The Complete Four Just Men (61 page)

‘I did not look it up,’ replied Gonsalez carelessly, ‘and if he dies, shall I weep? Give him another dose in half an hour, George. I will return by then.’

He took from his pocket a small black case, and opened it; the hypodermic syringe it contained was already charged, and rolling back the man’s sleeve, he inserted the needle and pressed home the piston.

* * *

Mr Birn woke the next morning with a throbbing headache.

He had no recollection of how he had got to bed, yet evidently he had undressed himself, for he was clad in his violet pyjamas. He rang the bell and got on to the floor, and though the room spun round him, he was able to hold himself erect.

The bell brought his housekeeper.

‘What happened to me last night?’ he asked, and she looked astounded.

‘Nothing, sir. I left you in the library.’

‘It is that beastly whisky,’ grumbled Mr Birn.

A cold bath and a cup of tea helped to dissipate the headache, but he was still shaky when he went into the room in which he had been sitting the night before.

A thought had occurred to him. A terrifying thought. Suppose the whisky had been drugged (though what opportunity there had been for drugging his drink he could not imagine) and somebody had broken in! . . .

He opened the safe and breathed a sigh of relief. The package was still there. It must have been the whisky, he grumbled, and declining breakfast, he ordered his car and was driven straight to the bank.

When he reached his office, he found the hatchet-faced young man in a state of agitation.

‘I think we must have had burglars here last night, Mr Birn.’

‘Burglars?’ said Mr Birn alarmed. And then with a laugh, ‘well, they wouldn’t get much here. But what makes you think they have been?’

‘Somebody has been in the room, that I’ll swear,’ said the young man. ‘The safe was open when I came and one of the books had been taken out and left on your table.’

A slow smile dawned on Mr Birn’s face.

‘I wish them luck,’ he said.

Nevertheless he was perturbed, and made a careful search of all his papers to see if any important documents had been abstracted. His promissory notes were at the bank, in that same large box wherein was deposited the necklace which had come to him for the settlement of a debt.

Just before noon his clerk came in quickly.

‘That fellow is here,’ he whispered.

‘Which fellow?’ growled Mr Birn.

‘The man from Jermyn Street who stopped the payment of Eden’s cheques.’

‘Ask him in,’ said Mr Birn. ‘Well, sir,’ he said jovially, ‘have you thought better about settling those debts?’

‘Better and better,’ said Gonsalez. ‘I can speak to you alone, I suppose?’

Birn signalled his assistant to leave them.

‘I’ve come to settle all sorts of debts. For example, I’ve come to settle the debt of a gentleman named Chaucer.’

The gambling-house keeper started.

‘A very charming fellow, Chaucer. I’ve been interviewing him this morning. Some time ago he had a shock which brought on a stroke of paralysis. He’s not been able to leave his room in consequence for some time.’

‘You’re telling me a lot I don’t want to hear about.’ said Mr Birn briskly.

‘The poor fellow is under the impression that he killed a red-haired croupier of yours. Apparently he was gambling and lost his head, when he saw your croupier taking a bill.’

‘My croupier,’ said the other with virtuous indignation. ‘What do you mean? I don’t know what a croupier is.’

‘He hit him over the head with a money-rake. You came to Chaucer the next day and told him your croupier was dead, seeking to extract money from him. You soon found he was ruined. You found also he had a very beautiful daughter, and it occurred to you that she might be of use to you in your nefarious schemes, so you had a little talk with her and she agreed to enter your service in order to save her father from ruin and possibly imprisonment.’

‘This is a fairy story you’re telling me, is it?’ said Birn, but his face had gone a pasty white and the hand that took the cigar from his lips trembled.

‘To bolster up your scheme,’ Gonsalez went on, ‘you inserted an advertisement in the death column of
The Times
and also you sent to the local newspaper a very flowery account of Mr Jinkins’s funeral, which was also intended for Chaucer and his daughter.’

‘It’s Greek to me,’ murmured Mr Birn with a pathetic attempt at a smile.

‘I interviewed Mr Chaucer this morning and was able to assure him that Jinkins is very much alive and is living at Brighton, and is running a little gambling-house – a branch of your many activities. And by the way, Mr Birn, I don’t think you will see Elsie Chaucer again.’

Birn was breathing heavily. ‘You know a hell of a lot,’ he began, but something in Leon’s eyes stopped him.

‘Birn,’ said Gonsalez softly. ‘I am going to ruin you – to take away every penny of the money you have stolen from the foolish men who patronise your establishments.’

‘Try it on,’ said Birn shakily. ‘There’s a law in this country! Go and rob the bank, and you’d have little to rob,’ he added with a grin. ‘There’s two hundred thousand pounds’ worth of securities in my bank – gilt-edged ones, Mr Clever! Go and ask the bank manager to hand them over to you. They’re in Box 65,’ he jeered. ‘That’s the only way you can ruin me, my son.’

Leon rose with a shrug.

‘Perhaps I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘Perhaps after all you will enjoy your ill-gotten gains.’

‘You bet your life I will.’ Mr Birn relit his cigar.

He remembered the conversation that afternoon when he received an urgent telephone message from the bank. What the manager said took him there as fast as a taxi could carry him.

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with your strong box,’ said the bank manager, ‘but one of my clerks who had to go into the vault said there was an extraordinary smell, and when we looked at the box, we found a stream of smoke coming through the keyhole.’

‘Why didn’t you open it?’ screamed Birn, fumbling for his key.

‘Partly because I haven’t a key, Mr Birn,’ said the bank manager intelligently.

With shaking hands the financier inserted the key and threw back the lid. A dense cloud of acrid yellow smoke came up and nearly stifled him . . . all that remained of his perfectly good securities was a black, sticky mess; a glass bottle, a few dull gems and nothing . . .

* * *

‘It looks to me,’ said the detective officer who investigated the circum
stance, ‘as though you must have inadvertently put in a package containing a very strong acid. What the acid is our analysts are working on now. It must have either leaked out or burst.’

‘The only package there,’ wailed Mr Birn, ‘was a package containing a diamond necklace.’

‘The remnants of which are still there,’ said the detective. ‘You are quite sure nobody could get at that package and substitute a destroying agent? It could easily be made. A bottle such as we found – a stopper made of some easily consumed material and there you are! Could
anybody
have opened
the package
and
slipped
the bottle inside?’

‘Impossible, impossible,’ moaned the financier.

He was sitting with his face in his hands, weeping for his lost affluence, for though a few of the contents of that box could be replaced, there were certain American bonds which had gone for ever and promissory notes by the thousand which would never be signed again.

The Man who would not Speak

But for the fact that he was already the possessor of innumerable
coats-of-arms, quarterings, family mottoes direct and affiliated, Leon
Gonsalez might have taken for his chief motto the tag ‘
homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto
.’ For there was no sphere of human activity which did not fascinate him. Wherever crowds gathered, wherever man in the aggregate was to be seen at his best or worst, there was Gonsalez to be found, oblivious to the attractions which had drawn the throng together, intensely absorbed in the individual members of the throng themselves.

Many years ago four young men, wealthy and intensely sincere, had come together with a common purpose inspired by one common ideal. There had been, and always will be, such combinations of enthusiasts. Great religious revivals, the creation of missions and movements of sociological reform, these and other developments have resulted from the joining together of fiery young zealots.

But the Four Just Men had as their objective the correction of the law’s inequalities. They sought and found the men whom the wide teeth of the legal rake had left behind, and they dealt out their justice with terrible swiftness.

None of the living three (for one had died at Bordeaux) had departed from their ideals, but it was Leon who retained the appearance of that youthful enthusiasm which had brought them together.

He sought for interests in all manner of places, and it is at the back of the grand-stand on Hurst Park racecourse that he first saw ‘Spaghetti’ Jones. It is one of the clear laws of coincidence, that if, in reading a book, you come across a word which you have not seen before, and which necessitates a reference to the dictionary, that same word will occur within three days on some other printed page. This law of the Inexplicable Recurrences applies equally to people, and Leon, viewing the bulk of the big man, had a queer feeling that they were destined to meet again – Leon’s instincts were seldom at fault.

Mr Spaghetti Jones was a tall, strong and stoutly built man, heavy eyed and heavy jawed. He had a long dark moustache which curled at the ends, and he wore a green and white bow tie that the startling pink of his shirt might not be hidden from the world. There were diamond rings on his fat fingers, and a cable chain across his figured waistcoat. He was attired in a very bright blue suit, perfectly tailored, and violently yellow boots encased his feet, which were small for a man of his size. In fact, Mr Spaghetti Jones was a model of what Mr Spaghetti Jones thought a gentleman should be.

It was not his rich attire, nor his greatness of bulk, which ensured for him Leon’s fascinated interest. Gonsalez had strolled to the back of the stand whilst the race was in progress, and the paddock was empty. Empty save for Mr Jones and two men, both smaller and both more poorly dressed than he.

Leon had taken a seat near the ring where the horses paraded, and it happened that the party strolled towards him. Spaghetti Jones made no attempt to lower his voice. It was rich and full of volume, and Leon heard every word. One of the men appeared to be quarrelling: the other, after a vain attempt to act as arbitrator, had subsided into silence.

‘I told you to be at Lingfield, and you weren’t there,’ Mr Jones was saying gently.

He was cleaning his nails with a small penknife, Leon saw, and apparently his attention was concentrated on the work of beautification.

‘I’m not going to Lingfield, or to anywhere else, for you, Jones.’ said the man angrily.

He was a sharp, pale-faced man, and Leon knew from the note in his voice that he was frightened, and was employing this blustering manner to hide his fear.

‘Oh, you’re not going to Lingfield or anywhere else, aren’t you?’ repeated Spaghetti Jones.

He pushed his hat to the back of his head, and raised his eyes momentarily, and then resumed his manicuring.

‘I’ve had enough of you and your crowd,’ the man went on. ‘We’re blooming slaves, that’s what we are! I can make more money running alone, now do you see?’

‘I see,’ said Jones. ‘But, Tom, I want you to be at Sandown next Thursday. Meet me in the ring – ’

‘I won’t, I won’t,’ roared the other, red of face. ‘I’ve finished with you, and all your crowd!’

‘You’re a naughty boy,’ said Spaghetti Jones almost kindly.

He slashed twice at the other’s face with his little penknife, and the man jumped back with a cry.

‘You’re a naughty boy,’ said Jones, returning to the contemplation of his nails, ‘and you’ll be at Sandown when I tell you.’

With that he turned and walked away.

The man called Tom pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his bleeding face. There were two long shallow gashes – Mr Jones knew to an nth of an inch how deeply he could go in safety – but they were ugly and painful.

The wounded man glared after the retreating figure, and showed his discoloured teeth in an ugly grin, but Leon knew that he would report for duty at Sandown as he was ordered.

The sight was immensely interesting to Leon Gonsalez.

He came back to the flat in Jermyn Street full of it.

Manfred was out visiting his dentist, but the moment he came into the doorway Leon babbled forth his discovery.

‘Absolutely the most amazing fellow I’ve seen in my life, George!’ he cried enthusiastically. ‘A gorgeous atavism – a survival of the age of cruelty such as one seldom meets. You remember that shepherd we found at Escorial? He was the nearest, I think. This man’s name is Spaghetti Jones,’ he went on, ‘he is the leader of a racecourse gang which blackmails bookmakers. His nickname is derived from the fact that he has Italian blood and lives in the Italian quarter, and I should imagine from the general asymmetry of the face, and the fullness of his chin, that there is a history of insanity, and certainly epilepsy, on the maternal side of his family.’

Manfred did not ask how Leon had made these discoveries. Put Leon on the track of an interesting ‘subject’ and he would never leave it until it was dissected fibre by fibre and laid bare for his examination.

‘He has a criminal record – I suppose?’

Gonsalez laughed, delighted.

‘That is where you’re wrong, my dear Manfred. He has never been convicted, and probably never will be. I found a poor little bookmaker in the silver ring – the silver ring is the enclosure where smaller bets are made than in Tattersall’s reservation – who has been paying tribute to Caesar for years. He was a little doleful and maudlin, otherwise he would not have told me what he did. I drove him to a public-house in Cobham, far from the madding crowd, and he drank gin (which is the most wholesome drink obtainable in this country, if people only knew it) until he wept, and weeping unbuttoned his soul.’

Manfred smiled and rang the bell for dinner.

‘The law will lay him low sooner or later: I have a great faith in English law,’ he said. ‘It misses far fewer times than any other law that is administered in the world.’

‘But will it?’ said Leon doubtfully. ‘I’d like to talk with the courteous Mr Fare about this gentleman.’

‘You’ll have an opportunity,’ said Manfred, ‘for we are dining with him tomorrow night at the Metropolitan Restaurant.’

Their credentials as Spanish criminologists had served them well with Mr Fare and they in turn had assisted him – and Fare was thankful.

It was after the Sunday night dinner, when they were smoking their cigars, and most of the diners at the Metropolitan had strayed out into the dancing-room, that Leon told his experience.

Fare nodded.

‘Oh yes. Spaghetti Jones is a hard case,’ he said. ‘We have never been able to get him, although he has been associated with some pretty unpleasant crimes. The man is colossal. He is brilliantly clever, in spite of his vulgarity and lack of education: he is remorseless, and he rules his little kingdom with a rod of iron. We have never been able to get one man to turn informer against him, and certainly he has never yet been caught with the goods.’

He flicked the ash of his cigar into his saucer, and looked a long time thoughtfully at the grey heap.

‘In America the Italians have a Black Hand organisation. I suppose you know that? It is a system of blackmail, the operations of which, happily, we have not seen in this country. At least, we hadn’t seen it until quite recently. I have every reason to believe that Spaghetti Jones is the guiding spirit in the one authentic case which has been brought to our notice.’

‘Here in London?’ said Manfred in surprise. ‘I hadn’t the slightest idea they tried that sort of thing in England.’

The Commissioner nodded.

‘It may, of course, be a fake, but I’ve had some of my best men on the track of the letter-writers for a month, without getting any nearer to them. I was only wondering this morning, as I was dressing, whether I could not interest you gentlemen in a case where I confess we are a little at sea. Do you know the Countess Vinci?’

To Leon’s surprise Manfred nodded.

‘I met her in Rome, about three years ago,’ he said. ‘She is the widow of Count Antonio Vinci, is she not?’

‘She is a widow with a son aged nine,’ said the Commissioner, ‘and she lives in Berkeley Square. A very wealthy lady and extremely charming. About two months ago she began to receive letters, which had no signature, but in its stead, a black cross. They were written in beautiful script writing, and that induced a suspicion of Spaghetti Jones who, in his youth, was a sign-writer.’

Leon nodded his head vigorously.

‘Of course, it is impossible to identify that kind of writing,’ he said admiringly. ‘By “script” I suppose you mean writing which is actually printed? That is a new method, and a particularly ingenious one, but I interrupted you, sir. Did these letters ask for money?’

‘They asked for money and threatened the lady as to what would happen if she failed to send to an address which was given. And here the immense nerve of Jones and his complicity was shown. Ostensibly Jones carries on the business of a newsagent. He has a small shop in Netting Hill, where he sells the morning and evening papers, and is a sort of local agent for racing tipsters whose placards you sometimes see displayed outside newspaper shops. In addition, the shop is used as an accommodation address – ’

‘Which means,’ said Manfred, ‘that people who do not want their letters addressed to their houses can have them sent there?’

The Commissioner nodded.

‘They charge twopence a letter. These accommodation addresses should, of course, be made illegal, because they open the way to all sorts of frauds. The cleverness of the move is apparent: Jones receives the letter, ostensibly on behalf of some client, the letter is in his hands, he can open it or leave it unopened so that if the police call – as we did on one occasion – there is the epistle intact! Unless we prevent it reaching his shop we are powerless to keep the letter under observation. As a matter of fact, the name of the man to whom the money was to be sent, according to the letter which the Countess received, was “H. Frascati, care of John Jones”. Jones, of course, received the answer to the Countess’s letter, put the envelope with dozens of other letters which were waiting to be claimed, and when our man went in in the evening, after having kept observation of the shop all day, he was told that the letter had been called for, and as, obviously, he could not search everybody who went in and out of the shop in the course of the day, it was impossible to prove the man’s guilt.’

‘A wonderful scheme!’ said the admiring Gonsalez. ‘Did the Countess send money?’

‘She sent £200 very foolishly,’ said Fare with a shake of his head, ‘and then when the next demand came she informed the police. A trap letter was made up and sent to Jones’s address, with the result as I have told you. She received a further note, demanding immediate payment, and threatening her and her boy, and a further trap letter was sent; this was last Thursday: and from a house on the opposite side of the road two of our officers kept observation, using field-glasses, which gave them a view of the interior of the shop. No letter was handed over during the day by Jones, so in the evening we raided the premises, and there was that letter on the shelf with the others, unopened, and we looked extremely foolish,’ said the Commissioner with a smile. He thought awhile. ‘Would you like to meet the Countess Vinci?’ he asked.

‘Very much indeed,’ said Gonsalez quickly, and looked at his watch.

‘Not tonight,’ smiled the Commissioner. ‘I will fix an interview for you tomorrow afternoon. Possibly you two ingenious gentlemen may think of something which has escaped our dull British wits.’

On their way back to Jermyn Street that night, Leon Gonsalez broke the silence with a startling question.

‘I wonder where one could get an empty house with a large bathroom and a very large bath?’ he asked thoughtfully.

‘Why ever – ?’ began Manfred, and then laughed. ‘I’m getting old, I think, Leon,’ he said as they turned into the flat. ‘There was a time when the amazing workings of your mind did not in any way surprise me. What other characteristics must this ideal home of yours possess?’

Leon scientifically twirled his hat across the room so that it fell neatly upon a peg of the hat-rack.

‘How is that for dexterity, George?’ he asked in self-admiration. ‘The house – oh well, it ought to be a little isolated, standing by itself in its own grounds, if possible. Well away from the road, and the road not often frequented. I should prefer that it was concealed from observation by bushes or trees.’

‘It sounds as if you’re contemplating a hideous crime,’ said Manfred good-humouredly.

‘Not I,’ corrected Leon quickly, ‘but I think our friend Jones is a real nasty fellow.’ He heaved a big sigh. ‘I’d give anything for his head measurements,’ he said inconsequently.

Their interview with the Countess Vinci was a pleasant one. She was a tall, pretty woman, of thirty-four, the ‘grande dame’ to her finger-tips.

Manfred, who was human, was charmed by her; for Leon Gonsalez she was too normal to be really interesting.

‘Naturally I’m rather worried,’ she said. ‘Philip is not very strong, though he is not delicate.’