The Complete Four Just Men (96 page)

‘I wondered if you would,’ said Manfred and, holding out his hand, he left his astonished host staring after him.

When he got to Curzon Street he found Gonsalez, his head in one deep armchair, his feet on another. Apparently Poiccart, who had reached home first, had told him of the callers, for he was holding forth on women.

‘They are wilful, they are unreasonable,’ he said bitterly. ‘You remember, George, that woman at Cordova, how we saved her life from her lover and how we barely saved our own at her infuriated hands – there should be a law prohibiting women from possessing firearms. Here is a case in point. Tomorrow the newspapers will tell you the harrowing story of a bride torn from the arms of her handsome bridegroom. The old ladies of Bayswater will shed tears over the tragedy, knowing nothing of the aching heart of Mr Harry Sidworth or the great inconvenience to which this strange and tragic happening has put George Manfred, Raymond Poiccart, and Leon Gonsalez.’

Manfred opened the safe in a corner of the room and put into it something he had taken from his pocket. Characteristically, Gonsalez asked no questions, and it was remarkable and significant that nobody discussed the pink diamond.

The following morning passed uneventfully, save that Leon had much to say about the hardness of the drawing-room sofa, where he had spent the night, and the three men had finished lunch and were sitting smoking over their coffee, when a ring of the bell took Poiccart into the hall.

‘Geydrew, full of bad tidings,’ said George Manfred, as the sound of a voice came to them.

Lord Geydrew it was, shrill with his tremendous information.

‘Have you heard the news? . . . Guntheimer has disappeared! The waiter went to his room this morning, could get no answer, opened the door with his key and walked in. The bed had not been slept in . . . all his luggage was there, and on the floor – ’

‘Let me guess,’ said Manfred, and held his forehead. ‘The jewel case was smashed to smithereens, without a single jewel in it! Or was it – ’

But Lord Geydrew’s face told him that his first guess was accurate.

‘How did you know?’ he gasped. ‘It wasn’t in the papers – my God, this is awful!’

In his agitation, he did not notice that Leon Gonsalez had slipped from the room, and only missed him when he turned to find the one man in whom, for some extraordinary reason, he had faith.

(‘Geydrew never did trust you or me,’ said George afterwards.)

‘I’m ashamed to confess it,’ smiled Manfred. ‘That was sheer guesswork. The jewel case had the appearance of being jumped on – I don’t wonder!’

‘But – but – ’ stammered the nobleman, and at that minute the door opened and he stood amazed.

A smiling girl was there, and in another instant was in his arms.

‘Here’s your Angela,’ said Leon, with great coolness, ‘and with all due respect to everybody, I shan’t be sorry to sleep in my own bed tonight. George, that sofa must be sent back to the brigands who supplied it.’

But George was at the safe, lifting out a red leather jewel case.

* * *

It was a long time before Geydrew was calm enough to hear the story.

‘My friend Leon Gonsalez,’ said Manfred, ‘has a wonderful memory for faces – so have we all, for the matter of that. But Leon is specially gifted. He was waiting at Waterloo to drive friend Poiccart home. Raymond had been to Winchester to see a surgeon friend of ours over a matter of a sprained leg. Whilst Leon was waiting he saw Guntheimer and your daughter and instantly recognized Guntheimer whose other name is Lanstry, or Smith, or Malikin. Guntheimer’s graft is bigamy, and Leon happens to know him rather well. A few inquiries made of the porter, and he discovered, not the identity of your daughter, but that this man had married that day. He approached Angela with a cock and bull story that some mysterious body was waiting to see her outside the station. I will not say that she imagined that mysterious body was Harry Sidworth, but at any rate she went very willingly. She showed some little fight when friend Leon pushed her into the car and drove away with her – ’

‘Anybody who has tried to drive a car and control an infuriated and terrified lady will sympathize with me,’ broke in Leon.

‘By the time Miss Angela Geydrew reached Curzon Street she was in full possession of the facts as Leon knew them,’ Manfred went on. ‘Leon’s one object was to postpone the honeymoon until he could get somebody to identify Guntheimer. The young lady told us nothing about her jewel case, but we all guessed the hundred-thousand-pound cheque, presented too late to be banked; before it could be cleared, Guntheimer would be well out of the country with any loot he was able to gather – in this case the family diamonds – and of course it would have been pretty easy to arrest him last night. When your lordship called yesterday Leon was out finishing his investigations. Before he returned, I learnt where I could get a duplicate jewel box, and with Poiccart made a call on friend bigamist. Poiccart was on the balcony, listening, and at an agreed word signal he smashed the window, which gave me just the opportunity I wanted to change the jewel boxes. Later, I presume, Mr Guntheimer opened the box, found it was empty, realized the game was up and fled.’

‘But how did you induce him to show you the jewel box?’ asked Lord Geydrew.

Manfred smiled cryptically. The tale of the pink diamond was too crude to be repeated.

The Third Coincidence

Leon Gonsalez, like the famous scientist, had an unholy knack of collecting coincidences. He had, too, strange faiths, and believed that if a man saw a pink cow with one horn in the morning, he must, by the common workings of a certain esoteric law, meet another pink cow with one horn later in the day.

‘Coincidences, my dear George,’ he said, ‘are inevitabilities – not accidents.’

Manfred murmured something in reply – he was studying the dossier of one William Yape, of whom something may be told at a later period.

‘Now here is a coincidence.’ Leon was in no sense abashed, for it was after dinner, the hour of the day when he was most confident. ‘This morning I took the car for a run to Windsor – she was a trifle sticky yesterday – and at Langley what did I find? A gentleman sitting before an inn, very drunk. He was, I imagined, an agricultural labourer in his best Sunday suit, and it was remarkable that he wore a diamond ring worth five hundred pounds. He had, he told me, been to Canada, and had stayed at the Château Fronteuse – which is an expensive hôtel.’

Poiccart was interested.

‘And the coincidence?’

‘If George will listen.’ Manfred looked up with a groan. ‘Thank you. Hardly had I begun questioning this inebriated son of the soil when a Rolls drove up, and there stepped down a rather nice-looking gentleman who also wore a diamond ring on his little finger.’

‘Sensation,’ said George Manfred, and went back to his dossier.

‘I shall be offended if you do not listen. Imagine the agriculturist suddenly jumping to his feet as if he had seen a ghost. “Ambrose!” he gasped. I tell you his face was the colour of milk. Ambrose – if he will pardon the liberty – could not have heard him, and passed into the inn. The labourer went stumbling away – it is remarkable that one’s head sobers so much more quickly than one’s legs – as though the devil was after him.

‘I went into the inn and found Ambrose drinking tea – a man who drinks tea at eleven o’clock in the morning has lived either in South Africa or Australia. It proved to be South Africa. An alluvial diamond digger, an ex-soldier and a most gentlemanly person, though not very communicative. After he had gone I went in search of the labourer – overtook him as he entered a most flamboyant villa.’

‘Which, with your peculiar disregard for the sacredness of the Englishman’s home, you entered.’

Leon nodded.

‘Truth is in you,’ he said. ‘Imagine, my dear George, a suburban villa so filled with useless furniture that you could hardly find a place to sit. Satin-covered settees, pseudo-Chinese cabinets, whatnots and wherefores crowding space. Ridiculous oil paintings, painted by the yard, in heavy gold frames, simpering enlargements of photographs covering hideous wallpaper – and two ladies, expensively dressed, bediamonded but without an “h” between them; common as the dirt on my shoes, shrill, ugly, coarse.

‘As I entered the hall on the trail of the labourer I heard him say: “He wasn’t killed – he’s back,” and a woman say: “Oh, my God!” And then the second woman said: “He must be killed – it was in the list on New Year’s Day!” – after which I was so busy explaining my presence that further enlightenment was out of the question.’

George Manfred had tied his dossier neatly with a strip of red tape, and now he leaned back in his chair.

‘You took the number of the Ambrose car, of course?’

Leon nodded.

‘And he wore a diamond ring?’

‘A lady’s – it was on his little finger. A not very magnificent affair. It was the sort of dress ring that a girl would wear.’

Poiccart chuckled. ‘Now we sit down and wait for the third coincidence,’ he said. ‘It is inevitable.’

A few minutes later Leon was on his way to Fleet Street, for he was a man whose curiosity was insatiable. For two hours, in the office of a friendly newspaper, he pored over the casualty lists that were published on four New Year’s Days, looking for a soldier whose first name was ‘Ambrose’.

‘The Three Just Men,’ said the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully, ‘are now so eminently respectable that we give them police protection.’

* * *

You must allow for the fact that this was after dinner, when even an Assistant Commissioner grows a little expansive, especially when he is host in his nice house in Belgravia. You must also allow for the more interesting fact that one of the famous organization had been seen outside Colonel Yenford’s house that very night.

‘They are strange devils – why they should be watching this place beats me; if I’d known I should have asked the fellow in!’

Lady Irene Belvinne looked at one of the portraits on the wall: she seemed scarcely interested in the Three Just Men. Yet every word Colonel Yenford spoke was eagerly stored in her memory.

A beautiful woman of thirty-five, the widow of a man who had held Cabinet rank, she might claim to be especially favoured. She had been the wife of a many-times millionaire who had left her his entire fortune; she had the lineless face and serene poise of one who had never known care . . .

‘I don’t exactly know what they do.’ Her voice was a soft drawl. ‘Are they detectives? Of course, I know what they were.’

Who did not know what that ruthless trio were in the days when every hand was against them? When swift death followed their threat, when a whole world of secret lawbreakers trembled at their names.

‘They’re tame enough now,’ said somebody. ‘They wouldn’t have played their monkey tricks today, eh, Yenford?’

Colonel Yenford was not so confident.

‘It’s strange,’ mused Irene. ‘I didn’t think of them.’

She was so wholly absorbed in her thoughts that she did not realize she was speaking aloud.

‘Why on earth should you think about them?’ demanded Yenford, a little astonished.

She started at this and changed the subject.

It was past midnight when she reached her beautiful flat in Piccadilly, and all the staff except her maid had gone to bed. At the sound of a key turning in the lock the maid came flying into the hall, and with a sinking of heart Irene Belvinne knew that something was wrong.

‘She’s been waiting since nine, m’lady,’ said the girl in a low voice.

Irene nodded.

‘Where is she?’ she asked.

‘I put her in the study, madam.’

Handing her coat to the maid, the woman walked up the broad passage, opened a door and entered the library. The woman who had been sitting on the hide-covered settee rose awkwardly at the sight of the radiant woman who entered. The visitor was poorly dressed, had a long, not too clean face, and a mouth that drooped pathetically. She looked up slyly from under her lowered lids, and though her tone was humble it also held a suggestion of menace.

‘He’s terribly bad again tonight, m’lady,’ she said. ‘We had all our work cut out to keep him in bed. He wanted to come here, he said, him being delirious. The doctor says that we ought to get him away to – ’ her eyes rose quickly and fell again ‘ – South Africa.’

‘It was Canada last time,’ said Irene steadily. ‘That was rather an expensive trip, Mrs Dennis.’

The woman mumbled something, rubbing her hands still more nervously.

‘I’m sure I’m worried to death about the whole business, me being his aunt, and I’m sure I can’t afford no five thousand pounds to take him to South Africa – ’

Five thousand pounds! Irene was aghast at the demand. The Canadian trip had cost three thousand, but the original request was for one.

‘I should like to see him myself,’ she said with sudden determination.

Again that swift, sly look.

‘I wouldn’t let you come and see him, me lady, unless you brought
a gentleman. I’d say your ’usband, but I know he’s no more. I wouldn’t take the responsibility, I wouldn’t indeed. That’s why I
never tell you where we’re living, in case you was tempted, me lady. He’d think no more of cutting your throat than he would of looking at you!’

A smile of contempt hardened the beautiful face.

‘I am not so sure that really terrifies me,’ said Irene quietly. ‘You want five thousand pounds – when do you sail?’

‘Next Saturday, me lady,’ said the woman eagerly. ‘And Jim say you was to pay the money in notes.’

Irene nodded.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But you mustn’t come here again unless I send for you.’

‘Where shall I get the money, me lady?’

‘Here at twelve o’clock tomorrow. And won’t you please make yourself a little more presentable when you call?’

The woman grinned.

‘I ain’t got your looks or your clothes, me lady,’ she sneered. ‘Every penny piece I earn goes on poor Jim, a-trying to save his life, when if he had his rights he’d have millions.’

Irene walked to the door and opened it, waited in the passage until the maid had shut out the unprepossessing visitor.

‘Open the windows and air the room,’ said Irene.

She went upstairs and sat down before her dressing table, eyeing her reflection thoughtfully.

Then, of a sudden, she got up and crossed the room to the telephone. She lifted the receiver and then realized that she did not know the number. A search of the book gave her the information she wanted. The Triangle Detective Agency had their headquarters in Curzon Street. But they would be in bed by now, she thought; and even if the members of this extraordinary confederation were not, would they be likely to interest themselves at this late hour?

She had hardly given the number before she was through. She heard the rattle of the receiver as it was raised, and the distinctive tinkle of a guitar; then an eager voice asked her who she was.

‘Lady Irene Belvinne,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me, but – ’

‘I know you very well. Lady Irene.’ She could almost detect the unknown smiling as he answered. ‘You dined at Colonel Yenford’s tonight and left the house at twelve minutes to twelve. You told your chauffeur to go back by way of Hyde Park . . . ’

The guitar had ceased. She heard a distant voice say: ‘Listen to Leon: he’s being all Sherlock Holmes.’ And then a laugh. She smiled in sympathy.

‘Do you want to see me?’ This was Leon Gonsalez speaking, then.

‘When can I?’ she asked.

‘Now. I’ll come right away, if you’re in any serious trouble – I have an idea that you are.’

She hesitated. An immediate decision was called for and she set her teeth.

‘Very well. Will you come? I’ll wait up for you.’

In her nervousness she dropped the receiver down while he was answering her.

Five minutes later the maid admitted a slim, good-looking man. He wore a dark suit, and was strangely like a Chancery barrister she knew. On her part the greeting was awkward, for the interval had been too short for her to make up her mind what she should tell him, and how she should begin.

It was in the library tainted, to her sensitive nostrils, with her late frowsy visitor, that she made her confession, and he listened with an expressionless face.

‘ . . . I was very young – that is my only excuse; and he was a very handsome, very attractive young man . . . and a chauffeur isn’t a servant . . . I mean, one can be quite good friends with him, as one couldn’t be with – well, with other servants.’

He nodded.

‘It was an act of lunacy, and nasty, and everything you can say. When my father sent him away I thought my heart would break.’

‘Your father knew?’ asked Gonsalez gravely.

She shook her head.

‘No. Father was rather quick-tempered, and he bullied Jim for some fault that was not his – that was the end of it. I had one letter and then I heard no more until two or three years after I was married, when I got a letter from this woman, saying that her nephew was consumptive and she knew what – good friends we’d been.’

To her surprise her visitor was smiling, and at first she was hurt.

‘You have told me only what I’ve guessed,’ he said to her amazement.

‘You guessed . . . but you didn’t know – ’

He interrupted her brusquely.

‘Was your second marriage happy, Lady Irene? I am not being impertinent.’

She hesitated.

‘It was quite happy. My husband was nearly thirty years older than I – why do you ask?’

Leon smiled again.

‘I am a sentimentalist – which is a shocking confession for one who boasts of his scientific mind. I am a devourer of love stories, both in fiction and in life. This Jim was not unpleasant?’

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said, and then added simply: I loved him – I love him still. That is the ghastly part of it. It is dreadful to think of him lying ill with this dreadful aunt looking after him – ’

‘Landlady,’ broke in Leon calmly. ‘He had no relations.’

She was on her feet now, staring at him.

‘What do you know?’

He had a gesture which was almost mesmeric in its calming effect.

‘I went to Colonel Yenford’s house tonight – I happened to learn that you were his guest and I wanted to see your mouth. I’m sorry if I am being mysterious, but I judge women by their mouths – the test is infallible. That is why I knew the hour you left.’

Irene Belvinne was frowning at him.

‘I don’t understand, Mr Gonzalez,’ she began. ‘What has my mouth to do with the matter?’

He nodded slowly.

‘If you had a certain type of mouth I should not have been interested – as it is . . . ’

She waited, and presently he spoke.

‘You will find James Ambrose Clynes in his suite at the Piccadilly Hôtel. The dress ring you gave him is on his little finger, and your photograph is the only one in his room.’

He put out his hand and steadied her as, white and shaking, she sank into a chair.

‘He’s a very rich man and a very nice man . . . and a very stupid man, or he would have come to see you.’

* * *

A car drew up before an ornate villa in the village of Langley and a poorly-dressed woman got down. The door was opened by a thickset man and the two passed into the over-furnished parlour. On the face of Mrs Dennis was a smile of satisfaction.

‘It’s all right – she’ll part,’ she said, throwing off her old coat.

The coarse-looking man with the diamond ring turned to his other sister.

‘As soon as we get the money it’s Canada for us,’ he said ominously. ‘I won’t have another fright like I had on Tuesday – why were you so late, Maria?’