The Complete Four Just Men (14 page)

The audience stirred impatiently. The good Bentvitch had spoken beyond his allotted time; and there were other people to speak – and prosy at that. And it would be ten o’clock before the Woman of Gratz would rise.

The babble was greatest in the corner of the hall, where little Peter, all eyes and startled eyebrows, was talking to an audience of his own.

‘It is impossible, it is absurd, it is most foolish!’ his thin voice rose almost to a scream. ‘I should laugh at it – we should all laugh, but the Woman of Gratz has taken the matter seriously, and she is afraid!’

‘Afraid!’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Oh, Peter, the fool!’

There were other things said because everybody in the vicinity expressed an opinion. Peter was distressed, but not by the epithets. He was crushed, humiliated, beaten by his tremendous tidings. He was nearly crying at the horrible thought. The Woman of Gratz was afraid! The Woman of Gratz who . . . It was unthinkable.

He turned his eyes toward the platform, but she was not there.

‘Tell us about it, Peter,’ pleaded a dozen voices; but the little man with the tears twinkling on his fair eyelashes waved them off.

So far from his incoherent outburst they had learnt only this – that the Woman of Gratz was afraid.

And that was bad enough.

For this woman – she was a girl really, a slip of a child who should have been finishing her education somewhere in Germany – this same woman had once risen and electrified the world.

There had been a meeting in a small Hungarian town to discuss ways and means. And when the men had finished their denunciation of Austria, she rose and talked. A short-skirted little girl with two long flaxen braids of hair, thin-legged, flat-chested, angular, hipless – that is what the men of Gratz noticed as they smiled behind their hands and wondered why her father had brought her to the meeting.

But her speech . . . two hours she spoke and no man stirred. A little flat-chested girl full of sonorous phrases – mostly she had collected them from the talk in Old Joseph’s kitchen. But with some power of her own, she had spun them together, these inconsiderable truisms, and had endowed them with a wondrous vitality.

They were old, old platitudes, if the truth be told, but at some time in the history of revolution, some long-dead genius had coined them, and newly fashioned in the furnace of his soul they had shaped men’s minds and directed their great and dreadful deeds.

So the Woman of Gratz arrived, and they talked about her and circulated her speeches in every language. And she grew. The hollow face of this lank girl filled, and the flat bosom rounded and there came softer lines and curves to her angular figure, and, almost before they realized the fact, she was beautiful.

So her fame had grown until her father died and she went to Russia. Then came a series of outrages which may be categorically and briefly set forth –

1: General Maloff shot dead by an unknown woman in his private room at the Police Bureau, Moscow.

2: Prince Hazallarkoff shot dead by an unknown woman in the streets of Petrograd.

3: Colonel Kaverdavskov killed by a bomb thrown by a woman who made her escape.

And the Woman of Gratz leapt to a greater fame. She had been arrested half a dozen times, and whipped twice, but they could prove nothing against her and elicit nothing from her – and she was very beautiful.

Now to the thundering applause of the waiting delegates, she stepped upon the platform and took the last speaker’s place by the side of the red-covered table.

She raised her hand and absolute and complete silence fell on the hall, so much so that her first words sounded strident and shrill, for she had attuned her voice to the din. She recovered her pitch and dropped her voice to a conversational tone.

She stood easily with her hands clasped behind her and made no gesture. The emotion that was within her she conveyed through her wonderful voice. Indeed, the power of the speech lay rather in its delivery than in its substance, for only now and then did she depart from the unwritten text of Anarchism: the right of the oppressed to overthrow the oppressor; the divinity of violence; the sacredness of sacrifice and martyrdom in the cause of enlightenment. One phrase alone stood apart from the commonplace of her oratory. She was speaking of the Theorists who counsel reform and condemn violence, ‘These Christs who deputize their Calvaries’, she called them with fine scorn, and the hall roared its approval of the imagery.

It was the fury of the applause that disconcerted her; the taller of the two men who sat watching her realized that much. For when the shouting had died down and she strove to resume, she faltered and stammered and then was silent. Then abruptly and with surprising vehemence she began again. But she had changed the direction of her oratory, and it was upon another subject that she now spoke. A subject nearer to her at that moment than any other, for her pale cheeks flushed and a feverish light came to her eyes as she spoke.

‘ . . . and now, with all our perfect organization, with the world almost within our grasp – there comes somebody who says “Stop!” – and we who by our acts have terrorized kings and dominated the councils of empires, are ourselves threatened!’

The audience grew deadly silent. They were silent before, but now the silence was painful.

The two men who watched her stirred a little uneasily, as though something in her speech had jarred. Indeed, the suggestion of braggadocio in her assertion of the Red Hundred’s power had struck a discordant note.

The girl continued speaking rapidly.

‘We have heard – you have heard – we know of these men who have written to us. They say – ’ her voice rose – ‘that we shall not do what we do. They threaten us – they threaten me – that we must change our methods, or they will punish as – as we – punish; kill as we kill – ’

There was a murmuring in the audience and men looked at one another in amazement. For terror unmistakable and undisguised was written on her pale face and shone from those wondrous eyes of hers.

‘But we will defy – ’

Loud voices and the sound of scuffling in the little anteroom interrupted her, and a warning word shouted brought the audience to its feet.

‘The police!’

A hundred stealthy hands reached for cunning pockets, but somebody leapt upon a bench, near the entrance, and held up an authoritative hand.

‘Gentlemen, there is no occasion for alarm – I am Detective-Superintendent Falmouth from Scotland Yard, and I have no quarrel with the Red Hundred.’

Little Peter, transfixed for the moment, pushed his way towards the detective.

‘Who do you want – what do you want?’ he asked.

The detective stood with his back to the door and answered.

‘I want two men who were seen to enter this hall: two members of an organization that is outside the Red Hundred. They – ’

‘Ha!’ The woman who still stood upon the platform leant forward with blazing eyes.

‘I know – I know!’ she cried breathlessly; ‘the men who threatened us – who threatened me – The Four Just Men!’

Chapter 2

The fourth man

The tall man’s hand was in his pocket when the detective spoke.

When he had entered the hall he had thrown a swift glance round the place and taken in every detail. He had seen the beaded strip of unpainted wood which guarded the electric light cables, and had improved the opportunity whilst the prosy brother was speaking to make a further reconnaissance. There was a white porcelain switchboard with half a dozen switches at the left-hand side of the platform. He judged the distance and threw up the hand that held the pistol.

Bang! Bang!

A crash of broken glass, a quick flash of blue flame from the shattered fuses – and the hall was in darkness. It happened before the detective could spring from his form into the yelling, screaming crowd – before the police officer could get a glance at the man who fired the shots.

In an instant the place was a pandemonium.

‘Silence!’ Falmouth roared above the din; ‘silence! Keep quiet, you miserable cowards – show a light here, Brown, Curtis – Inspector, where are your men’s lanterns?’

The rays of a dozen bull’s-eye lamps waved over the struggling throng.

‘Open your lanterns – ’ and to the seething mob, ‘Silence!’ Then a bright young officer remembered that he had seen gas-brackets in the room, and struggled through the howling mob till he came to the wall and found the gas-fitting with his lantern. He struck a match and lit the gas, and the panic subsided as suddenly as it had begun.

Falmouth, choked with rage, threw his eye round the hall. ‘Guard the door,’ he said briefly; ‘the hall is surrounded and they cannot possibly escape.’ He strode swiftly along the central aisle, followed by two of his men, and with an agile leap, sprang on to the platform and faced the audience. The Woman of Gratz, with a white set face, stood motionless, one hand resting on the little table, the other at her throat. Falmouth raised his hand to enjoin silence and the law-breakers obeyed.

‘I have no quarrel with the Red Hundred,’ he said. ‘By the law of this country it is permissible to hold opinions and propagate doctrines, however objectionable they be – I am here to arrest two men who have broken the laws of this country. Two persons who are part of the organization known as the Four Just Men.’

All the time he was speaking his eyes searched the faces before him. He knew that one-half of the audience could not understand him and that the hum of talk that arose as he finished was his speech in course of translation.

The faces he sought he could not discern. To be exact, he hoped that his scrutiny would induce two men, of whose identity he was ignorant, to betray themselves.

There are little events, unimportant in themselves, which occasionally lead to tremendous issues. A skidding motor-bus that crashed into a private car in Piccadilly had led to the discovery that there were three vociferous foreign gentlemen imprisoned in the overturned vehicle. It led to the further discovery that the chauffeur had disappeared in the confusion of the collision. In the darkness, comparing notes, the three prisoners had arrived at a conclusion – to wit, that their abduction was a sequel to a mysterious letter each had received, which bore the signature ‘The Four Just Men’.

So in the panic occasioned by the accident, they were sufficiently indiscreet to curse the Four Just Men by name, and, the Four Just Men being a sore topic with the police, they were questioned further, and the end of it was that Superintendent Falmouth motored eastward in great haste and was met in Middlesex Street by a reserve of police specially summoned.

He was at the same disadvantage he had always been – the Four Just Men were to him names only, symbols of a swift remorseless force that struck surely and to the minute – and nothing more.

Two or three of the leaders of the Red Hundred had singled themselves out and drew closer to the platform.

‘We are not aware,’ said François, the Frenchman, speaking for his companions in faultless English, ‘we are not aware of the identity
of the men you seek, but on the understanding that they are not brethren of our Society, and moreover – ’ he was at a loss for words to
put the fantastic situation – ‘and moreover since they have threatened us – threatened us,’ he repeated in bewilderment, ‘we will afford you every assistance.’

The detective jumped at the opportunity.

‘Good!’ he said and formed a rapid plan.

The two men could not have escaped from the hall. There was a little door near the platform, he had seen that – as the two men he sought had seen it. Escape seemed possible through there; they had thought so, too. But Falmouth knew that the outer door leading from the little vestibule was guarded by two policemen. This was the sum of the discovery made also by the two men he sought. He spoke rapidly to François.

‘I want every person in the hall to be vouched for,’ he said quickly. ‘Somebody must identify every man, and the identifier must himself be identified.’

The arrangements were made with lightning-like rapidity. From the platform in French, German and Yiddish, the leaders of the Red Hundred explained the plan. Then the police formed a line, and one by one the people came forward, and shyly, suspiciously or self-consciously, according to their several natures, they passed the police line.

‘That is Simon Czech of Buda-Pest.’

‘Who identifies him?’

‘I’ – a dozen voices.

‘Pass.’

‘This is Michael Ranekov of Odessa.’

‘Who identifies him?’

‘I,’ said a burly man, speaking in German.

‘And you?’

There was a little titter, for Michael is the best-known man in the Order. Some there were who, having passed the line, waited to identify their kinsfolk and fellow-countrymen.

‘It seems much simpler than I could have imagined.’

It was the tall man with the trim beard, who spoke in a guttural tone which was neither German nor Yiddish. He was watching with amused interest the examination.

‘Separating the lambs from the goats with a vengeance,’ he said with a faint smile, and his taciturn companion nodded. Then he asked –

‘Do you think any of these people will recognize you as the man who fired?’

The tall man shook his head decisively.

‘Their eyes were on the police – and besides I am too quick a shot. Nobody saw me unless – ’

‘The Woman of Gratz?’ asked the other, without showing the slightest concern.

‘The Woman of Gratz,’ said George Manfred.

They formed part of a struggling line that moved slowly toward the police barrier.

‘I fear,’ said Manfred, ‘that we shall be forced to make our escape in a perfectly obvious way – the bull-at-the-gate method is one that I object to on principle, and it is one that I have never been obliged to employ.’

They were speaking all the time in the language of the harsh gutturals, and those who were in their vicinity looked at them in some perplexity, for it is a tongue unlike any that is heard in the Revolutionary Belt.

Closer and closer they grew to the inflexible inquisitor at the end of the police line. Ahead of them was a young man who turned from time to time as if seeking a friend behind. His was a face that fascinated the shorter of the two men, ever a student of faces. It was a face of deadly pallor, that the dark close-cropped hair and the thick black eyebrows accentuated. Aesthetic in outline, refined in contour, it was the face of a visionary, and in the restless, troubled eyes there lay a hint of the fanatic. He reached the barrier and a dozen eager men stepped forward for the honour of sponsorship. Then he passed and Manfred stepped calmly forward.

‘Heinrich Rossenburg of Raz,’ he mentioned the name of an obscure Transylvanian village.

‘Who identifies this man?’ asked Falmouth monotonously. Manfred held his breath and stood ready to spring.

‘I do.’

It was the
spirituel
who had gone before him; the dreamer with the face of a priest.

‘Pass.’

Manfred, calm and smiling, sauntered through the police with a familiar nod to his saviour. Then he heard the challenge that met his companion.

‘Rolf Woolfund,’ he heard Poiccart’s clear, untroubled voice.

‘Who identifies this man?’

Again he waited tensely.

‘I do,’ said the young man’s voice again.

Then Poiccart joined him, and they waited a little.

Out of the corner of his eye Manfred saw the man who had vouched for him saunter toward them. He came abreast, then: ‘If you would care to meet me at Reggiori’s at King’s Cross I shall be there in an hour,’ he said, and Manfred noticed without emotion that this young man also spoke in Arabic.

They passed through the crowd that had gathered about the hall – for the news of the police raid had spread like wildfire through the East End – and gained Aldgate Station before they spoke.

‘This is a curious beginning to our enterprise,’ said Manfred. He seemed neither pleased nor sorry. ‘I have always thought that Arabic was the safest language in the world in which to talk secrets – one learns wisdom with the years,’ he added philosophically.

Poiccart examined his well-manicured finger-nails as though the problem centred there. ‘There is no precedent,’ he said, speaking to himself.

‘And he may be an embarrassment,’ added George; then, ‘let us wait and see what the hour brings.’

The hour brought the man who had befriended them so strangely. It brought also a little in advance of him a fourth man who limped slightly
but greeted
the two with a rueful smile.
‘Hurt?’
asked
Manfred.

‘Nothing worth speaking about,’ said the other carelessly, ‘and now what is the meaning of your mysterious telephone message?’

Briefly Manfred sketched the events of the night, and the other listened gravely.

‘It’s a curious situation,’ he began, when a warning glance from Poiccart arrested him. The subject of their conversation had arrived.

He sat down at the table, and dismissed the fluttering waiter that hung about him.

The four sat in silence for a while and the newcomer was the first to speak.

‘I call myself Bernard Courtlander,’ he said simply, ‘and you are the organization known as the Four Just Men.’

They did not reply.

‘I saw you shoot,’ he went on evenly, ‘because I had been watching you from the moment when you entered the hall, and when the police adopted the method of identification, I resolved to risk my life and speak for you.’

‘Meaning,’ interposed Poiccart calmly, ‘you resolved to risk – our killing you?’

‘Exactly,’ said the young man, nodding, ‘a purely outside view would be that such a course would be a fiendish act of ingratitude, but I have a closer perception of principles, and I recognize that such a sequel to my interference is perfectly logical.’ He singled out Manfred leaning back on the red plush cushions. ‘You have so often shown that human life is the least considerable factor in your plan, and have given such evidence of your singleness of purpose, that I am fully satisfied that if my life – or the life of any one of you – stood before the fulfilment of your objects, that life would go – so!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Well?’ said Manfred. ‘I know of your exploits,’ the strange young man went on, ‘as who does not?’

He took from his pocket a leather case, and from that he extracted a newspaper cutting. Neither of the three men evinced the slightest interest in the paper he unfolded on the white cloth. Their eyes were on his face.

‘Here is a list of people slain – for justice’s sake,’ Courtlander said, smoothing the creases from a cutting from the
Megaphone
, ‘men
whom the law of the land passed by, sweaters and debauchers, robbers of public funds, corrupters of youth – men who bought “justice” as you and I buy bread.’ He folded the paper again. ‘I have prayed God that I might one day meet you.’

‘Well?’ It was Manfred’s voice again.

‘I want to be with you, to be one of you, to share your campaign and, and – ’ he hesitated, then added soberly, ‘if need be, the death that awaits you.’

Manfred nodded slowly, then looked toward the man with the limp.

‘What do you say, Gonsalez?’ he asked.

This Leon Gonsalez was a famous reader of faces – that much the young man knew – and he turned for the test and met the other’s appraising eyes.

‘Enthusiast, dreamer, and intellectual, of course,’ said Gonsalez slowly; ‘there is reliability which is good, and balance which is better – but – ’

‘But – ?’ asked Courtlander steadily.

‘There is passion, which is bad,’ was the verdict.

‘It is a matter of training,’ answered the other quietly. ‘My lot has been thrown with people who think in a frenzy and act in madness; it is the fault of all the organizations that seek to right wrong by indiscriminate crime, whose sense are senses, who have debased sentiment to sentimentality, and who muddle kings with kingship.’

‘You are of the Red Hundred?’ asked Manfred.

‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘because the Red Hundred carries me a little way along the road I wish to travel.’

‘In the direction?’

‘Who knows?’ replied the other. ‘There are no straight roads, and you cannot judge where lies your destination by the direction the first line of path takes.’

‘I do not tell you how great a risk you take upon yourself,’ said Manfred, ‘nor do I labour the extent of the responsibility you ask to undertake. You are a wealthy man?’

‘Yes,’ said Courtlander, ‘as wealth goes; I have large estates in Hungary.’

‘I do not ask that question aimlessly, yet it would make no difference if you were poor,’ said Manfred. ‘Are you prepared to sell your estates – Buda-Gratz I believe they are called – Highness?’

For the first time the young man smiled.

‘I did not doubt but that you knew me,’ he said; ‘as to my estates, I will sell them without hesitation.’

‘And place the money at my disposal?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, instantly.

‘Without reservation?’

‘Without reservation.’

‘And,’ said Manfred, slowly, ‘if we felt disposed to employ this money for what might seem our own personal benefit, would you take exception?’