THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
from the goats with a vengeance,’ he said with a faint smile, and his taciturn companion nodded. Then he asked —
‘Do you think any of these people will recognize you as the man who fired?’
The tall man shook his head decisively.
‘Their eyes were on the police — and besides I am too quick a shot. Nobody saw me unless—’
‘The Woman of Gratz?’ asked the other, without showing the slightest concern.
‘The Woman of Gratz,’ said George Manfred.
They formed part of a struggling line that moved slowly toward the police barrier.
‘I fear,’ said Manfred, ‘that we shall be forced to make our escape in a perfectly obvious way — the bull-at-the-gate method is one that I object to on principle, and it is one that I have never been obliged to employ.’
They were speaking all the time in the language of the harsh gutturals, and those who were in their vicinity looked at them in some perplexity, for it is a tongue unlike any that is heard in the Revolutionary Belt.
Closer and closer they grew to the inflexible inquisitor at the end of the police line. Ahead of them was a young man who turned from time to time as if seeking a friend behind. His was a face that fascinated the shorter of the two men, ever a student of faces. It was a face of deadly pallor, that the dark close-cropped hair and the thick black eyebrows accentuated. Aesthetic in outline, refined in contour, it was the face of a visionary, and in the restless, troubled eyes there lay a hint of the fanatic. He reached the barrier and a dozen eager men stepped forward for the honour of sponsorship. Then he passed and Manfred stepped calmly forward.
‘Heinrich Rossenburg of Raz,’ he mentioned the name of an obscure Transylvanian village.
‘Who identifies this man?’ asked Falmouth monotonously. Manfred held his breath and stood ready to spring.
‘I do.’
It was the spiritue who had gone before him; the dreamer with the face of a priest.
‘Pass.’
Manfred, calm and smiling, sauntered through the police with a familiar nod to his saviour. Then he heard the challenge that met his companion.
‘Rolf Woolfund,’ he heard Poiccart’s clear, untroubled voice.
‘Who identifies this man?’
Again he waited tensely.
‘I do,’ said the young man’s voice again.
Then Poiccart joined him, and they waited a little.
Out of the corner of his eye Manfred saw the man who had vouched for him saunter toward them. He came abreast, then:
‘If you would care to meet me at Reggiori’s at King’s Cross I shall be there in an hour,’ he said, and Manfred noticed without emotion that this young man also spoke in Arabic.
They passed through the crowd that had gathered about the hall — for the news of the police raid had spread like wildfire through the East End — and gained Aldgate Station before they spoke.
‘This is a curious beginning to our enterprise,’ said Manfred. He seemed neither pleased nor sorry. ‘I have always thought that Arabic was the safest language in the world in which to talk secrets — one learns wisdom with the years,’ he added philosophically.
Poiccart examined his well-manicured fingernails as though the problem centred there. ‘There is no precedent,’ he said, speaking to himself.
‘And he may be an embarrassment,’ added George; then, ‘let us wait and see what the hour brings.’
The hour brought the man who had befriended them so strangely. It brought also a little in advance of him a fourth man who limped slightly but greeted the two with a rueful smile. ‘Hurt?’ asked Manfred.
‘Nothing worth speaking about,’ said the other carelessly, ‘and now what is the meaning of your mysterious telephone message?’
Briefly Manfred sketched the events of the night, and the other listened gravely.
‘It’s a curious situation,’ he began, when a warning glance from Poiccart arrested him. The subject of their conversation had arrived.
He sat down at the table, and dismissed the fluttering waiter that hung about him.
The four sat in silence for a while and the newcomer was the first to speak.
‘I call myself Bernard Courtlander,’ he said simply, ‘and you are the organization known as the Four Just Men.’
They did not reply.
‘I saw you shoot,’ he went on evenly, ‘because I had been watching you from the moment when you entered the hall, and when the police adopted the method of identification, I resolved to risk my life and speak for you.’
‘Meaning,’ interposed Poiccart calmly, ‘you resolved to risk — our killing you?’
‘Exactly,’ said the young man, nodding, ‘a purely outside view would be that such a course would be a fiendish act of ingratitude, but I have a closer perception of principles, and I recognize that such a sequel to my interference is perfectly logical.’ He singled out Manfred leaning back on the red plush cushions. ‘You have so often shown that human life is the least considerable factor in your plan, and have given such evidence of your singleness of purpose, that I am fully satisfied that if my life — or the life of any one of you — stood before the fulfilment of your objects, that life would go — so!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Well?’ said Manfred. ‘I know of your exploits,’ the strange young man went on, ‘as who does not?’
He took from his pocket a leather case, and from that he extracted a newspaper cutting. Neither of the three men evinced the slightest interest in the paper he unfolded on the white cloth. Their eyes were on his face.
‘Here is a list of people slain — for justice’ sake,’ Courtlander said, smoothing the creases from a cutting from the Megaphone, ‘men whom the law of the land passed by, sweaters and debauchers, robbers of public funds, corrupters of youth — men who bought ‘justice’ as you and I buy bread.’ He folded the paper again. ‘I have prayed God that I might one day meet you.’
‘Well?’ It was Manfred’s voice again.
‘I want to be with you, to be one of you, to share your campaign and and—’ he hesitated, then added soberly, ‘if need be, the death that awaits you.’
Manfred nodded slowly, then looked toward the man with the limp.
‘What do you say, Gonsalez?’ he asked.
This Leon Gonsalez was a famous reader of faces, — that much the young man knew, — and he turned for the test and met the other’s appraising eyes.
‘Enthusiast, dreamer, and intellectual, of course,’ said Gonsalez slowly; ‘there is reliability which is good, and balance which is better — but—’
‘But — ?’ asked Courtlander steadily.
‘There is passion, which is bad,’ was the verdict.
‘It is a matter of training,’ answered the other quietly. ‘My lot has been thrown with people who think in a frenzy and act in madness; it is the fault of all the organizations that seek to right wrong by indiscriminate crime, whose sense are senses, who have debased sentiment to sentimentality, and who muddle kings with kingship.’
‘You are of the Red Hundred?’ asked Manfred.
‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘because the Red Hundred carries me a little way along the road I wish to travel.’
‘In the direction?’
‘Who knows?’