“You don’t need to be cruel about it,” Jack said. He held out his hand with a seductive smile. “We can be friends, can’t we? Come have a nice cuddle, Lottie.”
“Not that kind of friends,” Lottie said firmly. “And I’ll only stay in this room on your guarantee that there will be no talk of cuddling or love. One word, and I’m out the door. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Jack said in a resigned tone. Then he flashed her a boyish grin. “But I’ll bet a quid you’ll change your mind.”
“Don’t have a quid,” Lottie said.
“I’ll loan it to you.”
“Never a borrower nor a lender be,” Lottie replied smartly, and ignoring his dark look, carried her feast of fish and chips to her own bed, where she made herself comfortable and ate hungrily until every crumb was gone.
In a way that she could not quite describe, Lottie felt relieved, as if the fates had kept her from mistakenly choosing the wrong path, which, once taken, might have led to enormous complications. And so she was able to sleep without difficulty in the same room with this very attractive man, and was easily able to ignore his glance, dark and passionate, which followed her as she moved around. Jack might be as sulky as a scolded child, but Lottie felt easy in herself. She had done what she felt right, without regret, and she was pragmatist enough to put aside what she couldn’t or shouldn’t do and focus instead on what she could.
So when Lottie saw the article on the front page of Freedom on Thursday morning, she began to get a glimmering idea of how she could help Adam, who was now much on her mind. After all, if he had not been at the Clarion to take her to lunch, the police would not have arrested him, so it was up to her to see that, somehow or another, he was rescued.
The article reported that at the request of counsel, the three Anarchists accused of bomb-making had been granted a continuance to the fourth of September, which was a fortnight away. They would be transported from Holloway Prison, where they were being held, to the Old Bailey, where they would stand trial. The article urged all London Anarchists to attend the trial and show, by their presence, their support for their comrades, who, whatever they had done, had done it out of their belief that all governments were oppressive, and that the only path toward freedom was to end the rule of tyranny.
Lottie had, of course, told Jack why she was hiding from the police, and what had happened at the newspaper office, and all about Yuri Messenko and Ivan Kopinski and Pierre Mouffetard and Adam. Now, she thought for a few minutes, shaping her idea. Then she looked over the top of her newspaper. “Listen to this, Jack.”
“I’m working,” Jack replied, around his cigarette.
“Then stop working and listen,” she commanded, and read the article out loud. When she was finished, she put the newspaper down. “Something must be done, Jack,” she said urgently. “Those men are innocent. They must be freed.”
“Freed?” Jack turned around, a cigarette hanging from his lips. It was warm that morning; the window was open and he was wearing an undershirt that revealed his chiseled muscles-wearing it deliberately, Lottie suspected, hoping that the sight of his masculine torso might tempt her to change her mind. “You mean to infiltrate the jury, I take it,” he remarked sarcastically. “And just how do you reckon to do that?”
Lottie tossed her head impatiently. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way to infiltrate a jury. Our men will be found guilty, of course. I mean to find a way to free them from prison.”
Jack’s blue eyes glinted and he smiled, as if in spite of himself. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re beautiful when you’re passionate?”
She scowled. “Be serious, Jack. This is serious business.”
“Serious? It sure as hell is,” he agreed. He turned around and straddled his chair backward. “I’ve been in jail, and I know. And I’ll tell you, Lottie, it ain’t no easy thing to get a man out of jail, once he’s behind bars.”
“You’ve been in jail?” Lottie put her head on one side, regarding him thoughtfully. Jack had told her-endlessly, it seemed-about his adventures as a seaman, a gold-seeker, and a Socialist, but he had not mentioned jail.
“It happened in the Depression of ’94,” Jack said, launching into what Lottie had come to think of as his storytelling mode. “I was travelin’ with Coxey’s Army, a rabble-rousin’ bunch of the unemployed who marched on Washington to try to get things changed. But I got fed up and deserted when we got to the Mississippi River. Hopped a freight headin’ east. I ended up at Niagara Falls and got one good look at the river before John Law pinched me for vagrancy, along with a couple of other hoboes. They shoved us into a big iron cage and then hauled us off to a courtroom, where the judge gave us thirty days apiece without allowin’ any of us so much as a word in our defense.” Jack’s voice grew hard. “Trial was a farce. I was denied not only my right of trial by jury but my right to plead guilty or not guilty. Got my American blood up, I’ll tell you.”
Lottie stared at him. “I didn’t think things like that happened in America.”
“Neither did I,” Jack said. “All I did was walk along their sidewalk and gawk at their picayune waterfall. What crime was there in that? Next thing I know, I’m rolled up snug as a bug in the Erie County Penitentiary.” He paused. “I learned plenty from that experience, I’ll tell you. It was like going to school. I learned how to pass the punk, pick a lock, pick a pocket-”
“Pick a pocket?” Lottie interrupted eagerly.
“Yeah.” Jack grinned. “This old geezer shared my cell, Cardboard Clancy, his name was. They called him Cardboard because that’s where he liked to sleep on the road, in little houses he made out of cardboard boxes. Card, he was a masterful pickpocket.” Jack lit a cigarette from the end of the one he was smoking and stubbed out the butt. His eyes were sparkling with the memory and the telling of it. “One day, in the mess-hall, ol’ Card picked the keys clean out of the guard’s pocket. Slick as a whistle, it was. Fella never even knew they were gone.”
“And then what happened?” Lottie asked, regarding him curiously. The trouble with Jack was that you never knew how much of his tale to believe. He could recount a story so full of lively, real-life details that you felt you were actually there, then he’d laugh and tell you he’d made it all up and congratulate himself on having fooled you.
“What happened?” Jack shrugged. “Nothing happened. We were getting out the next week, so we didn’t bother using the keys. Might as well get a few more prison meals under our belts.” He grinned. “Anyway, Card just did it to show me how it was done. We had it all fixed up to go into partnership when we got out, y’see. Card thought I was a crook just like him, and I didn’t see any merit in disabusing him of the notion. So I let him think I was the real goods, so to speak, and he spent a fair amount of time teaching me what he knew. Especially picking pockets. As I say, he was real good at it. We practiced on one another until I was real good at it, too.”
“So you learned how to be a dipper,” Lottie said in a speculative tone.
“A dipper?”
Lottie laughed. “That’s what a pickpocket is called here. A buzzer, sometimes. A mobsman, if he’s well-dressed.”
“Well, I don’t think they’d’ve called me a mobsman in those days.” Jack chuckled briefly. “I was a tramp, pure and simple. And I wasn’t doing it to pick up story material, or study human nature, either, the way I’m doing now. I did it because of the life that was in me, the wanderlust in my blood that wouldn’t let me rest. But I hadn’t the price of the railroad fare in my jeans, so I-”
“Did you practice dipping while you were a tramp?” Lottie interrupted. Jack’s story was interesting, but he was taking a long time to tell it.