She leaned her elbows on the dirty wooden counter, looked up at the fly-specked menu board, and ordered a two-penny pie and a bottle of lemonade. She was untying the money out of a knotted handkerchief at her belt when London slid several coins across the counter.

“Permit me,” he said with a smile.

The woman turned toward him, and he was struck dumb. She was no gypsy, but the very same Charlotte Conway whom he had last seen jumping down from the rusty iron ladder in Hampstead Street. Now, as then, she seemed to him easy and free in her body, unconstrained and open and frank in herself, ready to meet any peril or opportunity that the world might offer. Stunned, he realized that this Anarchist gypsy was the woman he had been looking for all his life.

It took a moment-it felt like a lifetime-to shape her name. “Lottie!” he whispered. “Lottie Conway!”

Her eyes met his with an astonishing boldness, widening and then narrowing, taking in his seafaring clothes and his green cloth cap. “Do I know you?” she asked.

The huskiness of her voice, the artlessness of her greeting, delighted him. “Jack London,” he said. “I’m an American journalist here to do a story. We met in an alley off Hampstead, when you shinnied down that ladder the day the cops raided the Clarion.” He grinned. “That was swell, the way you ditched those John Laws. A second more or less, you’d’a been pinched and hauled off to the calaboose.”

She looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language, but at that moment, the meat pie and lemonade were passed across the counter. He picked them up and, in a proprietary way, led the girl to a wooden table in the farthest corner. She sat down and dove into the pie as if she were starving, saying not a word.

“You’re on the lam, are you?” he asked, when she was finished.

She frowned and pushed back the empty plate. “On the lam?”

“Trying to keep clear of the cops.” With a grin, he ran his eye down her frock, admiring the swell of her breasts beneath the dirty bodice, the narrow waist, the trim ankles under the muddy hem of her skirt. “Done that myself in my hobo days, riding the rails across America. Got a few tricks up my sleeve I’d be glad to teach you. I remember once in Reno, Nevada, back in ‘92-”

“Thank you for the meal.” She stood. “Good-bye, now.”

He caught at her wrist. “No, don’t, please!” he said, and heard and was not ashamed of the pleading in his voice. “I’ve just found you. You can’t go away.”

“I can’t?” Her eyes were on his, his fingers still tight on her wrist. “Why not?”

“Because.” Because I didn’t know there were such women in the world, he thought wildly. Because you give wings to my imagination, and open great, luminous pages in books where heroes do heroic deeds for the sake of beautiful ladies. Because I am greedy for the feel of you. “Because I can help you,” he said humbly. “I want to help you.”

“Help me? Why?” She pulled her arm away, but she sat back down.

“Because you need me,” he said, his humility vanishing in a hero’s boldness, which was abashed the very next moment by her throaty laugh.

“Need you?” She tossed her head, an amused smile on her lips. “Why in the world should I need you?”

“Because,” he said, and leaned toward her, his eyes glinting with delight at the thought of the temptation he was offering her, his heart filled with the almost overpowering hope that she would accept. “Because I know a place where you can hide. A place where no one in the world would ever look for you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

At the Sibley House breakfast table on Tuesday morning, Kate was handed a telegram from Hodge, her butler at Bishop’s Keep. Patrick, the sixteen-year-old red-haired boy whom she and Charles had taken as their own, had arrived home the night before and was laid up with a badly-sprained ankle. [6] The boy-a young man now, nearly-had a marvelous gift for working with horses and served as an apprentice to George Lambton at Newmarket, one of the country’s leading horse trainers. But he had suffered an accidental fall, and while he was not badly injured, Mr. Lambton had thought it best that he go home for a week or two to recuperate.

Hodge’s telegram assured Kate that the doctor felt Patrick to be in no danger, but she knew she wouldn’t be easy in her mind until she saw him for herself, and if she went home, she could put the time to good use by working on her manuscript. Anyway, there was no purpose to her staying in the City, for it was clear that she could not find Charlotte Conway unless the girl wanted to be found. She could be anywhere in the vast city of London, and looking for her on the streets would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Perhaps Charlotte would contact Nellie or Helen Rossetti or even Mrs. Conway, and Kate had made sure that each one of them knew how to get in touch with her. If Charlotte turned up, and if there was something she could do to help the girl, she could always go back to London.

On Tuesday afternoon, Charles and Edward Savidge went to New Scotland Yard, to the newly-established fingerprint department. There, they met with Sergeant Collins, who had been appointed and trained by Assistant Commissioner Henry as the Yard’s chief fingerprint expert. The evidence, now boxed and labeled with a caution against handling, had been moved from the evidence locker to Collins’s office.

Sergeant Collins pulled on a pair of thin cotton gloves and opened the box. He took out a three-inch stack of Anarchist literature, all appearing to be copies of the same meeting notice, and several books, one by Prince Kropotkin, two others by Mikhail Bakunin. Next, he took out a much-folded sheet of cheap paper, clearly a letter, handwritten in French.

“Found in Mouffetard’s pocket,” he said, handing it to Savidge. To Charles he said, “No point in testing for fingerprints, not on that rough paper.”

Savidge unfolded the letter and read it. “I’d like to copy this,” he said.

The sergeant nodded and took out a bottle of what appeared to be a clear, viscous liquid, bearing the label Dr. Gabriel’s Pure Medicinal Glycerine. “Found in the newspaper office, on a shelf,” he said, setting it on the table.

Finally, he took out three ginger-beer bottles, one at a time, very carefully. The long-necked, champagne-shaped bottles were made of stoneware (as was usual with ginger-beer bottles, which were meant to be returned and refilled), the neck colored brown, the rest of the bottle plain salt-glazed, with the manufacturer’s name and bearded likeness impressed on the front. The bottles, each one capped with a screw-in stopper, appeared to be half full of a noxious-smelling liquid substance, identified by the Yard chemist, Sergeant Collins reported, as nitric acid. A square white evidence label had been applied to the back of each bottle. On it was written in ink the time and place the bottle was collected and the name Finney, the officer who had brought it in.

Savidge sat down to copy the letter into his pocket notebook. Charles watched as Collins dusted the four bottles with charcoal powder. A few prints showed quite clearly on the glazed surface, and these the sergeant photographed. Then he began to study the bottles, comparing the fingerprints on them to the inked prints of the jailed men, obtained from Holloway Prison.