The Four Just Men E-Book

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: idb
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 408

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Manfred laid down the Heraldo di Madrid, removed his eyeglass, rubbed it with a spotless handkerchief, and laughed quietly. “These Russians are droll,” he commented. Poiccart frowned and reached for the newspaper. “Who is it—this time?” “A Governor of one of the Southern Provinces.” “Killed?” Manfred’s moustache curled in scornful derision ...

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The Four Just Men

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932)

isbn 9783961500055

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Copyright, 1936,

By

TO

CONTENTS

PART I

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

CHAPTER

PAGE

I

Thery’s Trade

1

II

A Newspaper Story

7

III

The Faithful Commons

15

IV

One Thousand Pounds Reward

24

V

Preparations

34

VI

The Outrage at the “Megaphone”

44

VII

The Clues

59

VIII

The Messenger of the Four

71

IX

The Pocket-Book

85

X

The Cupidity of Marks

98

XI

Three Who Died

114

XII

A Newspaper Cutting

127

XIII

Conclusion

136

PART II

THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE

I

The Red Hundred

143

II

The Fourth Man

157

III

Jessen, Alias Long

169

IV

The Red Bean

181

V

The Council of Justice

194

VI

Princess Revolutionary

204

VII

The Government and Mr. Jessen

212

VIII

An Incident in the Fight

219

IX

The Four vs. the Hundred

226

X

The Trial

232

XI

Manfred

243

XII

In Wandsworth Jail

252

XIII

The “Rational Faithers”

264

XIV

At the Old Bailey

272

XV

Chelmsford

285

XVI

The Execution

298

PART ITHE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

CHAPTER ITHERY’S TRADE

Four men sat about a table on the sidewalk in front of the Café of the Nations in the High Street of Cadiz and talked business.

Leon Gonsalez was one, Poiccart was another, George Manfred was a notable third, and one Thery, or Saimont, was the fourth. Of this quartet, only Thery requires no introduction to the student of contemporary history. In the Bureau of Public Affairs you will find his record. As Thery, alias Saimont, he is registered and to all students of Criminology and Physiognomy, he must need no introduction.

He sat at the little table, this man, obviously ill at ease, pinching his fat cheeks, smoothing his shaggy eyebrows, fingering the white scar on his unshaven chin, doing all the things that the lower classes do when they suddenly find themselves placed on terms of equality with their betters.

For although Gonsalez, with the light blue eyes and the restless hands, and Poiccart, heavy, saturnine, and suspicious, and George Manfred, with his grey shot beard and single eyeglass, were less famous in the criminal world, each was a great man, as you shall learn.

Manfred laid down the Heraldo di Madrid, removed his eyeglass, rubbed it with a spotless handkerchief, and laughed quietly.

“These Russians are droll,” he commented.

Poiccart frowned and reached for the newspaper. “Who is it—this time?”

“A Governor of one of the Southern Provinces.”

“Killed?”

Manfred’s moustache curled in scornful derision.

“Bah! Who ever killed a man with a bomb! Yes, yes; I know it has been done—but so clumsy, so primitive, so very much like undermining a city wall that it may fall and slay—amongst others—your enemy.”

Poiccart was reading the telegram deliberately and without haste, after his fashion.

“The Prince was severely injured and the would-be assassin lost an arm,” he read, and pursed his lips disapprovingly. The hands of Gonsalez, never still, opened and shut nervously, which was Leon’s sign of perturbation.

“Our friend here”—Manfred jerked his head in the direction of Gonsalez and laughed—“our friend has a conscience and——”

“Only once,” interrupted Leon quickly, “and not by my wish; you remember, Manfred; you remember, Poiccart”—he did not address Thery—“I advised against it. You remember?” He seemed anxious to exculpate himself from the unspoken charge. “It was a miserable little thing, and I was in Madrid,” he went on breathlessly, “and they came to me, some men from a factory at Barcelona. They said what they were going to do, and I was horror-stricken at their ignorance of the elements of the laws of chemistry. I wrote down the ingredients and the proportions, and begged them, yes, almost on my knees, to use some other method. ‘My children,’ I said, ‘you are playing with something that even chemists are afraid to handle. If the owner of the factory is a bad man, by all means exterminate him, shoot him, wait on him after he has dined and is slow and dull, and present a petition with the right hand and—with the left hand—so’!”

Leon twisted his knuckles down and struck forward and upward at an imaginary oppressor. “But they would listen to nothing I had to say.”

Manfred stirred the glass of creamy liquid that stood at his elbow, and nodded his head with an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.

“I remember—several people died, and the principal witness at the trial of the expert in explosives was the man for whom the bomb was intended.”

Thery cleared his throat as if to speak, and the three looked at him curiously. There was some resentment in Thery’s voice.

“I do not profess to be a great man like you, señors. Half the time I don’t understand what you are talking about—you speak of governments and kings and constitutions and causes. If a man does me an injury I smash his head”—he hesitated, “I do not know how to say it . . . but I mean . . . well, you kill people without hating them, men who have not hurt you. Now, that is not my way. . . .” He hesitated again, tried to collect his thoughts, looked intently at the middle of the roadway, shook his head and relapsed into silence.

The others looked at him, then at one another, and each man smiled. Manfred took a bulky case from his pocket, extracted an untidy cigarette, rerolled it deftly and struck a government match on the sole of his boot.

“Your—way—my—dear—Thery”—he puffed—“is a fool’s way. You kill for benefit; we kill for justice, which lifts us out of the ruck of professional slayers. When we see an unjust man oppressing his fellows; when we see an evil thing done against the good God”—Thery crossed himself, “and against man—and know that by the laws of man this evil-doer may escape punishment—we punish.”

“Listen,” interrupted the taciturn Poiccart; “once there was a girl, young and beautiful, up there”—he waved his hand northward with unerring instinct—“and a priest—a priest, you understand—and the parents winked at it because it is often done . . . but the girl was filled with loathing and shame, and would not go a second time, so he trapped her and kept her in a house, and then when the bloom was off turned her out, and I found her. She was nothing to me, but I said, ‘Here is a wrong that the law cannot adequately right.’ So one night I called on the priest with my hat over my eyes and said that I wanted him to come to a dying traveller. He would not have come then, but I told him that the dying man was rich and was a great person. He mounted the horse I had brought, and we rode to a little house on the mountain. . . . I locked the door and he turned round—so! Trapped, and he knew it. ‘What are you going to do?’ he said with a gasping noise. ‘I am going to kill you, señor,’ I said, and he believed me. I told him the story of the girl. . . . He screamed when I moved towards him, but he might as well have saved his breath. ‘Let me see a priest,’ he begged; and I handed him—a mirror.”

Poiccart stopped to sip his coffee.

“They found him on the road next day without a mark to show how he died,” he said simply.

“How?” Thery bent forward eagerly, but Poiccart permitted himself to smile grimly, and made no response.

Thery bent his brows and looked suspiciously from one to the other.

“If you can kill as you say you can, why have you sent for me? I was happy in Jerez working at the wine factory . . . there is a girl there . . . they call her Juan Samarez.” He mopped his forehead and looked quickly from one to the other. “When I received your message I thought I should like to kill you—whoever you were—you understand I am happy . . . and there is the girl—and the old life I have forgotten——”

Manfred arrested the incoherent protests.

“Listen,” said he imperiously; “it is not for you to inquire the wherefore and the why; we know who you are and what you are; we know more of you even than the police know, for we could send you to the garotte.”

Poiccart nodded his head in affirmation, and Gonsalez looked at Thery curiously, like the student of human nature that he was.

“We want a fourth man,” went on Manfred, “for something we wish to do; we would have wished to have had one animated by no other desire than to see justice done. Failing that, we must have a criminal, a murderer if you like.”

Thery opened and shut his mouth as if about to speak.

“One whom we can at a word send to his death if he fails us; you are the man; you will run no risk; you will be well rewarded; you may not be asked to slay. Listen,” went on Manfred, seeing that Thery had opened his mouth to speak. “Do you know England? I see that you do not. You know Gibraltar? Well, this is the same people. It is a country up there”—Manfred’s expressive hands waved north,—“a curious, dull country, with curious, dull people. There is a man, a member of the Government, and there are men whom the Government have never heard of. You remember one: Garcia, Manuel Garcia, leader in the Carlist movement; he is in England; it is the only country where he is safe; from England he directs the movement here, the great movement. You know of what I speak?”

Thery nodded.

“This year as well as last there has been a famine, men have been dying about the church doors, starving in the public squares; they have watched corrupt Government succeed corrupt Government; they have seen millions flow from the public treasury into the pockets of politicians. This year something will happen; the old régime must go. The Government know this; they know where the danger lies, they know their salvation can only come if Garcia is delivered into their hands before the organization for revolt is complete. But Garcia is safe for the present, and would be safe for all time were it not for a member of the English Government, who is about to introduce and pass into law a bill. When that is passed, Garcia is as good as dead. You must help us to prevent that from ever becoming law; that is why we have sent for you.”

Thery looked bewildered. “But how?” he stammered.

Manfred drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to Thery. “This, I think,” he said, speaking deliberately, “is an exact copy of the police description of yourself.” Thery nodded. Manfred leant over and, pointing to a word that occurred half-way down the sheet, “Is that your trade?” he said.

Thery looked puzzled. “Yes,” he replied.

“Do you really know anything about that trade?” asked Manfred earnestly; and the other two men leant forward to catch the reply.

“I know,” said Thery slowly, “everything there is to be known: had it not been for a—mistake I might have earned great money.”

Manfred heaved a sigh of relief and nodded to his two companions.

“Then,” he said briskly, “the English minister is a dead man.”

CHAPTER IIA NEWSPAPER STORY

On the fourteenth day of August 190- a tiny paragraph appeared at the foot of an unimportant page in London’s most sober journal to the effect that the secretary of state for foreign affairs had been much annoyed by the receipt of a number of threatening letters, and was prepared to pay a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would give such information as would lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons, etc. The few people who read London’s most sober journal thought, in their ponderous Athenæum Club way, that it was a remarkable thing that a minister of state should be annoyed at anything; more remarkable that he should advertise his annoyance, and most remarkable of all that he could imagine for one minute that the offer of a reward would put a stop to the annoyance.

News editors of less sober but larger circulated newspapers, wearily scanning the dull columns of Old Sobriety, read the paragraph with a newly acquired interest.

“Hullo, what’s this?” asked Smiles of the Comet, and cut out the paragraph with huge shears, pasted it upon a sheet of copy-paper and headed it:

“Who is Sir Philip’s Correspondent?” As an afterthought—the Comet being in Opposition—he prefixed an introductory paragraph, humorously suggesting that the letters were from an intelligent electorate, grown tired of the shilly-shallying methods of the Government.

The news editor of the Evening World—a white-haired gentleman of deliberate movement—read the paragraph twice, cut it out carefully, read it again and, placing it under a paper-weight, very soon forgot all about it.

The news editor of the Megaphone, which is a very bright newspaper indeed, cut the paragraph as he read it, rang a bell, called a reporter, all in a breath so to speak, and issued a few terse instructions.

“Go down to Portland Place, try to see Sir Philip Ramon, secure the story of that paragraph—why he is threatened, what he is threatened with; get a copy of one of the letters if you can. If you cannot see Ramon, get hold of a secretary.”

And the obedient reporter went forth.

He returned in an hour in that state of mysterious agitation peculiar to the reporter who has got a “beat.” The news editor duly reported to the editor-in-chief, and that great man said, “That’s very good, that’s, very good indeed”—which was praise of the highest order.

What was “very good indeed” about the reporter’s story may be gathered from the half-column that appeared in the Megaphone on the following day:

Cabinet Minister in Danger

Threats to Murder the Foreign Secretary

“The Four Just Men”

Plot to Arrest the Passage of the Aliens

Extradition Bill

Extraordinary Revelations

Considerable comment was excited by the appearance in the news columns of yesterday’s National Journal of the following paragraph:

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Philip Ramon) has during the past few weeks been the recipient of threatening letters, all apparently emanating from one source and written by one person. These letters are of such a character that they cannot be ignored by his Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who hereby offers a reward of Fifty Pounds (£50) to any person or persons, other than the actual writer, who will lay such information as will lead to the apprehension and conviction of the author of these anonymous letters.

So unusual was such an announcement, remembering that anonymous and threatening letters are usually to be found daily in the letter-bags of every statesman and diplomat, that the Daily Megaphone immediately instituted inquiries as to the cause for this unusual departure.

A representative of this newspaper called at the residence of Sir Philip Ramon, who very courteously consented to be seen.

“It is quite an unusual step to take,” said the great Foreign Secretary, in answer to our representative’s question, “but it has been taken with the full concurrence of my colleagues of the Cabinet. We have reasons to believe there is something behind the threats, and I might say that the matter has been in the hands of the police for some weeks past.

“Here is one of the letters,” and Sir Philip produced a sheet of foreign notepaper from a portfolio, and was good enough to allow our representative to make a copy.

It was undated, and beyond the fact that the handwriting was of the flourishing, effeminate variety that is characteristic of the Latin races, it was written in good English.

It ran:

Your Excellency,—

The Bill that you are about to pass into law is an unjust one. It is calculated to hand over to a corrupt and vengeful Government men who now in England find an asylum from the persecutions of despots and tyrants. We know that in England opinion is divided upon the merits of your Bill, and that upon your strength, and your strength alone, depends the passing into law of the Aliens Political Offences Bill.

Therefore it grieves us to warn you that unless your Government withdraws this Bill, it will be necessary to remove you, and not alone you, but any other person who undertakes to carry into law this unjust measure.

(Signed)

Four Just Men

“The Bill referred to,” Sir Philip resumed, “is of course the Aliens Extradition (Political Offences) Bill, which, had it not been for the tactics of the Opposition, might have passed quietly into law last session.”

Sir Philip went on to explain that the Bill was called into being by the insecurity of the succession in Spain.

“It is imperative that neither England nor any other country should harbour propagandists who, from the security of these, or other shores, should set Europe ablaze. Coincident with the passage of this measure similar Acts or proclamations have been made in every country in Europe. In fact, they are all in existence, having been arranged to come into law simultaneously with ours, last session.”

“Why do you attach importance to these letters?” asked the Daily Megaphone representative.

“Because we are assured, both by our own police and the continental police, that the writers are men who are in deadly earnest. The ‘Four Just Men,’ as they sign themselves, are known collectively in almost every country under the sun. Who they are individually we should all very much like to know. Rightly or wrongly, they consider that justice as meted out here on earth is inadequate, and have set themselves about correcting the law. They were the people who assassinated General Trelovitch, the leader of the Servian Regicides; they hanged the French Army Contractor Conrad in the Place de la Concorde—with a hundred policemen within call. They shot Hermann le Blois, the poet-philosopher, in his study for corrupting the youth of the world with his reasoning.”

The Foreign Secretary then handed to our representative a list of the crimes committed by this extraordinary quartet.

Our readers will recollect the circumstance of each murder, and it will be remembered that until to-day—so closely have the police of the various nationalities kept the secret of the Four Men—no one crime has been connected with the other; and certainly none of the circumstances which, had they been published, would have assuredly revealed the existence of this band, have been given to the public before to-day.

The Daily Megaphone is able to publish a full list of sixteen murders committed by the four men.

“Two years ago, after the shooting of le Blois, by some hitch in their almost perfect arrangements, one of the four was recognized by a detective as having been seen leaving le Blois’s house on the Avenue Kléber, and he was shadowed for three days, in the hope that the four might be captured together. In the end he discovered he was being watched, and made a bolt for liberty. He was driven to bay in a café in Bordeaux—they had followed him from Paris; and before he was killed he shot a sergeant de ville and two other policemen. He was photographed, and the print was circulated throughout Europe, but who he was or what he was, even what nationality he was, is a mystery to this day.”

“But the four are still in existence?”

Sir Philip shrugged his shoulders. “They have either recruited another, or they are working short-handed,” he said.

In conclusion the Foreign Secretary said:

“I am making this public through the press, in order that the danger which threatens, not necessarily myself, but any public man who runs counter to the wishes of this sinister force, should be recognized. My second reason is that the public may in its knowledge assist those responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the execution of their office, and by their vigilance prevent the committal of further unlawful acts.”

Inquiries subsequently made at Scotland Yard elicited no further information on the subject beyond the fact that the Criminal Investigation Department was in communication with the chiefs of the continental police.

The following is a complete list of the murders committed by the “Four Just Men,” together with such particulars as the police have been able to secure regarding the cause for the crimes. We are indebted to the Foreign Office for permission to reproduce the list.

London, October 7, 1899.—Thomas Cutler, master tailor, found dead under suspicious circumstances. Coroner’s jury returned verdict of “Willful murder against some person or persons unknown.”

(Cause of murder ascertained by police: Cutler, who was a man of some substance, and whose real name was Bentvitch, was a sweater of a particularly offensive type. Three convictions under the Factory Act. Believed by the police there was a further and more intimate cause for the murder not unconnected with Cutler’s treatment of women employees.)

Liège, February 28, 1900.—Jacques Ellerman, prefect: shot dead returning from the Opera House. Ellerman was a notorious evil liver, and upon investigating his affairs after his death it was found that he had embezzled nearly a quarter of a million francs of the public funds.

Sattle (Kentucky), October 1900.—Judge Anderson. Found dead in his room, strangled. Anderson had thrice been tried for his life on charges of murder. He was the leader of the Anderson faction in the Anderson-Hara feud. Had killed in all seven of the Hara clan, was three times indicted and three times released on a verdict of “Not guilty.” It will be remembered that on the last occasion, when charged with the treacherous murder of the Editor of the Sattle Star, he shook hands with the packed jury and congratulated them.

New York, October 30, 1900.—Patrick Welch, a notorious grafter and stealer of public moneys. Sometime City Treasurer; moving spirit in the infamous Street Paving Syndicate; exposed by the New York Journal. Welch was found hanging in a little wood on Long Island. Believed at the time to have been suicide.

Paris, March 4, 1901.—Madame Despard.—Asphyxiated. This also was regarded as suicide till certain information came to hands of French police. Of Madame Despard nothing good can be said. She was a notorious “dealer in souls.”

Paris, March 4, 1902 (exactly a year later).—Monsieur Gabriel Lanfin, Minister of Communication. Found shot in his brougham in the Bois de Boulogne. His coachman was arrested, but eventually discharged. The man swore he heard no shot or cry from his master. It was raining at the time, and there were few pedestrians in the Bois.

(Here followed ten other cases, all on a par with those quoted above, including the cases of Trelovitch and le Blois.)

It was undoubtedly a great story.

The editor-in-chief, seated in his office, read it over again and said, “Very good indeed.”

The reporter—whose name was Smith—read it over and grew pleasantly warm at the consequences of his achievement.

The foreign secretary read it in bed as he sipped his morning tea, and frowningly wondered if he had said too much.

The chief of the French police read it—translated and telegraphed—in Le Temps, and furiously cursed the talkative Englishman who was upsetting his plans.

In Madrid, at the Café de la Paix, in the Place of the Sun, Manfred, cynical, smiling, and sarcastic, read extracts to three men—two pleasantly amused, the other heavy-jowled and pasty of face, with the fear of death in his eyes.

CHAPTER IIITHE FAITHFUL COMMONS

Somebody—was it Mr. Gladstone?—placed it on record that there is nothing quite so dangerous, quite so ferocious, quite so terrifying, as a mad sheep. Similarly, as we know, there is no person quite so indiscreet, quite so foolishly talkative, quite so amazingly gauche, as the diplomat who for some reason or other has run off the rails.

There comes a moment to the man who has trained himself to guard his tongue in the councils of nations, who has been schooled to walk warily amongst pitfalls digged cunningly by friendly powers, when the practice and precept of many years are forgotten, and he behaves humanly. Why this should be has never been discovered by ordinary people, although the psychological minority who can generally explain the mental processes of their fellows have doubtless very adequate and convincing reasons for these acts of dis-balancement.

Sir Philip Ramon was a man of peculiar temperament. I doubt whether anything in the wide world would have arrested his purpose once his mind had been made up. He was a man of strong character, a firm, square-jawed, big-mouthed man, with that shade of blue in his eyes that one looks for in peculiarly heartless criminals and particularly famous generals. And yet Sir Philip Ramon feared, as few men imagined he feared, the consequence of the task he had set himself.

There are thousands of men who are physically heroes and morally poltroons, men who would laugh at death—and live in terror of personal embarrassment. Coroners’ courts listen daily to the tale of such men’s lives—and deaths.

The foreign secretary reversed these qualities. Good animal men would unhesitatingly describe the minister as a coward, for he feared pain and he feared death.

“If this thing is worrying you so much,” the premier said kindly—it was at the cabinet council two days following the publication of the Megaphone’s story—“why don’t you drop the bill? After all, there are matters of greater importance to occupy the time of the House, and we are getting near the end of the session.”

An approving murmur went round the table.

“We have every excuse for dropping it. There must be a horrible slaughtering of innocents—Braithwaite’s Unemployed Bill must go; and what the country will say to that, Heaven only knows.”

“No, no!” The foreign secretary brought his fist down on the table with a crash. “It shall go through; of that I am determined. We are breaking faith with the Cortes, we are breaking faith with France, we are breaking faith with every country in the Union. I have promised the passage of this measure—and we must go through with it, even though there are a thousand ‘Just Men,’ and a thousand threats.”

The premier shrugged his shoulders.

“Forgive me for saying so, Ramon,” said Bolton, the solicitor general; “but I can’t help feeling you were rather indiscreet to give particulars to the press as you did. Yes, I know we were agreed that you should have a free hand to deal with the matter as you wished, but somehow I did not think you would have been quite so—what shall I say?—candid.”

“My discretion in the matter, Sir George, is not a subject that I care to discuss,” replied Ramon stiffly.

Later, as he walked across Palace Yard with the youthful-looking chancellor, Mr. Solicitor-General, smarting under the rebuff, said, à propos of nothing, “Silly old ass.” And the youthful guardian of Britain’s finances smiled.

“If the truth be told,” he said, “Ramon is in a most awful funk. The story of the Four Just Men is in all the clubs, and a man I met at the Carlton at lunch has rather convinced me that there is really something to be feared. He was quite serious about it—he’s just returned from South America and has seen some of the work done by these men.”

“What was that?”

“A president or something of one of these rotten little republics . . . about eight months ago—you’ll see it in the list. . . . They hanged him . . . most extraordinary thing in the world. They took him out of bed in the middle of the night, gagged him, blindfolded him, carried him to the public jail, gained admission, and hanged him on the public gallows—and escaped!”

Mr. Solicitor-General saw the difficulties of such proceedings, and was about to ask for further information when an under-secretary buttonholed the chancellor and bore him off. “Absurd,” muttered Mr. Solicitor crossly.

There were cheers for the secretary for foreign affairs as his brougham swept through the crowd that lined the approaches to the House. He was in no wise exalted, for popularity was not a possession he craved. He knew instinctively that the cheers were called forth by the public’s appreciation of his peril; and the knowledge chilled and irritated him. He would have liked to think that the people scoffed at the existence of this mysterious four—it would have given him some peace of mind had he been able to think “the people have rejected the idea.”

For although popularity or unpopularity was outside his scheme of essentials, yet he had an unswerving faith in the brute instincts of the mob. He was surrounded in the lobby of the House with a crowd of eager men of his party, some quizzical, some anxious, all clamouring for the latest information—all slightly in fear of the acid-tongued minister.

“Look here, Sir Philip”—it was the stout, tactless member for West Brondesbury—“what is all this we hear about threatenin’ letters? Surely you’re not goin’ to take notice of things of that sort—why, I get two or three every day of my life.”

The minister strode impatiently away from the group, but Tester—the member—caught his arm.

“Look here——” he began.

“Go to the devil,” said the foreign secretary plainly, and walked quickly to his room.

“Beastly temper that man’s got, to be sure,” said the honorable member despairingly. “Fact is, old Ramon’s in a blue funk. The idea of making a song about threatenin’ letters! Why, I get——”

A group of men in the members’ smoke-room discussed the question of the Just Four in a perfectly unoriginal way.

“It’s too ridiculous for words,” said one oracularly. “Here are four men, a mythical four, arrayed against all the forces and established agencies of the most civilized nation on earth.”

“Do you think Ramon will withdraw the Bill?” asked the senior member for Aldgate East.

“Ramon? Not he—he’d sooner die.”

“It’s a most unusual circumstance,” said Aldgate East; and three boroughs, a London suburb, and a midland town nodded and “thought it was.”

“In the old days, when old Bascoe was a young member”—Aldgate East indicated an aged senator bent and white of beard and hair, who was walking painfully toward a seat—“in the old days——”

“Thought old Bascoe had paired?” remarked a listener irrelevantly.

“If I were Ramon,” resumed Aldgate East profoundly, “I know exactly what I should do. I should go to the police and say ‘Look here——’ ”

A bell rang furiously and continuously, and the members went scampering along the corridor. “Division—’vision.”

Clause Nine of the Medway Improvement Bill having been satisfactorily settled and the words “Or as may hereafter be determined” added by a triumphant majority of twenty-four, the faithful Commons returned to the interrupted discussion.

“What I say, and what I’ve always said about a man in the cabinet,” maintained an important individual, “is that he must, if he is a true statesman, drop all consideration for his own personal feelings.”

“Hear!” applauded somebody.

“His own personal feelings,” repeated the orator. “He must put his duty to the state before all other—er—considerations. You remember what I said to Barrington the other night when we were talking out the Estimates? I said, ‘The right honourable gentleman has not, cannot have, allowed for the strong and almost unanimous desires of the great body of the electorate. The action of a minister of the crown must primarily be governed by the intelligent judgment of the great body of the electorate, whose fine feelings’—no—‘whose higher instincts’—no—that wasn’t it—at any rate I made it very clear what the duty of a minister was,” concluded the oracle lamely.

“Now I——” commenced Aldgate East, when an attendant approached with a tray on which lay a greenish-grey envelope.

“Has any gentleman dropped this?” he inquired, and, picking up the letter, the member fumbled for his eyeglasses.

“To the Members of the House of Commons,” he read, and looked over his pince-nez at the circle of men about him.

“Company prospectus,” said the stout member for West Brondesbury, who had joined the party; “I get hundreds. Only the other day——”

“Too thin for a prospectus,” said Aldgate East, weighing the letter in his hand.

“Patent medicine, then,” persisted the light of Brondesbury. “I get one every morning—‘Don’t burn the candle at both ends,’ and all that sort of rot. Last week a feller sent me——”

“Open it,” some one suggested, and the member obeyed. He read a few lines and turned red.

“Well, I’m damned!” he gasped, and read aloud:

Citizens,

The Government is about to pass into law a measure which will place in the hands of the most evil Government of modern times men who are patriots and who are destined to be the saviours of their countries. We have informed the minister in charge of this measure, the title of which appears in the margin, that unless he withdraws this Bill we will surely slay him.

We are loath to take this extreme step, knowing that otherwise he is an honest and brave gentleman, and it is with a desire to avoid fulfilling our promise that we ask the members of the Mother of Parliaments to use their every influence to force the withdrawal of this Bill.

Were we common murderers or clumsy anarchists we could with ease wreak a blind and indiscriminate vengeance on the members of this assembly, and in proof thereof, and as an earnest that our threat is no idle one, we beg you to search beneath the table near the recess in this room. There you will find a machine sufficiently charged to destroy the greater portion of this building.

(Signed)

Four Just Men

Postscript.—We have not placed either detonator or fuse in the machine, which may therefore be handled with impunity.

As the reading of the letter proceeded the faces of the listeners grew pallid.

There was something very convincing about the tone of the letter, and instinctively all eyes sought the table near the recess.

Yes, there was something, a square black something, and the crowd of legislators shrank back. For a moment they stood spellbound—and then there was a mad rush for the door.

“Was it a hoax?” asked the prime minister anxiously, but the hastily summoned expert from Scotland Yard shook his head.

“Just as the letter described it,” he said gravely, “even to the absence of fuses.”

“Was it really——”

“Enough to wreck the House, sir,” was the reply.

The premier, with a troubled face, paced the floor of his private room.

He stopped once to look moodily through the window that gave a view of a crowded terrace and a mass of excited politicians gesticulating and evidently all speaking at once.

“Very, very serious—very, very serious,” he muttered. Then aloud, “We’ve said so much we might as well continue. Give the newspapers as full an account of this afternoon’s happenings as you think necessary—give them the text of the letter.” He pushed a button, and his secretary entered noiselessly.

“Write to the commissioner telling him to offer a reward of a thousand pounds for the arrest of the man who left this thing, and a free pardon and the reward to any accomplice.”

The secretary withdrew and the Scotland Yard expert waited.

“Have your people found how the machine was introduced?”

“No, sir; the police have all been relieved and been subjected to separate interrogation. They remember seeing no stranger either entering or leaving the House.”

The premier pursed his lips in thought.

“Thank you,” he said simply, and the expert withdrew.

On the terrace Aldgate East and the oratorical member divided honours.

“I must have been standing quite close to it,” said the latter impressively; “ ’pon my word it makes me go cold all over to think about it. You remember, Mellin? I was saying about the duty of the ministry——”

“I asked the waiter,” said the member for Aldgate to an interested circle, “when he brought the letter: ‘Where did you find it?’ ‘On the floor, sir,’ he said. I thought it was a medicine advertisement; I wasn’t going to open it, only somebody——”

“It was me,” claimed the stout gentleman from Brondesbury proudly; “you remember I was saying——”

“I knew it was somebody,” continued Aldgate East graciously. “I opened it and read the first few lines. ‘Bless my soul,’ I said——”

“You said, ‘Well, I’m damned,’ ” corrected Brondesbury.

“Well, I know it was something very much to the point,” admitted Aldgate East. “I read it—and, you’ll quite understand, I couldn’t grasp its significance, so to speak. Well——”

The three stalls reserved at the Star Music Hall in Oxford Street were occupied one by one. At half-past seven prompt came Manfred, dressed quietly; at eight came Poiccart, a fairly prosperous middle-aged gentleman; at half-past eight came Gonsalez, asking in perfect English for a program. He seated himself between the two others.

When pit and gallery were roaring themselves hoarse over a patriotic song, Manfred smilingly turned to Leon and said:

“I saw it in the evening papers.”

Leon nodded quickly.

“There was nearly trouble,” he said quietly. “As I went in somebody said, ‘I thought Bascoe had paired,’ and one of them almost came up to me and spoke.”

CHAPTER IVONE THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD

To say that England was stirred to its depths—to quote more than one leading article on the subject—by the extraordinary occurrence in the House of Commons, would be stating the matter exactly.

The first intimation of the existence of the Four Just Men had been received with pardonable derision, particularly by those newspapers that were behindhand with the first news. Only the Daily Megaphone had truly and earnestly recognized how real was the danger which threatened the minister in charge of the obnoxious act. Now, however, even the most scornful could not ignore the significance of the communication that had so mysteriously found its way into the very heart of Britain’s most jealously guarded institution. The story of the “Bomb Outrage” filled the pages of every newspaper throughout the country, and the latest daring venture of the Four was placarded the length and breadth of the Isles.

Stories, mostly aprocryphal, of the men who were responsible for the newest sensation made their appearance from day to day, and there was no other topic in the mouths of men wherever they met but the strange quartet who seemed to hold the lives of the mighty in the hollows of their hands.

Never since the days of the Fenian outrages had the mind of the public been so filled with apprehension as it was during the two days following the appearance in the Commons of the “blank bomb,” as one journal felicitously described it. Perhaps there was not exactly the same kind of apprehension, since there was a general belief, which grew out of the trend of the letters, that the Four menaced none other than one man.

The first intimation of their intentions had excited widespread interest. But the fact that the threat had been launched from a small French town, and that in consequence the danger was very remote, had somehow robbed the threat of some of its force. Such was the vague reasoning of an ungeographical people that did not realize that Dax is no farther from London than Aberdeen.

But here was the hidden terror in the metropolis itself. Why, argued London, with suspicious sidelong glances, every man we rub elbows with may be one of the Four, and we none the wiser.

Heavy, black-looking posters stared down from blank walls, and filled the breadth of every police notice-board.

£1,000 REWARD

Whereas, on August 18, at about 4.30 o’clock in the afternoon, an infernal machine was deposited in the Members’ Smoke-Room by some person or persons unknown.

And Whereas there is reason to believe that the person or persons implicated in the disposal of the aforesaid machine are members of an organized body of criminals known as “The Four Just Men,” against whom warrants have been issued on charges of wilful murder in London, Paris, New York, New Orleans, Sattle (U.S.A.), Barcelona, Tomsk, Belgrade, Christiana, Capetown and Caracas.

Now, Therefore, the above reward will be paid by his Majesty’s Government to any person or persons who shall lay such information as shall lead to the apprehension of any or the whole of the persons styling themselves “The Four Just Men” and identical with the band before mentioned.

And Furthermore, a free pardon and the reward will be paid to any member of the band for such information, providing the person laying such information has neither committed nor has been an accessory before or after the act of any of the following murders.

(Signed)

Ryday Montgomery,

  His Majesty’s Secretary

  of State for Home Affairs

J. B. Calfort,

  Commissioner of Police

[Here followed a list of the sixteen crimes alleged

against the four men.]

God Save the King

All day long little knots of people gathered before the broadsheets, digesting the magnificent offer.

It was an unusual hue and cry, differing from those with which Londoners were best acquainted. For there was no appended description of the men wanted; no portraits by which they might be identified, no stereotyped “when last seen was wearing a dark blue serge suit, cloth cap, check tie,” on which the searcher might base his scrutiny of the passer-by. It was a search for four men whom no person had ever consciously seen, a hunt for a will-o’-the-wisp, a groping in the dark after indefinite shadows.

Detective Superintendent Falmouth, who was a very plain-spoken man (he once brusquely explained to a Royal Personage that he hadn’t got eyes in the back of his head), told the assistant-commissioner exactly what he thought about it.

“You can’t catch men when you haven’t got the slightest idea who or what you’re looking for. For the sake of argument, they might be women for all we know—they might be Chinamen or niggers; they might be tall or short; they might—why, we don’t even know their nationality! They’ve committed crimes in almost every country in the world. They’re not French because they killed a man in Paris, or Yankee because they strangled Judge Anderson.”

“The writing,” said the commissioner, referring to a bunch of letters he held in his hand.

“Latin; but that may be a fake. And suppose it isn’t? There’s no difference between the handwriting of a Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, Italian, South American, or Creole—and, as I say, it might be a fake, and probably is.”

“What have you done?” asked the commissioner.

“We’ve pulled in all the suspicious characters we know. We cleaned out Little Italy, combed Bloomsbury, been through Soho, and searched all the colonies. We raided a place at Sunhead last night—a lot of Armenians live down there, but——”

The detective’s face bore a hopeless look.

“As likely as not,” he went on, “we should find them at one of the swagger hotels—that’s if they were fools enough to bunch together; but you may be sure they’re living apart, and meeting at some unlikely spot once or twice a day.”

He paused, and tapped his fingers absently on the big desk at which he and his superior sat.

“We’ve had de Courville over,” he resumed. “He saw the Soho crowd, and what is more important, saw his own man who lives amongst them—and it’s none of them, I’ll swear—or at least he swears, and I’m prepared to accept his word.”

The commissioner shook his head pathetically.

“They’re in an awful stew in Downing Street,” he said. “They do not know exactly what is going to happen next.”

Mr. Falmouth rose to his feet with a sigh and fingered the brim of his hat.

“Nice time ahead of us—I don’t think,” he remarked paradoxically.

“What are the people thinking about it?” asked the commissioner.

“You’ve seen the papers?”

Mr. Commissioner’s shrug was uncomplimentary to British journalism.

“The papers! Who in Heaven’s name is going to take the slightest notice of what is in the papers?” he said petulantly.

“I am, for one,” replied the calm detective; “newspapers are more often than not led by the public; and it seems to me the idea of running a newspaper, in a nutshell, is to write so that the public will say, ‘That’s smart—it’s what I’ve said all along.’ ”

“But the public themselves—have you had an opportunity of gathering their idea?”

Detective Falmouth nodded.

“I was talking in the Park to a man only this evening—a master-man by the look of him, and presumably intelligent. ‘What’s your idea of this Four Just Men business?’ I asked. ‘It’s very queer,’ he said: ‘do you think there’s anything in it?’—and that,” concluded the disgusted police officer, “is all the public thinks about it.”

But if there was sorrow at Scotland Yard, Fleet Street itself was all a-twitter with pleasurable excitement. Here was great news indeed: news that might be heralded across double columns, blared forth in headlines, shouted by placards, illustrated, diagramized and illuminated by statistics.

“Is it the Mafia?” asked the Comet noisily, and went on to prove that it was.

The Evening World, with its editorial mind lingering lovingly in the sixties, mildly suggested a vendetta, and instanced “The Corsican Brothers.”

The Megaphone stuck to the story of the Four Just Men, and printed pages of details concerning their nefarious acts. It disinterred from dusty files, Continental and American, the full circumstances of each murder; it gave the portraits and careers of the men who were slain, and, whilst in no way palliating the offence of the Four, yet set forth justly and dispassionately the lives of the victims, showing the sort of men they were.

It accepted warily the reams of contributions that flowed into the office; for a newspaper that has received the stigma “yellow” exercises more caution than its more sober competitors. In newspaperland a dull lie is seldom detected, but an interesting exaggeration drives an unimaginative rival to hysterical denunciations.

And reams of “Four Men” anecdotes did flow in. For suddenly, as if by magic, every outside contributor, every literary gentleman who made a specialty of personal notes, every kind of man who wrote, discovered that he had known the Four intimately all his life.

“When I was in Italy . . .” wrote the author of Come Again (Hackworth Press, 6s.; “slightly soiled,” Farringdon Book Mart, 2d.), “I remember I heard a curious story about these Men of Blood . . .”

Or—

“No spot in London is more likely to prove the hiding-place of the Four Villains than Tidal Basin,” wrote another gentleman, who stuck “Collins” in the northeast corner of his manuscript. “Tidal Basin in the reign of Charles II was known as . . .”

“Who’s Collins?” asked the super-chief of the Megaphone of his hard-worked editor.

“A liner,” described the editor wearily, thereby revealing that even the newer journalism has not driven the promiscuous contributor from his hard-fought field; “he does police-courts, fires, inquests and things. Lately he’s taken to literature and writes Picturesque-Bits-of-Old-London and Famous-Tombstones-of-Hornsey epics. . . .”

Throughout the office of the newspaper the same thing was happening. Every cable that arrived, every piece of information that reached the sub-editor’s basket, was coloured with the impending tragedy uppermost in men’s minds. Even the police-court reports contained some allusion to the Four. It was the overnight drunk and disorderly’s justification for his indiscretion.

“The lad has always been honest,” said the peccant errand boy’s tearful mother; “it’s reading these horrible stories about the Four Foreigners that’s made him turn out like this”; and the magistrate took a lenient view of the offence.

To all outward showing, Sir Philip Ramon, the man mostly interested in the development of the plot, was the least concerned.

He refused to be interviewed any further; he declined to discuss the possibilities of assassination, even with the premier, and his answer to letters of appreciation that came to him from all parts of the country was an announcement in the Morning Post