The Complete Four Just Men (11 page)

‘A full day’s work,’ laughed Manfred.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Poiccart soberly, ‘but hear the sequel. We parted, and I walked westward perfectly satisfied of our security. I made for Covent Garden Market, because this is one of the places in London where a man may be seen at four o’clock in the morning without exciting suspicion.

‘I had strolled through the market, idly watching the busy scene, when, for some cause that I cannot explain, I turned suddenly on my heel and came face to face with Marks! He grinned sheepishly, and recognised me with a nod of his head.

‘He did not wait for me to ask him his business, but started in to explain his presence.

‘I accepted his explanation easily, and for the second time that night invited him to coffee. He hesitated at first, then accepted. When the coffee was brought, he pulled it to him as far from my reach as possible, and then I knew that Mr Marks had placed me at fault, that I had underrated his intelligence, that all the time he had been unburdening himself he had recognised me. He had put me off my guard.’

‘But why – ?’ began Manfred.

‘That is what I thought,’ the other answered. ‘Why did he not have me arrested?’ He turned to Leon, who had been a silent listener. ‘Tell us, Leon, why?’

‘The explanation is simple,’ said Gonsalez quietly: ‘why did not Thery betray us? – cupidity, the second most potent force of civilisation. He has some doubt of the reward. He may fear the honesty of the police – most criminals do so; he may want witnesses.’ Leon walked to the wall, where his coat hung. He buttoned it thoughtfully, ran his hand over his smooth chin, then pocketed the little phial that stood on the table.

‘You have slipped him, I suppose?’ he asked.

Poiccart nodded.

‘He lives – ?’

‘At 700 Red Cross Street, in the Borough – it is a common lodging-house.’

Leon took a pencil from the table and rapidly sketched a head upon the edge of a newspaper.

‘Like this? ‘he asked.

Poiccart examined the portrait.

‘Yes,’ he said in surprise; ‘have you seen him?’

‘No,’ said Leon carelessly, ‘but such a man would have such a head.’

He paused on the threshold.

‘I think it is necessary.’ There was a question in his assertion. It was addressed rather to Manfred, who stood with his folded arms and knit brow staring at the floor.

For answer Manfred extended his clenched fist.

Leon saw the down-turned thumb, and left the room.

* * *

Billy Marks was in a quandary. By the most innocent device in the world his prey had managed to slip through his fingers. When Poiccart, stopping at the polished doors of the best hôtel in London, whither they had strolled, casually remarked that he would not be a moment and disappeared into the hôtel, Billy was nonplussed. This was a contingency for which he was not prepared. He had followed the suspect from Blackfriars; he was almost sure that this was the man he had robbed. He might, had he wished, have called upon the first constable he met to take the man into custody; but the suspicion of the thief, the fear that he might be asked to share the reward with the man who assisted him restrained him. And besides, it might not be the man at all, argued Billy, and yet –

Poiccart was a chemist, a man who found joy in unhealthy precipitates, who mixed evil-smelling drugs and distilled, filtered, carbonated, oxydized, and did all manner of things in glass tubes, to the vegetable, animal, and mineral products of the earth.

Billy had left Scotland Yard to look for a man with a discoloured hand. Here again, he might, had he been less fearful of treachery, have placed in the hands of the police a very valuable mark of identification.

It seems a very lame excuse to urge on Billy’s behalf that this cupidity alone stayed his hand when he came face to face with the man he was searching for. And yet it was so. Then again there was a sum in simple proportion to be worked out. If one Just Man was worth a thousand pounds, what was the commercial value of four? Billy was a thief with a business head. There were no waste products in his day’s labour. He was not a conservative scoundrel who stuck to one branch of his profession. He would pinch a watch, or snatch a till, or pass snide florins with equal readiness. He was a butterfly of crime, flitting from one illicit flower to another, and nor above figuring as the X of “information received”.

So that when Poiccart disappeared within the magnificent portals of the Royal Hôtel in Northumberland Avenue, Billy was hipped. He realised in a flash that his captive had gone whither he could not follow without exposing his hand; that the chances were he had gone for ever. He looked up and down the street; there was no policeman in sight. In the vestibule, a porter in shirt sleeves was polishing brasses. It was still very early; the streets were deserted, and Billy, after a few moment’s hesitation, took a course that he would not have dared at a more conventional hour.

He pushed open the swing doors and passed into the vestibule. The porter turned on him as he entered and favoured him with a suspicious frown.

‘What do you want?’ asked he, eyeing the tattered coat of the visitor in some disfavour.

‘Look ’ere, old feller,’ began Billy, in his most conciliatory tone.

Just then the porter’s strong right arm caught him by the coat collar, and Billy found himself stumbling into the street.

‘Outside – you,’ said the porter firmly.

It needed this rebuff to engender in Marks the necessary self-assurance to carry him through.

Straightening his ruffled clothing, he pulled Falmouth’s card from his pocket and returned to the charge with dignity.

‘I am a p’lice officer,’ he said, adopting the opening that he knew so well, ‘and if you interfere with me, look out, young feller!’

The porter took the card and scrutinised it.

‘What do you want?’ he asked in more civil tones. He would have added “sir”, but somehow it stuck in his throat. If the man is a detective, he argued to himself, he is very well disguised.

‘I want that gentleman that came in before me,’ said Billy.

The porter scratched his head.

‘What is the number of his room?’ he asked.

‘Never mind about the number of his room,’ said Billy rapidly. ‘Is there any back way to this hôtel – any way a man can get out of it? I mean, besides through the front entrance?’

‘Half a dozen,’ replied the porter.

Billy groaned.

‘Take me round to one of them, will you?’ he asked. And the porter led the way.

One of the tradesmen’s entrances was from a small back street; and here it was that a street scavenger gave the information that Marks had feared. Five minutes before a man answering to the description had walked out, turned towards the Strand and, picking up a cab in the sight of the street cleaner, had driven off.

Baffled, and with the added bitterness that had he played boldly he might have secured at any rate a share of a thousand pounds, Billy walked slowly to the Embankment, cursing the folly that had induced him to throw away the fortune that was in his hands. With hands thrust deep into his pockets, he tramped the weary length of the Embankment, going over again and again the incidents of the night and each time muttering a lurid condemnation of his error. It must have been an hour after he had lost Poiccart that it occurred to him all was not lost. He had the man’s description, he had looked at his face, he knew him feature by feature. That was something, at any rate. Nay, it occurred to him that if the man was arrested through his description he would still be entitled to the reward – or a part of it. He dared not see Falmouth and tell him that he had been in company with the man all night without effecting his arrest. Falmouth would never believe him, and, indeed, it was curious that he should have met him.

This fact struck Billy for the first time. By what strange chance had he met this man? Was it possible – the idea frightened Marks – that the man he had robbed had recognised him, and that he had deliberately sought him out with murderous intent?

A cold perspiration broke upon the narrow forehead of the thief. These men were murderers, cruel, relentless murderers: suppose – ?

He turned from the contemplation of the unpleasant possibilities to meet a man who was crossing the road towards him. He eyed the stranger doubtingly. The newcomer was a young-looking man, clean-shaven, with sharp features and restless blue eyes. As he came closer, Marks noted that first appearance had been deceptive; the man was not so young as he looked. He might have been forty, thought Marks. He approached, looked hard at Billy, then beckoned him to stop, for Billy was walking away.

‘Is your name Marks?’ asked the stranger authoritatively.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the thief.

‘Have you seen Mr Falmouth?’

‘Not since last night,’ replied Marks in surprise.

‘Then you are to come at once to him.’

‘Where is he?’

‘At Kensington Police Station – there has been an arrest, and he wants you to identify the man.’

Billy’s heart sank.

‘Do I get any of the reward?’ he demanded, ‘that is if I recognise ’im?’

The other nodded and Billy’s hopes rose.

‘You must follow me,’ said the newcomer, ‘Mr Falmouth does not wish us to be seen together. Take a first-class ticket to Kensington and get into the next carriage to mine – come.’

He turned and crossed the road toward Charing Cross, and Billy followed at a distance.

He found the stranger pacing the platform and gave no sign of recognition. A train pulled into the station and Marks followed his conductor through a crowd of workmen the train had discharged. He entered an empty first-class carriage, and Marks, obeying instructions, took possession of the adjoining compartment, and found himself the solitary occupant.

Between Charing Cross and Westminster Marks had time to review his position. Between the last station and St James’s Park, he invented his excuses to the detective; between the Park and Victoria he had completed his justification for a share of the reward. Then as the train moved into the tunnel for its five minutes’ run to Sloane Square, Billy noticed a draught, and turned his head to see the stranger standing on the footboard of the swaying carriage, holding the half-opened door.

Marks was startled.

‘Pull up the window on your side,’ ordered the man, and Billy, hypnotised by the authoritative voice, obeyed. At that moment he heard the tinkle of broken glass.

He turned with an angry snarl.

‘What’s the game?’ he demanded.

For answer the stranger swung himself clear of the door and, closing it softly, disappeared.

‘What’s his game?’ repeated Marks drowsily. Looking down he saw a broken phial at his feet, by the phial lay a shining sovereign. He stared stupidly at it for a moment, then, just before the train ran into Victoria Station, he stooped to pick it up . . .

Chapter 10

Three who died

A passenger leisurely selecting his compartment during the wait at Kensington opened a carriage door and staggered back coughing. A solicitous porter and an alarmed station official ran forward and pulled open the door, and the sickly odour of almonds pervaded the station.

A little knot of passengers gathered and peered over one another’s shoulders, whilst the station inspector investigated. By and by came a doctor, and a stretcher, and a policeman from the street without.

Together they lifted the huddled form of a dead man from the carriage and laid it on the platform.

‘Did you find anything?’ asked the policeman.

‘A sovereign and a broken bottle,’ was the reply.

The policeman fumbled in the dead man’s pockets.

‘I don’t suppose he’ll have any papers to show who he is,’ he said with knowledge. ‘Here’s a first-class ticket – it must be a case of suicide. Here’s a card – ’

He turned it over and read it, and his face underwent a change.

He gave a few hurried instructions, then made his way to the nearest telegraph office.

Superintendent Falmouth, who had snatched a few hours’ sleep at the Downing Street house, rose with a troubled mind and an uneasy feeling that in spite of all his precautions the day would end disastrously. He was hardly dressed before the arrival of the Assistant Commissioner was announced.

‘I have your report, Falmouth,’ was the official’s greeting; ‘you did perfectly right to release Marks – have you had news of him this morning?’

‘No.’

‘H’m,’ said the Commissioner thoughtfully. ‘I wonder whether – ’ He did not finish his sentence. ‘Has it occurred to you that the Four may have realised their danger?’

The detective’s face showed surprise.

‘Why, of course, sir.’

‘Have you considered what their probable line of action will be?’

‘N – no – unless it takes the form of an attempt to get out of the country.’

‘Has it struck you that whilst this man Marks is looking for them, they are probably seeking him?’

‘Bill is smart,’ said the detective uneasily.

‘So are they,’ said the Commissioner with an emphatic nod. ‘My advice is, get in touch with Marks and put two of your best men to watch him.’

‘That shall be done at once,’ replied Falmouth; ‘I am afraid that it is a precaution that should have been taken before.’

‘I am going to see Sir Philip,’ the Commissioner went on, and he added with a dubious smile, ‘I shall be obliged to frighten him a little.’

‘What is the idea?’

‘We wish him to drop this Bill. Have you seen the morning papers?’

‘No, sir.’

‘They are unanimous that the Bill should be abandoned – they say because it is not sufficiently important to warrant the risk, that the country itself is divided on its merit; but as a matter of fact they are afraid of the consequence; and upon my soul I’m a little afraid too.’

He mounted the stairs, and was challenged at the landing by one of his subordinates.

This was a system introduced after the episode of the disguised ‘detective’. The Foreign Minister was now in a state of siege. Nobody had to be trusted, a password had been initiated, and every precaution taken to ensure against a repetition of the previous mistake.

His hand was raised to knock upon the panel of the study, when he felt his arm gripped. He turned to see Falmouth with white face and startled eyes.

‘They’ve finished Billy,’ said the detective breathlessly. ‘He has just been found in a railway carriage at Kensington.’

The Commissioner whistled.

‘How was it done?’ he asked.

Falmouth was the picture of haggard despair.

‘Prussic acid gas,’ he said bitterly; ‘they are scientific. Look you, sir, persuade this man to drop his damned Bill.’

He pointed to the door of Sir Philip’s room. ‘We shall never save him. I have got the feeling in my bones that he is a doomed man.’

‘Nonsense!’ the Commissioner answered sharply.

‘You are growing nervous – you haven’t had enough sleep, Falmouth. That isn’t spoken like your real self – we must save him.’

He turned from the study and beckoned one of the officers who guarded the landing.

‘Sergeant, tell Inspector Collins to send an emergency call throughout the area for reserves to gather immediately. I will put such a cordon round Ramon today,’ he went on addressing Falmouth, ‘that no man shall reach him without the fear of being crushed to death.’

And within an hour there was witnessed in London a scene that has no parallel in the history of the Metropolis. From every district there came a small army of policemen. They arrived by train, by tramway car, by motorbus, by every vehicle and method of traction that could be requisitioned or seized. They streamed from the stations, they poured through the thoroughfares, till London stood aghast at the realisation of the strength of her civic defences.

Whitehall was soon packed from end to end; St James’s Park was black with them. Automatically Whitehall, Charles Street, Birdcage Walk, and the eastern end of the Mall were barred to all traffic by solid phalanxes of mounted constables. St George’s Street was in the hands of the force, the roof of every house was occupied by a uniformed man. Not a house or room that overlooked in the slightest degree the Foreign Secretary’s residence but was subjected to a rigorous search. It was as though martial law had been proclaimed, and indeed two regiments of Guards were under arms the whole of the day ready for any emergency. In Sir Philip’s room the Commissioner, backed by Falmouth, made his last appeal to the stubborn man whose life was threatened.

‘I tell you, sir,’ said the Commissioner earnestly, ‘we can do no more than we have done, and I am still afraid. These men affect me as would something supernatural. I have a horrible dread that for all our precautions we have left something out of our reckoning; that we are leaving unguarded some avenue which by their devilish ingenuity they may utilise. The death of this man Marks has unnerved me – the Four are ubiquitous as well as omnipotent. I beg of you, sir, for God’s sake, think well before you finally reject their terms. Is the passage of this Bill so absolutely necessary?’ – he paused – ‘is it worth your life?’ he asked with blunt directness; and the crudity of the question made Sir Philip wince.

He waited some time before he replied, and when he spoke his voice was low and firm.

‘I shall not withdraw,’ he said slowly, with a dull, dogged evenness of tone. ‘I shall not withdraw in any circumstance.

‘I have gone too far,’ he went on, raising his hand to check Falmouth’s appeal. ‘I have got beyond fear, I have even got beyond resentment; it is now to me a question of justice. Am I right in introducing a law that will remove from this country colonies of dangerously intelligent criminals, who, whilst enjoying immunity from arrest, urge ignorant men forward to commit acts of violence and treason? If I am right, the Four Just Men are wrong. Or are they right: is this measure an unjust thing, an act of tyranny, a piece of barbarism dropped into the very centre of twentieth-century thought, an anachronism? If these men are right, then I am wrong. So it has come to this, that I have to satisfy my mind as to the standard of right and wrong that I must accept – and I accept my own.’

He met the wondering gaze of the officers with a calm, unflinching countenance.

‘You were wise to take the precautions you have,’ he resumed quietly. ‘I have been foolish to chafe under your protective care.’

‘We must take even further precautions,’ the Commissioner interrupted; ‘between six and half past eight o’clock tonight we wish you to remain in your study, and under no circumstance to open the door to a single person – even to myself or Mr Falmouth. During that time you must keep your door locked.’ He hesitated. ‘If you would rather have one of us with you – ’

‘No, no,’ was the Minister’s quick reply; ‘after the impersonation of yesterday I would rather be alone.’

The Commissioner nodded. ‘This room is anarchist-proof,’ he said, waving his hand round the apartment. ‘During the night we have made a thorough inspection, examined the floors, the wall, the ceiling, and fixed steel shields to the shutters.’

He looked round the chamber with the scrutiny of a man to whom every visible object was familiar.

Then he noticed something new had been introduced. On the table stood a blue china bowl full of roses.

‘This is new,’ he said, bending his head to catch the fragrance of the beautiful flowers.

‘Yes,’ was Ramon’s careless reply, ‘they were sent from my house in Hereford this morning.’

The Commissioner plucked a leaf from one of the blooms and rolled it between his fingers. ‘They look so real,’ he said paradoxically, ‘that they might even be artificial.’

As he spoke he was conscious that he associated the roses in some way with – what?

He passed slowly down the noble marble stairway – a policeman stood on every other step – and gave his views to Falmouth.

‘You cannot blame the old man for his decision; in fact, I admire him today more than I have ever done before. But – ’ there was a sudden solemnity in his voice – ‘I am afraid – I am afraid.’

Falmouth said nothing.

‘The notebook tells nothing,’ the Commissioner continued, ‘save the route that Sir Philip might have taken had he been anxious to arrive at 44 Downing Street by back streets. The futility of the plan is almost alarming, for there is so much evidence of a strong subtle mind behind the seeming innocence of this list of streets that I am confident that we have not got hold of the true inwardness of its meaning.’

He passed into the streets and threaded his way between crowds of policemen. The extraordinary character of the precautions taken by the police had the natural result of keeping the general public ignorant of all that was happening in Downing Street. Reporters were prohibited within the magic circle, and newspapers, and particularly the evening newspapers, had to depend upon such information as was grudgingly offered by Scotland Yard. This was scanty, while their clues and theories, which were many, were various and wonderful.

The
Megaphone
, the newspaper that regarded itself as being the most directly interested in the doings of the Four Just Men, strained every nerve to obtain news of the latest developments. With the coming of the fatal day, excitement had reached an extraordinary pitch; every fresh edition of the evening newspapers was absorbed as
soon as it reached the streets. There was little material to satisfy the appetite of a sensation-loving public, but such as there was, was given. Pictures of 44 Downing Street, portraits of the Minister, plans
of the vicinity of the Foreign Office, with diagrams illustrating existing police precautions, stood out from columns of letterpress dealing, not for the first but for the dozenth time, with the careers of the Four as revealed by their crimes.

And with curiosity at its height, and all London, all England, the whole of the civilised world, talking of one thing and one thing only there came like a bombshell the news of Marks’s death.

Variously described as one of the detectives engaged in the case, as a foreign police officer, as Falmouth himself, the death of Marks grew from ‘Suicide in a Railway Carriage’ to its real importance.
Within an hour the story of tragedy, inaccurate in detail, true in substance, filled the columns of the Press. Mystery on mystery! Who was this ill-dressed man, what part was he playing in the great game, how came he by his death? asked the world instantly; and little by little, pieced together by ubiquitous newsmen, the story was made known. On top of this news came the great police march on
Whitehall. Here was evidence of the serious view the authorities were taking.

‘From my vantage place,’ wrote Smith in the
Megaphone
, ‘I could see the length of Whitehall. It was the most wonderful spectacle that London has ever witnessed. I saw nothing but a great sea of black helmets reaching from one end of the broad thoroughfare to the other. Police! the whole vicinity was black with police; they thronged side streets, they crowded into the Park, they formed not a cordon, but a mass through which it was impossible to penetrate.’

For the Commissioners of Police were leaving nothing to chance. If they were satisfied that cunning could be matched by cunning, craft by craft, stealth by counter-stealth, they would have been content to defend their charge on conventional lines. But they were outmanoeuvred. The stake was too high to depend upon strategy – this was a case that demanded brute force. It is difficult, writing so long after the event, to realise how the terror of the Four had so firmly fastened upon the finest police organisation in the world, to appreciate the panic that had come upon a body renowned for its clearheadedness.

The crowd that blocked the approaches to Whitehall soon began to grow as the news of Billy’s death circulated, and soon after two o’clock that afternoon, by order of the Commissioner, Westminster Bridge was closed to all traffic, vehicular or passenger. The section of the Embankment that runs between Westminster and Hunger-ford Bridge was next swept by the police and cleared of curious pedestrians; Northumberland Avenue was barred, and before three o’clock there was no space within five hundred yards of the official residence of Sir Philip Ramon that was not held by a representative of the law. Members of Parliament on their way to the House were escorted by mounted men, and, taking on a reflected glory, were cheered by the crowd. All that afternoon a hundred thousand people waited patiently, seeing nothing, save, towering above the heads of a host of constabulary, the spires and towers of the Mother of Parliaments, or the blank faces of the buildings – in Trafalgar Square, along the Mall as far as the police would allow them, at the lower end of Victoria Street, eight deep along the Albert Embankment, growing in volume every hour. London waited, waited in patience, orderly, content to stare steadfastly at nothing, deriving no satisfaction for their weariness but the sense of being as near as it was humanly possible to be to the scene of a tragedy. A stranger arriving in London, bewildered by this gathering, asked for the cause. A man standing on the outskirts of the Embankment throng pointed across the river with the stem of his pipe.