THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
Crystal Palace grounds by night.
A Guards’ band was playing the overture to Tannhäuser, 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 inkstained 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