The Complete Four Just Men (57 page)

He came quickly to meet them.

‘Which is Mr Fuentes?’ he asked, speaking in English.

‘I am Signor Fuentes,’ replied Manfred, with a smile, ‘but it is my friend who is the criminologist.’

‘Delighted to meet you both – but I have an apology to make to you;’ he said, speaking hurriedly. ‘By some mischance – the stupidity of one of my men – the letter addressed to Fare was not posted. I only discovered it half an hour ago. I hope you don’t mind.’

Manfred murmured something conventional and then the door opened to admit a lady.

‘I want to present you to her ladyship,’ said Lord Pertham.

The woman who came in was thin and vinegary: a pair of pale eyes, a light-lipped mouth and a trick of frowning deprived her of whatever charm Nature had given to her.

Leon Gonsalez, who analysed faces automatically and mechanically, thought, ‘Spite – suspicion – uncharity – vanity.’

The frown deepened as she offered a limp hand.

‘Dinner is ready, Pertham,’ she said, and made no attempt to be agreeable to her guests.

It was an awkward meal. Lord Pertham was nervous and his nervousness might have communicated itself to the two men if they had been anything but what they were. This big man seemed to be in terror of his wife – was deferential, even humble in her presence, and when at last she swept her sour face from the room he made no attempt to hide his sigh of relief.

‘I am afraid we haven’t given you a very good dinner,’ he said. ‘Her ladyship has had a little – er – disagreement with my cook.’

Apparently her ladyship was in the habit of having little disagreements with her cook, for in the course of the conversation which followed he casually mentioned certain servants in his household who were no longer in his employ. He spoke mostly of their facial characteristics, and it seemed to Manfred, who was listening as intently as his companion, that his lordship was not a great authority upon the subject. He spoke haltingly, made several obvious slips, but Leon did not correct him. He mentioned casually that he had an additional interest in criminals because his own life had been threatened.

‘Let us go up and join my lady,’ he said after a long and blundering exposition of some phase of criminology which Manfred could have sworn he had read up for the occasion.

They went up the broad stairs into a little drawing-room on the first floor. It was empty. His lordship was evidently surprised.

‘I wonder – ’ he began, when the door opened and Lady Pertham ran in. Her face was white and her thin lips were trembling.

‘Pertham,’ she said rapidly, ‘I’m sure there’s a man in my dressing-room.’

‘In your dressing-room?’ said Lord Pertham, and ran out quickly.

The two men would have followed him, but he stopped half-way up the stairs and waved them back.

‘You had better wait with her ladyship,’ he said. ‘Ring for Thomas, my love,’ he said.

Standing at the foot of the stairs they heard him moving about. Presently they heard a cry and the sound of a struggle. Manfred was half-way up the stairs when a door slammed above. Then came the sound of voices and a shot, followed by a heavy fall.

Manfred flung himself against the door from whence the sound came.

‘It’s all right,’ said Lord Pertham’s voice.

A second later he unlocked the door and opened it.

‘I’m afraid I’ve killed this fellow.’

The smoking revolver was still in his hand. In the middle of the floor lay a poorly dressed man and his blood stained the pearl-grey carpet.

Gonsalez walked quickly to the body and turned it over. At the first sight he knew that the man was dead. He looked long and earnestly in his face, and Lord Pertham said: ‘Do you know him?’

‘I think so,’ said Gonsalez quietly. ‘He is my colour-blind criminal,’ for he had recognised the brother of Mrs Prothero.

They walked home to their lodgings that night leaving Lord Pertham closeted with a detective-inspector, and Lady Pertham in hysterics.

Neither man spoke until they reached their flat, then Leon, with a sigh of content, curled up in the big armchair and pulled lovingly at an evil-smelling cigar.

‘Leon!’

He took no notice.

‘Leon!’

Leon shifted his head round and met George’s eye.

‘Did anything about that shooting tonight strike you as peculiar?’

‘Several things,’ said Leon.

‘Such as?’

‘Such as the oddness of the fate that took Slippery Bill – that was the name of my burglar – to Lord Pertham’s house. It was not odd that he should commit the burglary, because he was a ladder larcenist, as you call him. By the way, did you look at the dead man’s hand?’ he asked, twisting round and peering across the table at Manfred.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said the other in surprise.

‘What a pity – you would have thought it still more peculiar. What are the things you were thinking of?’

‘I was wondering why Lord Pertham carried a revolver. He must have had it in his pocket at dinner.’

‘That is easily explained,’ said Gonsalez. ‘Don’t you remember his telling us that his life had been threatened in anonymous letters?’

Manfred nodded.

‘I had forgotten that,’ he said. ‘But who locked the door?’

‘The burglar, of course,’ said Leon and smiled. And by that smile Manfred knew that he was prevaricating. ‘And talking of locked doors – ’ and rose.

He went into his room and returned with two little instruments that looked like the gongs of electric bells, except that there was a prong sticking up from each.

He locked the sitting-room door and placed one of these articles on the floor, sticking the spike into the bottom of the door so that it was impossible to open without exercising pressure upon the bell. He tried it and there was a shrill peal.

‘That’s all right,’ he said, and turned to examine the windows.

‘Are you expecting burglars?’

‘I am rather,’ said Leon, ‘and really I cannot afford to lose my sleep.’

Not satisfied with the fastening of the window he pushed in a little wedge, and performed the same office to the second of the windows looking upon the street.

Another door, leading to Manfred’s room from the passage without, he treated as he had served the first.

In the middle of the night there was a frantic ring from one of the bells. Manfred leapt out of bed and switched on the light. His own door was fast and he raced into the sitting-room, but Gonsalez was there before him examining the little sentinel by the door. The door had been unlocked. He kicked away the alarm with his slippered foot.

‘Come in, Lord Pertham,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk this matter over.’

There was a momentary silence, then the sound of a slippered foot, and a man came in. He was fully dressed and hatless, and Manfred, seeing the bald head, gasped.

‘Sit down and make yourself at home, and let me relieve you of that lethal weapon you have in your pocket, because this matter can be arranged very amicably,’ said Leon.

It was undoubtedly Lord Pertham, though the great mop of hair had vanished, and Manfred could only stare as Leon’s left hand slipped into the pocket of the midnight visitor and drew forth a revolver which he placed carefully on the mantelshelf.

Lord Pertham sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. For a while the silence was unbroken.

‘You may remember the Honourable George Fearnside,’ began Leon, and Manfred started.

‘Fearnside? Why, he was on the Prince’s yacht – ’

‘He was on the Prince’s yacht,’ agreed Gonsalez, ‘and we thoroughly believed that he did not associate us with escaping malefactors, but apparently he knew us for the Four Just Men. You came into your title about six years ago, didn’t you, Pertham?’

The bowed figure nodded. Presently he sat up – his face was white and there were black circles about his eyes.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it seems that instead of getting you, you have got me. Now what are you going to do?’

Gonsalez laughed softly.

‘For myself,’ he said, ‘I am certainly not going in the witness-box to testify that Lord Pertham is a bigamist and for many years has been leading a double life. Because that would mean I should also have to admit certain uncomfortable things about myself.’

The man licked his lips and then: ‘I came to kill you,’ he said thickly.

‘So we gather,’ said Manfred. ‘What is this story, Leon?’

‘Perhaps his lordship will tell us,’ said Gonsalez.

Lord Pertham looked round for something.

‘I want a glass of water,’ he said, and it was Leon who brought it.

‘It is perfectly true,’ said Lord Pertham after a while. ‘I recognised you fellows as two of the Four Just Men. I used to be a great friend of His Highness, and it was by accident that I was on board the yacht when you were taken off. His Highness told me a yarn about some escapade, but when I got to Spain and read the newspaper account of the escape I was pretty certain that I knew who you were. You probably know something about my early life, how I went before the mast as a common sailor and travelled all over the world. It was the kind of life which satisfied me more than any other, for I got to know people and places and to know them from an angle which I should never have understood in any other way. If you ever want to see the world, travel in the fo’c’sle,’ he said with a half-smile.

‘I met Martha Grey one night in the East End of London at a theatre. When I was a seaman I acted like a seaman. My father and I were not on the best of terms and I never wanted to go home. She sat by my side in the pit of the theatre and ridiculous as it may seem to you I fell in love with her.’

‘You were then married?’ said Leon, but the man shook his head.

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Like a fool I was persuaded to marry her ladyship about three months later, after I had got sick of the sea and had come back to my own people. She was an heiress and it was a good match for me. That was before my father had inherited his cousin’s money. My life with her ladyship was a hell upon earth. You saw her tonight and you can guess the kind of woman she is. I have too great a respect for women and live too much in awe of them to exercise any control over her viperish temper and it was the miserable life I lived with her which drove me to seek out Martha.

‘Martha is a good girl,’ he said, and there was a glitter in his eye as he challenged denial. ‘The purest, the dearest, the sweetest woman that ever lived. It was when I met her again that I realised how deeply in love I was, and as with a girl of her character there was no other way – I married her.

‘I had fever when I was on a voyage to Australia and lost all my hair. That was long before I met Martha. I suppose it was vanity on my part, but when I went back to my own life and my own people, as I did for a time after that, I had a wig made which served the double purpose of concealing my infirmity and preventing my being recognised by my former shipmates.

‘As the little hair I had had gone grey I had the wig greyed too, had it made large and poetical – ’ he smiled sadly, ‘to make my disguise more complete. Martha didn’t mind my bald head. God bless her!’ he said softly, ‘and my life with her has been a complete and unbroken period of happiness. I have to leave her at times to manage my own affairs and in those times I pretend to be at sea, just as I used to pretend to her ladyship that business affairs called me to America to explain my absence from her.’

‘The man you shot was Martha’s half-brother, of course,’ said Gonsalez, and Lord Pertham nodded.

‘It was just ill luck which brought him to my house,’ he said, ‘sheer bad luck. In the struggle my wig came off, he recognised me and I shot him,’ he said simply. ‘I shot him deliberately and in cold blood, not only because he threatened to wreck my happiness, but because for years he has terrorised his sister and has been living on her poor earnings.’

Gonsalez nodded.

‘I saw grey hair in his hands and I guessed what had happened,’ he said.

‘Now what are you going to do?’ asked the Earl of Pertham.

Leon was smoking now.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked in retort. ‘Perhaps you would like me to tell you?’

‘I should,’ said the man earnestly.

‘You are going to take your bigamous wife abroad just as soon as this inquest is over, and you are going to wait a reasonable time and then persuade your wife to get a divorce. After which you will marry your Mrs Prothero in your own name,’ said Gonsalez.

‘Leon,’ said Manfred after Fearnside had gone back to the room above, the room he had taken in the hope of discovering how much Gonsalez knew, ‘I think you are a thoroughly unmoral person. Suppose Lady Pertham does not divorce his lordship?’

Leon laughed.

‘There is really no need for her to divorce Lord Pertham,’ he said, ‘for his lordship told us a little lie. He married his Martha first, deserted her and went back to her. I happen to know this because I have already examined both registers, and I know there was a Mrs Prothero before there was a Lady Pertham.’

‘You’re a wonderful fellow, Leon,’ said Manfred admiringly.

‘I am,’ admitted Leon Gonsalez.

The Man who loved Music

The most striking characteristics of Mr Homer Lynne were his deep and wide sympathies, and his love of Tschaikovsky’s ‘1812’. He loved music generally, but his neighbours in Pennerthon Road, Hampstead, could testify with vehemence and asperity to his preference for that great battle piece. It had led from certain local unpleasantness to a police-court application, having as its object the suppression of Mr Homer Lynne as a public nuisance, and finally to the exchange of lawyers’ letters and the threat of an action in the High Court.

That so sympathetic and kindly a gentleman should utterly disregard the feelings and desires of his neighbours, that he should have in his bedroom the largest gramophone that Hampstead had ever known, and a gramophone, moreover, fitted with an automatic arm, so that no sooner was the record finished than the needle was switched to the outer edge of the disc and began all over again, and that he should choose the midnight hour for his indulgence, were facts as strange as they were deplorable.

Mr Lynne had urged at the police court that the only method he had discovered for so soothing his nerves that he could ensure himself a night’s sleep, was to hear that thunderous piece.

That Mr Lynne was sympathetic at least three distressed parents could testify. He was a theatrical agent with large interests in South America; he specialised in the collection of ‘turns’ for some twenty halls large and small, and the great artists who had travelled through the Argentine and Mexico, Chile and Brazil, had nothing but praise for the excellent treatment they had received at the hands of those Mr Lynne represented. It was believed, and was in truth, a fact, that he was financially interested in quite a number of these places of amusement, which may have accounted for the courtesy and attention which the great performers received on their tour.

He also sent out a number of small artists – microscopically small artists whose names had never figured on the play bills of Britain. They were chosen for their beauty, their sprightliness and their absence of ties.

‘It’s a beautiful country,’ Mr Homer Lynne would say.

He was a grave, smooth man, clean-shaven, save for a sign of grey side-whiskers, and people who did not know him would imagine that he was a successful lawyer, with an ecclesiastical practice.

‘It’s a beautiful country,’ he would say, ‘but I don’t know whether I like sending a young girl out there. Of course, you’ll have a good salary, and live well – have you any relations?’

If the girl produced a brother or a father, or even a mother, or an intimate maiden aunt, Mr Lynne would nod and promise to write on the morrow, a promise which he fulfilled, regretting that he did not think the applicant would quite suit his purpose – which was true. But if she were isolated from these connections, if there were no relations to whom she would write, or friends who were likely to pester him with enquiries, her first-class passage was forthcoming – but not for the tour which the great artists followed, nor for the bigger halls where they would be likely to meet. They were destined for smaller halls, which were not so much theatre as cabaret.

Now and again, on three separate occasions to be exact, the applicant for an engagement would basely deceive him. She would say she had no relations, and lo! there would appear an inquisitive brother, or, as in the present case, a father.

On a bright morning in June, Mr Lynne sat in his comfortable chair, his hands folded, regarding gravely a nervous little man who sat on the other side of the big mahogany desk balancing his bowler hat on his knees.

‘Rosie Goldstein,’ said Mr Lynne thoughtfully, ‘I seem to remember the name.’

He rang a bell and a dark young man answered.

‘Bring me my engagement book, Mr Mandez,’ said Mr Lynne.

‘You see how it is, Mr Lynne,’ said the caller anxiously – he was unmistakably Hebraic and very nervous. ‘I hadn’t any idea that Rosie had gone abroad until a friend of hers told me that she had come here and got an engagement.’

‘I see,’ said Mr Lynne. ‘She did not tell you she was going.’

‘No, sir.’

The dark young man returned with the book and Mr Lynne turned the pages leisurely, running his finger down a list of names.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Rosie Goldstein. Yes, I remember the girl now, but she told me she was an orphan.’

Goldstein nodded.

‘I suppose she thought I’d stop her,’ he said with a sigh of relief. ‘But as long as I know where she is, I’m not so worried. Have you her present address?’

Lynne closed the book carefully and beamed at the visitor.

‘I haven’t her present address,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but if you will write her a letter and address it to me, I will see that it goes forward to our agents in Buenos Aires: they, of course, will be able to find her. You see, there are a large number of halls in connection with the circuit, and it is extremely likely that she may be performing up-country. It is quite impossible to keep track of every artist.’

‘I understand that, sir,’ said the grateful little Jew.

‘She ought to have told you,’ said the sympathetic Lynne shaking his head.

He really meant that she ought to have told him.

‘However, we’ll see what can be done.’

He offered his plump hand to the visitor, and the dark young man showed him to the door.

Three minutes later Mr Lynne was interviewing a pretty girl who had the advantage of stage experience – she had been a member of a beauty chorus in a travelling revue. And when the eager girl had answered questions relating to her stage experiences, which were few, Mr Lynne came to the real crux of the interview.

‘Now what do your father and mother say about this idea of your accepting this engagement to go abroad?’ he asked with his most benevolent smile.

‘I have no father or mother,’ said the girl, and Mr Lynne guessed from the momentary quiver of the lips that she had lost one of these recently.

‘You have brothers, perhaps?’

‘I have no brothers,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I haven’t any relations in the world, Mr Lynne. You will let me go, won’t you?’ she pleaded.

Mr Lynne would let her go. If the truth be told, the minor ‘artists’ he sent to the South American continent were infinitely more profitable than the great performers whose names were household words in London.

‘I will write you tomorrow,’ he said conventionally.

‘You will let me go?’

He smiled. ‘You are certain to go, Miss Hacker. You need have no fear on the subject. I will send you on the contract – no, you had better come here and sign it.’

The girl ran down the stairs into Leicester Square, her heart singing. An engagement at three times bigger than the biggest salary she had ever received! She wanted to tell everybody about it, though she did not dream that in a few seconds she would babble her happiness to a man who at that moment was a perfect stranger.

He
was a foreign-looking
gentleman,
well
dressed
and
good-looking. He had the kind of face that appeals to children – an appeal that no psychologist has ever yet analysed.

She met him literally by accident. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs as she came down, and missing her footing she tell forward into his arms.

‘I am ever so sorry,’ she said with a smile.

‘You don’t look very sorry,’ smiled the man. ‘You look more like a person who had just got a very nice engagement to go abroad.’

She stared at him.

‘However did you know that?’

‘I know it because – well, I know,’ he laughed, and apparently abandoning his intention of going upstairs, he turned and walked with her into the street.

‘Yes, I am,’ she nodded. ‘I’ve had a wonderful opportunity. Are you in the profession?’

‘No, I’m not in the profession,’ said Leon Gonsalez, ‘if you mean the theatrical profession, but I know the countries you’re going to rather well. Would you like to hear something about the Argentine?’

She looked at him dubiously.

‘I should very much,’ she hesitated, ‘but I – ’

‘I’m going to have a cup of tea, come along,’ said Leon good-humouredly.

Though she had no desire either for tea or even for the interview (though she was dying to tell somebody) the magnetic personality of the man held her, and she fell in by his side. And at that very moment Mr Lynne was saying to the dark-skinned man:

‘Fonsio! She’s a beaut!’ and that staid man kissed the bunched tips of his fingers ecstatically.

This was the third time Leon Gonsalez had visited the elegant offices of Mr Homer Lynne in Panton Street.

Once there was an organisation which was called the Four Just Men, and these had banded themselves together to execute justice upon those whom the law had missed, or passed by, and had earned for themselves a reputation which was world-wide. One had died, and of the three who were left, Poiccart (who had been called the brains of the four) was living quietly in Seville. To him had come a letter from a compatriot in Rio, a compatriot who did not identify him with the organisation of the Four Just Men, but had written vehemently of certain abominations. There had been an exchange of letters, and Poiccart had discovered that most of these fresh English girls who had appeared in the dance halls of obscure towns had been imported through the agency of the respectable Mr Lynne, and Poiccart had written to his friends in London.

‘Yes, it’s a beautiful country,’ said Leon Gonsalez, stirring his tea thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you’re awfully pleased with yourself.’

‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ said the girl. ‘Fancy, I’m going to receive £12 a week and my board and lodging. Why, I shall be able to save almost all of it.’

‘Have you any idea where you will perform?’

The girl smiled.

‘I don’t know the country,’ she said, ‘and it’s dreadfully ignorant of me, but I don’t know one single town in the Argentine.’

‘There aren’t many people who do,’ smiled Leon, ‘but you’ve heard of Brazil, I suppose?’

‘Yes, it’s a little country in South America,’ she nodded, ‘I know that.’

‘Where the nuts come from,’ laughed Leon. ‘No, it’s not a little country in South America: it’s a country as wide as from here to the centre of Persia, and as long as from Brighton to the equator. Does that give you any idea?’

She stared at him.

And then he went on, but confined himself to the physical features of the sub-continent. Not once did he refer to her contract – that was not his object. That object was disclosed, though not to her, when he said: ‘I must send you a book. Miss Hacker: it will interest you if you are going to the Argentine. It is full of very accurate information.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said gratefully. ‘Shall I give you my address?’

That was exactly what Leon had been fishing for. He put the scrap of paper she had written on into his pocket-book, and left her.

George Manfred, who had acquired a two-seater car, picked him up outside the National Gallery, and drove him to Kensington Gardens, the refreshment buffet of which, at this hour of the day, was idle. At one of the deserted tables Leon disclosed the result of his visit.

‘It was singularly fortunate that I should have met one of the lambs.’

‘Did you see Lynne himself?’

Leon nodded.

‘After I left the girl I went up and made a call. It was rather difficult to get past the Mexican gentleman – Mandez I think his name is – into the sanctum but eventually Lynne saw me.’

He chuckled softly: ‘I do not play on the banjo; I declare this to you, my dear George, in all earnestness. The banjo to me is a terrible instrument – ’

‘Which, means,’ said Manfred with a smile, ‘that you described yourself as a banjo soloist who wanted a job in South America.’

‘Exactly,’ said Leon, ‘and I need hardly tell you that I was not engaged. The man is interesting, George.’

‘All men are interesting to you, Leon,’ laughed Manfred, putting aside the coffee he had ordered, and lighting a long, thin cigar.

‘I should have loved to tell him that his true vocation was arson. He has the face of the true incendiary, and I tell you George, that Lombroso was never more accurate than when he described that type. A fair, clear, delicate skin, a plump, babylike face, hair extraordinarily fine: you can pick them out anywhere.’

He caressed his chin and frowned.

‘Callous destruction of human happiness also for profit. I suppose the same type of mind would commit both crimes. It is an interesting parallel. I should like to consult our dear friend Poiccart on that subject.’

‘Can he be touched by the law?’ asked Manfred. ‘Is there no way of betraying him?’

‘Absolutely none,’ said Leon shortly. ‘The man is a genuine agent. He has the names of some of the best people on his books and they all speak loudly in his praise. The lie that is half a lie is easier to detect than the criminal who is half honest. If the chief cashier of the Bank of England turned forger, he would be the most successful forger in the world. This man has covered himself at every point. I had a talk with a Jewish gentleman – a pathetic old soul named Goldstein, whose daughter went abroad some seven or eight months ago. He has not heard from her, and he told me that Lynne was very much surprised to discover that she had any relations at all. The unrelated girl is his best investment.’

‘Did Lynne give the old man her address?’

Leon shrugged his shoulders.

‘There are a million square miles in the Argentine – where is she? Cordoba, Tucuman, Mendoza, San Louis, Santa Fé, Rio Cuarto, those are a few towns. And there are hundreds of towns where this girl may be dancing, towns which have no British or American Consul. It’s rather horrible, George.’

Manfred looked thoughtfully across the green spaces in the park.

‘If we could be sure,’ said Gonsalez softly. ‘It will take exactly two months to satisfy us, and I think it would be worth the money. Our young friend will leave by the next South American packet, and you, some time ago, were thinking of returning to Spain. I think I will take the trip.’

George nodded.

‘I thought you would,’ he said. ‘I really can’t see how we can act unless you do.’