Title: Four Just Men
Author: Edgar Wallace
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Language:  English
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Title: Four Just Men
Author: Edgar Wallace




CONTENTS

PROLOGUE. THERY'S TRADE
CHAPTER I. A NEWSPAPER STORY
CHAPTER II. THE FAITHFUL COMMONS
CHAPTER III. ONE THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD
CHAPTER IV. PREPARATIONS
CHAPTER V. THE OUTRAGE AT THE 'MEGAPHONE'
CHAPTER VI. THE CLUES
CHAPTER VII. THE MESSENGER OF THE FOUR
CHAPTER VIII. THE POCKET-BOOK
CHAPTER IX. THE CUPIDITY OF MARKS
CHAPTER X. THREE WHO DIED
CHAPTER XI. A NEWSPAPER CUTTING
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION



PROLOGUE. THERY'S TRADE

If you leave the Plaza del Mina, go down the narrow street, where,
from ten till four, the big flag of the United States Consulate hangs
lazily; through the square on which the Hotel de la France fronts,
round by the Church of Our Lady, and along the clean, narrow
thoroughfare that is the High Street of Cadiz, you will come to the
Cafe of the Nations.

At five o'clock there will be few people in the broad, pillared
saloon, and usually the little round tables that obstruct the sidewalk
before its doors are untenanted.

In the late summer (in the year of the famine) four men sat about
one table and talked business.

Leon Gonsalez was one, Poiccart was another, George Manfred was a
notable third, and one, Thery, or Saimont, was the fourth. Of this
quartet, only Thery requires no introduction to the student of
contemporary history. In the Bureau of Public Affairs you will find his
record. As Thery, alias Saimont, he is registered.

You may, if you are inquisitive, and have the necessary permission,
inspect his photograph taken in eighteen positions--with his hands
across his broad chest, full faced, with a three-days' growth of beard,
profile, with--but why enumerate the whole eighteen?

There are also photographs of his ears--and very ugly, bat-shaped
ears they are--and a long and comprehensive story of his life.

Signor Paolo Mantegazza, Director of the National Museum of
Anthropology, Florence, has done Thery the honour of including him in
his admirable work (see chapter on 'Intellectual Value of a Face');
hence I say that to all students of criminology and physiognomy, Thery
must need no introduction.

He sat at a' little table, this man, obviously ill at ease, pinching
his fat cheeks, smoothing his shaggy eyebrows, fingering the white scar
on his unshaven chin, doing all the things that the lower classes do
when they suddenly find themselves placed on terms of equality with
their betters.

For although Gonsalez, with the light blue eyes and the restless
hands, and Poiccart, heavy, saturnine, and suspicious, and George
Manfred, with his grey-shot beard and single eyeglass, were less famous
in the criminal world, each was a great man, as you shall learn.

Manfred laid down the Heraldo di Madrid, removed his
eyeglass, rubbed it with a spotless handkerchief, and laughed
quietly.

"These Russians are droll," he commented.

Poiccart frowned and reached for the newspaper. "Who is it--this
time?"

"A governor of one of the Southern Provinces."

"Killed?"

Manfred's moustache curled in scornful derision.

"Bah! Who ever killed a man with a bomb! Yes, yes; I know it has
been done--but so clumsy, so primitive, so very much like undermining a
city wall that it may fall and slay--amongst others--your enemy."

Poiccart was reading the telegram deliberately and without haste,
after his fashion.

"The Prince was severely injured and the would-be assassin lost an
arm," he read, and pursed his lips disapprovingly. The hands of
Gonsalez, never still, opened and shut nervously, which was Leon's sign
of perturbation.

"Our friend here"--Manfred jerked his head in the direction of
Gonsalez and laughed--"our friend has a conscience and----"

"Only once," interrupted Leon quickly, "and not by my wish you
remember, Manfred; you remember, Poiccart"--he did not address
Thery--"I advised against it. You remember?" He seemed anxious to
exculpate himself from the unspoken charge. "It was a miserable little
thing, and I was in Madrid," he went on breathlessly, "and they came to
me, some men from a factory at Barcelona. They said what they were
going to do, and I was horror-stricken at their ignorance of the
elements of the laws of chemistry. I wrote down the ingredients and the
proportions, and begged them, yes, almost on my knees, to use some
other method. 'My children,' I said, 'you are playing with something
that even chemists are afraid to handle. If the owner of the factory is
a bad man, by all means exterminate him, shoot him, wait on him after
he has dined and is slow and dull, and present a petition with the
right hand and--with the left hand--so!'" Leon twisted his knuckles
down and struck forward and upward at an imaginary oppressor. "But they
would listen to nothing I had to say."

Manfred stirred the glass of creamy liquid that stood at his elbow
and nodded his head with an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.

"I remember--several people died, and the principal witness at the
trial of the expert in explosives was the man for whom the bomb was
intended."

Thery cleared his throat as if to speak, and the three looked at him
curiously. There was some resentment in Thery's voice.

"I do not profess to be a great man like you, senors. Half the time
I don't understand what you are talking about--you speak of governments
and kings and constitutions and causes. If a man does me an
injury I smash his head"--he hesitated--"I do not know how to say
it...but I mean...well, you kill people without hating them, men who
have not hurt you. Now, that is not my way..." He hesitated again,
tried to collect his thoughts, looked intently at the middle of the
roadway, shook his head, and relapsed into silence.

The others looked at him, then at one another, and each man smiled.
Manfred took a bulky case from his pocket, extracted an untidy
cigarette, re-rolled it deftly and struck a government match on the
sole of his boot.

"Your-way-my-dear-Thery"--he puffed--"is a fool's way. You kill for
benefit; we kill for justice, which lifts us out of the ruck of
professional slayers. When we see an unjust man oppressing his fellows;
when we see an evil thing done against the good God"--Thery crossed him
self--"and against man--and know that by the laws of man this evildoer
may escape punishment--we punish."

"Listen," interrupted the taciturn Poiccart: "once there was a girl,
young and beautiful, up there"--he waved his hand northward with
unerring instinct--"and a priest--a priest, you understand--and the
parents winked at it because it is often done...but the girl was
filled with loathing and shame, and would not go a second time, so he
trapped her and kept her in a house, and then when the bloom was off
turned her out, and I found her. She was nothing to me, but I said,
'Here is a wrong that the law cannot adequately right.' So one night I
called on the priest with my hat over my eyes and said that I wanted
him to come to a dying traveller. He would not have come then, but I
told him that the dying man was rich and was a great person. He mounted
the horse I had brought, and we rode to a little house on the mountain...I
locked the door and he turned round--so! Trapped, and he knew it.
'What are you going to do?' he said with a gasping noise. 'I am going
to kill you, senor,' I said, and he believed me. I told him the story
of the girl...He screamed when I moved towards him, but he might
as well have saved his breath. 'Let me see a priest,' he begged; and I
handed him--a mirror."

Poiccart stopped to sip his coffee.

"They found him on the road next day without a mark to show how he
died," he said simply.

"How?" Thery bent forward eagerly, but Poiccart permitted himself to
smile grimly, and made no response.

Thery bent his brows and looked suspiciously from one to the
other.

"Government, and there are men whom the Government have never heard
of. You remember one Garcia, Manuel Garcia, leader in the Carlist
movement; he is in England; it is the only country where he is safe;
from England he directs the movement here, the great movement. You know
of what I speak?"

Thery nodded.

"This year as well as last there has been a famine, men have been
dying about the church doors, starving in the public squares; they have
watched corrupt Government succeed corrupt Government; they have seen
millions flow from the public treasury into the pockets of politicians.
This year something will happen; the old regime must go. The Government
know this; they know where the danger lies, they know their salvation
can only come if Garcia is delivered into their hands before the
organisation for revolt is complete. But Garcia is safe for the present
and would be safe for all time were it not for a member of the English
Government, who is about to introduce and pass into law a Bill. When
that is passed, Garcia is as good as dead. You must help us to prevent
that from ever becoming law; that is why we have sent for you."

Thery looked bewildered. "But how?" he stammered.

Manfred drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to Thery. "This,
I think," he said, speaking deliberately, "is an exact copy of the
police description of yourself." Thery nodded. Manfred leant over and,
pointing to a word that occurred half way down the sheet, "Is that your
trade?" he asked.

Thery looked puzzled. "Yes," he replied.

"Do you really know anything about that trade?" asked Manfred
earnestly; and the other two men leant forward to catch the reply.

"I know," said Thery slowly, "everything there is to be known: had
it not been for a--mistake I might have earned great money."

Manfred heaved a sigh of relief and nodded to his two
companions.

"Then," said he briskly, "the English Minister is a dead man."



CHAPTER I. A NEWSPAPER STORY


On the fourteenth day of August, 19--, a tiny paragraph appeared at
the foot of an unimportant page in London's most sober journal to the
effect that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had been much
annoyed by the receipt of a number of threatening letters, and was
prepared to pay a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would give
such information as would lead to the apprehension and conviction of
the person or persons, etc. The few people who read London's most sober
journal thought, in their ponderous Athenaeum Club way, that it was a
remarkable thing that a Minister of State should be annoyed at
anything; more remarkable that he should advertise his annoyance, and
most remarkable of all that he could imagine for one minute that the
offer of a reward would put a stop to the annoyance.

News editors of less sober but larger circulated newspapers, wearily
scanning the dull columns of Old Sobriety, read the paragraph
with a newly acquired interest.

"Hullo, what's this?" asked Smiles of the Comet, and cut out
the paragraph with huge shears, pasted it upon a sheet of copy-paper
and headed it:

Who is Sir Philip's Correspondent?

As an afterthought--the Comet being in Opposition--he
prefixed an introductory paragraph, humorously suggesting that the
letters were from an intelligent electorate grown tired of the
shilly-shallying methods of the Government.

The news editor of the Evening World--a white-haired
gentleman of deliberate movement--read the paragraph twice, cut it out
carefully, read it again and, placing it under a paperweight, very soon
forgot all about it.

The news editor of the Megaphone, which is a very bright
newspaper indeed, cut the paragraph as he read it, rang a bell, called
a reporter, all in a breath, so to speak, and issued a few terse
instructions.

"Go down to Portland Place, try to see Sir Philip Ramon, secure the
story of that paragraph--why he is threatened, what he is threatened
with; get a copy of one of the letters if you can. If you cannot see
Ramon, get hold of a secretary."

And the obedient reporter went forth.

He returned in an hour in that state of mysterious agitation
peculiar to the reporter who has got a 'beat'. The news editor duly
reported to the Editor-in-Chief, and that great man said, "That's very
good, that's very good indeed"--which was praise of the highest
order.

What was 'very good indeed' about the reporter's story may be
gathered from the half-column that appeared in the Megaphone on
the following day:

CABINET MINISTER IN DANGER
 THREATS TO MURDER THE FOREIGN SECRETARY
 'THE FOUR JUST MEN'
 PLOT TO ARREST THE PASSAGE OF THE
 ALIENS EXTRADITION BILL--
 EXTRAORDINARY REVELATIONS

Considerable comment was excited by the appearance in the news
columns of yesterday's National Journal of the following
paragraph:

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Philip Ramon) has
during the past few weeks been the recipient of threatening letters,
all apparently emanating from one source and written by one person.
These letters are of such a character that they cannot be ignored by
his Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who hereby offers
a reward of Fifty pounds (L50) to any person or persons, other than the
actual writer, who will lay such information as will lead to the
apprehension and conviction of the author of these anonymous
letters.

So unusual was such an announcement, remembering that anonymous and
threatening letters are usually to be found daily in the letter-bags of
every statesman and diplomat, that the Daily Megaphone immediately
instituted inquiries as to the cause for this unusual departure.

A representative of this newspaper called at the residence of Sir
Philip Ramon, who very courteously consented to be seen.

"It is quite an unusual step to take," said the great Foreign
Secretary, in answer to our representative's question, "but it has been
taken with the full concurrence of my colleagues of the Cabinet. We
have reasons to believe there is something behind the threats, and I
might say that the matter has been in the hands of the police for some
weeks past.

"Here is one of the letters," and Sir Philip produced a sheet of
foreign notepaper from a portfolio, and was good enough to allow our
representative to make a copy.

It was undated, and beyond the fact that the handwriting was of the
flourishing effeminate variety that is characteristic of the Latin
races, it was written in good English.

It ran: Your Excellency,--

The Bill that you are about to pass into law is an unjust one...
It is calculated to hand over to a corrupt and vengeful Government men
who now in England find an asylum from the persecutions of despots and
tyrants. We know that in England opinion is divided upon the merits of
your Bill, and that upon your strength, and your strength alone,
depends the passing into law of the Aliens Political Offences Bill.

Therefore it grieves us to warn you that unless your Government
withdraws this Bill, it will be necessary to remove you, and not alone
you, but any other person who undertakes to carry into law this unjust
measure.

(Signed) four just men.

"The Bill referred to," Sir Philip resumed, "is of course the Aliens
Extradition (Political Offences) Bill, which, had it not been for the
tactics of the Opposition, might have passed quietly into law last
session."

Sir Philip went on to explain that the Bill was called into being by
the insecurity of the succession in Spain.

"It is imperative that neither England nor any other country should
harbour propagandists who, from the security of these, or other shores,
should set Europe ablaze. Coincident with the passage of this measure
similar Acts or proclamations have been made in every country in
Europe. In fact, they are all in existence, having been arranged to
come into law simultaneously with ours, last session."

"Why do you attach importance to these letters?" asked the Daily
Megaphone representative.

"Because we are assured, both by our own police and the continental
police, that the writers are men who are in deadly earnest. The 'Four
just men', as they sign themselves, are known collectively in almost
every country under the sun. Who they are individually we should all
very much like to know. Rightly or wrongly, they consider that justice
as meted out here on earth is inadequate, and have set themselves about
correcting the law. They were the people who assassinated General
Trelovitch, the leader of the Servian Regicides: they hanged the
French Army Contractor, Conrad, in the Place de la Concorde--with a
hundred policemen within call. They shot Hermon le Blois, the
poet-philosopher, in his study for corrupting the youth of the world
with his reasoning."

The Foreign Secretary then handed to our representative a list of
the crimes committed by this extraordinary quartet.

Our readers will recollect the circumstance of each murder, and it
will be remembered that until today--so closely have the police of the
various nationalities kept the secret of the Four Men--no one crime has
been connected with the other; and certainly none of the circumstances
which, had they been published, would have assuredly revealed the
existence of this band, have been given to the public before today.

The Daily Megaphone is able to publish a full list of sixteen
murders committed by the four men.

"Two years ago, after the shooting of le Blois, by some hitch in
their almost perfect arrangements, one of the four was recognised by a
detective as having been seen leaving le Blois's house on the Avenue
Kleber, and he was shadowed for three days, in the hope, that the four
might be captured together. In the end he discovered he was being
watched, and made a bolt for liberty. He was driven to bay in a cafe in
Bordeaux--they had followed him from Paris: and before he was killed he
shot a sergeant de ville and two other policemen. He was photographed,
and the print was circulated throughout Europe, but who he was or what
he was, even what nationality he was, is a mystery to this day."

"But the four are still in existence?"

Sir Philip shrugged his shoulders. "They have either recruited
another, or they are working shorthanded," he said.

In conclusion the Foreign Secretary said:

"I am making this public through the Press, in order that the danger
which threatens, not necessarily myself, but any public man who runs
counter to the wishes of this sinister force, should be recognised. My
second reason is that the public may in its knowledge assist those
responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the execution of
their office, and by their vigilance prevent the committal of further
unlawful acts."

Inquiries subsequently made at Scotland Yard elicited no further
information on the subject beyond the fact that the Criminal
Investigation Department was in communication with the chiefs of the
continental police.

The following is a complete list of the murders committed by the
Four Just Men, together with such particulars as the police have been
able to secure regarding the cause for the crimes. We are indebted to
the Foreign Office for permission to reproduce the list.

London,

October 7, 1899.--Thomas Cutler, master tailor, found dead under
suspicious circumstances. Coroner's jury returned a verdict of 'Wilful
murder against some person or persons unknown.'

(Cause of murder ascertained by police: Cutler, who was a man of
some substance, and whose real name was Bentvitch, was a sweater of a
particularly offensive type. Three convictions under the Factory Act.
Believed by the police there was a further and more intimate cause for
the murder not unconnected with Cutler's treatment of women
employees.)

Liege,

February 28,1900.--Jacques Ellerman, prefect: shot dead returning
from the Opera House. Ellerman was a notorious evil liver, and upon
investigating his affairs after his death it was found that he had
embezzled nearly a quarter of a million francs of the public funds.

Seattle

(Kentucky), October, 1900.--Judge Anderson. Found dead in his room,
strangled. Anderson had thrice been tried for his life on charges of
murder. He was the leader of the Anderson faction in the Anderson-Hara
feud. Had killed in all seven of the Hara clan, was three times
indicted and three times released on a verdict of Not Guilty. It will
be remembered that on the last occasion, when charged with the
treacherous murder of the Editor of the Seattle Star, he shook
hands with the packed jury and congratulated them.

New York,

October 30, 1900.--Patrick Welch, a notorious grafter and stealer of
public moneys. Sometime City Treasurer; moving spirit in the infamous
Street Paving Syndicate; exposed by the New York Journal. Welch
was found hanging in a little wood on Long Island. Believed at the time
to have been suicide.

Paris,

March 4, 1901.--Madame Despard. Asphyxiated. This also was regarded
as suicide till certain information came to hands of French police. Of
Madame Despard nothing good can be said. She was a notorious 'dealer in
souls'.

Paris,

March 4, 1902 (exactly a year later).--Monsieur Gabriel Lanfin,
Minister of Communication. Found shot in his brougham in the Bois de
Boulogne. His coachman was arrested but eventually discharged. The man
swore he heard no shot or cry from his master. It was raining at the
time, and there were few pedestrians in the Bois.

(Here followed ten other cases, all on a par with those quoted
above, including the cases of Trelovitch and le Blois.)

It was undoubtedly a great story.

The Editor-in-Chief, seated in his office, read it over again and
said, "Very good indeed."

The reporter--whose name was Smith--read it over and grew pleasantly
warm at the consequences of his achievement.

The Foreign Secretary read it in bed as he sipped his morning tea,
and frowningly wondered if he had said too much.

The chief of the French police read it--translated and
telegraphed--in Le Temps, and furiously cursed the talkative
Englishman who was upsetting his plans.

In Madrid, at the Cafe de la Paix, in the Place of the Sun, Manfred,
cynical, smiling, and sarcastic, read extracts to three men--two
pleasantly amused, the other heavy-jowled and pasty of face, with the
fear of death in his eyes.



CHAPTER II. THE FAITHFUL COMMONS


Somebody--was it Mr Gladstone?--placed it on record that there is
nothing quite so dangerous, quite so ferocious, quite so terrifying as
a mad sheep. Similarly, as we know, there is no person quite so
indiscreet, quite so foolishly talkative, quite so amazingly gauche, as
the diplomat who for some reason or other has run off the rails.

There comes a moment to the man who has trained himself to guard his
tongue in the Councils of Nations, who has been schooled to walk warily
amongst pitfalls digged cunningly by friendly Powers, when the practice
and precept of many years are forgotten, and he behaves humanly. Why
this should be has never been discovered by ordinary people, although
the psychological minority who can generally explain the mental
processes of their fellows, have doubtless very adequate and convincing
reasons for these acts of disbalancement.

Sir Philip Ramon was a man of peculiar temperament.

I doubt whether anything in the wide world would have arrested his
purpose once his mind had been made up. He was a man of strong
character, a firm, square-jawed, big-mouthed man, with that shade of
blue in his eyes that one looks for in peculiarly heartless criminals,
and particularly famous generals. And yet Sir Philip Ramon feared, as
few men imagined he feared, the consequence of the task he had set
himself.

There are thousands of men who are physically heroes and morally
poltroons, men who would laugh at death--and live in terror of personal
embarrassments. Coroner's courts listen daily to the tale of such men's
lives--and deaths.

The Foreign Secretary reversed these qualities. Good animal men
would unhesitatingly describe the Minister as a coward, for he feared
pain and he feared death.

"If this thing is worrying you so much," the Premier said kindly--it
was at the Cabinet Council two days following the publication of the
Megaphone's story--"why don't you drop the Bill? After all,
there are matters of greater importance to occupy the time of the
House, and we are getting near the end of the session."

An approving murmur went round the table.

"We have every excuse for dropping it. There must be a horrible
slaughtering of the innocents--Braithewaite's Unemployed Bill must go;
and what the country will say to that, Heaven only knows."

"No, no!" The Foreign Secretary brought his fist down on the table
with a crash. "It shall go through; of that I am determined. We are
breaking faith with the Cortes, we are breaking faith with France, we
are breaking faith with every country in the Union. I have promised the
passage of this measure--and we must go through with it, even though
there are a thousand 'Just Men', and a thousand threats."

The Premier shrugged his shoulders.

"Forgive me for saying so, Ramon," said Bolton, the Solicitor, "but
I can't help feeling you were rather indiscreet to give particulars to
the Press as you did. Yes, I know we were agreed that you should have a
free hand to deal with the matter as you wished, but somehow I did not
think you would have been quite so--what shall I say?--candid."

"My discretion in the matter, Sir George, is not a subject that I
care to discuss," replied Ramon stiffly.

Later, as he walked across Palace Yard with the youthful-looking
Chancellor, Mr Solicitor-General, smarting under the rebuff, said, a
propos of nothing, "Silly old ass." And the youthful guardian of
Britain's finances smiled.

"If the truth be told," he said, "Ramon is in a most awful funk. The
story of the Four Just Men is in all the clubs, and a man I met at the
Carlton at lunch has rather convinced me that there is really something
to be feared. He was quite serious about it--he's just returned from
South America and has seen some of the work done by these men."

"What was that?"

"A president or something of one of these rotten little
republics...about eight months ago--you'll see it in the list...They
hanged him...most extraordinary thing in the world. They took him
out of bed in the middle of the night, gagged him, blindfolded him,
carried him to the public jail, gained admission, and hanged him on the
public gallows--and escaped!"

Mr Solicitor saw the difficulties of such proceedings, and was about
to ask for further information when an under-secretary buttonholed the
Chancellor and bore him off. "Absurd," muttered Mr Solicitor
crossly.

There were cheers for the Secretary for Foreign Affairs as his
brougham swept through the crowd that lined the approaches to the
House. He was in no wise exalted, for popularity was not a possession
he craved. He knew instinctively that the cheers were called forth by
the public's appreciation of his peril; and the knowledge chilled and
irritated him. He would have liked to think that the people scoffed at
the existence of this mysterious four--it would have given him some
peace of mind had he been able to think 'the people have rejected the
idea.

For although popularity or unpopularity was outside his scheme of
essentials, yet he had an unswerving faith in the brute instincts of
the mob. He was surrounded in the lobby of the House with a crowd of
eager men of his party, some quizzical, some anxious, all clamouring
for the latest information--all slightly in fear of the acid-tongued
Minister.

"Look here, Sir Philip"--it was the stout, tactless member for West
Brondesbury--"what is all this we hear about threatenin' letters?
Surely you're not goin' to take notice of things of that sort--why, I
get two or three every day of my life."

The Minister strode impatiently away from the group, but Tester--the
member--caught his arm.

"Look here--" he began.

"Go to the devil," said the Foreign Secretary plainly, and walked
quickly to his room.

"Beastly temper that man's got, to be sure," said the honourable
member despairingly. "Fact is, old Ramon's in a blue funk. The idea of
making a song about threatenin' letters! Why, I get----"

A group of men in the members' smokeroom discussed the question of
the Just Four in a perfectly unoriginal way.

"It's too ridiculous for words," said one oracularly. "Here are four
men, a mythical four, arrayed against all the forces and established
agencies of the most civilised nation on earth."

"Except Germany," interrupted Scott, MP, wisely.

"Oh, leave Germany out of it for goodness' sake," begged the first
speaker tartly. "I do wish, Scott, we could discuss a subject in which
the superiority of German institutions could not be introduced."

"Impossible," said the cheerful Scott, flinging loose the reins of
his hobby horse: "remember that in steel and iron alone the production
per head of the employee has increased 43 per cent., that her
shipping----"

"Do you think Ramon will withdraw the bill?" asked the senior member
for Aldgate East, disentangling his attention from the babble of
statistics.

"Ramon? Not he--he'd sooner die."

"It's a most unusual circumstance," said Aldgate East; and three
boroughs, a London suburb, and a midland town nodded and 'thought it
was'.

"In the old days, when old Bascoe was a young member"--Aldgate East
indicated an aged senator bent and white of beard and hair, who was
walking painfully toward a seat--"in the old days----"

"Thought old Bascoe had paired?" remarked an irrelevant
listener.

"In the old days," continued the member for the East End, "before
the Fenian trouble----"

"----talk of civilisation," went on the enthusiastic Scott.
"Rheinbaken said last month in the Lower House, 'Germany had reached
that point where----'"

"If I were Ramon," resumed Aldgate East profoundly, "I know exactly
what I should do. I should go to the police and say 'Look here----'"

A bell rang furiously and continuously, and the members went
scampering along the corridor. "Division--'vision."

Clause Nine of the Medway Improvement Bill having been
satisfactorily settled and the words 'Or as may hereafter be
determined' added by a triumphant majority of twenty-four, the faithful
Commons returned to the interrupted discussion.

"What I say, and what I've always said about a man in the Cabinet,"
maintained an important individual, "is that he must, if he is a true
statesman, drop all consideration for his own personal feelings."

"Hear!" applauded somebody.

"His own personal feelings," repeated the orator. "He must put his
duty to the state before all other--er--considerations. You remember
what I said to Barrington the other night when we were talking out the
Estimates? I said, 'The right honourable gentleman has not, cannot
have, allowed for the strong and almost unanimous desires of the great
body of the electorate. The action of a Minister of the Crown must
primarily be governed by the intelligent judgment of the great body of
the electorate, whose fine, feelings'--no--'whose higher instincts'--
no--that wasn't it--at any rate I made it very clear what the duty of a
Minister was," concluded the oracle lamely.

"Now I----" commenced Aldgate East, when an attendant approached
with a tray on which lay a greenish-grey envelope.

"Has any gentleman dropped this?" he inquired, and, picking up the
letter, the member fumbled for his eyeglasses.

"To the Members of the House of Commons," he read, and looked over
his pince-nez at the circle of men about him.

"Company prospectus," said the stout member for West Brondesbury,
who had joined the party; "I get hundreds. Only the other day----"

"Too thin for a prospectus," said Aldgate East, weighing the letter
in his hand.

"Patent medicine, then," persisted the light of Brondesbury. "I get
one every morning--'Don't burn the candle at both ends', and all that
sort of rot. Last week a feller sent me----"

"Open it," someone suggested, and the member obeyed. He read a few
lines and turned red.

"Well, I'm damned!" he gasped, and read aloud:

Citizens,

The Government is about to pass into law a measure which will place in
the hands of the most evil Government of modern times men who are
patriots and who are destined to be the saviours of their countries. We
have informed the Minister in charge of this measure, the title of
which appears in the margin, that unless he withdraws this Bill we will
surely slay him.

We are loath to take this extreme step, knowing that otherwise he is
an honest and brave gentleman, and it is with a desire to avoid
fulfilling our promise that we ask the members of the Mother of
Parliaments to use their every influence to force the withdrawal of
this Bill.

Were we common murderers or clumsy anarchists we could with ease
wreak a blind and indiscriminate vengeance on the members of this
assembly, and in proof thereof, and as an earnest that our threat is no
idle one, we beg you to search beneath the table near the recess in
this room. There you will find a machine sufficiently charged to
destroy the greater portion of this building.

(Signed) Four Just Men

Postscript.--We have not placed either detonator or fuse in the
machine, which may therefore be handled with impunity.

As the reading of the letter proceeded the faces of the listeners
grew pallid.

There was something very convincing about the tone of the letter,
and instinctively all eyes sought the table near the recess.

Yes, there was something, a square black something, and the crowd of
legislators shrank back. For a moment they stood spellbound--and then
there was a mad rush for the door.

"Was it a hoax?" asked the Prime Minister anxiously, but the hastily
summoned expert from Scotland Yard shook his head.

"Just as the letter described it," he said gravely, "even to the
absence of fuses."

"Was it really----"

"Enough to wreck the House, sir," was the reply.

The Premier, with a troubled face, paced the floor of his private
room.

He stopped once to look moodily through the window that gave a view
of a crowded terrace and a mass of excited politicians gesticulating
and evidently all speaking at once.

"Very, very serious--very, very serious," he muttered. Then aloud,
"We said so much we might as well continue. Give the newspapers as full
an account of this afternoon's happenings as they think necessary--give
them the text of the letter." He pushed a button and his secretary
entered noiselessly.

"Write to the Commissioner telling him to offer a reward of a
thousand pounds for the arrest of the man who left this thing and a
free pardon and the reward to any accomplice."

The Secretary withdrew and the Scotland Yard expert waited.

"Have your people found how the machine was introduced?"

"No, sir; the police have all been relieved and been subjected to
separate interrogation. They remember seeing no stranger either
entering or leaving the House."

The Premier pursed his lips in thought.

"Thank you," he said simply, and the expert withdrew.

On the terrace Aldgate East and the oratorical member divided
honours.

"I must have been standing quite close to it," said the latter
impressively; "'pon my word it makes me go cold all over to think
about it. You remember, Mellin? I was saying about the duty of the
Ministry----"

"I asked the waiter," said the member for Aldgate to an interested
circle, "when he brought the letter: 'Where did you find it?'

"On the floor, sir!" he said. "I thought it was a medicine
advertisement; I wasn't going to open it, only somebody----"

"It was me," claimed the stout gentleman from Brondesbury proudly;
"you remember I was saying----''

"I knew it was somebody," continued Aldgate East graciously. "I
opened it and read the first few lines. 'Bless my soul,' I
said----"

"You said, 'Well, I'm damned,'" corrected Brondesbury.

"Well, I know it was something very much to the point," admitted
Aldgate East. "I read it--and, you'll quite understand, I couldn't
grasp its significance, so to speak. Well----"

The three stalls reserved at the Star Music Hall in Oxford Street
were occupied one by one. At half past seven prompt came Manfred,
dressed quietly; at eight came Poiccart, a fairly prosperous
middle-aged gentleman; at half past eight came Gonsalez, asking in
perfect English for a programme. He seated himself between the two
others.

When pit and gallery were roaring themselves hoarse over a patriotic
song, Manfred smilingly turned to Leon, and said:

"I saw it in the evening papers."

Leon nodded quickly.

"There was nearly trouble," he said quietly. "As I went in somebody
said, 'I thought Bascoe had paired,' and one of them almost came up to
me and spoke."



CHAPTER III. ONE THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD


To say that England was stirred to its depths--to quote more than
one leading article on the subject--by the extraordinary occurrence in
the House of Commons, would be stating the matter exactly.

The first intimation of the existence of the Four Just Men had been
received with pardonable derision, particularly by those newspapers
that were behindhand with the first news. Only the Daily
Megaphone had truly and earnestly recognised how real was the
danger which threatened the Minister in charge of the obnoxious Act.
Now, however, even the most scornful could not ignore the significance
of the communication that had so mysteriously found its way into the
very heart of Britain's most jealously guarded institution. The story
of the Bomb Outrage filled the pages of every newspaper throughout the
country, and the latest daring venture of the Four was placarded the
length and breadth of the Isles.

Stories, mostly apocryphal, of the men who were responsible for the
newest sensation made their appearance from day to day, and there was
no other topic in the mouths of men wherever they met but the strange
quartet who seemed to hold the lives of the mighty in the hollows of
their hands.

Never since the days of the Fenian outrages had the mind of the
public been so filled with apprehension as it was during the two days
following the appearance in the Commons of the 'blank bomb', as one
journal felicitously described it.

Perhaps in exactly the same kind of apprehension, since there was a
general belief, which grew out of the trend of the letters, that the
Four menaced none other than one man.

The first intimation of their intentions had excited widespread
interest. But the fact that the threat had been launched from a small
French town, and that in consequence the danger was very remote, had
somehow robbed the threat of some of its force. Such was the vague
reasoning of an ungeographical people that did not realise that Dax is
no farther from London than Aberdeen.

But here was the Hidden Terror in the Metropolis itself. Why, argued
London, with suspicious sidelong glances, every man we rub elbows with
may be one of the Four, and we none the wiser.

Heavy, black-looking posters stared down from blank walls, and
filled the breadth of every police noticeboard.

£1000 REWARD

Whereas, on August 18, at about 4.30 o'clock in the afternoon, an
infernal machine was deposited in the Members' Smoke-Room by some
person or persons unknown.

And whereas there is reason to believe that the person or persons
implicated in the disposal of the aforesaid machine are members of an
organised body of criminals known as The Four Just Men, against whom
warrants have been issued on charges of wilful murder in London, Paris,
New York, New Orleans, Seattle (USA), Barcelona, Tomsk, Belgrade,
Christiania, Capetown and Caracas.

Now, therefore, the above reward will be paid by his Majesty's
Government to any person or persons who shall lay such information as
shall lead to the apprehension of any of or the whole of the persons
styling themselves The Four Just Men and identical with the band before
mentioned.

And, furthermore, a free pardon and the reward will be paid to any
member of the band for such information, providing the person laying
such information has neither committed nor has been an accessory before
or after the act of any of the following murders.

(Signed)

Ryday Montgomery, His Majesty's Secretary of State for Home Affairs.

J. B. Calfort, Commissioner of Police.

Here followed a list of the sixteen crimes alleged against the four
men.

God Save the King

All day long little knots of people gathered before the broadsheets,
digesting the magnificent offer.

It was an unusual hue and cry, differing from those with which
Londoners were best acquainted. For there was no appended description
of the men wanted; no portraits by which they might be identified, no
stereotyped 'when last seen was wearing a dark blue serge suit, cloth
cap, check tie', on which the searcher might base his scrutiny of the
passer-by.

It was a search for four men whom no person had ever consciously
seen, a hunt for a will-o'-the-wisp, a groping in the dark after
indefinite shadows.

Detective Superintendent Falmouth, who was a very plain-spoken man
(he once brusquely explained to a Royal Personage that he hadn't got
eyes in the back of his head), told the Assistant Commissioner exactly
what he thought about it.

"You can't catch men when you haven't got the slightest idea who or
what you're looking for. For the sake of argument, they might be women
for all we know--they might be chinamen or niggers; they might be tall
or short; they might--why, we don't even know their nationality!
They've committed crimes in almost every country in the world. They're
not French because they killed a man in Paris, or Yankee because they
strangled Judge Anderson."

"The writing," said the Commissioner, referring to a bunch of
letters he held in his hand.

"Latin; but that may be a fake. And suppose it isn't? There's no
difference between the handwriting of a Frenchman, Spaniard,
Portuguese, Italian, South American, or Creole--and, as I say, it might
be a fake, and probably is."

"What have you done?" asked the Commissioner.

"We've pulled in all the suspicious characters we know. We've
cleaned out Little Italy, combed Bloomsbury, been through Soho, and
searched all the colonies. We raided a place at Nunhead last night--a
lot of Armenians live down there, but----"

The detective's face bore a hopeless look.

"As likely as not," he went on, "we should find them at one of the
swagger hotels--that's if they were fools enough to bunch together; but
you may be sure they're living apart, and meeting at some unlikely spot
once or twice a day."

He paused, and tapped his fingers absently on the big desk at which
he and his superior sat.

"We've had de Courville over," he resumed. "He saw the Soho crowd,
and what is more important, saw his own man who lives amongst them--and
it's none of them, I'll swear--or at least he swears, and I'm prepared
to accept his word."

The Commissioner shook his head pathetically.

"They're in an awful stew in Downing Street," he said. "They do not
know exactly what is going to happen next."

Mr Falmouth rose to his feet with a sigh and fingered the brim of
his hat.

"Nice time ahead of us--I don't think," he remarked
paradoxically.

"What are the people thinking about it?" asked the Commissioner.

"You've seen the papers?"

Mr .Commissioner's shrug was uncomplimentary to British
journalism.

"The papers! Who in Heaven's name is going to take the slightest
notice of what is in the papers!" he said petulantly.

"I am, for one," replied the calm detective; "newspapers are more
often than not led by the public; and it seems to me the idea of
running a newspaper in a nutshell is to write so that the public will
say, 'That's smart--it's what I've said all along.'"

"But the public themselves--have you had an opportunity of gathering
their idea?" Superintendent Falmouth nodded. "I was talking in the Park
to a man only this evening--a master-man by the look of him, and
presumably intelligent. 'What's your idea of this Four Just Men
business?' I asked. 'It's very queer,' he said: 'do you think there's
anything in it?'--and that," concluded the disgusted police officer,
"is all the public thinks about it."

But if there was sorrow at Scotland Yard, Fleet Street itself was
all a-twitter with pleasurable excitement. Here was great news indeed:
news that might be heralded across double columns, blared forth in
headlines, shouted by placards, illustrated, diagramised, and
illuminated by statistics.

"Is it the Mafia?" asked the Comet noisily, and went on to
prove that it was.

The Evening World, with its editorial mind lingering lovingly
in the 'sixties, mildly suggested a vendetta, and instanced 'The
Corsican Brothers'.

The Megaphone stuck to the story of the Four Just Men, and
printed pages of details concerning their nefarious acts. It
disinterred from dusty files, continental and American, the full
circumstances of each murder; it gave the portraits and careers of the
men who were slain, and, whilst in no way palliating the offence of the
Four, yet set forth justly and dispassionately the lives of the
victims, showing the sort of men they were.

It accepted warily the reams of contributions that flowed into the
office; for a newspaper that has received the stigma 'yellow' exercises
more caution than its more sober competitors. In newspaper-land a dull
lie is seldom detected, but an interesting exaggeration drives an
unimaginative rival to hysterical denunciations.

And reams of Four Men anecdotes did flow in. For suddenly, as if by
magic, every outside contributor, every literary gentleman who made a
speciality of personal notes, every kind of man who wrote, discovered
that he had known the Four intimately all his life.

'When I was in Italy...' wrote the author of Come Again
(Hackworth Press, 6s.: 'slightly soiled', Farring-don Book Mart,
2d.) 'I remember I heard a curious story about these Men of
Blood...'

Or--

'No spot in London is more likely to prove the hiding-place of the
Four Villains than Tidal Basin,' wrote another gentleman, who stuck
Collins in the north-east corner of his manuscript. 'Tidal Basin
in the reign of Charles II was known as...'

"Who's Collins?" asked the super-chief of the Megaphone of
his hard-worked editor.

"A liner," described the editor wearily, thereby revealing that
even the newer journalism had not driven the promiscuous contributor
from his hard-fought field; "he does police-courts, fires,
inquests, and things. Lately he'; taken to literature and writes
Picturesque-Bits-of-Old London and Famous Tombstones-of-Hornsey
epics..."

Throughout the offices of the newspapers the same thing was
happening. Every cable that arrived, ever; piece of information that
reached the sub-editor's basket was coloured with the impending tragedy
uppermost ii men's minds. Even the police-court reports contained some
allusion to the Four. It was the overnight drunk an disorderly's
justification for his indiscretion.

"The lad has always been honest," said the boy's tearful mother;
"it's reading these horrible stories about the Four Foreigners that's
made him turn out like this"; and the magistrate took a lenient view o
the offence.

To all outward showing, Sir Philip Ramon, the man mostly interested
in the development of the plot, was the least concerned.

He refused to be interviewed any further; he declined to discuss the
possibilities of assassination, even with the Premier, and his answer
to letters of appreciation that came to him from all parts of the
country was an announcement in the Morning Post asking his
correspondents to be good enough to refrain from persecuting him with
picture postcards, which found no other repository than his wastepaper
basket.

He had thought of adding an announcement of his intention of
carrying the Bill through Parliament at whatever cost, and was only
deterred by the fear of theatricality.

To Falmouth, upon whom had naturally devolved the duty of protecting
the Foreign Secretary from harm, Sir Philip was unusually gracious, and
incidentally permitted that astute officer to get a glimpse of the
terror in which a threatened man lives.

"Do you think there's any danger, Superintendent?" he asked, not
once but a score of times; and the officer, stout defender of an
infallible police force, was very reassuring.

"For," as he argued to himself, "what is the use of frightening a
man who is half scared of death already? If nothing happens, he will
see I have spoken the truth, and if--if--well, he won't be able to call
me a liar."

Sir Philip was a constant source of interest to the detective, who
must have shown his thoughts once or twice. For the Foreign Secretary,
who was a remarkably shrewd man, intercepting a curious glance of the
police officer, said sharply, "You wonder why I still go on with the
Bill knowing the danger? Well, it will surprise you to learn that I do
not know the danger, nor can I imagine it! I have never been
conscious of physical pain in my life, and in spite of the fact that I
have a weak heart, I have never had so much as a single ache. What
death will be, what pangs or peace it may bring, I have no conception.
I argue with Epictetus that the fear of death is by way of being an
impertinent assumption of a knowledge of the hereafter, and that we
have no reason to believe it is any worse condition than our present. I
am not afraid to die--but I am afraid of dying."

"Quite so, sir," murmured the sympathetic but wholly uncomprehending
detective, who had no mind for nice distinctions.

"But," resumed the Minister--he was sitting in his study in Portland
Place--"if I cannot imagine the exact process of dissolution, I can
imagine and have experienced the result of breaking faith with the
chancellories, and I have certainly no intention of laying up a store
of future embarrassments for fear of something that may after all be
comparatively trifling."

Which piece of reasoning will be sufficient to indicate what the
Opposition of the hour was pleased to term 'the tortuous mind of the
right honourable gentleman'.

And Superintendent Falmouth, listening with every indication of
attention, yawned inwardly and wondered who Epictetus was.

"I have taken all possible precautions, sir," said the detective in
the pause that followed the recital of this creed. "I hope you won't
mind for a week or two being followed about by some of my men. I want
you to allow two or three officers to remain in the house whilst you
are here, and of course there will be quite a number on duty at the
Foreign Office."

Sir Philip expressed his approval, and later, when he and the
detective drove down to the House in a closed brougham, he understood
why cyclists rode before and on either side of the carriage, and why
two cabs followed the brougham into Palace Yard.

At Notice Time, with a House sparsely filled, Sir Philip rose in his
place and gave notice that he would move the second reading of the
Aliens Extradition (Political Offences) Bill, on Tuesday week, or, to
be exact, in ten days.

That evening Manfred met Gonsalez in North Tower Gardens and
remarked on the fairy-like splendour of the Crystal Palace grounds by
night.

A Guards' band was playing the overture to Tann-hduser, and
the men talked music.

Then--

"What of Thery?" asked Manfred.

"Poiccart has him today; he is showing him the sights." They both
laughed.

"And you?" asked Gonsalez.

"I have had an interesting day; I met that delightfully naive
detective in Green Park, who asked me what I thought of ourselves!"

Gonsalez commented on the movement in G minor, and Manfred nodded
his head, keeping time with the music.

"Are we prepared?" asked Leon quietly.

Manfred still nodded and softly whistled the number. He stopped with
the final crash of the band, and joined in the applause that greeted
the musicians.

"I have taken a place," he said, clapping his hands. "We had better
come together."

"Is everything there?"

Manfred looked at his companion with a twinkle in his eye.

"Almost everything."

The band broke into the National Anthem, and the two men rose and
uncovered.

The throng about the bandstand melted away in the gloom, and Manfred
and his companion turned to go.

Thousands of fairy lamps gleamed in the grounds, and there was a
strong smell of gas in the air.

"Not that way this time?" questioned, rather than asserted,
Gonsalez.

"Most certainly not that way," replied Manfred decidedly.



CHAPTER IV. PREPARATIONS


When an advertisement appeared in the Newspaper Proprietor
announcing that there was--

For sale: An old-established zinco-engraver's business with a
splendid new plant and a stock of chemicals.

Everybody in the printing world said "That's Etherington's." To the
uninitiated a photo-engraver's is a place of buzzing saws, and lead
shavings, and noisy lathes, and big bright arc lamps.

To the initiated a photo-engraver's is a place where works of art
are reproduced by photography on zinc plates, and consequently used for
printing purposes.

To the very knowing people of the printing world, Etherington's was
the worst of its kind, producing the least presentable of pictures at a
price slightly above the average.

Etherington's had been in the market (by order of the trustees) for
three months, but partly owing to its remoteness from Fleet Street (it
was in Carnaby Street), and partly to the dilapidated condition of the
machinery (which shows that even an official receiver has no moral
sense when he starts advertising), there had been no bids.

Manfred, who interviewed the trustee in Carey Street, learnt that
the business could be either leased or purchased; that immediate
possession in either circumstances was to be had; that there were
premises at the top of the house which had served as a dwelling-place
to generations of caretakers, and that a banker's reference was all
that was necessary in the way of guarantee.

"Rather a crank," said the trustee at a meeting of creditors,
"thinks that he is going to make a fortune turning out photogravures of
Murillo at a price within reach of the inartistic. He tells me that he
is forming a small company to carry on the business, and that so soon
as it is formed he will buy the plant outright."

And sure enough that very day Thomas Brown, merchant; Arthur W.
Knight, gentleman; James Selkirk, artist; Andrew Cohen, financial
agent; and James Leech, artist, wrote to the Registrar of Joint Stock
Companies, asking to be formed into a company, limited by shares, with
the object of carrying on business as photo-engravers, with which
object they had severally subscribed for the shares set against their
names.

(In parenthesis, Manfred was a great artist.)

And five days before the second reading of the Aliens Extradition
Act, the company had entered into occupation of their new premises in
preparation to starting business.

"Years ago, when I first came to London," said Manfred, "I
learned the easiest way to conceal one's identity was to disguise
oneself as a public enemy. There's a wealth of respectability behind
the word 'limited', and the pomp and circumstance of a company
directorship diverts suspicion, even as it attracts attention."

Gonsalez printed a neat notice to the effect that the Fine Arts
Reproduction Syndicate would commence business on October 1, and a
further neat label that 'no hands were wanted', and a further terse
announcement that travellers and others could only be seen by
appointment, and that all letters must be addressed to the Manager.

It was a plain-fronted shop, with a deep basement crowded with the
dilapidated plant left by the liquidated engraver. The ground floor had
been used as offices, and neglected furniture and grimy files
predominated.

There were pigeonholes filled with old plates, pigeonholes filled
with dusty invoices, pigeonholes in which all the debris that is
accumulated in an office by a clerk with salary in arrear was
deposited.

The first floor had been a workshop, the second had been a store,
and the third and most interesting floor of all was that on which were
the huge cameras and the powerful arc lamps that were so necessary an
adjunct to the business.

In the rear of the house on this floor were the three small rooms
that had served the purpose of the bygone caretaker.

In one of these, two days after the occupation, sat the four men of
Cadiz.

Autumn had come early in the year, a cold driving rain was falling
outside, and the fire that burnt in the Georgian grate gave the chamber
an air of comfort.

This room alone had been cleared of litter, the best furniture of
the establishment had been introduced, and on the ink-stained
writing-table that filled the centre of the apartment stood the remains
of a fairly luxurious lunch.

Gonsalez was reading a small red book, and it may be remarked that
he wore gold-rimmed spectacles; Poiccart was sketching at a corner of
the table, and Manfred was smoking a long thin cigar and studying a
manufacturing chemist's price list. Thery (or as some prefer to call
him Saimont) alone did nothing, sitting a brooding heap before the
fire, twiddling his fingers, and staring absently at the leaping little
flames in the grate.

Conversation was carried on spasmodically, as between men whose
minds were occupied by different thoughts. Thery concentrated the
attentions of the three by speaking to the point. Turning from his
study of the fire with a sudden impulse he asked:

"How much longer am I to be kept here?"

Poiccart looked up from his drawing and remarked:

"That is the third time he has asked today."

"Speak Spanish!" cried Thery passionately. "I am tired of this new
language. I cannot understand it, any more than I can understand
you."

"You will wait till it is finished," said Manfred, in the staccato
patois of Andalusia; "we have told you that."

Thery growled and turned his face to the grate.

"I am tired of this life," he said sullenly. "I want to walk about
without a guard--I want to go back to Jerez, where I was a free man. I
am sorry I came away."

"So am I," said Manfred quietly; "not very sorry though--I hope for
your sake I shall not be."

"Who are you?" burst forth Thery, after a momentary silence. "What
are you? Why do you wish to kill? Are you anarchists? What money do you
make out of this? I want to know."

Neither Poiccart nor Gonsalez nor Manfred showed any resentment at
the peremptory demand of their recruit. Gonsalez's clean-shaven,
sharp-pointed face twitched with pleasurable excitement, and his cold
blue eyes narrowed.

"Perfect! perfect!" he murmured, watching the other man's face:
"pointed nose, small forehead and--articu-lorum se ipsos torquentium
sonus; gemitus, mugitusque parum explanatis----"

The physiognomist might have continued Seneca's picture of the Angry
Man, but Thery sprang to his feet and glowered at the three.

"Who are you?" he asked slowly. "How do I know that you are not to
get money for this? I want to know why you keep me a prisoner, why you
will not let me see the newspapers, why you never allow me to walk
alone in the street, or speak to somebody who knows my language? You
are not from Spain, nor you, nor you--your Spanish is--yes, but you are
not of the country I know. You want me to kill--but you will not say
how----"

Manfred rose and laid his hand on the other's shoulder.

"Senor," he said--and there was nothing but kindness in his
eyes--"restrain your impatience, I beg of you. I again assure you that
we do not kill for gain. These two gentlemen whom you see have each
fortunes exceeding six million pesetas, and I am even richer; we kill
and we will kill because we are each sufferers through acts of
injustice, for which the law gave us no remedy. If--if----" he
hesitated, still keeping his grey eyes fixed unflinchingly on the
Spaniard. Then he resumed gently: "If we kill you it will be the first
act of the kind."

Thery was on his feet, white and snarling, with his back to the
wall; a wolf at bay, looking from one to the other with fierce
suspicion.

"Me--me!" he breathed, "kill me?"

Neither of the three men moved save Manfred, who dropped his
outstretched hand to his side.

"Yes, you." He nodded as he spoke. "It would be new work for us, for
we have never slain except for justice--and to kill you would be an
unjust thing."

Poiccart looked at Thery pityingly.

"That is why we chose you," said Poiccart, "because there was always
a fear of betrayal, and we thought--it had better be you."

"Understand," resumed Manfred calmly, "that not a hair of your head
will be harmed if you are faithful--that you will receive a reward that
will enable you to live--remember the girl at Jerez."

Thery sat down again with a shrug of indifference but his hands were
trembling as he struck a match to light his cigarette.

"We will give you more freedom--you shall go out every day. In a few
days we shall all return to Spain. They called you the silent man in
the prison at Granada--we shall believe that you will remain so."

After this the conversation became Greek to the Spaniard, for the
men spoke in English.

"He gives very little trouble," said Gonsalez. "Now that we have
dressed him like an Englishman, he does not attract attention. He
doesn't like shaving every day; but it is necessary, and luckily he is
fair. I do not allow him to speak in the street, and this tries his
temper somewhat."

Manfred turned the talk into a more serious channel.

"I shall send two more warnings, and one of those must be delivered
in his very stronghold. He is a brave man."

"What of Garcia?" asked Poiccart.

Manfred laughed.

"I saw him on Sunday night--a fine old man, fiery, and oratorical. I
sat at the back of a little hall whilst he pleaded eloquently in French
for the rights of man. He was a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Mirabeau, a
broad-viewed Bright, and the audience was mostly composed of Cockney
youths, who had come that they might boast they had stood in the temple
of Anarchism."

Poiccart tapped the table impatiently.

"Why is it, George, that an element of bathos comes into all these
things?"

Manfred laughed.

"You remember Anderson? When we had gagged him and bound him to the
chair, and had told him why he had to die--when there were only the
pleading eyes of the condemned, and the half-dark room with a
flickering lamp, and you and Leon and poor Clarice masked and silent,
and I had just sentenced him to death--you remember how there crept
into the room the scent of frying onions from the kitchen below."

"I, too, remember," said Leon, "the case of the regicide."

Poiccart made a motion of agreement.

"You mean the corsets," he said, and the two nodded and laughed.

"There will always be bathos," said Manfred; "poor Garcia with a
nation's destinies in his hand, an amusement for shop-girls--tragedy
and the scent of onions--a rapier thrust and the whalebone of
corsets--it is inseparable."

And all the time Thery smoked cigarettes, looking into the fire with
his head on his hands.

"Going back to this matter we have on our hands," said Gonsalez. "I
suppose that there is nothing more to be done till--the day?"

"Nothing."

"And after?"

"There are our fine art reproductions."

"And after," persisted Poiccart.

"There is a case in Holland, Hermannus van der Byl, to wit; but it
will be simple, and there will be no necessity to warn."

Poiccart's face was grave.

"I am glad you have suggested van der Byl, he should have been dealt
with before--Hook of Holland or Flushing?"

"If we have time, the Hook by all means."

"And Thery?"

"I will see to him," said Gonsalez easily; "we will go overland to
Jerez--where the girl is," he added laughingly.

The object of their discussion finished his tenth cigarette and sat
up in his chair with a grunt.

"I forgot to tell you," Leon went on, "that today, when we were
taking our exercise walk, Thery was considerably interested in the
posters he saw everywhere, and was particularly curious to know why so
many people were reading them. I had to find a lie on the spur of the
minute, and I hate lying"--Gonsalez was perfectly sincere. "I invented
a story about racing or lotteries or something of the sort, and he was
satisfied."

Thery had caught his name in spite of its anglicised pronunciation,
and looked inquiry.

"We will leave you to amuse our friend," said Manfred, rising.
"Poiccart and I have a few experiments to make."

The two left the room, traversed the narrow passage, and paused
before a small door at the end. A larger door on the right, padlocked
and barred, led to the studio. Drawing a small key from his pocket,
Manfred opened the door, and, stepping into the room, switched on a
light that shone dimly through a dust-covered bulb. There had been some
attempt at restoring order from the chaos. Two shelves had been cleared
of rubbish, and on these stood rows of bright little phials, each
bearing a number. A rough table had been pushed against the wall
beneath the shelves, and on the green baize with which the table was
covered was a litter of graduated measures, test tubes, condensers,
delicate scales, and two queer-shaped glass machines, not unlike gas
generators.

Poiccart pulled a chair to the table, and gingerly lifted a metal
cup that stood in a dish of water. Manfred, looking over his shoulder,
remarked on the consistency of the liquid that half filled the vessel,
and Poiccart bent his head, acknowledging the remark as though it were
a compliment.

"Yes," he said, satisfied, "it is a complete success, the formula is
quite right. Some day we may want to use this."

He replaced the cup in its bath, and reaching beneath the table,
produced from a pail a handful of ice-dust, with which he carefully
surrounded the receptacle.

"I regard that as the multum in farvo of explosives," he
said, and took down a small phial from the shelf, lifted the stopper
with the crook of his little finger, and poured a few drops of a
whitish liquid into the metal cup.

"That neutralises the elements," said Poiccart, and gave a sigh of
relief. "I am not a nervous man, but the present is the first
comfortable moment I have had for two days."

"It makes an abominable smell," said Manfred, with his handkerchief
to his nose.

A thin smoke was rising from the cup.

"I never notice those things," Poiccart replied, dipping a thin
glass rod into the mess. He lifted the rod, and watched reddish drops
dripping from the end.

"That's all right," he said.

"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 V. 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 voila!"

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.

"We went for a walk this afternoon," resumed Leon, "and were passing
along Regent Street, he stopping every few seconds to look in the
shops, when suddenly--we had been staring at the window of a
photographer's--I missed him. There were hundreds of people in the
street--but no Thery...I have been seeking him ever since."

Leon sipped his drink and looked at his watch.

The other two men did nothing, said nothing.

A careful observer might have noticed that both Manfred's and
Poiccart's hands strayed to the top button of their coats.

"Perhaps not so bad as that," smiled Gonsalez.

Manfred broke the silence of the two.

"I take all blame," he commenced, but Poiccart stopped him with a
gesture.

"If there is any blame, I alone am blameless," he said with a short
laugh. "No, George, it is too late to talk of blame. We underrated the
cunning of m'sieur, the enterprise of the English newspapers
and--and----"

"The girl at Jerez," concluded Leon.

Five minutes passed in silence, each man thinking rapidly.

"I have a car not far from here," said Leon at length. "You had told
me you would be at this place by eleven o'clock; we have the naphtha
launch at Burnham-on-Crouch--we could be in France by daybreak."

Manfred looked at him. "What do you think yourself?" he asked.

"I say stay and finish the work," said Leon.

"And I," said Poiccart quietly but decisively.

Manfred called the waiter.

"Have you the last editions of the evening papers?"

The waiter thought he could get them, and returned with two.

Manfred scanned the pages carefully, then threw them aside.

"Nothing in these," he said. "If Thery has gone to the police we
must hide and use some other method to that agreed upon, or we could
strike now. After all, Thery has told us all we want to know,
but----"

"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.



CHAPTER VI. THE CLUES


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:

£1000 REWARD

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. No. 44 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.

"I wonder you have not got an iron safe to lock me in," he said
petulantly, and closed the conversation.

There was a knock at the door and Falmouth put his head inside.

"I don't want to hurry you, sir," he said, "but----"

So the Foreign Secretary drove off to Downing Street in something
remarkably like a temper.

For he was not used to being hurried, or taken charge of, or ordered
hither and thither. It irritated him further to see the now familiar
cyclists on either side of the carriage, to recognise at every few
yards an obvious policeman in mufti admiring the view from the
sidewalk, and when he came to Downing Street and found it barred to all
carriages but his own, and an enormous crowd of morbid sightseers
gathered to cheer his ingress, he felt as he had never felt before in
his life--humiliated.

He found his secretary waiting in his private office with the rough
draft of the speech that was to introduce the second reading of the
Extradition Bill.

"We are pretty sure to meet with a great deal of opposition,"
informed the secretary, "but Mainland has sent out three-line whips,
and expects to get a majority of thirty-six--at the very least."

Ramon read over the notes and found them refreshing.

They brought back the old feeling of security and importance. After
all, he was a great Minister of State. Of course the threats were too
absurd--the police were to blame for making so much fuss; and of course
the Press--yes, that was it--a newspaper sensation.

There was something buoyant, something almost genial in his air,
when he turned with a half smile to his secretary.

"Well, what about my unknown friends--what do the blackguards call
themselves?--the Four Just Men?"

Even as he spoke he was acting a part; he had not forgotten their
title, it was with him day and night.

The secretary hesitated; between his chief and himself the Four Just
Men had been a tabooed subject.

"They--oh, we've heard nothing more than you have read," he said
lamely; "we know now who Thery is, but we can't place his three
companions."

The Minister pursed his lips.

"They give me till tomorrow night to recant," he said.

"You have heard from them again?"

"The briefest of notes," said Sir Philip lightly.

"And otherwise?"

Sir Philip frowned. "They will keep their promise," he said shortly,
for the 'otherwise' of his secretary had sent a coldness into his heart
that he could not quite understand.

In the top room in the workshop at Carnaby Street, Thery, subdued,
sullen, fearful, sat facing the three. "I want you to quite
understand," said Manfred, "that we bear you no ill-will for what you
have done. I think, and Senor Poiccart thinks, that Senor Gonsalez did
right to spare your life and bring you back to us."

Thery dropped his eyes before the half-quizzical smile of the
speaker.

"Tomorrow night you will do as you agreed to do--if the necessity
still exists. Then you will go----" he paused.

"Where?" demanded Thery in sudden rage. "Where in the name of Heaven?
I have told them my name, they will know who I am--they will find
that by writing to the police. Where am I to go?"

He sprang to his feet, glowering on the three men, his hands
trembling with rage, his great frame shaking with the intensity of his
anger.

"You betrayed yourself," said Manfred quietly; "that is your
punishment. But we will find a place for you, a new Spain under other
skies--and the girl at Jerez shall be there waiting for you."

Thery looked from one to the other suspiciously. Were they laughing
at him?

There was no smile on their faces; Gonsalez alone looked at him with
keen, inquisitive eyes, as though he saw some hidden meaning in the
speech.

"Will you swear that?" asked Thery hoarsely, "will you swear that by
the----"

"I promise that--if you wish it I will swear it," said Manfred. "And
now," he went on, his voice changing, "you know what is expected of you
tomorrow night--what you have to do?"

Thery nodded.

"There must be no hitch--no bungling; you and I and Poiccart and
Gonsalez will kill this unjust man in a way that the world will never
guess--such an execution as shall appall mankind. A swift death, a sure
death, a death that will creep through cracks, that will pass by the
guards unnoticed. Why, there never has been such a thing
done--such----" he stopped dead with flushed cheeks and kindling eyes,
and met the gaze of his two companions. Poiccart impassive, sphinxlike,
Leon interested and analytic. Manfred's face went a duller red.

"I am sorry," he said almost humbly; "for the moment I had forgotten
the cause, and the end, in the strangeness of the means."

He raised his hand deprecatingly.

"It is understandable," said Poiccart gravely, and Leon pressed
Manfred's arm.

The three stood in embarrassed silence for a moment, then Manfred
laughed.

"To work!" he said, and led the way to the improvised
laboratory.

Inside Thery took off his coat. Here was his province, and from
being the cowed dependant he took charge of the party, directing them,
instructing, commanding, until he had the men of whom, a few minutes
before, he had stood in terror running from studio to laboratory, from
floor to floor.

There was much to be done, much testing, much calculating, many
little sums to be worked out on paper, for in the killing of Sir Philip
Ramon all the resources of modern science were to be pressed into the
service of the Four.

"I am going to survey the land," said Manfred suddenly, and
disappearing into the studio returned with a pair of step-ladders.
These he straddled in the dark passage, and mounting quickly pushed up
a trapdoor that led to the flat roof of the building.

He pulled himself up carefully, crawled along the leaden surface,
and raising himself cautiously looked over the low parapet.

He was in the centre of a half mile circle of uneven roofs. Beyond
the circumference of his horizon London loomed murkily through smoke
and mist. Below was a busy street. He took a hasty survey of the roof
with its chimney stacks, its unornamental telegraph pole, its leaden
floor and rusty guttering; then, through a pair of field-glasses, made
a long, careful survey southward. He crawled slowly back to the
trapdoor, raised it, and let himself down very gingerly till his feet
touched the top of the ladder. Then he descended rapidly, closing the
door after him.

"Well?" asked Thery with something of triumph in his voice.

"I see you have labelled it," said Manfred.

"It is better so--since we shall work in the dark," said Thery.

"Did you see then----?" began Poiccart.

Manfred nodded.

"Very indistinctly--one could just see the Houses of Parliament
dimly, and Downing Street is a jumble of roofs."

Thery had turned to the work that was engaging his attention.
Whatever was his trade he was a deft workman. Somehow he felt that he
must do his best for these men. He had been made forcibly aware of
their superiority in the last days, he had now an ambition to assert
his own skill, his individuality, and to earn commendation from these
men who had made him feel his littleness.

Manfred and the others stood aside and watched him in silence. Leon,
with a perplexed frown, kept his eyes fixed on the workman's face. For
Leon Gonsalez, scientist, physiognomist (his translation of the
Theologi Physiognomia Humana of Lequetius is regarded today as
the finest), was endeavouring to reconcile the criminal with the
artisan.

After a while Thery finished.

"All is now ready," he said with a grin of satisfaction: "let me
find your Minister of State, give me a minute's speech with him, and
the next minute he dies."

His face, repulsive in repose, was now demoniacal. He was like some
great bull from his own country made more terrible with the snuffle of
blood in his nostrils.

In strange contrast were the faces of his employers. Not a muscle of
either face stirred. There was neither exultation nor remorse in their
expressions--only a curious something that creeps into the set face of
the judge as he pronounces the dread sentence of the law. Thery saw
that something, and it froze him to his very marrow.

He threw up his hands as if to ward them off.

"Stop! stop!" he shouted; "don't look like that, in the name of
God--don't, don't!" He covered his face with shaking hands.

"Like what, Thery?" asked Leon softly.

Thery shook his head.

"I cannot say--like the judge at Granada when he says--when he says,
'Let the thing be done!'"

"If we look so," said Manfred harshly, "it is because we are
judges--and not alone judges but executioners of our judgment."

"I thought you would have been pleased," whimpered Thery.

"You have done well," said Manfred gravely.

"Bueno, bueno!" echoed the others.

"Pray God that we are successful," added Manfred solemnly, and Thery
stared at this strange man in amazement.

Superintendent Falmouth reported to the Commissioner that afternoon
that all arrangements were now complete for the protection of the
threatened Minister.

"I've filled up 44 Downing Street," he said; "there's practically a
man in every room. I've got four of our best men on the roof, men in
the basement, men in the kitchens."

"What about the servants?" asked the Commissioner.

"Sir Philip has brought up his own people from the country, and now
there isn't a person in the house from the private secretary to the
doorkeeper whose name and history I do not know from A to Z."

The Commissioner breathed an anxious sigh.

"I shall be very glad when tomorrow is over," he said. "What are the
final arrangements?"

"There has been no change, sir, since we fixed things up the morning
Sir Philip came over. He remains at 44 all day tomorrow until half past
eight, goes over to the House at nine to move the reading of the Bill,
returns at eleven."

"I have given orders for the traffic to be diverted along the
Embankment between a quarter to nine and a quarter after, and the same
at eleven," said the Commissioner. "Four closed carriages will drive
from Downing Street to the House, Sir Philip will drive down in a car
immediately afterwards."

There was a rap at the door--the conversation took place in the
Commissioner's office--and a police officer entered. He bore a card in
his hand, which he laid upon the table.

"Senor Jose di Silva," read the Commissioner, "the Spanish Chief of
Police," he explained to the Superintendent. "Show him in, please."

Senor di Silva, a lithe little man, with a pronounced nose and a
beard, greeted the Englishmen with the exaggerated politeness that is
peculiar to Spanish official circles.

"I am sorry to bring you over," said the Commissioner, after he had
shaken hands with the visitor and had introduced him to Falmouth; "we
thought you might be able to help us in our search for Thery."

"Luckily I was in Paris," said the Spaniard; "yes, I know Thery, and
I am astounded to find him in such distinguished company. Do I know the
Four?"--his shoulders went up to his ears--"who does? I know of
them--there was a case at Malaga, you know?...Thery is not a good
criminal. I was astonished to learn that he had joined the band."

"By the way," said the chief, picking up a copy of the police notice
that lay on his desk, and running his eye over it, "your people omitted
to say--although it really isn't of very great importance--what is
Thery's trade?"

The Spanish policeman knitted his brow.

"Thery's trade! Let me remember." He thought for a moment. "Thery's
trade? I don't think I know; yet I have an idea that it is something to
do with rubber. His first crime was stealing rubber; but if you want to
know for certain----"

The Commissioner laughed.

"It really isn't at all important," he said lightly.



CHAPTER VII. THE MESSENGER OF THE FOUR


There was yet another missive to be handed to the doomed Minister.
In the last he had received there had occurred the sentence: One
more warning you shall receive, and so that we may be assured it shall
not go astray, our next and last message shall be delivered into your
hands by one of us in person.

This passage afforded the police more comfort than had any episode
since the beginning of the scare. They placed a curious faith in the
honesty of the Four Men; they recognised that these were not ordinary
criminals and that their pledge was inviolable. Indeed, had they
thought otherwise the elaborate precautions that they were taking to
ensure the safety of Sir Philip would not have been made. The honesty
of the Four was their most terrible characteristic.

In this instance it served to raise a faint hope that the men who
were setting at defiance the establishment of the law would overreach
themselves. The letter conveying this message was the one to which Sir
Philip had referred so airily in his conversation with his secretary.
It had come by post, bearing the date mark, Balham, 12.15.

"The question is, shall we keep you absolutely surrounded, so that
these men cannot by any possible chance carry out their threat?" asked
Superintendent Falmouth in some perplexity, "or shall we apparently
relax our vigilance in order to lure one of the Four to his destruction?"

The question was directed to Sir Philip Ramon as he sat huddled up
in the capacious depths of his office chair.

"You want to use me as a bait?" he asked sharply.

The detective expostulated.

"Not exactly that, sir; we want to give these men a chance----"

"I understand perfectly," said the Minister, with some show of
irritation.

The detective resumed:

"We know now how the infernal machine was smuggled into the House;
on the day on which the outrage was committed an old member, Mr.
Bascoe, the member for North Torrington, was seen to enter the
House."

"Well?" asked Sir Philip in surprise.

"Mr. Bascoe was never within a hundred miles of the House of Commons
on that date," said the detective quietly. "We might never have found
it out, for his name did not appear in the division list. We've been
working quietly on that House of Commons affair ever since, and it was
only a couple of days ago that we made the discovery."

Sir Philip sprang from his chair and nervously paced the floor of
his room.

"Then they are evidently well acquainted with the conditions of life
in England," he asserted rather than asked.

"Evidently; they've got the lay of the land, and that is one of the
dangers of the situation."

"But," frowned the other, "you have told me there were no dangers,
no real dangers."

"There is this danger, sir," replied the detective, eyeing the
Minister steadily, and dropping his voice as he spoke, "men who are
capable of making such disguise are really outside the ordinary run of
criminals. I don't know what their game is, but whatever it is, they
are playing it thoroughly. One of them is evidently an artist at that
sort of thing, and he's the man I'm afraid of--today."

Sir Philip's head tossed impatiently.

"I am tired of all this, tired of it"--and he thrashed the edge of
his desk with an open palm--"detectives and disguises and masked
murderers until the atmosphere is, for all the world, like that of a
melodrama."

"You must have patience for a day or two," said the plain-spoken
officer.

The Four Just Men were on the nerves of more people than the Foreign
Minister.

"And we have not decided what is to be our plan for this evening,"
he added.

"Do as you like," said Sir Philip shortly, and then: "Am I to be
allowed to go to the House tonight?"

"No; that is not part of the programme," replied the detective.

Sir Philip stood for a moment in thought.

"These arrangements; they are kept secret, I suppose?"

"Absolutely."

"Who knows of them?"

"Yourself, the Commissioner, your secretary, and myself."

"And no one else?"

"No one; there is no danger likely to arise from that source. If
upon the secrecy of your movements your safety depended it would be
plain sailing."

"Have these arrangements been committed to writing?" asked Sir
Philip.

"No, sir; nothing has been written; our plans have been settled upon
and communicated verbally; even the Prime Minister does not know."

Sir Philip breathed a sigh of relief.

"That is all to the good," he said, as the detective rose to go.

"I must see the Commissioner. I shall be away for less than half an
hour; in the meantime I suggest that you do not leave your room," he
said.

Sir Philip followed him out to the ante-room, in which sat Hamilton,
the secretary.

"I have had an uncomfortable feeling," said Falmouth, as one of his
men approached with a long coat, which he proceeded to help the
detective into, "a sort of instinctive feeling this last day or two,
that I have been watched and followed, so that I am using a car to
convey me from place to place: they can't follow that, without
attracting some notice." He dipped his hand into the pocket and brought
out a pair of motoring goggles. He laughed somewhat shamefacedly as he
adjusted them. "This is the only disguise I ever adopt, and I might
say, Sir Philip," he added with some regret, "that this is the first
time during my twenty-five years of service that I have ever played the
fool like a stage detective."

After Falmouth's departure the Foreign Minister returned to his
desk.

He hated being alone: it frightened him. That there were two score
detectives within call did not dispel the feeling of loneliness. The
terror of the Four was ever with him, and this had so worked upon his
nerves that the slightest noise irritated him. He played with the
penholder that lay on the desk. He scribbled inconsequently on the
blotting-pad before him, and was annoyed to find that the scribbling
had taken the form of numbers of figure 4.

Was the Bill worth it? Was the sacrifice called for? Was the measure
of such importance as to justify the risk? These things he asked
himself again and again, and then immediately, What sacrifice? What
risk?

"I am taking the consequence too much for granted," he muttered,
throwing aside the pen, and half turning from the writing-table. "There
is no certainty that they will keep their words; bah! it is impossible
that they should----"

There was a knock at the door.

"Hullo, Superintendent," said the Foreign Minister as the knocker
entered. "Back again already!"

The detective, vigorously brushing the dust from his moustache with
a handkerchief, drew an official-looking blue envelope from his
pocket.

"I thought I had better leave this in your care," he said, dropping
his voice; "it occurred to me just after I had left; accidents happen,
you know."

The Minister took the document.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It is something which would mean absolute disaster for me if by
chance it was found in my possession," said the detective, turning to
go.

"What am I to do with it?"

"You would greatly oblige me by putting it in your desk until I
return"; and the detective stepped into the anteroom, closed the door
behind him and, acknowledging the salute of the plain-clothes officer
who guarded the outer door, passed to the motor-car that awaited
him.

Sir Philip looked at the envelope with a puzzled frown.

It bore the superscription Confidential and the address,
Department A, C1D, Scotland Yard.

'Some confidential report,' thought Sir Philip, and an angry doubt
as to the possibility of it containing particulars of the police
arrangements for his safety filled his mind. He had hit by accident
upon the truth had he but known. The envelope contained those
particulars.

He placed the letter in a drawer of his desk and drew some papers
towards him.

They were copies of the Bill for the passage of which he was daring
so much.

It was not a long document. The clauses were few in number, the
objects, briefly described in the preamble, were tersely defined. There
was no fear of this Bill failing to pass on the morrow. The
Government's majority was assured. Men had been brought back to town,
stragglers had been whipped in, prayers and threats alike had assisted
in concentrating the rapidly dwindling strength of the administration
on this one effort of legislation; and what the frantic entreaties of
the Whips had failed to secure, curiosity had accomplished, for members
of both parties were hurrying to town to be present at a scene which
might perhaps be history, and, as many feared, tragedy.

As Sir Philip conned the paper he mechanically formed in his mind
the line of attack--for, tragedy or no, the Bill struck at too many
interests in the House to allow of its passage without a stormy debate.
He was a master of dialectics, a brilliant casuist, a coiner of phrases
that stuck and stung. There was nothing for him to fear in the debate.
If only----It hurt him to think of the Four Just Men. Not so much
because they threatened his life--he had gone past that--but the mere
thought that there had come a new factor into his calculations, a new
and terrifying force, that could not be argued down or brushed aside
with an acid jest, nor intrigued against, nor adjusted by any
parliamentary method. He did not think of compromise. The possibility
of making terms with his enemy never once entered his head.

"I'll go through with it!" he cried, not once but a score of times;
"I'll go through with it!" and now, as the moment grew nearer to hand,
his determination to try conclusions with this new world-force grew
stronger than ever.

The telephone at his elbow purred--he was sitting at his desk with
his head on his hands--and he took the receiver. The voice of his house
steward reminded him that he had arranged to give instructions for the
closing of the house in Portland Place.

For two or three days, or until this terror had subsided, he
intended his house should be empty. He would not risk the lives of his
servants. If the Four intended to carry out their plan they would run
no risks of failure, and if the method they employed were a bomb, then,
to make assurance doubly sure, an explosion at Downing Street might
well synchronize with an outrage at Portland Place.

He had finished his talk, and was replacing the receiver when a
knock at the door heralded the entry of the detective.

He looked anxiously at the Minister.

"Nobody been, sir?" he asked.

Sir Philip smiled.

"If by that you mean have the Four delivered their ultimatum in
person, I can comfort your mind--they have not."

The detective's face was evidence of his relief.

"Thank Heaven!" he said fervently. "I had an awful dread that whilst
I was away something would happen. But I have news for you, sir."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir, the Commissioner has received a long cable from America.
Since the two murders in that country one of Pinkerton's men has been
engaged in collecting data. For years he has been piecing together the
scrappy evidence he has been able to secure, and this is his
cable-gram." The detective drew a paper from his pocket and, spreading
it on the desk, read:

Pinkerton, Chicago, to Commissioner of Police, Scotland yard,
London.

Warn Ramon that the Four do not go outside their promise. If they
have threatened to kill in a certain manner at a certain time they will
be punctual. We have proof of this characteristic. After Anderson's
death small memorandum book was discovered outside window of room
evidently dropped. Book was empty save for three pages, which were
filled with neatly written memoranda headed 'Six methods of execution'.
It was initialled 'C.' (third letter in alphabet). Warn Ramon against
following: drinking coffee in any form, opening letters or parcels,
using soap that has not been manufactured under eye of trustworthy
agent, sitting in any room other than that occupied day and night by
police officer. Examine his bedroom; see if there is any method by
which heavy gases can be introduced. We are sending two men by
'Lucania' to watch.

The detective finished reading. 'Watch' was not the last word in the
original message, as he knew. There had been an ominous postscript,
Afraid they will arrive too late.

"Then you think----?" asked the statesman.

"That your danger lies in doing one of the things that Pinkerton
warns us against," replied the detective. "There is no fear that the
American police are talking idly. They have based their warning on some
sure knowledge, and that is why I regard their cable as important."

There was a sharp rap on the panel of the door, and without waiting
for invitation the private secretary walked into the room, excitedly
waving a newspaper.

"Look at this!" he cried, "read this! The Four have admitted their
failure."

"What!" shouted the detective, reaching for the journal.

"What does this mean?" asked Sir Philip sharply.

"Only this, sir: these beggars, it appears, have actually written an
article on their 'mission'."

"In what newspaper?"

"The Megaphone. It seems when they recaptured Thery the
editor asked the masked man to write him an article about himself, and
they've done it; and it's here, and they've admitted defeat,
and--and----"

The detective had seized the paper and broke in upon the incoherent
secretary's speech.

"The Creed of the Four Just Men" he read. "Where is their
confession of failure?"

"Half way down the column--I have marked the passage--here"; and the
young man pointed with a trembling finger to a paragraph.

"'We leave nothing to chance,'" read the detective, "'if the
slightest hitch occurs, if the least detail of our plan miscarries, we
acknowledge defeat. So assured are we that our presence on earth is
necessary for the carrying out of a great plan, so certain are we that
we are the indispensable instruments of a divine providence, that we
dare not, for the sake of our very cause, accept unnecessary risks. It
is essential therefore that the various preliminaries to every
execution should be carried out to the full. As an example, it will be
necessary for us to deliver our final warning to Sir Philip Ramon; and
to add point to this warning, it is, by our code, essential that that
should be handed to the Minister by one of us in person. All
arrangements have been made to carry this portion of our programme into
effect. But such are the extraordinary exigencies of our system that
unless this warning can be handed to Sir Philip in accordance with our
promise, and before eight o'clock this evening, our arrangements fall
to the ground, and the execution we have planned must be forgone.'"

The detective stopped reading, with disappointment visible on every
line of his face.

"I thought, sir, by the way you were carrying on that you had
discovered something new. I've read all this, a copy of the article was
sent to the Yard as soon as it was received."

The secretary thumped the desk impatiently.

"But don't you see!" he cried, "don't you understand that there is
no longer any need to guard Sir Philip, that there is no reason to use
him as a bait, or, in fact, to do anything if we are to believe these
men--look at the time----"

The detective's hand flew to his pocket; he drew out his watch,
looked at the dial, and whistled.

"Half past eight, by God!" he muttered in astonishment, and the
three stood in surprised silence.

Sir Philip broke the silence.

"Is it a ruse to take us off our guard?" he said hoarsely.

"I don't think so," replied the detective slowly, "I feel sure that
it is not; nor shall I relax my watch--but I am a believer in the
honesty of these men--I don't know why I should say this, for I have
been dealing with criminals for the past twenty-five years, and never
once have I put an ounce of faith in the word of the best of 'em, but
somehow I can't disbelieve these men. If they have failed to deliver
their message they will not trouble us again."

Ramon paced his room with quick, nervous steps.

"I wish I could believe that," he muttered; "I wish I had your
faith."

A tap on the door panel.

"An urgent telegram for Sir Philip," said a grey-haired
attendant.

The Minister stretched out his hand, but the detective was before
him.

"Remember Pinkerton's wire, sir," he said, and ripped open the brown
envelope.

Just received a telegram handed in at Charing Cross
7.52. Begins: We have delivered our last message to the
foreign Secretary, signed Four. Ends. Is this true?
Editor, Megaphone.

"What does this mean?" asked Falmouth in bewilderment when he had
finished reading.

"It means, my dear Mr. Falmouth," replied Sir Philip testily, "that
your noble Four are liars and braggarts as well as murderers; and it
means at the same time, I hope, an end to your ridiculous faith in
their honesty."

The detective made no answer, but his face was clouded and he bit
his lips in perplexity.

"Nobody came after I left?" he asked.

"Nobody."

"You have seen no person besides your secretary and myself?"

"Absolutely nobody has spoken to me, or approached within a dozen
yards of me," Ramon answered shortly.

Falmouth shook his head despairingly.

"Well--I--where are we?" he asked, speaking