The Complete Four Just Men (13 page)

Chapter 12

Conclusion

Falmouth sat on the opposite side of the Chief Commissioner’s desk, his hands clasped before him. On the blotting-pad lay a thin sheet of grey notepaper. The Commissioner picked it up again and re-read it.

When you receive this [it ran] we who for want of a better title call ourselves ‘The Four Just Men’ will be scattered throughout Europe, and there is little likelihood of your ever tracing us. In no spirit of boastfulness we say: We have accomplished
that which we set ourselves to accomplish. In no sense of
hypocrisy we repeat our regret that such a step as we took was necessary.

Sir Philip Ramon’s death would appear to have been an accident. This much we confess. Thery bungled – and paid the penalty. We depended too much upon his technical knowledge. Perhaps by diligent search you will solve the mystery of Sir Philip Ramon’s death – when such a search is rewarded you will realise the truth of this statement. Farewell.

‘It tells us nothing,’ said the Commissioner. Falmouth shook his head despairingly. ‘Search!’ he said bitterly; ‘we have searched the house in Downing Street from end to end – where else can we search?’

‘Is there no paper amongst Sir Philip’s documents that might conceivably put you on the track?’

‘None that we have seen.’

The chief bit the end of his pen thoughtfully.

‘Has his country house been examined?’

Falmouth frowned.

‘I didn’t think that necessary.’

‘Nor Portland Place?’

‘No: it was locked up at the time of the murder.’

The Commissioner rose.

‘Try Portland Place,’ he advised. ‘At present it is in the hands of Sir Philip’s executors.’

The detective hailed a hansom, and in a quarter of an hour found himself knocking upon the gloomy portals of the late Foreign Secretary’s town house. A grave manservant opened the door; it was Sir Philip’s butler, a man known to Falmouth, who greeted him with a nod.

‘I want to make a search of the house, Perks,’ he said. ‘Has anything been touched?’

The man shook his head.

‘No, Mr Falmouth,’ he replied, ‘everything is just as Sir Philip left it. The lawyer gentlemen have not even made an inventory.’

Falmouth walked through the chilly hall to the comfortable little room set apart for the butler.

‘I should like to start with the study,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid there will be a difficulty, then, sir,’ said Perks respectfully.

‘Why?’ demanded Falmouth sharply.

‘It is the only room in the house for which we have no key. Sir Philip had a special lock for his study and carried the key with him. You see, being a Cabinet Minister, and a very careful man, he was very particular about people entering his study.’

Falmouth thought.

A number of Sir Philip’s private keys were deposited at Scotland Yard.

He scribbled a brief note to his chief and sent a footman by cab to the Yard.

Whilst he was waiting he sounded the butler.

‘Where were you when the murder was committed, Perks?’ he asked.

‘In the country: Sir Philip sent away all the servants, you will remember.’

‘And the house?’

‘Was empty – absolutely empty.’

‘Was there any evidence on your return that any person had effected an entrance?’

‘None, sir; it would be next to impossible to burgle this house. There are alarm wires fixed communicating with the police station, and the windows are automatically locked.’

‘There were no marks on the doors or windows that would lead you to believe that an entrance had been attempted?’

The butler shook his head emphatically. ‘None; in the course of my daily duty I make a very careful inspection of the paintwork, and I should have noticed any marks of the kind.’

In half an hour the footman, accompanied by a detective, returned, and Falmouth took from the plain-clothed officer a small bunch of keys.

The butler led the way to the first floor.

He indicated the study, a massive oaken door, fitted with a microscopic lock.

Very carefully Falmouth made his selection of keys. Twice he tried unsuccessfully, but at the third attempt the lock turned with a click, and the door opened noiselessly.

He stood for a moment at the entrance, for the room was in darkness.

‘I forgot,’ said Perks, ‘the shutters are closed – shall I open them?’

‘If you please,’ said the detective.

In a few minutes the room was flooded with light.

It was a plainly furnished apartment, rather similar in appearance to that in which the Foreign Secretary met his end. It smelt mustily of old leather, and the walls of the room were covered with bookshelves. In the centre stood a big mahogany writing-table, with bundles of papers neatly arranged.

Falmouth took a rapid and careful survey of this desk. It was thick with accumulated dust. At one end, within reach of the vacant chair stood an ordinary table telephone.

‘No bells,’ said Falmouth.

‘No,’ replied the butler. ‘Sir Philip disliked bells – there is a “buzzer”.’

Falmouth remembered.

‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘I remember – hullo!’

He bent forward eagerly.

‘Why, what has happened to the telephone?’

He might well ask, for its steel was warped and twisted. Beneath where the vulcanite receiver stood was a tiny heap of black ash, and of the flexible cord that connected it with the outside world nothing remained but a twisted piece of discoloured wire.

The table on which it stood was blistered as with some great heat.

The detective drew a long breath.

He turned to his subordinate.

‘Run across to Miller’s in Regent Street – the electrician – and ask Mr Miller to come here at once.’

He was still standing gazing at the telephone when the electrician arrived.

‘Mr Miller,’ said Falmouth slowly, ‘what has happened to this telephone?’

The electrician adjusted his pince-nez and inspected the ruin.

‘H’m,’ he said, ‘it rather looks as though some linesman had been criminally careless.’

‘Linesman? What do you mean?’ demanded Falmouth.

‘I mean the workmen engaged to fix telephone wires.’ He made another inspection.

‘Cannot you see?’

He pointed to the battered instrument.

‘I see that the machine is entirely ruined – but why?’

The electrician stooped and picked up the scorched wire from the ground.

‘What I mean is this,’ he said. ‘Somebody has attached a wire carrying a high voltage – probably an electric-lighting wire – to this telephone line: and if anybody had happened to have been at – ’ He stopped suddenly, and his face went white.

‘Good God!’ he whispered, ‘Sir Philip Ramon was electrocuted!’

For a while not one of the party spoke. Then Falmouth’s hand darted into his pocket and he drew out the little notebook which Billy Marks had stolen.

‘That is the solution,’ he cried; ‘here is the direction the wires took – but how is it that the telephone at Downing Street was not destroyed in a similar manner?’

The electrician, white and shaking, shook his head impatiently.

‘I have given up trying to account for the vagaries of electricity,’ he said; ‘besides, the current, the full force of the current, might have been diverted – a short circuit might have been effected – anything might have happened.’

‘Wait!’ said Falmouth eagerly. ‘Suppose the man making the connection had bungled – had taken the full force of the current himself – would that have brought about this result?’

‘It might – ’

‘ “Thery bungled – and paid the penalty,” ’ quoted Falmouth slowly. ‘Ramon got a slight shock – sufficient to frighten him – he had a weak heart – the burn on his hand, the dead sparrows! By Heaven! it’s as clear as daylight!’

Later, a strong force of police raided the house in Carnaby Street, but they found nothing – except a half-smoked cigarette bearing the name of a London tobacconist, and the counterfoil of a passage ticket to New York.

It was marked per RMS
Lucania
, and was for three first-class passengers.

When the
Lucania
arrived at New York she was searched from stem to stern, but the Four Just Men were not discovered.

It was Gonsalez who had placed the ‘clue’ for the police to find.

THE END

The Council of Justice

Chapter 1

The Red Hundred

It is not for you or me to judge Manfred and his works. I say ‘Manfred’, though I might as well have said ‘Gonsalez’, or for the matter of that ‘Poiccart’, since they are equally guilty or great
according to the light in which you view their acts. The most lawless of us would hesitate to defend them, but the greater humanitarian could scarcely condemn them.

From the standpoint of us, who live within the law, going about our business in conformity with the code, and unquestioningly keeping to the left or to the right as the police direct, their methods were terrible, indefensible, revolting.

It does not greatly affect the issue that, for want of a better word, we call them criminals. Such would be mankind’s unanimous designation, but I think – indeed, I know – that they were indifferent to the opinions of the human race. I doubt very much whether they expected posterity to honour them.

Their action towards the cabinet minister was murder, pure and simple. Yet, in view of the large humanitarian problems involved, who would describe it as pernicious?

Frankly I say of the three men who killed Sir Philip Ramon, and who slew ruthlessly in the name of Justice, that my sympathies are with them. There are crimes for which there is no adequate punishment, and offences that the machinery of the written law cannot efface. Therein lies the justification for the Four Just Men – the Council of Justice as they presently came to call themselves, a council of great intellects, passionless.

And not long after the death of Sir Philip and while England still rang with that exploit, they performed an act or a series of acts that won not alone from the Government of Great Britain, but from the Governments of Europe, a sort of unofficial approval and Falmouth had his wish. For here they waged war against great world-criminals – they pitted their strength, their cunning, and their wonderful intellects against the most powerful organization of the underworld – against past masters of villainous arts, and brains equally agile.

* * *

It was the day of days for the Red Hundred. The wonderful inter-national congress was meeting in London, the first great congress of recognized Anarchism. This was no hole-and-corner gathering of hurried men speaking furtively, but one open and unafraid, with three policemen specially retained for duty outside the hall, a commissionaire to take tickets at the outer lobby, and a shorthand writer with a knowledge of French and Yiddish to make notes of remarkable utterances.

The wonderful congress was a fact. When it had been broached there were people who laughed at the idea; Niloff of Vitebsk was one
because he did not think such openness possible. But little Peter (his preposterous name was Konoplanikova, and he was a reporter on the staff of the foolish
Russkoye Znamza
), this little Peter who had
thought out the whole thing; whose idea it was to gather a conference of the Red Hundred in London; who hired the hall and issued the bills (bearing in the top left-hand corner the inverted triangle of the Hundred) asking those Russians in London interested in the building of a Russian Sailors’ Home to apply for tickets; who, too, secured a hall where interruption was impossible; was happy – yea, little brothers, it was a great day for Peter.

‘You can always deceive the police,’ said little Peter enthusiastically; ‘call a meeting with a philanthropic object and –
voilà
!’

Wrote
Inspector
Falmouth to
the assistant commissioner
of police
–

Your respected communication to hand. The meeting to be held tonight at the Phoenix Hall, Middlesex Street, E., with the object of raising funds for a Russian Sailors’ Home is, of course, the first international congress of the Red Hundred. Shall not be able to get a man inside, but do not think that matters much, as meeting will be engaged throwing flowers at one another and serious business will not commence till the meeting of the inner committee.

I enclose a list of men already arrived in London, and have the honour to request that you will send me portraits of under-mentioned men.

There were three delegates from Baden, Herr Smidt from Freiburg, Herr Bleaumeau from Karlsruhe, and Herr Von Dunop from Mannheim. They were not considerable persons, even in the eyes of the world of Anarchism; they called for no particular notice, and therefore the strange thing that happened to them on the night of the congress is all the more remarkable.

Herr Smidt had left his pension in Bloomsbury and was hurrying eastward. It was a late autumn evening and a chilly rain fell, and Herr Smidt was debating in his mind whether he should go direct to the rendezvous where he had promised to meet his two compatriots, or whether he should call a taxi and drive direct to the hall, when a hand grasped his arm.

He turned quickly and reached for his hip pocket. Two men stood behind him and but for themselves the square through which he was passing was deserted.

Before he could grasp the Browning pistol, his other arm was seized and the taller of the two men spoke.

‘You are Augustus Smidt?’ he asked.

‘That is my name.’

‘You are an anarchist?’

‘That is my affair.’

‘You are at present on your way to a meeting of the Red Hundred?’

Herr Smidt opened his eyes in genuine astonishment.

‘How did you know that?’ he asked.

‘I am Detective Simpson from Scotland Yard, and I shall take you into custody,’ was the quiet reply.

‘On what charge?’ demanded the German.

‘As to that I shall tell you later.’

The man from Baden shrugged his shoulders.

‘I have yet to learn that it is an offence in England to hold opinions.’

A closed motor-car entered the square, and the shorter of the two whistled and the chauffeur drew up near the group.

The anarchist turned to the man who had arrested him.

‘I warn you that you shall answer for this,’ he said wrathfully. ‘I have an important engagement that you have made me miss through your foolery and – ’

‘Get in!’ interrupted the tall man tersely.

Smidt stepped into the car and the door snapped behind him.

He was alone and in darkness. The car moved on and then Smidt discovered that there were no windows to the vehicle. A wild idea came to him that he might escape. He tried the door of the car; it was immovable. He cautiously tapped it. It was lined with thin sheets of steel.

‘A prison on wheels,’ he muttered with a curse, and sank back into the corner of the car.

He did not know London; he had not the slightest idea where he was going. For ten minutes the car moved along. He was puzzled. These policemen had taken nothing from him, he still retained his pistol. They had not even attempted to search him for compromising documents. Not that he had any except the pass for the conference and – the Inner Code!

Heavens! He must destroy that. He thrust his hand into the inner pocket of his coat. It was empty. The thin leather case was gone! His face went grey, for the Red Hundred is no fanciful secret society but a bloody-minded organization with less mercy for bungling brethren than for its sworn enemies. In the thick darkness of the car his nervous fingers groped through all his pockets. There was no doubt at all – the papers had gone.

In the midst of his search the car stopped. He slipped the flat pistol from his pocket. His position was desperate and he was not the kind of man to shirk a risk.

Once there was a brother of the Red Hundred who sold a password to the Secret Police. And the brother escaped from Russia. There was a woman in it, and the story is a mean little story that is hardly worth the telling. Only, the man and the woman escaped, and went to Baden, and Smidt recognized them from the portraits he had received from headquarters, and one night . . . You understand that there was nothing clever or neat about it. English news-papers would have described it as a ‘revolting murder’, because the details of the crime were rather shocking. The thing that stood to Smidt’s credit in the books of the Society was that the murderer was undiscovered.

The memory of this episode came back to the anarchist as the car stopped – perhaps this was the thing the police had discovered? Out of the dark corners of his mind came the scene again, and the voice of the man . . . ‘Don’t! don’t! O Christ! don’t!’ and Smidt sweated . . .

The door of the car opened and he slipped back the cover of his pistol.

‘Don’t shoot,’ said a quiet voice in the gloom outside, ‘here are some friends of yours.’

He lowered his pistol, for his quick ears detected a wheezing cough.

‘Von Dunop!’ he cried in astonishment.

‘And Herr Bleaumeau,’ said the same voice. ‘Get in, you two.’

Two men stumbled into the car, one dumbfounded and silent – save for the wheezing cough – the other blasphemous and voluble.

‘Wait, my friend!’ raved the bulk of Bleaumeau; ‘wait! I will make you sorry.’

The door shut and the car moved on.

The two men outside watched the vehicle with its unhappy passengers disappear round a corner and then walked slowly away.

‘Extraordinary men,’ said the taller.

‘Most,’ replied the other, and then, ‘Von Dunop – isn’t he – ?’

‘The man who threw the bomb at the Swiss President – yes.’

The shorter man smiled in the darkness.

‘Given a conscience, he is enduring his hour,’ he said.

The pair walked on in silence and turned into Oxford Street as the clock of a church struck eight.

The tall man lifted his walking-stick and a sauntering taxi pulled up at the curb.

‘Aldgate,’ he said, and the two men took their seats.

Not until the taxi was spinning along Newgate Street did either of the men speak, and then the shorter asked: ‘You are thinking about the woman?’

The other nodded and his companion relapsed into silence; then he spoke again.

‘She is a problem and a difficulty, in a way – yet she is the most dangerous of the lot. And the curious thing about it is that if she were not beautiful and young she would not be a problem at all. We’re very human, George. God made us illogical that the minor businesses of life should not interfere with the great scheme. And the great scheme is that animal men should select animal women for the mothers of their children.’

‘
Venenum in auro bibitur
,’ the other quoted, which shows that he was an extraordinary detective, ‘and so far as I am concerned it matters little to me whether an irresponsible homicide is a beautiful woman or a misshapen negro.’

They dismissed the taxi at Aldgate Station and turned into Middlesex Street.

The meeting-place of the great congress was a hall which was originally erected by an enthusiastic Christian gentleman with a weakness for the conversion of Jews to the New Presbyterian Church, With this laudable object it had been opened with great pomp and the singing of anthems and the enthusiastic proselytizer had spoken on that occasion two hours and forty minutes by the clock.

After twelve months’ labour the Christian gentleman discovered that the advantages of Christianity only appeal to very rich Jews indeed, to the Cohens who become Cowans, to the Isaacs who become Grahames, and to the curious low-down Jews who stand in the same relation to their brethren as White Kaffirs to a European community.

So the hall passed from hand to hand, and, failing to obtain a music and dancing licence, went back to the mission-hall stage.

Successive generations of small boys had destroyed its windows and beplastered its walls. Successive fly-posters had touched its blank face with colour. Tonight there was nothing to suggest that there was any business of extraordinary importance being transacted within its walls. A Russian or a Yiddish or any kind of reunion does not greatly excite Middlesex Street, and had little Peter boldly announced that the congress of the Red Hundred were to meet in full session there would have been no local excitement and – if the truth be told – he might still have secured the services of his three policemen and commissionaire.

To this worthy, a neat, cleanly gentleman in uniform, wearing on his breast the medals for the relief of Chitral and the Soudan Campaigns, the two men delivered the perforated halves of their tickets and passed through the outer lobby into a small room. By a door at the other end stood a thin man with a straggling beard. His eyes were red-rimmed and weak, he wore long narrow buttoned boots, and he had a trick of pecking his head forwards and sideways like an inquisitive hen.

‘You have the word, brothers?’ he asked, speaking German like one unaccustomed to the language.

The taller of the two strangers shot a swift glance at the sentinel that absorbed the questioner from his cracked patent leather boots to his flamboyant watch-chain. Then he answered in Italian.

‘Nothing!’

The face of the guardian flushed with pleasure at the familiar tongue.

‘Pass, brother; it is very good to hear that language.’

The air of the crowded hall struck the two men in the face like the blast from a destructor. It was unclean; unhealthy – the scent of an early-morning doss-house.

The hall was packed, the windows were closed and curtained, and as a precautionary measure, little Peter had placed thick blankets before the ventilators.

At one end of the hall was a platform on which stood a semicircle of chairs and in the centre was a table draped with red. On the wall behind the chairs – every one of which was occupied – was a huge red flag bearing in the centre a great white ‘C’. It had been tacked to the wall, but one corner had broken away revealing a part of the painted scroll of the mission workers.

‘ . . . are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’

The two intruders pushed their way through a group that were gathered at the door. Three aisles ran the length of the building, and they made their way along the central gangway and found seats near the platform.

A brother was speaking. He was a good and zealous worker but a bad orator. He spoke in German and enunciated commonplaces with hoarse emphasis. He said all the things that other men had said and forgotten. ‘This is the time to strike’ was his most notable sentence, and notable only because it evoked a faint buzz of applause.