Death In Hyde Park

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.

Ivan had lived in France while he was studying Kropotkin’s work. He had been employed as a printer’s apprentice and had spent all his spare time perusing Anarchist books and pamphlets with the passion of a zealot-and a zealot he was. As a very young man, Ivan had been seized by the Russian police for refusing to serve in the Czar’s army; imprisoned, he had refused to recognize the authority of his judges and jailers, and had been brutally beaten for his resolute nay-saying. The way out of prison had involved taking as hostage Georgi Fedorov-an important official, the son of Princess Fedorovna and the nephew of Grand Duke Gerasimov, a favorite of the Czar-and when Fedorov was shot by prison guards during the escape, a price was laid on Ivan’s head. He had fled to his village for a last farewell before leaving Russia forever, but there he discovered that his parents had been brutally executed by the police, in retribution for their son’s escape. Until then, he had been genuinely remorseful at Fedorov’s death, but this pitiless murder of innocents hardened him. There was nothing left for Ivan, as there was nothing left for so many dispossessed, dispersed Russians, but to stoke the flaming fires of hatred in his heart and vow to find a way to bring down the hated regime of the Czar.

And Anarchism seemed to offer that way. Living on his luck and by his wits in some of the filthiest slums of Paris, Munich, and Brussels, he had met many other comrades who shared his passionate views, his hatred of corrupt regimes, his fury at the ruling class. And at last, he met Kropotkin, a Russian nobleman who had repudiated rank and riches and become an uncompromising apostle of the necessity of violence as a means of destroying the old world and clearing the way for the new. This should be done, Kropotkin urged, “by speech and written word, by dagger, gun, and dynamite,” and when the revolution had come (Kropotkin calculated that it would take no more than three to five years), all governments would be destroyed, and all property would become the property of all the people. Each person would draw upon the community warehouses for food and goods according to his needs, and each person would work according to his talents, for the good of all. In such a world, there would be no greed, no oppression, no slums, no prisons-and no murder of innocents.

Ivan’s hungry soul had been fed by Kropotkin’s shining, inspiring dream. He knew that he was strong and dedicated enough to answer the stirring summons to “men of courage willing not only to speak but to act, men who prefer prison, exile, and death to a life that contradicts their principles.” These men of courage-and Ivan knew that he was one-would make up the advance guard of the revolution, prepared to act long before the masses were awake to the possibility of a new future. Men of strength like himself and Pierre and even Adam (although he was a trade unionist, and a reformer, and not an Anarchist). Women of strength, like Lottie, lovely Lottie, whom Ivan would have loved with all the fierce passion of his Slavic soul, had he allowed himself to do so. Lottie, whose mischievous smile and gay laugh so belied her firm will, her dedication to all that was right and just and noble. And then there was Yuri.

Still on his back, Ivan raised his right leg and began to flex it rhythmically. It was ironic, wasn’t it? He had considered himself in the advance guard, laboring to spread the Anarchist word through the pages of the Clarion, when all the time, unbeknownst to anyone, Yuri Messenko-affectionate, gentle, Yuri, a boy to whom no one had paid any special regard-had been plotting a revolutionary deed so bravely violent and so startlingly audacious as to bring credit to them all.

Ivan had been astonished when he heard what Yuri had done; he had been utterly dumbfounded, and he was dumbfounded still, as he thought about it. That Yuri would have the courage, the cleverness, the extraordinary commitment required to carry out such a singular act made him feel enormously proud, even as he shook his head over the amazing improbability of such a thing. He felt a sharp sense of loss, as well (although he reminded himself that this was unforgivably bourgeois), for he had allowed himself to love Yuri (to the extent that an Anarchist could feel love) for his gentleness and compassion. Ivan feared that he had never fully understood the boy, for at times Yuri seemed remarkably dim-witted and yet at other times exhibited a deeply intuitive vision. And he had certainly neither understood nor shared Yuri’s devotion to Pierre, that inflammatory fire-brand of a fellow who seemed to Ivan to be manipulative and devious in the extreme. But this had not changed Ivan’s fondness for Yuri, and while he saluted Yuri’s heroic act, he mourned the lost young hero.

But there were other problems upon which Ivan must exercise his mind. His defense, for instance. Mr. Morley, the solicitor who had been sent by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants to defend Adam, had refused to take Ivan’s and Pierre ’s case, on the grounds that the ASRS was paying him to arrange the defense of one man, not three. Nicholas Petrovich, one of the few comrades brave enough to acknowledge any connection with their jailed colleages, had paid Ivan a visit the day before, bringing some cheese and apples-which were promptly confiscated by the guard. Nikki had come to let Ivan know that a solicitation was being conducted among the members of the Hampstead Road cell to collect the eight guineas required by Mr. Brownlow, a barrister who had defended other Anarchists on occasion.

“Brownlow is very sharp, we understand,” Nikki had said, in his thick Slavic accent. “If anyone can get you two off the charge, he’s the man.”

“If the eight guineas can be found,” Ivan said dispiritedly. “That seems high.”

“I’m afraid it’s the charge,” Nikki replied in an apologetic tone. “If it had been anything else but explosives with intent, he would’ve come cheaper. But explosives-”

“Explosives?” Ivan had interrupted sharply. “How do explosives come into it?”

Nikki gazed at him as if he didn’t quite understand. “Why, the bombs,” he said. “In your room, and Pierre’s. Ginger-beer bottles with something in them-nitric acid, they say. Not to mention the Anarchist literature, and the bomb-making instructions found in Pierre ’s pocket.” Admiration and pride were mixed with exasperation in his look. “The comrades said to tell you that they didn’t know that you were a Dynamitard, or that you and Yuri and Pierre were planning to blow up the King. If they’d known, they’d have said it wasn’t a good idea. Too dangerous all ’round.”

“It was Yuri’s plan, not mine,” Ivan said. “I had nothing to do with it.” He was about to add that he had no idea how a bomb had come to be found in his room, but held his tongue. The comrades could think as they liked about him. And if they liked to think that he was a man of deeds, rather than words only, well, that was their choice. He stood no chance before the British bench, anyway, with or without the aid of the eight-guinea Brownlow. He was a Russian and an Anarchist, and when he was found guilty and had served his sentence, he would be handed over to the Ochrana, the Czar’s secret police, who would arrange for his deportation. Once in Russia, he was a dead man.

And this opened another vast panorama of problems upon which Ivan must exercise his mental faculties. For the past three weeks, he had suspected that he was being trailed by one of the Russian secret agents who prowled London, keeping a watch on the Russian émigrés, many of whom had sought refuge in the teeming East End. Ivan had done his best to avoid the man-a tall, thin fellow with a black Vandyke beard, wearing a dark overcoat with a fur collar-but he knew it was a futile effort. Whatever he did, he could not get away from the man. And even if he did, it would be of no use, for now that the Ochrana had located him, they would merely assign another agent to trail him.

In fact, now that he thought about it, it seemed to him quite likely that the explosives found in his room had been put there by a Russian agent, immediately after he was seen to be seized in the raid on the Clarion. The agent would know that Special Branch police would search his rooms and would want to ensure that they find something incriminating. Of course, the Ochrana would prefer to get their hands on him immediately, so it was possible that they might make some sort of arrangement with the British authorities to hand him over-a trade for another prisoner, or even an arranged escape. One had heard of that sort of thing.

Ivan ran his hands through his lanky, dirty hair. Of course, this didn’t explain why a bomb had also been placed in Pierre ’s room, since an Ochrana agent was not likely to have any special animosity toward a French Anarchist. Ivan smiled bleakly. Especially an ineffectual French Anarchist, all fierce words and no deeds, whose passion for the Cause blinded him to any real possibility for vigorous action. But there were French secret agents in the City as well (not to mention German and Spanish and Italian and American) and perhaps there had been some sort of collaboration.

However, Ivan did not intend to expend his mental energies on Pierre and his fate. He had to think how best to manage to free himself from this unimaginably tangled web and from the agent who would be waiting to lay hands on him when the Court found him guilty-which would happen, he was sure of it, whatever the efforts of Mr. Eight-Guinea Brownlow.

But Brownlow was to make no such efforts on their behalf, as Pierre Mouffetard learned the next day. Pierre, a dingy, hard-faced man, his jaw patchily smudged with a meager whisker, had also been in jails before, usually on a charge of picking pockets, for that was his criminal trade. But he had never stayed for long, since he or his associates had always managed some early means of egress. He therefore remained unconcerned about his current situation and continued to carry himself with his customary air of blustery self-confidence, even when Nicholas Petrovich came to tell him that Brownlow would not be hired, after all.

The conversation had taken place just an hour ago, in the visiting cage. Nikki said that he had been sent to inform both Pierre and Ivan that the Hampstead Road Anarchists had changed their minds. Instead of helping to procure a defense, they had decided that it would be best for them to disassociate themselves from their jailed comrades. As a messenger, Nikki was clearly uncomfortable with this announcement, and stammered as he said it.

“They… we want to express solidarity with militant action, of course, but we… the group, that is, feels it can’t be reckless.” He colored. “You must take it as you like, Pierre, but they… we have decided to disclaim all connection with you and Ivan. And Adam Gould, too, of course-he’s not a member, anyway. It’s the explosives, you see. Everyone’s nervous.”

Pierre frowned, not so much at the way the comrades had abandoned him, but at the charge itself, which he had heard from Nikki the day before, for the first time. “But I had no explosives in my room,” he said. “I told you that yesterday.”

“That does not alter the fact,” Nikki replied somberly, “that the police say they found a bomb there. And there were the instructions for bomb-making in your pocket.”

“Instructions?” Pierre gave a hard laugh. “That was merely a letter-a French compatriot writing to tell me about a Spanish comrade who built an explosive device of some sort.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nikki pressed his lips together. “The comrades said that they are sorry, but they know that you, of all people, will appreciate that they must act in their own self-interest.”

Of course they must act in their own self-interest, Pierre thought scornfully, and he would act-as he always did-in his. That was what it meant to be an Anarchist, and whatever else he was (and he was many things), he was an Anarchist at heart. He stared down for a moment at the knot of his long, thin fingers, thinking about the bomb that had been put in his room by-by whom? He frowned, for while his impulsive actions and inflammatory temper had made him many enemies, he could think of none who would have chosen this route to revenge. But Pierre had been in difficult straits before, and things had come right in the end. Things seemed dark indeed, but there would be a way out. And if he could not find one, why, then, he would make one.

So Pierre had merely smiled tightly, asked Nikki to tell the comrades that he appreciated their position, and retired to his cell to consider the matter further. In his considerations, of course, his mind went to Ivan and Adam, in whose rooms the police had also found bombs. Pierre had no special liking for Adam, who was a reformist, not a revolutionary. But he was truly sorry for Ivan, whom he especially admired, for Ivan was both passionate and dedicated and had suffered through many trials, always showing himself worthy. With his training as a printer, Ivan was well on his way to making important contributions to the Cause-far more than he, Pierre, could ever hope to make. Pierre did not possess a great deal of self-knowledge, but he knew enough about himself to recognize that he had made very little of his life, and of the opportunities that had come his way. If he had to do it over again, he would do what Ivan had done: study more diligently, learn a trade, and find a way to do something significant for the Cause.

But there was no use in regret. The past was past, and neither here nor there. For now, there was nothing to do but wait and see what might happen.