicial abstractions as “justice” and “fairness” in favor of its own interests. And even though it appeared from all accounts that the defense was mounting a sharp assault on the prosecution’s case, he was sure that the judge would find a way to resolve the matter as it should be resolved.

Tropov was astounded, therefore, when he heard the jury’s verdict, which had spread through the Bell & Bailey like wildfire on the steppes. Only two of the Anarchists had been found guilty, while the third was declared innocent! Scarcely able to credit what he was hearing, Tropov left his mug of ale on the table, dashed across the street, and joined the milling crowd on the sidewalk, anxious to learn what had happened.

After a few breathless inquiries, however, he discovered that his fears were groundless. It was the Englishman Gould whom the jury had found innocent, a trade-union fellow and dangerous agitator, no doubt, but of no interest to Tropov. The penalty of ten years imposed on the other two, however-and particularly upon Ivan Kopinski-presented a new set of problems. Tropov had expected a shorter sentence, five years, perhaps, or seven at the most. It might be exceedingly difficult to lay hands upon a man when he finally emerged from a decade in an English prison. In the shifting landscape of European and Central Asian intrigue, ten years was an eternity. In ten years, Russia might well be at war with England.

Moving against the crowd, Tropov made his way around to the yard between Newgate and the Old Bailey, where the Black Maria was waiting to return the condemned men to prison. He had no plan in mind, for he had to admit to being at a momentary loss as to what, exactly, to do next, with regard to Kopinski. He went simply to satisfy himself that the transport of the men was going as expected. It was not.

Tropov stood just inside the gate, along with perhaps thirty or forty people-some of them tipsy, others merely rowdy-which had gathered around the Black Maria. Night was falling and the gas lamps in the yard cast a misty glow across the cobbled pavement. As the door opened and the uniformed guards led the shuffling pair of shackled and handcuffed prisoners out to the waiting van, a slender young woman in a red babushka and embroidered apron flung herself wildly out of the crowd and ran the dozen yards toward them, screaming at Kopinski in an incoherent torrent of Russian.

Amused, Tropov smiled to himself. He couldn’t quite catch the woman’s words, but from her behavior and her gestures, it appeared that she had once been Kopinski’s sweetheart-and was with child, it would seem, from the way she screamed and wept and pointed to her belly. Apparently, Kopinski had not practiced all the Anarchist tenets, especially that which discouraged relationships with women. The poor creature flew passionately at the handcuffed man, pummeling him with her fists and crying a few Russian words over and over again. This time, Tropov managed to catch them, or thought he had. “Klyuchee!” she screamed. “Skreetm v’karmenye!”

Kopinski appeared to be completely dumbfounded at this unexpected and highly emotional outburst, but he finally spoke a few surprised words in Russian. Hearing him, the girl threw up her arms, let out a long and heart-rending shriek of despair, and collapsed to the pavement in a huddled faint.

There was sudden pandemonium. The shouting crowd surged forward through the gathering darkness, completely surrounding the prisoners and the van. The horses whinnied and reared in their traces as the driver fought to hold them. The guards, the prisoners, and the people became a shouting, swirling, disorganized mass. It took a minute, perhaps longer, for the warders to regain control of the situation, push the crowd back, and hustle their prisoners into the van. It took a moment more for a dark-haired man in a green cap to push the crowd aside, revive the girl, and lift her to her feet. The bystanders parted, murmuring sympathetically, as he half-supported, half-carried the sobbing young woman out of the yard and into the street, where they disappeared from Tropov’s sight.

“The prisoner’s sweetheart, most like,” said the old woman standing next to Tropov. She shook her head sadly. “Ten years is a long time. I pity ’er, raisin’ the child ’erself.”

“That’s wot comes o’ takin’ up with th’ crim’nal class,” snapped her companion, a younger woman wrapped in a dark shawl. “She should’ve known better. Come along, Mum. It’ll be rainin’ afore