The Complete Four Just Men (6 page)

‘And it is an explosive no more?’ asked Manfred.

‘It is as harmless as a cup of chocolate.’

Poiccart wiped the rod on a rag, replaced the phial, and turned to his companion.

‘And now?’ he asked.

Manfred made no answer, but unlocked an old-fashioned safe that stood in the corner of the room. From this he removed a box of polished wood. He opened the box and disclosed the contents.

‘If Thery is the good workman he says he is, here is the bait that shall lure Sir Philip Ramon to his death,’ he said.

Poiccart looked. ‘Very ingenious,’ was his only comment. Then – ’ Does Thery know, quite know, the stir it has created?’

Manfred closed the lid and replaced the box before he replied.

‘Does Thery know that he is the fourth Just Man?’ he asked; then slowly, ‘I think not – and it is as well as he does not know; a thousand pounds is roughly thirty-three thousand pesetas, and there is the free pardon – and the girl at Jerez,’ he added thoughtfully.

* * *

A brilliant idea came to Smith, the reporter, and he carried it to the chief.

‘Not bad,’ said the editor, which meant that the idea was really very good – ‘not bad at all.’

‘It occurred to me,’ said the gratified reporter, ‘that one or two of the four might be foreigners who don’t understand a word of English.’

‘Quite so,’ said the chief; ‘thank you for the suggestion. I’ll have it done tonight.’

Which dialogue accounts for the fact that the next morning the
Megaphone
appeared with the police notice in French, Italian, German – and Spanish.

Chapter 5

The outrage at the
Megaphone

The editor of the
Megaphone
, returning from dinner, met the super-chief on the stairs. The super-chief, boyish of face, withdrew his mind from the mental contemplation of a new project (Megaphone House is the home of new projects) and inquired after the Four Just Men.

‘The excitement is keeping up,’ replied the editor. ‘People are talking of nothing else but the coming debate on the Extradition Bill, and the Government is taking every precaution against an attack upon Ramon.’

‘What is the feeling?’

The editor shrugged his shoulders.

‘Nobody really believes that anything will happen in spite of the bomb.’

The super-chief thought for a moment, and then quickly: ‘What do you think?’

The editor laughed.

‘I think the threat will never be fulfilled; for once the Four have struck against a snag. If they hadn’t warned Ramon they might have done something, but forewarned – ’

‘We shall see,’ said the super-chief, and went home.

The editor wondered, as he climbed the stairs, how much longer the Four would fill the contents bill of his newspaper, and rather hoped that they would make their attempt, even though they met with a failure, which he regarded as inevitable.

His room was locked and in darkness, and he fumbled in his pocket for the key, found it, turned the lock, opened the door and entered.

‘I wonder,’ he mused, reaching out of his hand and pressing down the switch of the light . . .

There was a blinding flash, a quick splutter of flame, and the room was in darkness again.

Startled, he retreated to the corridor and called for a light.

‘Send for the electrician,’ he roared; ‘one of these damned fuses has gone!’

A lamp revealed the room to be filled with a pungent smoke; the electrician discovered that every globe had been carefully removed from its socket and placed on the table.

From one of the brackets suspended a curly length of thin wire which ended in a small black box, and it was from this that thick fumes were issuing.

‘Open the windows,’ directed the editor; and a bucket of water having been brought, the little box was dropped carefully into it.

Then it was that the editor discovered the letter – the greenish-grey letter that lay upon his desk. He took it up, turned it over, opened it, and noticed that the gum on the flap was still wet.

Honoured Sir [ran the note], when you turned on your light this evening you probably imagined for an instant that you were a victim of one of those ‘outrages’ to which you are fond of referring. We owe you an apology for any annoyance we may have caused you. The removal of your lamp and the substitution of a ‘plug’ connecting a small charge of magnesium powder is the cause of your discomfiture. We ask you to believe that it would have been as simple to have connected a charge of nitroglycerine, and thus have made you your own executioner. We have arranged this as evidence of our inflexible intention to carry out our promise in respect of the Aliens Extradition Act. There is no power on earth that can save Sir Philip Ramon from destruction, and we ask you, as the directing force of a great medium, to throw your weight into the scale in the cause of justice, to call upon your Government to withdraw an unjust measure, and save not only the lives of many inoffensive persons who have found an asylum in your country, but also the life of a Minister of the Crown whose only fault in our eyes is his zealousness in an unrighteous cause.

(Signed) The Four Just Men

‘Whew!’ whistled the editor, wiping his forehead and eyeing the sodden box floating serenely at the top of the bucket.

‘Anything wrong, sir?’ asked the electrician daringly.

‘Nothing,’ was the sharp reply. ‘Finish your work, refix these globes, and go.’

The electrician, ill-satisfied and curious, looked at the floating box and the broken length of wire.

‘Curious-looking thing, sir,’ he said. ‘If you ask me – ’

‘I don’t ask you anything; finish your work,’ the great journalist interrupted.

‘Beg pardon, I’m sure,’ said the apologetic artisan.

Half an hour later the editor of the
Megaphone
sat discussing the situation with Welby.

Welby, who is the greatest foreign editor in London, grinned amiably and drawled his astonishment.

‘I have always believed that these chaps meant business,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and what is more, I feel pretty certain that they will keep their promise. When I was in Genoa – ’ Welby got much of his information first-hand – ‘when I was in Genoa – or was it Sofia? – I met a man who told me about the Trelovitch affair. He was one of the men who assassinated the King of Servia, you remember. Well, one night he left his quarters to visit a theatre – the same night he was found dead in the public square with a sword thrust through his heart. There were two extraordinary things about it.’ The foreign editor ticked them on off his fingers. ‘First, the General was a noted swordsman, and there was every evidence that he had not been killed in cold blood, but had been killed in a duel; the second was that he wore corsets, as many of these Germanised officers do, and one of his assailants had discovered this fact, probably by a sword thrust, and had made him discard them; at any rate when he was found this frippery was discovered close by his body.’

‘Was it known at the time that it was the work of the Four?’ asked the editor.

Welby shook his head.

‘Even I had never heard of them before,’ he said resentfully. Then asked, ‘What have you done about your little scare?’

‘I’ve seen the hall porters and the messengers, and every man on duty at the time, but the coming and the going of our mysterious friend – I don’t suppose there was more than one – is unexplained. It really is a remarkable thing. Do you know, Welby, it gives me quite an uncanny feeling; the gum on the envelope was still wet; the letter must have been written on the premises and sealed down within a few seconds of my entering the room.’

‘Were the windows open?’

‘No; all three were shut and fastened, and it would have been impossible to enter the room that way.’

The detective who came to receive a report of the circumstances endorsed this opinion.

‘The man who wrote this letter must have left your room not longer than a minute before you arrived,’ he concluded, and took charge of the letter.

Being a young and enthusiastic detective, before finishing his investigations he made a most minute search of the room, turning up carpets, tapping walls, inspecting cupboards, and taking laborious and unnecessary measurements with a foot-rule.

‘There are a lot of our chaps who sneer at detective stories,’ he explained to the amused editor, ‘but I have read almost everything that has been written by Gaboriau and Conan Doyle, and I believe in taking notice of little things. There wasn’t any cigar ash or anything of that sort left behind, was there?’ he asked wistfully.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the editor gravely.

‘Pity,’ said the detective, and wrapping up the ‘infernal machine’ and its appurtenances, he took his departure.

Afterwards the editor informed Welby that the disciple of Holmes had spent half an hour with a magnifying glass examining the floor.

‘He found half a sovereign that I lost weeks ago, so it’s really an ill wind – ’

All that evening nobody but Welby and the chief knew what had happened in the editor’s room. There was some rumour in the sub-editor’s department that a small accident had occurred in the sanctum.

‘Chief busted a fuse in his room and got a devil of a fright,’ said the man who attended to the Shipping List.

‘Dear me,’ said the weather expert, looking up from his chart, ‘do you know something like that happened to me: the other night – ’

The chief had directed a few firm words to the detective before his departure.

‘Only you and myself know anything about this occurrence,’ said the editor, ‘so if it gets out I shall know it comes from Scotland Yard.’

‘You may be sure nothing will come from us,’ was the detective’s reply: ‘we’ve got into too much hot water already.’

‘That’s good,’ said the editor, and ‘that’s good’ sounded like a threat.

So that Welby and the chief kept the matter a secret till half an hour before the paper went to press.

This may seem to the layman an extraordinary circumstance, but experience has shown most men who control newspapers that news has an unlucky knack of leaking out before it appears in type.

Wicked compositors – and even compositors can be wicked – have been known to screw up copies of important and exclusive news, and throw them out of a convenient window so that they have fallen close to a patient man standing in the street below and have been immediately hurried off to the office of a rival newspaper and sold for more than their weight in gold. Such cases have been known.

But at half past eleven the buzzing hive of Megaphone House began to hum, for then it was that the sub-editors learnt for the first time of the ‘outrage’.

It was a great story – yet another
Megaphone
scoop, headlined half down the page with the ‘Just Four’ again – outrage at the office of the
Megaphone
– devilish ingenuity – Another Threatening Letter – The Four Will Keep Their Promise – Remarkable Document – Will the Police save Sir Philip Ramon?

‘A very good story,’ said the chief complacently, reading the proofs.

He was preparing to leave, and was speaking to Welby by the door.

‘Not bad,’ said the discriminating Welby. ‘What I think – hullo!’

The last was addressed to a messenger who appeared with a stranger.

‘Gentleman wants to speak to somebody, sir – bit excited, so I brought him up; he’s a foreigner, and I can’t understand him, so I brought him to you . . . ’ – this to Welby.

‘What do you want?’ asked the chief in French.

The man shook his head, and said a few words in a strange tongue.

‘Ah!’ said Welby, ‘Spanish – what do you wish?’ he said in that language.

‘Is this the office of that paper?’ The man produced a grimy copy of the
Megaphone
.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I speak to the editor?’

The chief looked suspicious.

‘I am the editor,’ he said.

The man looked over his shoulder, then leant forward.

‘I am one of The Four Just Men,’ he said hesitatingly. Welby took a step towards him and scrutinised him closely.

‘What is your name?’ he asked quickly.

‘Miguel Thery of Jerez,’ replied the man.

* * *

It was half past ten when, returning from a concert, the cab that bore Poiccart and Manfred westward passed through Hanover Square and turned off to Oxford Street.

‘You ask to see the editor,’ Manfred was explaining; ‘they take you up to the offices; you explain your business to somebody; they are very sorry, but they cannot help you; they are very polite, but not to the extent of seeing you off the premises, so, wandering about seeking your way out, you come to the editor’s room and, knowing that he is out, slip in, make your arrangements, walk out, locking the door after you if nobody is about, addressing a few farewell words to an imaginary occupant, if you are seen, and
voilà
!’

Poiccart bit the end of his cigar.

‘Use for your envelope a gum that will not dry under an hour and you heighten the mystery,’ he said quietly, and Manfred was amused.

‘The envelope-just-fastened is an irresistible attraction to an English detective.’

The cab speeding along Oxford Street turned into Edgware Road, when Manfred put up his hand and pushed open the trap in the roof.

‘We’ll get down here,’ he called, and the driver pulled up to the sidewalk.

‘I thought you said Pembridge Gardens?’ he remarked as Manfred paid him.

‘So I did,’ said Manfred; ‘goodnight.’

They waited chatting on the edge of the pavement until the cab had disappeared from view, then turned back to the Marble Arch, crossed to Park Lane, walked down that plutocratic thoroughfare and round into Piccadilly. Near the Circus they found a restaurant with a long bar and many small alcoves, where men sat around marble tables, drinking, smoking, and talking. In one of these, alone, sat Gonsalez, smoking a long cigarette and wearing on his clean-shaven mobile face a look of meditative content.

Neither of the men evinced the slightest sign of surprise at meeting him – yet Manfred’s heart missed a beat, and into the pallid cheeks of Poiccart crept two bright red spots.

They seated themselves, a waiter came and they gave their orders, and when he had gone Manfred asked in a low tone, ‘Where is Thery?’

Leon gave the slightest shrug.

‘Thery has made his escape,’ he answered calmly.

For a minute neither man spoke, and Leon continued: ‘This morning, before you left, you gave him a bundle of newspapers?’

Manfred nodded.

‘They were English newspapers,’ he said. ‘Thery does not know a word of English. There were pictures in them – I gave them to amuse him.’

‘You gave him, amongst others, the
Megaphone
?’

‘Yes – ha!’ Manfred remembered.

‘The offer of a reward was in it – and the free pardon – printed in Spanish.’

Manfred was gazing into vacancy.

‘I remember,’ he said slowly. ‘I read it afterwards.’

‘It was very ingenious,’ remarked Poiccart commendingly.

‘I noticed he was rather excited, but I accounted for this by the fact that we had told him last night of the method we intended adopting for the removal of Ramon and the part he was to play.’

Leon changed the topic to allow the waiter to serve the refreshments that had been ordered.

‘It is preposterous,’ he went on without changing his key, ‘that a horse on which so much money has been placed should not have been sent to England at least a month in advance.’

‘The idea of a bad Channel-crossing leading to the scratching of the favourite of a big race is unheard of,’ added Manfred severely.

The waiter left them.