The Complete Four Just Men (26 page)

‘And now – !’ he snivelled a little, wiping away the tears with a greasy cap – and now she lay in seventy fathoms of water, this Sea’s Pride!

‘And all through a bit of dirty business that I wouldn’t have took on, but for the slack times!’ he said slowly and added a practical request: what was she going to do about it?

‘You were paid for the risk,’ she said impatiently. She spoke through an interpreter, for her knowledge of English was limited.

‘Paid!’ The old man glared furiously. ‘Paid a miserable thousand for a ship worth its weight in gold.’

But she had sources of information at hand
that he had
not expected.

‘Your ship was worth its weight – in old iron,’ she said coldly; ‘it was such a wretched thing that no insurance company would risk a policy.’

He stormed, threatened, thrusting his seamed, mottled face into hers. He would have the law; the police should know, and a great deal more of the same kind of talk.

She eyed him curiously.

‘Captain,’ she said slowly, ‘we, the brotherhood, the association, sympathize with you in your loss, we will even go so far as to compensate you – reasonably, but if you talk foolishly, we have the way and the will to make you silent.’

The old skipper tried to suppress a shudder, but without success. Wilfully blind to the character of the work he had undertaken, it came as a shock to see the veil of pretence torn from the ‘business’ and the grim reality of his enterprise shown, naked and ugly.

Seeking for an object for the display of rage which was necessary to cloak his fear, he happily hit upon the man who had brought about his misfortune, and his denunciations of Manfred and his works found instant response.

‘You have lost a ship!’ she said; ‘seek the man who destroyed it and I will buy you a new one. Yes, I – I will buy you such a ship as you have never yet commanded. Give him into my hands, dead or alive. I ask for no greater service than that!’

She struck a bell and a man came into the room. She pointed to the captain.

‘You will give this sailor a thousand pounds,’ she said; ‘you will also see that he is kept under observation. If he communicates with the police or endeavours in any way to betray us, you will kill him.’

The captain, trading as he did in the Baltic, had picked up a little Russian – sufficient, at any rate, to understand what she said.

Therefore he left the house in Maida Vale – where Madame Deloraine gave lessons in French to a never-ceasing stream of queer-looking pupils from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. – with a dry mouth and – under the circumstances – a very natural unsteadiness of gait.

Chapter 15

The trial

To fathom the mind of the Woman of Gratz is no easy task, and one not to be lightly undertaken. Remembering her obscure beginning, the bare-legged child drinking in revolutionary talk in the Transylvanian kitchen, and the development of her intellect along
unconventional lines – remembering, also, that early in life she made acquaintance with the extreme problems of life and death in their least attractive forms, and that the proportion of things had been grossly distorted by her teachers, you may arrive at a point where your vacillating judgement hesitates between blame and pity.

I would believe that the power of introspection had no real place in her mental equipment, else how can we explain her attitude towards the man whom she had once defied and reconcile those outbursts of hers wherein she called for his death, for his terrible punishment, wherein, too, she allowed herself the rare luxury of unrestrained speech, how can we reconcile these tantrums with the fact that this man’s voice filled her thoughts day and night, the recollection of this man’s eyes through his mask followed her every movement, till the image of him became an obsession?

It may be that I have no knowledge of women and their ways (there is no subtle smugness in the doubt I express) and that her inconsistency was general to her sex. But Manfred himself was never quite sure of her, and to Leon Gonsalez she had no material existence. To him she was a perverted intellect, and as such worthy of study. Poiccart crystallized her virtues and her weaknesses when he called her a ‘dangerous fool’; beyond that this unemotional man was not prepared to go.

But Manfred, with all his genius, was only a man, and liable to a man’s mistakes. As to Gonsalez, he was seemingly beyond the reach of passion, and judged cold-bloodedly. Poiccart was more human, but lacked romance. As for the fourth man, Courlander, who has flitted at intervals through the pages of this story, his judgment is for the moment under suspicion, for the sentiment with which Gonsalez once charged him is very apparent in all his reasonings – for the moment.

With the knowledge of a market overstocked with stories, dealing intimately and with minute thoroughness, with the working of the human soul – with the example of the unparalleled case of the brother-author, who devoted a whole chapter to the psychology of a woman’s smile, I feel how lame and incompetent is the bald statement that the Woman of Gratz hated George Manfred with an immeasurable hatred, and yet hungered for the sight of him. All the more remarkable was it, from the fact that for his companions she had neither hate nor thought. Yet she saw clearly enough that the other two were equal in wisdom and coolness and courage. To one of them at least she might well have owed a special debt of vengeance, for that night on the hills he had wrenched a pistol from her hand with unceremonious violence. As to the fourth, she had seen him twice. Once, masked by the fire on the Sierras, and once – it was a fleeting vision but clearly photographed in her mind – in the corridor on the day she first met Manfred.

It is curious that she should be thinking idly of the fourth man when they brought news of him to her. It must not be imagined that she had spared either trouble or money to secure the extermination of her enemies, and the enemies of the Red Hundred. She had described them after their first meeting, and portraits, sketched under her instruction, had been circulated by the officers of the Reds. Once or twice she had asked herself why, with the coming of the judge that night – she always went back in thought to the little house in the hill – the three had been masked. With the death of Von Dunop, the answer was clear enough. No man saw their faces and lived. Would they kill her? Would Manfred strike the blow, crushing her against him in his strong arms once more? That would be a death robbed of half its terrors . . . Thus she mused, sitting near the window of her house, lulled by the ceaseless hum of traffic in the street below, and half dozing.

The turning of the door-handle woke her from her dreams.

It was Smidt, the unspeakable Smidt, all perspiration and excitement. His round coarse face glowed with it, and he could scarcely bring his voice to tell the news.

‘We have him! we have him!’ he cried in glee, and snapped his fingers. ‘Oh, the good news! – I am the first! Nobody has been, Little Friend? I have run and have taken taxis – ’

‘You have – whom?’ she asked steadily. The colour left her face and her hand strayed to her breast. As she waited she could feel the dull throbbing of her heart.

‘Speak, fool!’ she blazed. The suspense sickened her. If it should be –

‘The man – one of the men,’ he said, ‘who killed Starque and Francois, and – ’

‘Which – which man?’ she said harshly.

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the discoloured sketch.

‘Oh!’ she said; it was not Manfred.

Was she relieved or disappointed? Disappointed indeed.

‘Why, why?’ she asked stormily, ‘why only this man? Why not the others – why not the leader? – have they caught him and lost him?’

Chagrin and astonishment sat on Smidt’s round face. His disappointment was almost comic.

‘But, Little Mother!’ he said, crestfallen and bewildered, ‘this is one – we did not hope even for one and – ’

The storm passed over.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said wearily, ‘one – even one is good. They shall learn that the Red Hundred can still strike – this leader shall know – This man shall have a death,’ she said, looking at Smidt, ‘worthy of his importance. Tell me how he was captured.’

‘It was the picture,’ said the eager Smidt, ‘the picture you had drawn. One of our comrades thought he recognized him and followed him to his house. To make sure he sent for me. I went and recognized him – ’

‘Why was I not told?’ she asked sternly.

‘There was no time – indeed there was no time,’ he pleaded.

‘But we might have taken them all.’

‘No, no, no!’ he said quickly; ‘he lived alone, this man; that made it easier. Last night he went out – he walked quiet streets – soh!’

His gestures filled the blank spaces of the story.

‘He shall be tried – tonight,’ and she spent the day anticipating her triumph.

Conspirators do not always choose dark arches for their plottings. The Red Hundred especially were notorious for the likeliness of their rendezvous. They went to nature for a precedent, and as she endows the tiger with stripes that are undistinguishable from the jungle grass, so the Red Hundred would choose for their meetings such a place where meetings were usually held.

It was in the Lodge Room of the Pride of Millwall, A.O.S.A. – which may be amplified as the Associated Order of the Sons of Abstinence – that the trial took place. The financial position of the Pride of Millwall was not strong. An unusual epidemic of temperate seafaring men had called the Lodge into being, the influx of capital from eccentric bequests had built the tiny hall, and since the fiasco attending the first meeting of the League of London, much of its public business had been skilfully conducted in these riverside premises. It had been raided by the police during the days of terror, but nothing of an incriminating character had been discovered. Because of the success with which the open policy had been pursued the Woman of Gratz preferred to take the risk of an open trial in a hall liable to police raid.

The man must be so guarded that escape was impossible. Messengers sped in every direction to carry out her instruction. There was a rapid summoning of leaders of the movement, the choice of the place of trial, the preparation for a ceremony which was governed by well-established precedent, and the arrangement of the properties which played so effective a part in the trials of the Hundred.

In the black-draped chamber of trial the Woman of Gratz found a full company.
Maliscrivona, Tchezki, Vellantini, De Romans, to name a few who were there sitting together side by side on the low forms, and they buzzed a welcome as she walked into the room and took her seat at the higher place. She glanced round the faces, bestowing a nod here and a glance of recognition there. She remembered the last time she had made an appearance before the rank and file of the movement. She missed many faces that had turned to her in those days: Starque, François, Kitsinger – dead at the hands of the Four Just Men. It fitted her mood to remember that tonight she would judge one who had at least helped in the slaying of Starque.

Abruptly she rose. Lately she had had few opportunities for the display of that oratory which was once her sole title to consideration in the councils of the Red Hundred. Her powers of organization had come to be respected later. She felt the want of practice as she began speaking. She found herself hesitating for words, and once she felt her illustrations were crude. But she gathered confidence as she proceeded and she felt the responsive thrill of a fascinated audience.

It was the story of the campaign that she told. Much of it we know; the story from the point of view of the Reds may be guessed. She finished her speech by recounting the capture of the enemy.

‘Tonight we aim a blow at these enemies of progress; if they have been merciless, let us show them that the Red Hundred is not to be outdone in ferocity. As they struck, so let us strike – and, in striking, read a lesson to the men who killed our comrades, that they, nor the world, will ever forget.’

There was no cheering as she finished – that had been the order – but a hum of words as they flung their tributes of words at her feet – a ruck of incoherent phrases of praise and adoration.

Then two men led in the prisoner.

He was calm and interested, throwing out his square chin resolutely when the first words of the charge were called and twiddling the fingers of his bound hands absently.

He met the scowling faces turned to him serenely, but as they proceeded with the indictment, he grew attentive, bending his head to catch the words.

Once he interrupted. ‘I cannot quite understand that,’ he said in fluent Russian, ‘my knowledge of German is limited.’

‘What is your nationality?’ demanded the woman.

‘English,’ he replied.

‘Do you speak French?’ she asked.

‘I am learning,’ he said naively, and smiled.

‘You speak Russian,’ she said. Her conversation was carried on in that tongue.

‘Yes,’ he said simply; ‘I was there for many years.’

After this, the sum of his transgressions were pronounced in a language he understood. Once or twice as the reader proceeded – it was Ivan Oranvitch who read – the man smiled.

The Woman of Gratz recognized him instantly as the fourth of the party that gathered about her door the day Bartholomew was murdered. Formally she asked him what he had to say before he was condemned.

He smiled again.

‘I am not one of the Four Just Men,’ he said; ‘whoever says I am – lies.’

‘And is that all you have to say?’ she asked scornfully.

‘That is all,’ was his calm reply.

‘Do you deny that you helped slay our comrade Starque?’

‘I do not deny it,’ he said easily, ‘I did not help – I killed him.’

‘Ah!’ the exclamation came simultaneously from every throat.

‘Do you deny that you have killed many of the Red Hundred?’

He paused before he answered.

‘As to the Red Hundred – I do not know; but I have killed many people.’ He spoke with the grave air of a man filled with a sense of responsibility, and again the exclamatory hum ran through the hall. Yet, the Woman of Gratz had a growing sense of unrest in spite of the success of the examination.

‘You have said you were in Russia – did men fall to your hand
there?’

He nodded.

‘And in England?’

‘Also in England,’ he said.

‘What is your name?’ she asked. By an oversight it was a question she had not put before.

The man shrugged his shoulders.

‘Does it matter?’ he asked.

A thought struck her. In the hall she had seen Magnus the Jew. He had lived for many years in England, and she beckoned him.

‘Of what class is this man?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘Of the lower orders,’ he replied; ‘it is astounding – did you not notice when – no, you did not see his capture. But he spoke like a man of the streets, dropping his aspirates.’

He saw she looked puzzled and explained.

‘It is a trick of the order – just as the Moujik says . . . ’ he treated her to a specimen of colloquial Russian.

‘What is your name?’ she asked again.

He looked at her slyly.

‘In Russia they called me Father Kopab . . . ’ [
Footnote:
Kopab
: literally, ‘head-off’
]

The majority of those who were present were Russian, and at the word they sprang to their feet, shrinking back with ashen faces, as though they feared contact with the man who stood bound and helpless in the middle of the room.

The Woman of Gratz had risen with the rest. Her lips quivered and her wide open eyes spoke her momentary terror.

‘I killed Starque,’ he went on, ‘by authority. François also. Some day – ’ he looked leisurely about the room – ‘I shall also – ’

‘Stop!’ she cried, and then: ‘Release him,’ she said, and, wonderingly, Smidt cut the bonds that bound him.

He stretched himself. ‘When you took me,’ he said, ‘I had a book; you will understand that here in England I find – forgetfulness in books – and I, who have seen so much suffering and want caused through departure from the law, am striving as hard for the regeneration of mankind as you – but differently.’

Somebody handed him a book.

He looked at it, nodded, and slipped it into his pocket.

‘Farewell,’ he said as he turned to the open door.

‘In God’s name!’ said the Woman of Gratz, trembling, ‘go in peace, Little Father.’

And the man Jessen, sometime headsman to the Supreme Council, and latterly public executioner of England, walked out, no man barring his exit.

* * *

The power of the Red Hundred was broken. This much Falmouth knew. He kept an ever-vigilant band of men on duty at the great termini of London, and to these were attached the members of a dozen secret police forces of Europe. Day by day, there was the same report to make. Such and such a man, whose very presence in London had been unsuspected, had left via Harwich. So-and-so, surprisingly sprung from nowhere, had gone by the eleven o’clock train from Victoria; by the Hull and Stockholm route twenty had gone in one day, and there were others who made Liverpool, Glasgow, and Newcastle their port of embarkation.