Four Just Men (7 page)

"That would be unfair to Ramon." Poiccart finished the sentence in such a tone as summarily ended that possibility. "He has still two days, and must receive yet another, and last, warning."-

"Then we must find Thery."

It was Manfred who spoke, and he rose, followed by Poiccart and Gonsalez.

"If Thery has not gone to the police--where would he go?"

The tone of Leon's question suggested the answer.

"To the office of the newspaper that published the Spanish advertisement," was Manfred's reply, and instinctively the three men knew that this was the correct solution.

"Your motor-car will be useful," said Manfred, and all three left the bar.

In the editor's room Thery faced the two journalists.

"Thery?" repeated Welby; "I do not know that name. Where do you come from? What is your address?"

"I come from Jerez in Andalusia, from the wine farm of Sienor."

"Not that," interrupted Welby; "where do you come from now--what part of London ?"

Thery raised his hands despairingly.

"How should I know? There are houses and streets and people--and it is in London, and I was to kill a man, a Minister, because he had made a wicked law--they did not tell me----"

"They--who?" asked the editor eagerly.

"The other three."

"But their names?"

Thery shot a suspicious glance at his questioner.

"There is a reward," he said sullenly, "and a pardon. I want these before I tell----"

The editor stepped to his desk.

"If you are one of the Four you shall have your reward --you shall have some of it now." He pressed a button and a messenger came to the door.

"Go to the composing room and tell the printer not to allow his men to leave until I give orders."

Below, in the basement, the machines were thundering as they flung out the first numbers of the morning news.

"Now"--the editor turned to Thery, who had stood, uneasily shifting from foot to foot whilst the order was being given--"now, tell me all you know."

Thery did not answer; his eyes were fixed on the floor.

"There is a reward and a pardon," he muttered doggedly.

"Hasten!" cried Welby. "You will receive your reward and the pardon also. Tell us, who are the Four Just Men? Who are the other three? Where are they to be found?"

"Here," said a clear voice behind him; and he turned as a stranger, closing the door as he entered, stood facing the three men--a stranger in evening dress, masked from brow to chin.

There was a revolver in the hand that hung at his side.

"I am one," repeated the stranger calmly; "there are two others waiting outside the building."

"How did you get here--what do you want?" demanded the editor, and stretched his hand to an open drawer in his desk.

"Take your hand away"--and the thin barrel of the revolver rose with a jerk. "How I came here your doorkeeper will explain, when he recovers consciousness. Why I am here is because I wish to save my life--not an unreasonable wish. If Thery speaks I may be a dead man-- I am about to prevent him speaking. I have no quarrel with either of you gentlemen, but if you hinder me I shall kill you," he said simply. He spoke all the while in English, and Thery, with wide-stretched eyes and distended nostrils, shrank back against the wall, breathing quickly.

"You," said the masked man, turning to the terror-stricken informer and speaking in Spanish, "would have betrayed your comrades--you would have thwarted a great purpose, therefore it is just that you should die."

He raised the revolver to the level of Thery's breast, and Thery fell on his knees, mouthing the prayer he could not articulate.

"By God--no!" cried the editor, and sprang forward.

The revolver turned on him.

"Sir," said the unknown--and his voice sank almost to a whisper--"for God's sake do not force me to kill you."

"You shall not commit a cold-blooded murder," cried the editor in a white heat of anger, and moved forward, but Welby held him back. "What is the use ?" said Welby in an undertone; "he means it--we can do nothing."

"You can do something," said the stranger, and his revolver dropped to his side.

Before the editor could answer there was a knock at the door.

"Say you are busy"; and the revolver covered Thery, who was a whimpering, huddled heap by the wall.

"Go away," shouted the editor, "I am busy."

"The printers are waiting," said the voice of the messenger.

"Now," asked the chief, as the footsteps of the boy died away; "what can we do?"

"You can save this man's life."

"How?"

"Give me your word of honour that you will allow us both to depart, and will neither raise an alarm nor leave this room for a quarter of an hour."

The editor hesitated.

"How do I know that the murder you contemplate will not be committed as soon as you get clear?"

The other laughed under his mask.

"How do I know that as soon as I have left the room you will not raise an alarm ?"

"I should have given my word, sir," said the editor stiffly.

"And I mine," was the quiet response; "And my word has never been broken."

In the editor's mind a struggle was going on; here in his hand was the greatest story of the century; another minute and he would have extracted from Thery the secret of the Four.

Even now a bold dash might save everything--and the printers were waiting . . . but the hand that held the revolver was the hand of a resolute man, and the chief yielded.

"I agree, but under protest," he said. "I warn you that your arrest and punishment is inevitable."

"I regret," said the masked man with a slight bow, "that I cannot agree with you--nothing is inevitable save death. Come, Thery," he said, speaking in Spanish. "On my word as a Caballero I will not harm you."

Thery hesitated, then slunk forward with his head bowed and his eyes fixed on the floor.

The masked man opened the door an inch, listened, and in the moment came the inspiration of the editor's life.

"Look here," he said quickly, the man giving place to the journalist, "when you get home will you write us an article about yourselves? You needn't give us any embarrassing particulars, you know--something about your aspirations, your
raison d'etre"

"Sir," said the masked man--and there was a note of admiration in his voice--"I recognise in you an artist. The article will be delivered tomorrow"; and opening the door the two men stepped into the darkened corridor.

Blood-red placards, hoarse newsboys, overwhelming headlines, and column after column of leaded type told the world next day how near the Four had been to capture. Men in the train leant forward, their newspapers on their knees, and explained what they would have done had they been in the editor of the
Megaphone's
position. People stopped talking about wars and famines and droughts and street accidents and parliaments and ordinary everyday murders and the German Emperor, in order to concentrate their minds upon the topic of the hour. Would the Four Just Men carry out their promise and slay the Secretary for Foreign Affairs on the morrow ?

Nothing else was spoken about. Here was a murder threatened a month ago, and, unless something unforeseen happened, to be committed tomorrow.

No wonder that the London Press devoted the greater part of its space to discussing the coming of Thery and his recapture.

'. . . It is not so easy to understand,' said the
Telegram,
'why, having the miscreants in their hands, certain journalists connected with a sensational and halfpenny contemporary allowed them to go free to work their evil designs upon a great statesman whose unparalleled . . . We say if, for unfortunately in these days of cheap journalism every story emanating from the sanctum sanctorum of sensation-loving sheets is not to be accepted on its pretensions; so if, as it stated, these desperadoes really did visit the office of a contemporary last night. . .' At noonday Scotland Yard circulated broadcast a hastily printed sheet:

Wanted, on suspicion of being connected with a criminal organisation known as the Four Just Men, miguel thery,
alias
saimont,
alias
le chico, late of Jerez, Spain, a Spaniard speaking no English. Height 5 feet 8 inches. Eyes brown, hair black, slight black moustache, face broad. Scars: white scar on cheek, old knife wound on body. Figure, thick-set.

The above reward will be paid to any person or persons who shall give such information as shall lead to the identification of the said Thery with the band known as the Four Just Men and his apprehension.

From which may be gathered that, acting on the information furnished by the editor and his assistant at two o'clock in the morning, the Direct Spanish Cable had been kept busy; important personages had been roused from their beds in Madrid, and the history of Thery as recorded in the Bureau had been reconstructed from pigeon-hole records for the enlightenment of an energetic Commissioner of Police.

Sir Philip Ramon, sitting writing in his study at Portland Place, found a difficulty in keeping his mind upon the letter that lay before him.

It was a letter addressed to his agent at Branfell, the huge estate over which he, in the years he was out of office, played squire.

Neither wife nor chick nor child had Sir Philip.'. . . If by any chance these men succeed in carrying out their purpose I have made ample provision not only for yourself but for all who have rendered me faithful service,' he wrote--from which may be gathered the tenor of his letter.

During these past few weeks, Sir Philip's feelings towards the possible outcome of his action had undergone a change.

The irritation of a constant espionage, friendly on the one hand, menacing on the other, had engendered so bitter a feeling of resentment, that in this newer emotion all personal fear had been swallowed up. His mind was filled with one unswerving determination, to carry through the measure he had in hand, to thwart the Four Just Men, and to vindicate the integrity of a Minister of the Crown. 'It would be absurd,' he wrote in the course of an article entitled
Individuality in its Relation to the Public Service,
and which was published some months later in the
Quarterly Review--
'it would be monstrous to suppose that incidental criticism from a wholly unauthoritative source should affect or in any way influence a member of the Government in his conception of the legislation necessary for the millions of people entrusted to his care. He is the instrument, duly appointed, to put into tangible form the wishes and desires of those who naturally look to him not only to furnish means and methods for the betterment of their conditions, or the amelioration of irksome restrictions upon international commercial relations, but to find them protection from risks extraneous of purely commercial liabilities ... in such a case a Minister of the Crown with a due appreciation of his responsibilities ceases to exist as a man and becomes merely an unhuman automaton.'

Sir Philip Ramon was a man with very few friends. He had none of the qualities that go to the making of a popular man. He was an honest man, a conscientious man, a strong man. He was the cold-blooded, cynical creature that a life devoid of love had left him. He had no enthusiasm--and inspired none. Satisfied that a certain procedure was less wrong than any other, he adopted it. Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end. It may be said of him that he had no ambitions--only aims. He was the most dangerous man in the Cabinet, which he dominated in his masterful way, for he knew not the meaning of the blessed word 'compromise'.

If he held views on any subject under the sun, those views were to be the views of his colleagues.

Four times in the short history of the administration had
Rumoured Resignation of a Cabinet Minister
filled the placards of the newspapers, and each time the Minister whose resignation was ultimately recorded was the man whose views had clashed with the Foreign Secretary. In small things, as in great, he had his way.

His official residence he absolutely refused to occupy, and No. 44 Downing Street was converted into half office, half palace. Portland Place was his home, and from there he drove every morning, passing the Horse Guards clock as it finished the last stroke of ten.

A private telephone wire connected his study in Portland Place with the official residence, and but for this Sir Philip had cut himself adrift from the house in Downing Street, to .occupy which had been the ambition of the great men of his party.

Now, however, with the approach of the day on which every effort would be taxed, the police insisted upon his taking up his quarters in Downing Street.

Here, they said, the task of protecting the Minister would be simplified. No44 Downing Street they knew. The approaches could be better guarded, and, moreover, the drive--that dangerous drive!--between Portland Place and the Foreign Office would be obviated.

It took a considerable amount of pressure and pleading to induce Sir Philip to take even this step, and it was only when it was pointed out that the surveillance to which he was being subjected would not be so apparent to himself that he yielded.

"You don't like to find my men outside your door with your shaving water," said Superintendent Falmouth bluntly. "You objected to one of my men being in your bathroom when you went in the other morning, and you complained about a plain-clothes officer driving on your box--well, Sir Philip, in Downing Street I promise that you shan't even see them."

This clinched the argument.

It was just before leaving Portland Place to take up his new quarters that he sat writing to his agent whilst the detective waited outside the door.

The telephone at Sir Philip's elbow buzzed--he hated bells--and the voice of his private secretary asked with some anxiety how long he would be.

"We have got sixty men on duty at 44," said the secretary, zealous and young, "and today and tomorrow we shall----" And Sir Philip listened with growing impatience to the recital.