THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
boiler?’
Bartholomew started, as well he might, for nobody but himself knew that the Lucus Woerhmann was the ship he had hoped to overtake at Suez.
Manfred saw his bewilderment and smiled. ‘I do not ask credit for supernatural powers,’ he said; ‘frankly, it was the merest guesswork, but you must abandon your trip. It is necessary for our greater success that you should remain.’
Bartholomew bit his lips. This scheme did not completely fall in with his plans. He affected a sudden geniality.
‘Well, if I must, I must,’ he said heartily, ‘and since I agree, may I ask whom I have the honour of addressing, and further, since I am now your confidential agent, that I may see the faces of my employers?’
He recognized the contempt in Manfred’s laugh.
‘You need no introduction to us,’ said Manfred coldly, ‘and you will understand we do not intend taking you into our confidence. Our agreement is that we share your confidence, not that you shall share ours.’
‘I must know something,’ said Bartholomew doggedly. ‘What am I to do? Where am I to report! How shall I be paid?’
‘You will be paid when your work is completed.’ Manfred reached out his hand toward a little table that stood within his reach.
Instantly the room was plunged into darkness.
The traitor sprang back, fearing he knew not what.
‘Come — do not be afraid,’ said a voice.
‘What does this mean?’ cried Bartholomew, and stepped forward.
He felt the floor beneath him yield and tried to spring backwards, but already he had lost his balance, and with a scream of terror he felt himself falling, falling…
‘Here, wake up!’
Somebody was shaking his arm and he was conscious of an icy coldness and a gusty raw wind that buffeted his face.
He shivered and opened his eyes.
First of all he saw an iron camel with a load on its back; then he realized dimly that it was the ornamental support of a garden seat; then he saw a dull grey parapet of grimy stone. He was sitting on a seat on the Thames Embankment, and a policeman was shaking him, not ungently, to wakefulness.
‘Come along, sir — this won’t do, ye know.’
He staggered to his feet unsteadily. He was wearing a fur coat that was not his.
‘How did I come here?’ he asked in a dull voice.
The policeman laughed good humouredly.
‘Ah, that’s more than I can tell you — you weren’t here ten minutes ago, that I’ll swear.’
Bartholomew put his hand in his pocket and found some money.
‘Call me a taxi,’ he said shakily and one was found.
He left the policeman perfectly satisfied with the result of his morning’s work and drove home to his lodgings. By what extraordinary means had he reached the Embankment? He remembered the Four, he remembered the suddenly darkened room, he remembered falling — Perhaps he lost consciousness, yet he could not have been injured by his fall. He had a faint recollection of somebody telling him to breathe and of inhaling a sweet sickly vapour — and that was all.
The coat was not his. He thrust his hands into both pockets and found a letter. Did he but know it was of the peculiar texture that had made the greenish-grey paper of the Four Just Men famous throughout Europe.
The letter was brief and to the point:
For faithful service, you will be rewarded; for treachery, there will be no net to break your fall.
He shivered again. Then his impotence, his helplessness, enraged him, and he swore softly and weakly.
He was ignorant of the locality in which the interview had taken place. On his way thither he had tried in vain to follow the direction the shuttered motorcar had taken.
By what method the Four would convey their instructions he had no idea. He was quite satisfied that they would find a way.
He reached his flat with his head swimming from the effects of the I drug they had given him, and flung himself, dressed as he was, upon his bed and slept. He slept well into the afternoon, then rose stiff and irritable. A bath and a change refreshed him, and he walked out to keep an appointment he had made.
On his way he remembered impatiently that there was a call to the Council at five o’clock. It reminded him of his old rehearsal days. Then he recollected that no place had been fixed for the council meeting. He would find the quiet Francois in Leicester Square, so he turned his steps in that direction.
Francois, patient, smiling, and as deferential as ever, awaited him. ‘The council was held at two o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I am to tell you that we have decided on two projects.’ He looked left and right, with elaborated caution.
‘There is at Gravesend’ — he pronounced it ‘Gwayvse-end’—’a battleship that has put in for stores. It is the Grondovitch. It will be fresh in your mind that the captain is the nobleman Svardo — we have no reason to love him.’
‘And the second?’ asked Bartholomew.
Again Francois went through the pantomime that had so annoyed his companion before.
‘It is no less than the Bank,’ he said triumphantly.
Bartholomew was aghast.
‘The Bank — the Bank of England! Why, you’re mad — you have taken leave of your senses!’
Francois shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
‘It is the order,’ he said; then, abruptly, ‘Au revoir,’ he said, and, with his extravagant little bow, was gone.
If Bartholomew’s need for cutting himself adrift from the Red Hundred existed before, the necessity was multiplied now a thousand times. Any lingering doubt he might have had, any remote twinge of conscience at the part he was playing, these vanished.
He glanced at his watch, and hurried to his destination.
It was the Red Room of the Hotel Larboune that he sought.
He found a table and ordered a drink.
The waiter was unusually talkative.
He stood by the solitary table at which Bartholomew sat, and chatted pleasantly and respectfully. This much the other patrons of the establishment noticed idly, and wondered whether it was racing or house property that the two had in common.
The waiter was talking.
‘…I am inclined to disbelieve the story of the Grondovitch, but the Embassy and the commander shall know — when do you leave?’
‘Just as soon as I can,’ said Bartholomew.
The waiter nodded and flicked some cigarette ash from the table with his napkin.
‘And the Woman of Gratz?’ he asked.
Bartholomew made a gesture of doubt.
‘Why not,’ said the waiter, looking thoughtfully out of the window, ‘why not take her with you?’
There had been the germ of such a thought in Bartholomew’s mind, but he had never given form to it — even to himself.
‘She is very beautiful, and, it occurred to me, not altogether indifferent to your attractions — that kind of woman has a penchant for your type, and frankly we would gladly see her out of the way — or dead.’
M. Menshikoff was by no means vindictive, but there was obvious sincerity in his voice when he pronounced the last two words. M. Menshikoff had been right-hand