A Storm In The Blood Part 2

DAUBED WITH A LATHER of shaving soap, in a washstand mirror in a comrade's bedroom, at the other end of Commercial Road, Peter's face reflected a numbing fact: escape was just the start. Always, always. Today's goal was more than just to disappear: it was to avoid ending up like those hotheads in Tottenham last year, Hefeld and the other one, both with bullets in the head. "I must want to live some more," he said to the mirror.So far, success. He'd counted on his friend Pavell for sanctuary, with Fritz and Yoska clinging to his back pockets, and they'd got their temporary roost. Safety at Pavell's till first light, five hours to catch their breath and make a plan. Together or separate? Somewhere in London or outside? Think for yourself. Choose for yourself. Act for yourself. On every other flit, Peter got away alone, with secrecy to protect him instead of numbers. Look at these numbers! Fritz may be calm for the minute, but he's a jar of nitroglycerin tipped to explode. Yoska, with his bad leg, moves slow as a wounded elephant. Two more targets, two chances out of three something will tilt the wrong way.At each stroke of the razor, an irreversible cut. Inward from the untwisted ends of his mustache, left then right, shallow arcs uncovered his smooth upper lip. Then he scythed clean the neat triangular beard, the angled ruff of hairs under his jaw first, left side then right, and finally Peter erased the point that sat so elegantly barbered on his chin. A dozen strokes, a few more? He'd shed a skin and no twinge of nostalgia pained him. Looking back at him was an unfas.h.i.+onable face Peter hadn't seen in years-a prerevolutionary face.He joined his friends in the unlit front room. "I'm getting myself to Poplar. Out of the city.""Meeting the girl?" Yoska said."Am I the only one with an idea?"Fritz brooded, "They won't try to arrest us. If they see us they'll gun us down.""No," Yoska said shakily, laughing it off. "They'll capture us, Fritz. So they can torture us all day. Then they'll shoot us in the back." The laugh went, not the shakiness. "For what we know about Karl, the exe, the whole thing.""They have to murder us." Of this Fritz was convinced. "To prove it to the Englanders they've got power over foreigners.""Tame us. Put us back in our cages," Yoska caught on."We don't know anything, do we? We weren't there. In Houndsditch.""No, no.""What do they care? We're anarchists, auslanders-""Thieves, Jews, yes...""-we'll do.""Police want a prize. Our hides nailed on the king's wall.""Our heads hanging on the, the, in the-""Trophy room," Yoska supplied."The king of England's trophy room. They're coming after us with a meat ax.""One for each of us."Fritz hoisted himself off the sofa to declare, "Our people! Get word to them-I don't mean people like Pavell or Hoffman, not Liesma. I mean citizens, people around here. They'd start an uprising.""Uprising," echoed Yoska. "Because of us?""In the streets, why not? Barricades in Brick Lane. We didn't do anything against anybody." He asked Yoska: "Did you shoot any policemen tonight?" Then Peter: "Did you?"Until this deranged notion was aimed at him, Peter had kept his distance, happy to let Fritz shoot off sparks. Now, though, survival was at stake. Someone had to douse the firebrand with a bucket of cold water. "Ring a bell and see who comes running, why don't you? Walk down the street, Fritz, ring your bell. Call on your comrades to join you. 'Save your brothers from the b.a.s.t.a.r.d English police!' You'll die of loneliness. Or a brick in the head. Krauts, Polacks, Russos, Letts, Wops, and Yids-the Yids more than any of them. What do you think? They want to be Englishmen! They want people to leave them alone, that's all. To forget about them. That's the reason they came here. You think they'll come running to help like your house is on fire? You really think so? You're lucky if n.o.body turns you in.""Englanders don't want them! It's the funniest English joke. We'll always be Wops and Yids," Fritz said, pointing his finger. "The English are English. Everybody else is-you know it's true what I'm saying-everybody else is down in the dirt. If Yids and whoever around here don't believe today, tomorrow they'll see for sure. When the children walk around thinking they're English. They'll act like Englanders, learn how to talk like them, drink tea, and put on English clothes. Then we can have a big laugh. Listen to Englanders talking behind Yids' backs. And not just behind, either-sometimes right to their darling faces.""All right, then. Let's sit here and wait twenty years, all right? For the Great Uprising," Peter said."You have to educate the people.""Tonight? Why don't we educate them tonight, Fritz, so they'll make a revolution in Brick Lane and save our skins?""When they look outside their windows and see how the English are persecuting us they'll get educated.""Too late for you and me." Peter made a curse of the word uprising, turned away from Fritz, and called himself a fool for not borrowing money from Pavell to buy a train ticket out of London."He's your friend, so he must be all right," Yoska said to Peter. "If you trust Pavell, I do too.""Good. What do you mean?""n.o.body wants the police on them.""We can't stay with Pavell," Peter said. "Before first light, if he's back or not, we leave.""Where?" Fritz, throwing down a dare."I'm heading for Poplar.""I'll go to Betsy, then," Yoska decided. "She'll hide me." Then, a thought. "All of us.""How far?" Peter said, suddenly interested."Ten minutes. Sidney Street. By her flat you can get to the roof."Peter figured the odds. "A yard? A back door?""It's a quiet place. Normal," Yoska said. "Quiet people live there.""Where is it in the street?""Middle. On a little road. Also there's a yard behind there, a good alley.""Middle house." Peter considered it. "Who knows you know Betsy?""Mr. Gershon does.""Who's he?""Betsy's husband! A whole year and he doesn't know about me and Betsy. She can keep a secret. It's perfect." Yoska ma.s.saged his leg. "Don't worry about Gershon. He won't be around.""It's good," Fritz joined in. "We should go by Cable Street, stay off the big road.""Twenty minutes," Peter guessed. "Yoska, you have a key to the street door?"Yoska took a pebble out of his jacket pocket, showed it to Peter. "Sure."A melody plinked in a corner of the room, gla.s.sy, leisurely, as if, arguments and decisions settled, the balalaika player understood he had permission to play. Friend to them all, to Peter and Fritz, Yoska and Pavell, who used his brains and tracked the persecuted men here to offer what he could, to comfort, to sympathize, to help. Fritz swayed to each strum, limp as sea gra.s.s, overwhelmed by a nostalgic mood. Nostalgia for his peaceful life before the calamity in Houndsditch galloped down on him and mangled him under its hooves, taken over by the homely memory of a few nights ago. "Petersburg Road,'" he requested.Nicholas Tomacoff plinked the steel strings, sang the first few words of Fritz's favorite song. "Vdol po Piterskoi, po daro-zhinkye,"-and Fritz joined in-"po Tverskoi-Yamskoi, s kara-kolts.h.i.+kom..." the two men's voices, balalaika simpering underneath, and Peter in a strangled hush, "Are you crazy? Stop it! Hang a sign on Pavell's window and tell the whole neighborhood we're in here!""Sorry, Peter." Nicholas laid the silenced balalaika across his knees. "I'll keep quiet."

Twenty-seven

DO SOMETHING. When they can't do anything else, people go. Going is something they can do. She shut the door behind her and it's the same to Luba as finis.h.i.+ng. On this side of the door it isn't finished. I still help him. We're not dead and gone. This is dying. This is my home. Forget Settle Street, all of this city, nowhere outside is in the world. This room. This floor. This fire. This man. With him is the last place I'll live...Rosie's memory of Luba shutting the door behind her flickered in her mind. An hour ago, it could have happened a hundred years ago-when together they trailed around Stepney to bring a doctor who'd come out before dawn to tend to a suffering man. "He doesn't want to go to hospital. So this is all I can do." Medicine to quiet the pain, for ten s.h.i.+llings dug out of Karl's trouser pocket. "Can you hear me? What name do you want me to write on the certificate?" Karl dredged the strength to answer, "George Gardstein."The doctor said it to Luba; Luba said the same to Rosie: "I did what I could." Then, "I can't think about it anymore. I'm going to my brother's."Rosie stopped herself from replying, Somebody to do your thinking for you. Luba abandoned her in the room with Karl, who was leaving her too. Blood-soaked sheets underneath him, towels wet and red on the floor, butcher's flowers, more blood on Karl's pillow, his clothes. Gray light chilled the window's edges, un-haltable day pus.h.i.+ng in, the last of Karl's life. Forsaken.Not by Rosie. Not by me. This is our home today. We're one body. Rough or tender, no one touches us anymore. Is this how it feels when you're finally a ghost? A Presence watching, like the medium told me. I'm a Presence for you. You be one for me. A ghost can't touch the world. You can't be helped anymore or hurt. You're a memory. While they're alive. Then you're forgotten, same as if you never lived."Rosie?"She crawled over to the side of the bed. "I'm here.""You don't have to wait. Go home.""What do you need?" Rosie poured some water into a gla.s.s and found the small brown bottle the doctor left on the table."Do something for me."We aren't dead yet. I'm not a ghost or a memory yet. I can do this. For Karl. My Karl. If it's my last act in the world it will be this act of love. Help him remember it for an hour.Strong instructions in a weak voice from the bed. Rosie emptied the drawers and shelves of papers and photographs, moved stacks of Karl's notebooks and pamphlets from corners of the room into a bigger heap next to the fireplace. The bullets she found she collected into a flat cap, which she laid on Karl's bedside table. Then, one by one, she fed papers from the heap into the fire. She stirred them with the poker to do a thorough job. Now and again, she glanced back at Karl to persuade herself he was awake and watching.

Twenty-eight

KARL'S EYES STAYED OPEN; he lacked the strength to close them. Strength of will. A minute before, Rosie asked him if he wanted her to give his hair a brus.h.i.+ng. He failed to reply. So she neatened the damp, flattened nest with Nina's hairbrush. The strong beauty of Karl's face had slipped, sunk back, like the concavity of a cliff weakened by brute winds. Second by second becoming less of what it was.Now comes this: Nina is smart to get out quick. She knows the police will come tonight, tomorrow, to lift her. She knows good ways out of the district. It's best for her. And me. Tell me the use of it, Nina standing over me, bunching her handkerchief between her hands. "What a rotten terrible thing got done to you!" My boy. My love. Nothing can be done about it. She knows what I know. Thinks my thoughts. My girl. My comrade of the flame. I'm thinking of you in the streets, safe. Friends in Poplar. There by now on the trolleybus. I don't care. Even if she isn't thinking this, she's doing it, which is better than the same thing. Together, escaping them, split apart.He worked to concentrate on the few things he could see from the bed: his bootless feet, the bedside lamp, b.u.t.tons on his coat, the gentle peaks of red-orange fire bobbing across the coal in the grate. Rosie's back, her unkind hump, a shadow between him and the heat. He wanted to ask her to move aside a little, but even as he struggled to breathe a word, it ended as a pocket of air in his mouth. His body s.h.i.+vered, cold and wet, overture to the next round of pain that rolled down from his neck and shoulders, crested in his back and side, surged downward and deeper into his stomach.Cold as a Russian icehouse in here. My legs are frozen solid. My body won't let me make decisions anymore. When I mess myself, who will clean me? Nina got out quick. Selfish quick. I know who she is. Whose daughter. Abandon the helpless. But: no. She'll look after Rosie. Nina cares for her more than she likes to show. This is worse than old age. Dribbling out of my back. So I won't be an old man with her in America. Nina or some other one. In Penn-sylvan-ia. She was my last woman. My lifetime-twenty-four years. I killed men (confess it!), so a man killed me. He changed me into meat on a slab. I changed what happened in a day. More than one time. I decided and ordinary days broke apart. Measure by fractions. They're pouring out of me-things I did, my habits, my decisions, my names-now they have a number. I don't know where my legs are. I'm not here."Karl? I'll give you some medicine. Yes? It's morning. You can have some. Lean your head a little more. Karl?"Did you touch me in the back? Did someone punch me? I remember a metal rod. The burner, the-what. From the tanks. Blowpipe. Tip of the flame. Did we pull his money from inside? The prize, we exed it, no? Good piece of asbestos. Max burned me in the back. You can't say it was luck. We did it. I did something. Some action that ended me here. I always thought I'd get a bullet, but quick to the brain. Executed. In a jail or on the street. I remember fighting. Friends carried me and put me in this box. Who did? Jacob and Nina. The other one. She left the window open so the moths came in. Light keeps powder on their wings dry. A column of heated air rises. Updraft. Per ounce per volume of. Pushes them in the air. Am I in my coffin remembering this or am I in a dream of my future? Have I been born yet?"Rosie?""I'm here.""You can't do anything."Lead weights tipped down the well of Rosie's heart. Her sadness doubled, hearing those words; they opened a wound as old as she was. Lumbered with that knotted hump on her back, what could she do? All her life the same refusal over and over again. Sara Rosa, who couldn't play schoolgirl games. Rosie the red-faced maiden, who couldn't attract a man. Sara the Seamstress, who could hardly feed herself, employment the charity of Luba's brothers. Never completely trusted to do anything. She knew what she could accomplish: as much as Nina and Luba could, those two together. Those cripples.She went back to her station on the floor in front of the grate, to the haystack heap of photographs, charts, and tables, pamphlets, postcards and letters, and fed the fire. Cared for the fire, helped it burn. When a curled sheet of ash threatened to smother the coals, she swatted it to pieces, stirred it away. She kept an eye on the burning and added coal when it was needed to keep the flame even. Do it and it is done. Rosie's face and hands, the front of her, roasted in the constant heat; her back absorbed the cold that was in possession of the other side of the room. Half-dead, half-living.

PETER HAD FLED. Jacob, Yourka, and Max. Yoska and Fritz. All the men were gone when Rivka shook herself out of her numb trance and, wrapped in Nina's shawl, drifted back into the room. The third time she repeated Rosie's name, Rivka touched her on the shoulder and got this reply: a reluctant and brief turn of her head away from the fire. Did Rosie know? Did she refuse to know? Until you stood close to him, Karl looked to be alive. His sleepwalker's eyes were open, distantly engaged, his lips were slightly parted as if in conversation, paused by the interruption of a further thought. Rivka brushed the wetness from her face, then bent down next to Rosie and said, without much hope, "Do you know where Fritz went? Did he say? Or Yoska?" In the blackness swaddled around her, Rosie didn't hear Rivka's voice. She only rocked forward on her knees to lay a pale blue envelope on the fire. Help for Rivka had to come from somebody else. A reliable friend. No one was left at Grove Street who cared if Peter was safe or not.

Twenty-nine

STORY OF HOUNDSDITCH MURDERS.

CONSTABLE'S GRAPHIC NARRATIVE.

"A MAN'S HAND."

LEVI-THE OPENER OF THE DOOR.

THE FIRST SHOT.In the very heart of London three good officers were shot fatally, and two seriously wounded by burglars who were interrupted in tunnelling their way to the safe of a Houndsditch jeweller.In the ordinary contest of police against thieves the position would have been dead against the criminals.But here they shot their way to liberty-in the criminal foreigner's characteristic way. And though the police, searching in scores, have what are supposed to be descriptions of their appearance, they are still at large.Once more it is proved that the warrens of London slums are excellent grounds for concealment, and the fact that the men know little English emphasizes the truth of that old maxim of the criminal.The chase is continued to-day by over a hundred detectives, every man eager for the avengement of the death of his three comrades."WANTED."

POLICE DESCRIPTIONS OF THREE MEN AND A WOMAN.Following is the description issued by the police of the three men and one woman wanted in connection with the murders-

1."FRITZ": Aged twenty-four or twenty-five; height about 5ft. 8in. or 5ft. 9in.Complexion sallow, eyes grey, medium moustache turned up at the ends, colour of hair on head fair, nose rather small, slightly turned up, chin a little rounded, a few pimples on face, cheek-bones prominent, shoulders square but slightly bent forward.Dressed brown tweed suit, thin light stripes; dark melton overcoat, velvet collar, nearly new; usually wears grey crush tweed cap, red spots; sometimes a trilby hat.A native of Russia, speaks English and German imperfectly.

2."PETER": Surname unknown; known as "Peter the Painter" aged twenty-eight to thirty; height 5ft. 9in. or 5ft. 10in.Complexion sallow, skin clear, eyes dark, hair medium, moustache black, medium build.Very reserved manner.Usually dressed in brown tweed suit, large dark stripes; black overcoat, velvet collar rather large; rather old large felt hat; shabby black lace boots.Believed to be Russian anarchist, frequents club and inst.i.tute, Jubilee-street. Resides Grove-street.

3."YOURKA": A Russian; age twenty-one; 5ft. 8in. in height.Heavy moustache; dark brown hair; sallow complexion.Dressed in blue jacket suit and grey cap.

4.A WOMAN: Aged twenty-six to thirty; 5ft. 4in. in height.Slim build; drawn face; brown hair; blue eyes.Wearing a dark blue three-quarter jacket and skirt, with white blouse, light-coloured shoes, and large black hat trimmed with black silk.DEAD a.s.sa.s.sIN.

ACCIDENTALLY KILLED BY HIS COMRADE.A remarkable discovery was made by the City Police Sat.u.r.day. One of the murderers was found dead in a house at 59 Grove-street, Commercial-road. He was identified as the "Mr. Levi" who rented No. 11 Exchange-buildings, and there seems to be no doubt that he was killed by his comrade.He was taken to the house in Grove-street in a cab by two men early on Sat.u.r.day morning. He was bleeding from a wound in the head and wore a bandage. Medical advice was sought, and some suspicion being aroused the police were summoned. Before they arrived the man was dead.It is believed that Levi is not the dead man's name. It has been established that he is not a Jew, and the police believe that neither of his companions was a Jew.THE ALIEN CRIMINAL.

HOW THE DOOR IS OPEN TO HIM.This is the third crime of this particular type for which alien criminals in Britain are responsible. The first was the unsuccessful attempt on the Moth-erwell (Glasgow) branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland by three Poles armed with revolvers.The second crime was that at Tottenham on 23 January 1909, when two Poles, Hefeld and Jacob Lapidus, s.n.a.t.c.hed a bag of money from a clerk who was carrying the week's wages to Messrs. Schnurmann's works. They were instantly pursued, and fired on their pursuers repeatedly, killing Police Constable Tyler and a boy and wounding eighteen persons. Finally both shot themselves.To such an extent has the Aliens Act been relaxed that in 1906 a Russian Pole who had shot a policeman was admitted as a political refugee. But most of the Russian criminals who leave their country for its own good and come to England find the door opened to them by that provision of the Aliens Act regulations which exempts from scrutiny small vessels carrying fewer than twenty pa.s.sengers.THE HOUNDSDITCH MURDERS.

NEW DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WANTED MEN.

"FRITZ" & "PETER."

30 ARMED POLICE SEARCH FOR a.s.sa.s.sINS.

THE INQUEST.

THE MURDERER'S DYING STATEMENT.

"SHOT BY MISTAKE."With energy and hard determination that have never been surpa.s.sed in the elucidation of a great London crime the police of every department are hunting for the Houndsditch a.s.sa.s.sins-the burglars who, interrupted in their work, shot and killed three City policemen and seriously wounded two others.Every detective trained to expertness in ransacking the East End dens of suspected aliens is in the pursuit. Every railway station and all Continental pa.s.senger steamers are being watched.No fewer than thirty officers, each carrying a loaded revolver, were dispatched in one party in the dark early hours.DEFENCELESS.Every Londoner must feel deeply angry that three brave members of the police force have been lost in a murderously unequal struggle.Despite the tragedies of Tottenham and Houndsditch, are we to continue to send virtually unarmed men-socially valuable ones, too-against the pestilential foreign criminals that London and the world would be cleaner and happier without?DOCTOR'S EVIDENCE.

MURDERER'S ACCOUNT OF HOW HE SUSTAINED HIS WOUNDS.Dr. John James Scanlon, temporarily a.s.sisting Dr. Bernstein, a friend, in Commercial Road, was called:Did you speak to him?-He was muttering. I spoke to him in English. I asked his name.Before you examined him?-Yes."MY NAME IS GEORGE GARDSTEIN."He said his name was George Gardstein. I asked him what had happened to him. He said-Three hours ago I was shot by a friend with a revolver in the back by a mistake.I examined him and found a bullet hole in the left side of the back, and I found the bullet under the skin of the chest. It had not come out. It was about two inches from the middle line of the body.The man was in a very weak condition. He vomited some blood while I examined him, and frequently asked me to give him a narcotic to relieve the pain.He had great pain in the region of the stomach and abdomen [...]I made up a mixture of belladonna, nux vomica, and opium.THE INJURED.

P.C. WOODHAMS' STORY: "WE RAN FORWARD...AND I KNEW NO MORE."The two officers-Sergeant Bryant and Constable Woodhams-injured in the outrage are reported to-day to be progressing satisfactorily.It is reported now as almost certain that Sergeant, who is in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, will recover.Constable Woodhams, the more seriously injured, is at London Hospital. He is not allowed to see visitors.He has, however, given the description of the outrage:-I heard the whistles go, and my sergeant and his mate tried to open the door. We saw a flash, and they fell into the road. We ran forward, and then I found myself rolling on the ground, and I knew no more.He added that he saw nothing of the a.s.sailant, who apparently fired through the door.THE HOUNDSDITCH AFFRAY.

DEATH OF ANOTHER POLICEMAN.

VIVID STORIES.

THE WOMAN WITH THE SHAWL.

A GANG OF SIX.Another police officer-Constable Choate-died today as the result of the shooting outrage by burglars in the Houndsditch district last night.The full list of the killed and wounded is as follows:-KILLEDSergeant TuckerConstable ChoateINJUREDSergeant Bentley (shot in the neck and shoulder), condition serious.Sergeant Bryant (shot in the arm).Constable Woodhams (both legs broken by bullets).THE COVERED FACE.

STORY OF THE WOMAN COMPANION OF THE MAN WHO LOOKED LIKE A RUSSIAN JEW.Miss Ada Parker, who lives exactly opposite the house where the burglars carried on their work, gave an Evening News representative some particulars about the occupants of No. 11."The first I saw of them," she said, "was about three weeks ago, when the gentleman came across the road and asked me if I could find him a servant to clear up the house before he took possession of it."He spoke in very broken English. From his appearance I should say he was certainly a Jew-perhaps a Russian Jew."The only people I ever saw in the house were this man and the woman I took to be his wife. She was a very smart-looking woman."Every morning about eight o'clock she used to come outside and take down two of the three shutters. Behind these two shutters were thick curtains through which nothing could be seen."Behind the middle shutter, which was never removed, was a lighter curtain."I said to my brother only yesterday, 'I do not know how these people get their food in; I never see the young lady go out for provisions the way we do. I suppose they must go out late at night.'"The young woman always kept her face covered with a shawl, so that no one here knows what she is like."THE STEPNEY BOMB FACTORY.

TO-DAY'S IMPORTANT REVELATIONS.

MOROUNTZEFF.

THE a.s.sa.s.sIN WITH THE BLACK BOX.

SOUNDS BY NIGHT.

CRIMINALS WITH A PARIS MEETING PLACE.Today's inquiries show that the discovery made last night at a house 44 Gold-street, Stepney, by detectives who are searching for the alien a.s.sa.s.sins of three City police officers [...] is one of the very greatest importance.The discovery has established the fact that the murderer who died at a house in Grove-street, Whitechapel, was not named George Gardstein-as he told the doctor whom the two women summoned to him-but Poloski Morountzeff.He it was who had occupied the rooms in Gold-street-rooms found to resemble nothing so much as an a.r.s.enal.The landlord thought the man an artist. He appeared to be a dreamer; he had been seen painting at the window.And whenever he went out he carried a black tin box-a box thought to contain painting materials, but was probably used to bring to the house the deadly explosives with which the man was surrounded.THE DISCOVERY.

LETTERS SAID TO REVEAL AN ANARCHIST PLOT OF SENSATIONAL CHARACTER.The police discovered at the house in Gold-street a complete process for the manufacture of bombs.A number of mechanical appliances were found, and in gla.s.s bottles-used in order that the effective strength of the materials be preserved-were large quant.i.ties ofNitric acidLiquid mercurySulphuric acidPotash, andNitro-glycerin phosphatesThe police were able also to take possession of a magazine pistol, similar in pattern, it is believed, to that which was employed in the fusillade fired from the house in Exchange-buildings.In addition a dagger was found, and a belt which is understood to have had placed within it 150 Mauser dum-dum bullets-bullets, that is, with soft heads, which upon striking a human body would spread and inflict a wound of a grievous if not deadly character.But even this does not exhaust the list of dangerous material.MEETINGS IN PARIS.

FINGER-PRINTS SENT TO THE CONTINENTAL POLICE.

MOROUNTZEFF.

THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO PAINTED AT THE WINDOW.

AN EVENING NEWS REPRESENTATIVE SAYS THAT THE HOUSE [...]It was obvious that the Lettish bandits and "insurgents," who at that time terrorised Riga and the adjacent country, had made the Russian Empire too hot to told them; go somewhere they must; and of course, some came to London, while no doubt others have gone as far as Canada and the United States.Cornered, they fight like cats; the least chance of escape, however, and they are down on their knees begging for mercy. I have seen men imploring a Russian officer to spare their lives, but the moment the firing party was called out and hope abandoned, these same men struck up the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and died with that defiance in their mouths.Feline in temperament, the Lett is also feline in his personal appearance. You can distinguish him at a glance, especially by the peculiar dead-white pallor of his skin, the narrow cat-like eye and prominent cheek-bone.And so the Anarchist degenerates into the common burglar, into Fritz or "Peter the Painter." That they should use magazine pistols against the London police is also quite natural; for they would have treated their own police to nothing less. Ideas of justice or mercy or a fair trial are as foreign to them as the streets wherein they pillaged and murdered. No immigration laws will keep them out; as long as the Russian system of government is what it is, men as desperate as these will be produced, and, if they find their way to England, so much the worse for us.THE DEAD CONSTABLES.

SERGEANT BENTLEY MURDERED ON ANNIVERSARY OF HIS WEDDING.The shots of the Houndsditch desperadoes have killed three men of the finest type of the London police officer. They could not have laid low three men more popular with their companions or more respected by the general public.The three officers were alike in their courage, their efficiency, their strength; they were also alike in their good humour, their kindliness, and the strong personal affection in which they were held.Sergent Robert Bentley, who died late on Sat.u.r.day night from the effect of five bullet wounds to the neck and chest, would have been thirty-seven years of age on Boxing Day.He was married nine years ago on the 16th of December, so he was murdered on the anniversary of his wedding day.His wife, although in delicate health, was able to be with him when he died. He leaves behind a little girl seven years of age.Sergeant Charles Tucker, who was shot in the neck and died in a few minutes, was an older man. He had seen twenty-five years' service in the police force, and was already ent.i.tled to retire on a pension, but was retained owing to the heavy demands which will be made on the police during the Coronation.Constable Choate, who died in the London Hospital on Sat.u.r.day morning, had been in the City police force for fifteen years.Only ten days ago he went down to Horsham for the burial of his mother. [...]He was one of the best billiard players in the City Police and spent much of his spare time practising the game on the table in the Bishopsgate station.THE KING'S MESSAGE.

SYMPATH WITH THE RELATIVES OF THE DEAD OFFICERS.The King has sent a message to the Commissioners of the City Police saying that he has heard with great concern of the murder of the three constables belonging to the City Police.His Majesty has requested the Commissioners to express to the widows and families his sincere sympathy and the a.s.surance that he feels most deeply for them in their sorrow.He has also directed the Commissioners to express to the wounded constables his sympathy with them in the severe wounds they have received in the execution of their duty, and his hope that they will make a good progress towards a complete recovery.His Majesty also asks to be informed of their present condition.

PART III

THE SIEGE

Thirty

TO PUSH AGAINST OPPOSITION, even when oblivion itself is the enemy, to show courage and humanity, care for the reputation you enjoy among your neighbors-all beautiful ideals, let us agree, that are universally distributed around the world's population. It's reasonable to expect to find such qualities in abundance among doctors, human beings who swear an oath, in three small words, to the race's highest virtues: Do No Harm. This pledge had a special meaning for Dr. John James Scanlon in the wake of that night's murders in Houndsditch.During the desolate morning hours when Karl lay dying, pain blunted a little by the medicine Dr. Scanlon made up for him, the medical man tussled with his own soul. On one hand, his obligation to the Law bent him to notify the police of any wounding or death by gunshot; on the other hand, bending to that law meant courting the risk, when word got out, of denunciation by his neighbors in Whitechapel. He'd be shunned, blacklisted, branded an informer. If things should come to that, what good could he do?Against his will, Dr. Scanlon found himself in motion, a cog in the strange clockwork of events ratcheting ahead on that mid-December weekend. Slow in contacting the police, quicker in alerting the newspapers, on Sat.u.r.day morning he fired the starting gun on a race to Grove Street between an armed squad of detectives and a pack of reporters loping after the same rumored survivors.A contest bagged by DI Wensley's detectives, pistols drawn, no more than minutes to spare. Shadow and quiet held the stairway. Wensley kept his voice low. "Take care going up. No banister." The file of men climbed to the first-floor landing, where the door to the front bedroom was closed. Sergeant Leeson stepped forward and gave the doork.n.o.b a quarter of a turn. Unlocked. A nod from DI Wensley ordered him into the room, and the sergeant's nod back brought in the others to meet a threat no greater than a woman half-asleep in front of the fire, destroying evidence. She didn't move an inch when the men tramped into the room behind her.Sergeant Leeson clamped his fingers around Rosie's wrist to stop her adding the photograph of a young woman to the ash-choked fire. "Who's that you want to get rid of, then?"No protest from Rosie when he tugged it away from her and dropped it back onto the stack of unincinerated papers. Mechanically, exhausted, mesmerized, under his eyes, she slid Luba's photo off the pile again and toward the grate. The toe of the sergeant's boot gently blocked it. Then she felt him reach under her arms and lift her off the floor. Rosie stayed quiet until she faced Karl's corpse. Past the four or five policemen elbowing around each other for a gander at the dead terrorist, she saw where his blood blackened the sheet-saw his white s.h.i.+rt, Karl's rigid arm. And her cry, coiled inside Rosie for half the night, spiraled out of her lungs; her throat shook with it, a gull's shriek of earsplitting agony, the last sound to reach the world from a drowning soul, unbearable."Remove that woman," Wensley said, and Sergeant Leeson bundled Rosie outside to the landing. "What do you think this is?" he asked the detective standing next to him, handling the painted wooden sword by the foil belt attached to it."Looks like some kind of sword, sir.""And their bullets are gumdrops." Wensley looked across to an object in the hands of DI Thompson. "Got something there?"Thompson tilted the unframed watercolor into the light. "Pretty scene.""Is it?" Wensley doubted, then examined it himself, front and back. He glanced at the signature: Yourka 16/12/10. "Here's something prettier." With his thumb, he underlined the writing on a slip of paper stuck to the back of the painting: G. Dubof beside the address 20 Galloway Rd, Shepherd's Bush.The mixture of loose cartridges in the upturned tweed cap on the table next to the dead man interested the detective-inspector. Six Mauser pistol cartridges, older Mauser rifle cartridges, other bullets he counted in the jumble fit Morris tube and small rook rifles. Next thing fished up, the Dreyse pistol, from its hiding place underneath Karl's pillow, plus two fully loaded clips. The Crown's barristers wouldn't lack for exhibits in court.A clamor on the street from the wolf pack down there mooch ing 'round the door made Wensley think, This work is difficult enough without outsiders mobbing us. Their barked questions and complaints ruffled the air, not his concentration. Through the closer conversation in the dead man's room, he heard booted footsteps hurrying upstairs; he heard his name spoken. "Here, Constable."The young policeman said, "It's a man, sir. Down at the door.""What about him?""He's asking to see Fritz.""Is he still there?" Wensley pressed him, made way for the PC to take a look from the window. "Do you see him?""Yes. Little mustache. He's waiting very polite, sir.""What did you tell him?""Asked him to wait there till I spoke with you.""Did he give his name?"The constable read from his notebook. "Not sure I got it spelt right, but the name he give me is Tom-a-coff. Nicholas, his Christian name, sir."

"I SAY YOU: no. I do not go there help Fritz crime. Not other boys too." Nicholas stumbled through an account of his visit to Grove Street, voluntarily offered, a proclamation of his good character. When he was stuck for the correct word, he turned to the Russian interpreter, grudgingly, avoiding a direct look.DI Wensley needed something more than veiny emotional a.s.sertion to convince him of this young man's value to the investigation, let alone Nicholas Tomacoff's moral goodness. At the table under the electric light, sitting as close to Nicholas as he would if they'd been enjoying a pint together in a pub, the detective-inspector frowned, rubbed his brow, and with a short silence allowed everyone present to appreciate his seriousness of purpose. Then: "You mentioned to the constable you're one of Fritz's friends. In what circ.u.mstances did you meet Mr. Svaars?""Please?""Am I speaking too fast? I'm sorry, Mr. Tomacoff. Again. You're a friend of Fritz Svaars?" He gestured toward the interpreter, who repeated the last question in Nicholas's own language."I teach Fritz play mandolin.""You regard each other in a friendly way. You're friends. Nothing wrong about that," Wensley said. "It's perfectly natural for someone to help out a friend, perfectly understandable.""Not for make crime he hurt England. Good place in England," Nicholas said, with feeling. "Good men here.""Would you say more of your friends are English or foreigners?""No. Please again?""Plain and simple, Mr. Tomacoff, the majority of your friends, are they English or are they Russians? Or Letts, Jews, or what?""All kinds, all. Yes. English boys jolly good, same."The Russian, who stood at DI Wensley's elbow, offered to put the question; Wensley moved on with a curt wave. "Who else do you know at Grove Street? The man who was shot dead, the gentleman we know as George Gardstein?"For this answer, Nicholas sought from the Russian an unambiguous translation. He had met Karl for the first time at the party in Grove Street less than a week before. He could not, would not, say he was a friend of his."Who else was at this party? Besides Svaars and Gardstein.""Luba. Nina..."Discreet as a butler, the constable cribbed from his notebook and refreshed Wensley's memory. "Luba Milstein, Svaar's mistress. Nina Vasilyeva, she's Gardstein's.""And the man we know as Peter the Painter?""Him, yes. His woman also.""The Painter's got a mistress, too, like 'em all," Wensley noted to himself. "And what's she called?""She is call Rivka.""Know her second name?"Nicholas shook his head, apologetically, more aware than he'd seemed until then that this record-straightening chat was taking place within the confines of an interrogation room inside Leman Street police station, and he needed to ask for permission if he suddenly wanted to leave. DI Wensley pushed a blank piece of paper and a sharpened pencil across the table. "Nicholas, I'd like you to write down the names of everybody who came to that party. Do that for me now, yes?" In precise English lettering, solid as notes on a stave, he'd written three names and started on a fourth when Wensley asked him, "This celebration, the night before they went to Houndsditch, was it?""Two, three day.""What went on?""What was party? Play song, much," Nicholas said softly, hearing them again. "Music from balalaika, violin. Sing. Talk.""What did you talk about? With who?""I? I teach Fritz play mandolin song. Other boys talk. What I hear them, not so much. They talk on jail. Home."Nicholas volunteered this information with the thought, In any jail in Russia a police interrogator wouldn't be so polite; by now he'd be listening to me yelp and beg for the beating to stop. A stone-hearted tormentor? Not this fellow! Even Fritz would see this Englishman wasn't born with the stomach for torture. Besides that, what kind of man was he? Nicholas plucked clues from the two hours he'd been sitting at that small table across from DI Wensley: the man's patience, the firm hint of its limits, mature a.s.surance in the stillness of his voice and face, traits Nicholas took to be as English as the rain. His walrus mustache, fatherly; his broad chin, of the people; his wag of the head, his homely jowls, sincere. No Jew-hater peeped out at Nicholas from his questioner's pinp.r.i.c.k eyes-the bigot that Peter said lived inside every Englander-no contempt in them for a foreigner "lower than the dirt," no, the opposite. DI Wensley's eyes compressed under the consideration he gave to every word Nicholas uttered. Here was a man whose respect, when he ceased to withhold it, was awarded to you with the force of vindication.His estimation was not wildly off the mark, although the sincerity and fatherly a.s.surance the young Russian poeticized out of Frederick Wensley's mustache, chin, and jowls were, in truth, on show to pa.s.s along a practical message: Make no mistake, puppy, I'm a stayer. He was the Somerset outsider who'd waded through his years of insult and near invisibility in the Met, diligent and keen and thus mistrusted, pa.s.sed over, and he stayed. Probationer to constable to detective to DI at forty-five, a sluggish climb, but without a misstep.The foreigners he'd known in the district for more than twenty years, all with the same fault in their language-total incomprehension of the letter W-called him Vensel. Which migrated into an H Division joke and almost affectionate nickname: Weasel. Never mind, it'd been no harm, not to me. The Weasel'd on 'em, so harm to them. Street robbers. Pickpockets. Burglars. Murderers. Anarchists. Enemies of good people. We've got enough to battle against in our lives without this deliberate muck. Look at me and listen (Wensley said to Nicholas with every word he didn't say)-you're trying to figure me and reckon your chances? Here, I'll tell you, pup. I'm the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who's going to arrest your friends."You haven't been in England for very long, I understand.""June I am here. Seven month." A long time, by Nicholas's calendar. "Stay London is good with me.""Mr. Tomacoff, are you an anarchist?"Nicholas slapped the table. "I say you no! Not of Liesma!""All your friends, the men you've named..." Wensley pointed at the page between them on the table. "They're members of Liesma. Anarchists. Criminals who murder English policemen.""I teach Fritz play mandolin. He ask me go his house for make party." For a few seconds, Nicholas met Wensley's strategic silence with intensity of his own. As if the taut string that held his spine had been cut, his shoulders dropped. "I take you where they hide," he said."Who? Fritz, you mean? Peter?""Also Yoska."DI Wensley turned around to ask the constable, "Which one's Yoska?" While the PC thumbed through his notes, Wensley pushed Nicholas, "When did you see them?""Three o'clock. Fritz Svaars, Yoska Sokoloff, Peter Piatkow.""Write down the address." On the page of names, Nicholas added the address, and Wensley read it aloud for the constable to copy into his notebook. "Havering Street. Number Thirty-six." Then, to Nicholas, "How do I know you're not leading us into an ambush?"An appeal to the interpreter, and after Nicholas took in the meaning of the question, he slumped back in his chair, bruised and bewildered. "Take guns. Fritz and other boys take guns.""You'd better pray they don't use them." What Wensley said next had the sound of an afterthought, a question from the private man, not the detective. "Do you pray?""Pray?""To G.o.d. You believe in G.o.d? Reigns over us like the king in England, the tsar in Russia?""Sir, I believe same G.o.d like you."They left Nicholas in the room, in the unofficial custody of the Russian interpreter. Let him catch his breath, reminiscing with his countryman about samovars and balalaikas, moonlight on the Volga. In the corridor outside, DI Thompson more than hinted at his doubt that Nicholas Tomacoff's word could be trusted. "You don't think they give up their comrades, do you, Wensley?""We'll find out when we call upon Havering Street."The constable felt relaxed enough to remark, "Seen it in Whitechapel, right, sir? Give a Jew an inch and he'll put a bed in it. Give him two, he'll take in lodgers."It was slander, and Wensley did the constable a favor by letting it pa.s.s without rebuke. Business of the day was with his partner in this manhunt, the City detective-inspector. Wensley thought back, and said to DI Thompson, "I do believe him. Question the authority of G.o.d, you question every other kind of authority. He really does want to stay in England. Got that from him free and clear.""Yes, well?""You can't be any kind of a citizen and question authority, can you?" He wagged his hand confidentially between his chest and Thompson's. Finally, another reflection. "I should have said that in there. Might've pinched the address out of him quicker."

PETER BLAMED HIS sharply plummeting spirits on the rotten joke Yoska made as they walked past the doctor's surgery two doors along from their hideout. It spooked Peter's mind with the regret that he was not on his way to Poplar, alone and unburdened by one man ready to fling himself like a grenade against anybody in a uniform and another one skipping-or limping-here to there like an infant playing hide-and-seek with his wee friends in Special Branch. "That's the alley you're talking about?" He led Yoska the few steps back to the turning, to the iron gate at the mouth of what looked to Peter like an unbroken pa.s.sageway stretching the length of the row of brick houses."It cuts through the yards. This street"-Yoska jabbed his thumb over his shoulder-"to that one." He pointed vaguely ahead of them, to the opposite side of the square enclosed by two-and three-story buildings. Maybe a hundred windows looked down on doors to the yards and alley, Peter guessed. A route back to the mundane chaos of Commercial Road. "Let's get inside," Yoska said.Sleet glossed the cobbles and pavement of a thoroughfare as ordinary as any in Stepney. At the far end, a dray cart loaded with beer barrels rattled out of a brewery yard, and at this early hour, it was the only movement besides the three fugitives huddled at a front door, a fifteen-second dash from either corner. Peter trusted Yoska to bring them to a safe place, and when he vouched for the tameness of "my Betsy," Peter trusted him on that score, too. Though not irrevocably.For sure, he couldn't count on Yoska's powers of stealth. "Watch. It'll just take one throw," the Limper said. He'd got the pebble in his hand and hurled it, with a sportsman's accuracy, at the second-floor window. It hit with force enough to spin off at a skewed angle and vanish. "Betsy!" Yoska's hoa.r.s.e cry of love reached her as the nightgowned, nightcapped figure slid the window open and peeked down. "Take us in, dear."At that distance, Peter couldn't make out her face; he heard her voice, claggy with sleep, reply, "Who's with you, Yoskele?""The sooner you let me in, the sooner you'll find out."Betsy dropped the street door key to him. It missed Yoska's head by half an inch and bounced to the curb. "I see it," he said, grabbing Fritz's arm to balance himself as he craned down to fetch it, and in triumph Yoska twirled the key 'round his finger by its lilac ribbon."Come on, I'm cold," Fritz said. "I smell snow."A whipcrack of sleety wind stung the back of Peter's neck-a solid enough reason to follow Yoska and Fritz through the door, he thought.

Thirty-one

RIVKA IMAGINED PETER'S VOICE in her ear-she had the feeling he was still close-and so by the third day, Peter's howling absence wore itself down to a whimper. A blessing he wasn't standing beside her to see how hiding in alleys and doorways, fighting off drunkards, lechers, and other devils, had mangled Rivka inside and out, turned her into a beggar who couldn't beg, nameless and puny. Grainy muck stained her fingernails, gutter sludge sc.r.a.ped up with the potato peelings she fought over with a starving wh.o.r.e twice her age. Lonely necessity made Rivka selfish. She covered herself in Nina's shawl without wondering once whether its rightful owner lay hunched and frozen to death in the same razoring wind. As Anna Southam, the Stepney Songbird, is song, Rivka Bermansfelt is want.The same desolate trance that wafted her back to s.h.i.+nebloom's stopped her from going any closer than the pavement across the street. From there, screened by traffic, Rivka caught brief views of the Mayor through the restaurant's window; pudgy arms flapping, he directed waitresses and plates to and from the kitchen while he carried on energetic conversations with his customers. A man she could trust? Rely upon to feed her, hide her from the police? For dishes she broke, he let Rivka repay him with a song-and for his own safety, he sacked her after he'd heard she was in Holloway Prison. It's possible the Mayor didn't recognize the black-shawled woman planted in the hurly-burly of Sclater Street; he may not even have noticed her. If he did, he made no sign.Another man did see Rivka behind the linen stall. He stopped at s.h.i.+nebloom's, held the door halfway open, and noticed whoever and whatever was in motion behind him. Leon Beron, the heavy-bellied, astrakhan-collared broker who always made Rivka think of a badger, the one who decorated his watch chain with a 5 gold coin; Yoska traded his prizes with the Badger, trusted him that far. The gold from Houndsditch would have gone to Mr. Beron. Badly camouflaged, this badger's reconnaissance. Rivka tugged the shawl closer around her head and face, bare cloth between her and the grim weather, then ducked away into the commotion of pedestrians.Lunchtime in s.h.i.+nebloom's, the political knockabout was quieter than usual. Diners shared gossip about Karl's real murderer, the size of the haul they got away with, where he stashed the gold and gems before he died. And what reprisals from the English were on the cards. Leon Beron said to the Mayor, "More snitches and policemen than customers at the Warsaw. Somebody told them it was Karl's regular place. This is an oasis, compared.""Police haven't visited us. Not yet," he added, then let the matter drop. "By the way, Hannah made applesauce for the brisket today."A tall, thin man came in and invited himself to Beron's table. "Can't get a table at the Warsaw, it's full of Special Branch and their squealers.""Steinie," Beron's greeting. "Order the brisket.""So I figured you'd be here.""Very smart. My congratulations."From the next table, a voice in Russian. "They're biding their time. Feeding their horses."Steinie agreed with him. "Rifles and bayonets, after last Friday. We should build barricades. The sooner the better. You've got all those market stalls.""Sit down," Beron begged him. "The bayonets aren't coming today. What did you bring me?"The Mayor sympathized. "Your usual nonsense, Lev," he told the Russian.Lev paid no attention. "They'll plan something. They've got all the time in the world. Then they'll ride down on us like a typhoon, same as at home.""Usual nonsense.""What Gardstein did-""Did to them, to England," someone said."-is their excuse for a pogrom.""Three bogies got killed," Steinie reminded them with a show of three fingers. "For sure they'll come down here. Any place it's easy to find us." He put to the Mayor: "Why's it nonsense, a pogrom in Brick Lane?""The innocent with the guilty..." one of Lev's friends began.A contribution winged in from another table. "They won't start it in Brick Lane. Jubilee Street first. They'll burn down Rocker's club to make a point. Then they'll come to us.""Brick Lane runs straight down. Easy for horses," Steinie said."You think Englanders want to burn down their own city?" The Mayor's parting shot."Sure! To take it away from us!" said Lev."Police or no," Beron said, "I'm going back to the Warsaw. At least informers talk quiet." He didn't budge, though, and repeated his first question to Steinie.Steinie finally sat down. "I'll have something beautiful for you in a couple of weeks. Special. You'll have to be careful with it, break it up."Beron leaned in close, to wonder, "In the newspaper it says they didn't get to the safe. Did Gardstein bring something out?"Steinie's reply was no reply. He turned around to the Russians, pointed at the Mayor, and joked, "He doesn't think Brick Lane is a shtetl."The coa.r.s.e laughing didn't annoy Beron so much; neither did the debate simmering around him about the strategy and methods the police would employ in the coming attack. The voices he heard weren't Social Democrats or Anarchists, Latvian Nationalists or Syndicalists, Communists, Christian Socialists, Individualists or Social-Revolutionaries. Most of them Jews, like him. He said to Steinie, "Whatever they want to do, it's going to be bad for everybody."

TWO NIGHTS AGO, she slept on the frigid ground behind a pile of ash and kitchen slops, and the night before she didn't sleep through a single hour. Wherever she stopped walking to rest her feet, Rivka attracted men who pestered her with an offering in each hand-coins clutched in one, c.o.c.k in the other. On her third morning dumbly tramping the back streets of Whitechapel and Stepney, when the next turning led her past the Pavilion Theatre, Rivka got her first piece of good luck. The blistered dark green stage door was unlocked.She slipped into the building and found a place to conceal herself among the props and costumes, where she slept like a dead thing until early evening. The chatter of performers and stagehands jarred Rivka awake in time for her to clear out of there and stumble across other nooks, unlit, unvisited, above and beneath the stage. The secret was to choose the right moment to move. After the curtain came down on the final encore, shoeless, quiet as smoke, she sneaked back upstairs to rebuild her nest of drapery and tweed coats. For another two days, her luck held.The fate that Rivka feared was stalking her had already netted two of the Sisterhood. Fortunately for her nerves, she didn't know that Rosie was under arrest, and Luba too. Days before, Luba's brothers chased her down and marched their delinquent, pregnant sister to the police. First to Jack and Nathan, then to DI Thompson, Luba confessed her affair with one of the anarchists behind the Houndsditch crimes. Both women were spilling what they could-names, descriptions, addresses-and if Rivka had known how the odds were shrinking out there, she wouldn't have risked being seen in the street, much less gambled her freedom by stealing food off market barrows.Revolution? Social justice? Revenge? Any need outside of Rivka's body-and she felt the ghostly pain of Peter's absence cold as an amputated limb-simply disappeared from the world. Today she found shelter, and today she stole food she could eat without cooking. A bread roll, a piece of fruit, a handful of boiled sweets. Rivka had real talent as a thief. Her grab was as quick as her eye, her eye as quick as the judgment to take a thing or pa.s.s it up; in a snap, the prize was gone under the hem of her shawl. What did people see if they looked at Rivka? Flawless calm. No guilt or fear heated her cheeks; she didn't abscond. Rivka watched herself. What do they see? A woman strolling past, who has no reason to hurry, another one like us-you can see it in her, our morality and motives, our bland innocence.It wouldn't be luck if it didn't run out, and Rivka's deserted her because of a runaway carrot. From the landing above, she listened for the clunk of the stage door and the clack of its bolt. Clunk-clack, she was locked in for a second night, so Rivka could breathe easy and make up her bed behind the magician's cabinet. She tipped the wardrobe-room door closed behind her without noticing the uneaten leftover from her supper fall out of her pocket and wedge itself between door and door frame.Footsteps on the stairs stopped at the landing. An electric light switched off, then on again; Rivka heard the footsteps reach the door. "A carrot, for G.o.d's sake," Harry the manager complained. "They treat it like a pigsty." More topsy-turvy inside, a spilled cup of water, curtain and costumes on the floor, the human shape underneath them. "Who's there?" He saw Rivka's face and said her name."You remember me.""Peter?" Harry half-called, half-inquired."He's not here. I don't know where he is.""They're saying he's mixed up in that Houndsditch business.""He wasn't.""You know for sure?""For sure.""He was with you?""No."Rivka's certainty unsettled Harry. "The woman the police want," he said, opening his satchel, retrieving his copy of the Evening News. "Is it you? They put in a description."She took the newspaper from him and tried to make out the d.a.m.ning words. "It could be me.""It could be.""Yes," Rivka told him. "Why are they looking for Peter? He didn't go there. He didn't do anything against the law.""Not last Friday, maybe." Harry knelt to bring his face level with Rivka's. "Did Max let you in here?""n.o.body did. I got in.""What a way to live," he said and shook his head. "Your name's on the playbill. See?" With his thumb, he underlined the name Anna Southam the Stepney Songbird."Peter told me. It's a beautiful name.""Your name. Look at the date. Week of the twelfth. Anybody asks me I'll tell him Friday night you were singing at the Pavilion.""No. I can't. I'll go.""Where?""If they look for me here, you'll get trouble from the police.""So you'll go where?""To Peter. Where he is.""He wants to know you're someplace safe. Am I right? Good. All right." Harry nodded with her; they were in agreement. "I can even arrange a hot bath. All the comforts."He carted the tin bath from the storeroom. The coal stove in his office heated the bathwater. Harry took the curtain Rivka used for a mattress and strung it across the room to trap the heat long enough for Rivka to wash herself. On the other side of the curtain, Harry stood guard. "Do you know any of Peter's friends?""You're his friend.""His patron! Still, he doesn't talk to me. In the Pavilion, about painting my scenery, he talks my ear off. But what goes on outside?" Harry puffed his cheeks and shook his head. "Where could he go?""Somewhere with Yoska and Fritz.""Fritz." Harry placed the name. "The shaky actor, with the sword."Fritz hovered in her mind, stiffly declaiming his lines as Gamba, the Russian policeman. "The police tortured him. I heard him talk about it. When they got him in Russia. Or back home, in..." Rivka's whole body s.h.i.+vered, bathwater lapped out of the tub; she wept as if Fritz's memory of prison was hers too. "They tore his fingernails off.""I won't tell anybody you're here." Harry coupled his promise to a caution. "But I won't go out looking for Peter, either."

WRECKAGE STRETCHED AHEAD of Nina as far as she could see; its trail reached behind her from Houndsditch to the very threshold of her rented room. Curled against the wall, she burrowed under stale-smelling pillows and blankets, where, unforgotten, Karl moaned inside her own moan: "Why did you leave me?" All of us on the stairs in the smoky frenzy, explosions and shouting. Didn't Karl put himself between Nina and the bullets? It was no accident. Why did you leave me? Max Smoller's blood clot of a jealous heart, hungry for the attention Karl saved for Nina, lover-comrade, who had his confidence, devotion, protection. Max was gunning for another prize. Why did you leave me? To bring a doctor, who refused me to my face. The dying body on the bed, you know, it wasn't Karl anymore. Not you! To stay was no comfort for either of us. Only for Rosie. Is that why?Nina went on talking to herself in a waking dream, out of bed now, on her knees on the floor with a knife, brown paper and string, and a scrabbled pyramid of her valuables. "I left there before they went in to do the robbery," she repeated a dozen times, rehearsing the words until they came out of her mouth as the convincing truth.The parcel looked anonymous enough not to need hiding, but Nina buried it first in a dresser drawer. Which was too obvious. Next she slid it under the washstand, where it was too visibly out of place. Then she abandoned that task for a more important one. Off came her jacket and white blouse, off came her skirt. Dust in the washbasin grayed the painted rose at the bottom and darkened under the first splash of spirit vinegar. The acid odor burned Nina's nostrils, teared her eyes. Like a farm girl tugs and squeezes the udder of a cow, she tugged at handfuls of her hair to milk the black dye from it. Her fingers were painted with it, trickles of the melting color smudged her face, collected around her eyes.The knock on her door was really a courtesy, an announcement that took for granted Nina's permission to come in. Especially since her landlord, Isaac Gordon, had a plate of food for her, cooked by his daughter. "Polly's worried about you, Nina. We don't see you eat. In a day or two you're going to starve to death." One look at the wild-haired, sunken-eyed, miserable mess hunched over the washstand gave Isaac the feeling Nina was much closer to death than that."My stomach's no good," she said, and stopped what she was doing. The strength that was holding her up drained out of her legs and Nina crumpled to the floor. Her hands covered her face; it looked to Isaac, through her fingers, as if she were crying black tears. "He was my best friend.""What can you do with this? You can't bring him back." Isaac set the plate on the floor next to Nina. "Will you eat?""He cared for me. Without him I'd be dead." Her hands went limp. "Without him I am dead.""No, no. Don't punish yourself."Nina grabbed the brown paper package from under the washstand. "Keep this for me. Tell Polly to hide it under her bed.""Is it valuable?""It's everything. All of my..." she trailed off."Are you going away again?""I don't know. I think so. If I do."A clammy mist of awareness crept over Isaac. Days of gossip in the neighborhood, the talk he had with every shopkeeper, every edition of the newspaper he read carried a description of the woman seen with the murderers escaping from Houndsditch. Carefully, he said to Nina, "The one who pa.s.sed away-he wasn't your friend in the countryside?"Nina floated back to her bed. Her reply wasn't to Isaac. "It would've been better if he'd shot me."

REST AND FOOD cleared Rivka's thoughts. With Peter hiding G.o.d knows where, in G.o.d knows what shape, her own safety felt worthless, almost an act of greed. Hour by hour, kindness by kindness, the sanctuary Harry made for her in his office wedged more distance between Rivka and any chance of seeing Peter's face again. When Harry ferried a hot meal to his "princess in the tower," she worried about Peter going hungry; in her bed behind Harry's desk and a locked door, she lay awake, electrified by visions of Peter hunched in the chill and wet filth of an open yard or derelict building, on the run, human prey in the sights of strangers who took the fever hidden inside him for fanaticism.To them, his largeness was the largeness of a glacier; no one except Rivka knew how Peter's warmth waited to be finagled out of him, chased, found. He'd try to hold you at a distance with stiff lectures about the realities of combat and crime, tactics of escape; he'd give you examples of his superhuman realism and run off without leaving a trace, burrow deep, bow to the necessity of severing all human ties and force you to accept that we don't live in a magic world where a man and a woman remain knotted to each other with fiery strands of love. Rivka knew different.In less than a day, exhaustion and grat.i.tude drained out of her and Rivka was left possessed by the need to find Peter. At an early hour, before sunup, she raided the wardrobe room and dressed herself from the rack of costumes. A clean white blouse, dark jacket and dress, a black silk-trimmed hat to cover her hair, Nina's unfancy shawl-who'd recognize Rivka Bermansfelt under all of that? In a race to Peter's hiding place, she was one up on the police: these were her people. They spoke her language. In East End streets, she wasn't a stranger anymore. More than that, Rivka had a place to start her detective work. Did she know anyone who could name the men in Peter's circle better than Charles Perelman?Scorched odor of soot, a moldy smell from canvas and damp pallets, coal smoke, sour residue of beer, the breath of the street. Through those early-morning absences, Rivka followed the track she used to walk between s.h.i.+nebloom's and Wellesley Street, her mind racing, at work on the problem of how to contact her landlord without dangerously exposing either of them. A glimpse of that danger froze Rivka at the turning into Commercial Road; the sight of that wanted poster tilted the ground under her feet.The City of London Police offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the murderer of the three good men Rivka had watched Jacob shoot dead in Houndsditch. Somehow, they had photographs of the criminal, and his name, and neither was Jacob Peters. The man they wanted to arrest and convict, jail and hang, was Peter Piatkow, alias Schtern, alias Peter the Painter. In the first photo, a debonair anarchist murderer, his hand jauntily tucke