Lounging in his chair, Savidge regarded the glowing tip of his cigar. “You think Special Branch may have wanted some extra insurance against their targets?” he asked dryly.

“Perhaps,” Charles said. “All of the staff at the Clarion believe they were followed by the police for a period of some weeks before the Hyde Park incident, although Kopinski seems to think that a Russian agent is after him. I gather that he is considered to be an enemy of the Romanov regime, although I can’t yet tell you why.”

“An agent provocateur, eh?” Savidge said, raising his heavy eyebrows. “There seem to be a great many of those chaps wandering about the East End these days, all trying to dislodge refugees of one nationality or another, or otherwise cause trouble. I imagine that the Yard would like to be rid of the whole lot. Those foreign agents take up far too much of Special Branch’s attention.”

“Special Branch is in a difficult position just now,” Charles said. “The City has been swarming with heads of state and visiting dignitaries-almost like a plague of locusts-since before the first scheduled date of the Coronation. Ensuring their safety no doubt required a monumental effort, and the explosion in Hyde Park must have rattled the Yard all the way up to the commissioner. But that does not permit them to-”

“To manufacture evidence, mistreat members of the Press, and arrest émigrés who have sought refuge in London, et cetera et cetera.” With a bored expression, Savidge flicked the ash from his cigar. “I don’t like to disappoint you, Sheridan, but there must be a more compelling reason why I should become involved with this affair. I am of course interested in the possibility of laying hands on a policeman who manufactures evidence, but such a thing is deucedly hard to prove, even when one knows it is true. And Anarchists are hardly my dish of tea.”

“There is a compelling reason,” Charles said. He pursed his lips. “The case may involve the use of fingerprints.”

Savidge’s eyebrows went up again. “You’re saying-”

“I’m saying that if the police are telling the truth about those ginger-beer bottles, the defendants’ fingerprints should be all over them. If, however, the only prints belong to the police, or to some unidentified party-”

“I see,” Savidge said thoughtfully. “I must say, that changes things, doesn’t it, old chap?”

Charles knew exactly what lay behind Savidge’s sudden interest. It had to do with the fingerprints of a man named Harry Jackson, whose trial for burglary was scheduled at Old Bailey a fortnight hence. If the Crown’s prosecution was successful, the case would certainly become a forensic landmark, a vindication of a new system of criminal identification, and a proud feather in the cap of Scotland Yard’s new head of the Criminal Investigation Department and Assistant Police Commissioner of London, Edward Henry.

Henry had begun his work with fingerprints in the 1890s, when he was in charge of the Bengali police in British India. An intelligent and cultivated man, he had a mathematical bent and strong organizational abilities. Having become acquainted with the fingerprint studies of Sir Francis Galton, Henry developed a system that included not only taking the fingerprints, but classifying, indexing, filing, and retrieving them, and in 1906, implemented it in Bengal, where it replaced the current anthropometrical identification system called bertillonage, after the Frenchman who had developed it twenty years before. Henry thereupon proposed the new method to the Governor General of India. It was quickly adopted, proving to be a faster and more reliable method of identification than the slower, more complicated bertillonage.

It was a long way from India to England, and revolutionary ideas do not flow swiftly or smoothly through bureaucratic channels. But Charles had brought Henry’s program to the attention of the Home Office, and in 1900, he was appointed to a committee under Lord Belper, to look into what was being done in British India. The committee recommended the abandonment of anthropometry-the measurement of the skull, the length of arms, hands, and feet-and the creation of a new system of criminal identification based on Henry’s fingerprint system. In March 1901, Edward Henry himself was appointed to the post of Assistant Police Commissioner of London and head of the Criminal Investigation Department.

Henry had not found it easy to convince the Yard that fingerprints represented a more reliable means of identification than anthropometry, in which a great deal of time and effort had been invested and which some still held to be superior. Henry persevered, however, and soon the first Scotland Yard fingerprint department was in full operation. Within the year, nearly two thousand convicted persons were fingerprinted. Charles himself had directed the fingerprinting of prisoners at Dartmoor, and similar programs were conducted in prisons and jails across England.

Mark Twain had introduced the first fingerprint evidence into a fictional American courtroom in 1893, but the first real vindication of Henry’s new method did not occur in England until the month before Edward’s Coronation. On Derby Day at Epsom Downs, a team from the Yard fingerprinted fifty-four men who were arrested for various offenses, from public drunkenness to picking pockets. When the prints were checked against the new criminal records, over half of the men were found to have a history of arrests and convictions, thereby enabling the magistrate of the Petty Sessional Court to impose sentences twice as long as would otherwise have been awarded.

An even more important test was waiting in the wings, however, and both Charles and Savidge knew it. A house in Denmark Hill had been burgled and seven billiard balls stolen. The investigating officer noticed a dirty fingerprint on a newly-painted windowsill. The print was photographed, compared to those in the Yard’s files, and found to match the left thumbprint of a convicted burglar named Harry Jackson. Jackson had been apprehended, charged with the burglary, and was awaiting trial on September 2 at the Old Bailey. If the jury found him guilty, the case would make news all over the country-all over the world, perhaps.

“The first thing to do, of course,” Savidge said thoughtfully, “is to obtain the fingerprints of the men you wish me to defend. Then-”

“The men were fingerprinted when they were jailed, and their prints are in the custody of the administrator of Holloway Prison,” Charles said. “I confirmed that this morning.”

“Ah,” Savidge said. “Then we must obtain a competent expert who can examine the bottles held by the police and determine whether there is any fingerprint evidence to be found.”

“I think,” Charles said, “that I can serve in that capacity.”

“Of course,” Savidge said approvingly. “I had forgotten your expertise in that business.” He paused. “I don’t suppose that the police have studied the bottles for fingerprint evidence.”

“If they have,” Charles said, “no mention was made of it to Morley, Adam Gould’s solicitor. I rather doubt it, actually. Fingerprinting is not an investigative technique that Special Branch would have readily adopted.”

“Well, then,” Savidge said, “if you find the men’s fingerprints on those bombs, the best course would be a guilty plea. If not-”

“If not,” Charles said, “I suggest that we move for a continuance until after the Jackson trial is concluded. The chance for prevailing upon fingerprint evidence might be greater.”

Savidge looked at Charles. “You’ve been following the case, I take it. Is it likely that Jackson will be convicted?”

“On the evidence,” Charles said, “the Crown has a strong case. I should think he’ll be found guilty.” He paused. “I am afraid, however, that a jury will be less inclined to release three Anarchists on fingerprint testimony.”