Edaar

Wallace

i > Ro os tt ae

THE THREE JUST MEN A full-length novel

by f Edgar Wallace

published by Hodder and Stoughton

4

ST. PAUL’S HOUSE : LONDON EC4

NOVELS AND STORIES BY

EDGAR WALLACE

RED ACES THE INDIA-RUBBER MEN AGAIN SANDERS THE FLYING SQUAD AGAIN THE THREE THE DOUBLE THE SQUEAKER THE FORGER THE FEATHERED SERPENT TERROR KEEP THE SQUARE EMERALD THE NORTHING TRAMP THE TRAITOR’S GATE THE RINGER THE JOKER THE BRIGAND SANDERS THE BLACK ABBOT THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS THE FOUR JUST MEN THE YELLOW SNAKE THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE THE MIND OF MR. J. G. REEDER THE GAUNT STRANGER THE STRANGE COUNTESS THE SINISTER MAN DOUBLE DAN THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS THE GREEN ARCHER THE CLUE OF THE NEW PIN THE CRIMSON CIRCLE THE ANGEL OF TERROR THE LAW OF THE FOUR JUST MEN PENELOPE OF THE “POLYANTHA” THE MAN WHO KNEW THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED CANDLE AGAIN THE RINGER WHITE FACE THE FRIGHTENED LADY

THE THREE JUST MEN

Edgar Wallace

The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and have no relation to any living person

FIRST PUBLISHED + MAY 1924 i THI EDITION - + + 1950 REPRINTED -'- - + 1953

Printed and Bound in England for Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, by Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ltd., Aylesbury and London

VII

CONTENTS

The Firm of Oberzohn The Three Men of Curzon Street The Vendetta f The Snake Strikes

The Golden Woman

In Chester Square

“Moral Suasion”

The House of Oberzohn Before the Lights Went Out When the Lights Went Out Gurther

Leon Theorizes

Mirabelle Goes Home

The Pedlar

Two “Accidents”

Rath Hall

Written in Braille

The Story of Mont d’Or

At Heavytree Farm

Gurther Reports

The Account Book

In the Store Cellar

The Courier

At Hearm

XXVI In Captivity. XXVI Mr. Newton’s Dilemma XXVII At Frater’s _ XXIX. Work for Gute, XXX Joan a Prisoner XXXI The Things in the Box XXXII The Search - XXXIII The Siege oy ate ‘The Death Tube

CHAPTER ONE THE FIRM OF OBERZOHN

“£520 p.a. Wanted at once, Laboratory Secretary (lady). Young; no previous experience required, but must have passed recognized examination which included physics and inorganic (elementary) chemistry. Preference will be given to one whose family has some record in the world of science, Apply by letter, Box 9754, Daily Megaphone. If applicant is asked to interview advertiser, fare will be paid from any station within a hundred and fifty miles of London.”

A coon friend sent one of the issues containing this advertise- ment to Heavytree Farm and circled the announcement with a blue pencil,

Mirabelle Leicester found the newspaper on the hall settee when she came in from feeding the chickens, and thought that it had been sent by the Alington land agent who was so con- stantly calling her attention to the advertisers who wished to buy cheap farms. It was a practice of his. She had the feeling that he resented her presence in the country, and was anxious to replace her with a proprietor less poverty-stricken.

Splitting the wrapper with a dusty thumb, she turned naturally to the advertisement Pages, having the agent in mind. Her eyes went rapidly down the “Wanted to Buy” column. There were several “gentlemen requiring small farm in good district,” but none that made any appeal to her, and she was wondering why the parsimonious man had spent tup- pence-ha’penny on postage and paper when the circléd para- graph caught her eye.

“Glory!” said Mirabelle, her red lips parted in excited wonder.

Aunt Alma looked up from her press-cutting book, startled as Mirabelle dashed in.

“Me!” she said dramatically, and pointed a finger at the advertisement. “I am young—I have no experience—I have my higher certificate—and daddy was something in the world of science. And, Alma, we are exactly a hundred and forty miles from London town!”

7

8 THE THREE JUST MEN

“Dear me!” said Aunt Alma, a lady whose gaunt and terri- fying appearance was the terror of tradesmen and farm hands, though a milder woman never knitted stockings.

“Isnt it wonderful? This solves all our problems. We’ll leave the farm to Mark, open the flat in Bloomsbury . . . we can afford one or even two theatres a week. . .”

Alma read the announcement for the second time.

“Tt seems good,” she said with conventional caution, “though I don’t like the idea of your working, my dear. Your dear father...”

“Would have whisked me up to town and Ï should have had the job by to-night,” said Mirabelle definitely.

But Alma wasn’t sure. London was full of pitfalls and villainy untold lurked in its alleys and dark passages. She her- self never went to London except under protest. _

“I was.there years ago when those horrible Four Just Men were about, my dear,” she said, and Mirabelle, who loved her, listened to the oft-told story. “They terrorized London. One couldn’t go out at night with the certainty that one would come back again alive . . . and to think that they have had a free pardon! It is simply encouraging crime.”

“My dear,” said Mirabelle (and this was her inevitable re- joinder), “they weren’t criminals at all. They were very rich men who gave up their lives to punishing those whom the law let slip through its greasy old fingers. And they were par- doned for the intelligence work they did in the war—one worked for three months in the German War Office—and there aren’t four at all: there are only three. I’d love to meet them—they must be dears!”

When Aunt Alma made a grimace, she was hideous. Mira- belle averted her eyes.

“Anyway, they are not in London now, darling,” she said, “and you will be-able to sleep soundly at nights.”

“What about the snake?” asked Miss Alma Goddard ominously.

Now if there was one thing which no person contemplating a visit to London wished to be reminded about, it was the snake.

Six million people rose from their beds every morning, opened their newspapers and looked for news of the snake. Eighteen daily newspapers never passed a day without telling

THE FIRM OF OBERZOHN 9

their readers that the scare was childish and a shocking com- mentary on th€ neurotic tendencies of the age; they also pub- lished, at regular intervals, intimate particulars of the black mamba, its habits and its peculiar deadliness, and maintained quite a large staff of earnest reporters to “work up the story.”

The black mamba, most deadly of all the African snakes, had escaped from the Zoo one cold and foggy night in March. And there should have been the end of~him—a three-line paragraph, followed the next day by another three-line para- graph detailing how the snake was found dead on the frozen ground—no mamba could live under a temperature of 75° Fahrenheit. But the second paragraph never appeared. On the 2nd of April a policeman found a man huddled up in a doorway in Orme Place. He proved to be a well-known and apparently wealthy stockbroker, named Emmett. He was dead. In his swollen face were found two tiny punctured wounds, and the eminent scientist who was called into consultation gave his opinion that the man had died from snake-bite: an especially deadly snake. The night was chilly; the man had been to a theatre alone, His chauffeur stated that he had left his master in the best of spirits on the doorstep. The key found in the dead man’s hand showed that he was struck be- fore the car had turned. When his affairs were investigated he was found to be hopelessly insolvent. Huge sums drawn from his bank six months before had disappeared.

London had scarcely recovered from this shocking surprise when the snake struck again. This time in the crowded street, and choosing a humble victim, though by no means a blame- less one. An ex-convict named Sirk, a homeless down-and-out, was seen to fall by a park-keeper near the Achilles statue in Hyde Park. By the time the keeper reached him he was dead. There was no sign of a snake—nobody was near him. This time the snake had made his mark on the wrist—two little punctured wounds near together.

A month later the third man fell a victim. He was a clerk of the Bank of England, a reputable man who was seen to fall forward in a subway train, and, on being removed to hospital, was discovered to have died—again from snake-bite.

So that the snake became a daily figure of fear, and its sinister fame spread even so far afield as Heavytree Farm.

“Stuff!” said Mirabelle, yet with a shiver. “Alma, I wish

a I0 THE THREE JUST MEN

you wouldn’t keep these horrors in your scrapbook.”

“They are Life,” said Alma soberly, and theft: “When will you take up your appointment?” she asked, and the girl laughed.

“We will make a beginning right away—by applying for the job,” she said practically. “And you needn’t start packing your boxes for a very long time!”

An hout later she intercepted the village postman and

. handed him a letter. j

And that was the beginning of the adventure which in- volved so many lives and fortunes, which brought the Three Just men to the verge of dissolution, and one day was to turn the heart of London into a battle-field.

Two days after the letter was dispatched came the answer, typewritten, surprisingly personal, and in places curiously worded. There was an excuse for that, for the heading on the note-paper was

OBERZOHN & SMITTS, MERCHANTS AND EXPORTERS.

On the third day Mirabelle Leicester stepped down from a "bus in the City Road and entered the unimposing door of Romance, and an inquisitive chauffeur who saw her enter followed and overtook her in the lobby.

“Excuse me, madame—are you Mrs. Carter?”

Mirabelle did not look like Mrs. Anybody.

“No,” she said, and gave her name.

“But you're the lady from Hereford . . . you live with your mother at Telford Park ...?”

The man was so agitated that she was not annoyed by his insistence. Evidently he had instructions to meet a stranger and was fearful of missing her.

“You have made a mistake—I live at Heavytree Farm, Daynham—with my aunt.”

“Tg she called Carter?”

She laughed.

“Miss Alma Goddard—now are you satisfied?”

» “Then you’re not the lady, miss; I’m waiting to pick her u ig

a Vie "The chauffeur withdrew apologetically. ; tahe The girl waited: in the ornate ante-room for ten minutes

oe

THE: FIRM OF OBERZOHN Ir

before the pale youth with the stiff, upstanding hair and the huge rimless spectacles returned. His face was large, expres- sionless, unhealthy. Mirabelle had noted as a curious circum- stance that every man she had seen in the office was of the same type. Big heavy men who gave the impression that they had been called away from some very urgent work to deal with the triviality of her inquiries. They were speechless men who glared solemnly at her through thick lenses and nodded or shook their heads according to the requirements of the moment. She expected to meet foreigners in the offices of Oberzohn & Smitts; German, she imagined, and was sur- prised later to discover that both principals and staff were in the main Swedish.

The pale youth, true to the traditions of the house, said nothing: he beckoned her with a little jerk of his head, and _ she went into a larger room, where half a dozen men were sitting at half a dozen desks and writing furiously, their noses glued short-sightedly to the books and papers which engaged ` their attention. Nobody looked up as she passed through the waist-high gate which separated the caller from the staff. Hanging upon the wall between two windows was a map of Africa with great green patches. In one corner of the room were stacked a dozen massive ivory tusks, each bearing a hanging label. There was the model of a steamship in a case on a window-ledge, and on another a crudely carved wooden ` idol of native origin.

The youth stopped before a heavy rosewood door and knocked. When a deep voice answered, he pushed open the door and stood aside to let her pass. It was a gigantic room— that was the word which occurred to her as most fitting, and the vast space of it was emphasized by the almost complete lack of furniture. A very small ebony writing-table, two very small chairs and a long and narrow black cupboard fitted into a recess were all the furnishings she could see. ‘The high walls were covered with a golden paper. Four bright-red rafters ran across the black ceiling—the floor was completely covered with a deep purple carpet. It seemed that there was a rolled map above the fireplace—a long thin cord came down from the cornice and ended in a tassel within reach.

The room, with its lack of appointments, was so unexpected a vision that the girl stood staring from walls to roof, until

a SS eee — e e

a

I2 THE THREE JUST MEN t

she observed her guide making urgent signs, and then she advanced towards the man who stood with his back to the tiny fire that burnt in the silver fireplace.

He was tall and grey; her first impression was of an enor- mously high forehead. The sallow face was long, and nearer at hand, she saw, covered by innumerable lines and furrows. She judged him to be about fifty until he spoke, and then she realized that he was much older.

“Miss Mirabelle Leicester?”

His English was not altogether perfect; the delivery was queerly deliberate and he lisped slightly.

“Pray be seated. I am Dr. Eruc Oberzohn. I am not Ger- man. I admire the Germans, but I am Swedish. You are convinced?”

She laughed, and when Mirabelle Leicester laughed, less susceptible men than Dr. Eruc Oberzohn had forgotten all other business. She was not very tall—her slimness and her symmetrical figure made her appear so. She had in her face and in her clear grey eyes something of the country-side; she belonged to the orchards where the apple-blossom lay like heavy snow upon the bare branches; to the cold brooks that ran noisily under hawthorn hedges. The April sunlight was in her eyes and the springy velvet of meadows everlastingly under her feet.

To Dr. Oberzohn she was a girl in a blue tailor-made cos- tume. He saw that she wore a little hat with a straight brim that framed her face just above the lift of her curved eye- brows. A German would have seen these things, being a hope- less sentimentalist. The doctor was not German; he loathed their sentimentality.

“Will you be seated? You have a scientific training?”

Mirabelle shook her head.

“I haven't,” she confessed ruefully, “but I’ve passed in the subjects yqu mentioned in your advertisement.”

“But your father—he was a scientist?”

She nodded gravely.

“But not a great scientist,” he stated. “England and America do not produce such men. Ah, tell me not of your Kelvins, Edisons, and Newtons! They were incomplete, dull men, ponderous men—the fire was not there.”

She was somewhat taken aback, but she was amused as

THE FIRM OF OBERZOHN 13

well. His calm dismissal of men who were honoured in the scientific world was so obviously sincere.

“Now talk to me of yourself.” He seated himself in the hard, straight-backed chair by the little desk.

“Pm afraid there is very little I can tell you, Dr. Oberzohn. I live with my aunt at Heavytree Farm in Gloucester, and we have a flat in Doughty Court. My aunt and I have a small income—and I think that is all.”

“Go on, please,” he commanded. “Tell me of your sensa- tions when you had my letter—I desire to know your mind. That is how I form all opinions; that is how I made my immense fortune. By the analysis of the mind.”

She had expected many tests; an examination in elementary science; a typewriting test possibly (she dreaded this most); but she never for one moment dreamt that the flowery letter asking her to call at the City Road offices of Oberzohn & Smitts would lead to an experiment in psycho-analysis.

“I can only tell you that I was surprised,” she said, and the tightening line of her mouth would have told him a great deal if he were the student of human nature he claimed to be. “Naturally the salary appeals to me—ten pounds a week is such a high rate of pay that I cannot think I am quali- fied—”

“You are qualified.” His harsh voice grew more strident as he impressed this upon her. “I need a laboratory secretary. You are qualified”—he hesitated, and then went on—“by rea- son of distinguished parentage. Also”—he hesitated again for a fraction of a second—“also because of general education. Your duties shall commence soon!” He waved a long, thin hand to the door in the corner of the room. “You will take your position at once,” he said.

The long face, the grotesquely high forehead, the bulbous nose and wide, crooked mouth all seemed to work together when he spoke. At one moment the forehead was full of pleats and furrows—at the next, comparatively smooth. The point of his nose dipped up and down at every word, only his small, deep-set eyes remained steadfast, unwinking. She had seen eyes like those before, brown and pathetic. Of what did they remind her? His last words brought her to the verge of panic.

“Oh, I could not possibly start to-day,’ she said in trepidation.

14 THE THREE JUST MEN

“To-day, or it shall be never,” he said with an air of finality. >

She had to face a crisis. The salary was more than desir- able; it was necessary. The farm scarcely paid its way, for ‘Alma was not the best of managers. And the income grew more and more attenuated. Last year the company in which her meagre fortune was invested had passed a dividend and she had to give up her Swiss holiday.

“PIL start now.” She had to set her teeth to make this resolve.

“Very good; that is my wish.”

He was still addressing her as though she were a public meeting. Rising from his chair, he opened the little door and she went into a smaller room. She had seen laboratories, but none quite so beautifully fitted as this—shelf upon shelf of white porcelain jars, of cut-glass bottles, their contents en- graved in frosted letters; a bench that ran the length of the room, on which apparatus of every kind was arranged in order. In the centre of the room ran a long, glass-topped table, and here, in dustproof glass, were delicate instruments, rang- ing from scales which she knew could be influenced by a grain of dust, to electrical machines, so complicated that her heart sank at the sight of them.

“What must I do?” she asked dismally.

Everything was so beautifully new; she was sure she would drop one of those lovely jars . - - all the science of the school laboratory had suddenly drained out of her mind, leaving it a blank.

“You. will do.” Remarkably enough, the doctor for the moment seemed as much at a loss as the girl. “First—quanti- ties. In every jar or bottle there is a quantity. How much? Who knows? The last secretary was careless, stupid. She kept no book. Sometimes I go for something—it is not there! All gone. That is very regrettable.”

“You wish me to take stock?” she asked, her hopes reviving at the simplicity of her task.

There were measures and scales enough. The latter stood in a line like a platoon of soldiers ranged according to their size. Everything was very new, very neat. There was a smell of drying enamel in the room as though the place had been newly painted.

THE FIRM OF OBERZOHN I5

“That is all,” said the long-faced man.

He put his hand in the pocket of his frock-coat and took out a large wallet. From this he withdrew two crisp notes.

“Ten pounds,” he said briefly. “We pay already in advance. There is one more thing I desire to know,” he said, “It is of the aunt. She is in London?”

Mirabelle shook her head.

“No, she is in the country. I expected to go back this after- noon, and if I was—successful, we were coming to town to-morrow.”

He pursed his thickish lips; she gazed fascinated at his long forehead rippled in thought.

“It will be a nervous matter for her if you stay in London to-night—no?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No. I will stay at the flat; I have often stayed there alone, but even that will not be necessary. I will wire asking her to come up by the first train.”

“Wait.” He raised a pompous hand and darted back to his room. He returned with a packet of telegraph forms. “Write your telegram,” he commanded. “A clerk shall dispatch it at once.”

' Gratefully she took the blanks and wrote her news and request.

“Thank you,” she said.

Mr. Oberzohn bowed, went to the door, bowed again, and the door closed behind him.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, Mirabelle Leicester had no occasion to consult her employer or attempt to open the door. Had she done so, she would have discovered that it was locked. As for the telegram she had written, that was a curl of black ash in his fire.

CHAPTER TWO THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET

No. 233, Curzon Street, was a small house. Even the most _ enthusiastic of agents would not, if he had any regard to his _ soul’s salvation, describe its dimensions with any enthusiasm.

rae

ES a a

SS oe

SE

rs E Meets

E

P

16 THE THREE JUST MEN

He might enlarge upon its'bijou beauties, refer reverently to its historical association; speak truthfully of its central heating and electric installation, but he would, being an honest man, convey the impression that No. 233 was on the small side.

The house was flanked by two modern mansions, stone- fronted, with metal and glass doors that gave out a blur of light by night. Both overtopped the modest roof of their neighbour by many stories—No. 233 had the appearance of a little man crushed in a crowd and unable to escape, and there was in its mild frontage the illusion of patient resignation and humility.

To that section of Curzon Street wherein it had its place, the house was an offence and was, in every but a legal sense, a nuisance. A learned Chancery judge to whom application had been made on behalf of neighbouring property owners, ground landlords and the like, had refused to grant the in- junction for which they had pleaded, “prohibiting the said George Manfred from carrying on a business, to wit the Triangle Detective Agency, situate at the aforesaid number two hundred and thirty-three Curzon Street in the City of Westminster in the County of Middlesex.”

In a judgment which occupied a third of a column of The Times he laid down the dictum that a private detective might be a professional rather than a business man—a dictum which has been, and will be, disputed to the end of time.

So the little silver triangle remained fixed to the door and he continued to interview his clients—few in number, for he was most careful to accept only those who offered scope for his genius.

A tall, strikingly handsome man, with the face of a patrician and the shoulders of an athlete, Curzon Street—or such of the street as took the slightest notice of anything—observed him to be extremely well dressed on all occasions. He was a walking advertisement for a Hanover Street tailor who was so fashionable that he would have died with horror at the very thought of advertising at all. Car folk held up at busy cross- ings glanced into his limousine, saw the clean-cut profile and the tanned, virile face, and guessed him for a Harley Street specialist. Very few people knew him socially. Dr. Elver, the Scotland Yard surgeon, used to come up to Curzon Street at times and give his fantastic views on the snake and its appear-

THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET 17

ances, George Manfred and his friends listening in silence and offering no help. But apart from Elver and an Assistant Com- missioner of Police, a secretive man, who dropped in at odd moments to smoke a pipe and talk of old times, the social callers were few and far between.

His chauffeur-footman was really better known than he. At the mews where he garaged his car, they called him “Lightning,” and it was generally agreed that this thin-faced, eager-eyed man would sooner or later meet the end which in- evitably awaits all chauffeurs who take sharp corners on two wheels at sixty miles an hour: some of the critics had met the big Spanz on the road and had reproached him afterwards, gently or violently, according to the degree of their scare.

Few knew Mr. Manfred’s butler, a dark-browed foreigner, rather stout and somewhat saturnine. He was a man who talked very little even to the cook and the two housemaids who came every morning at eight and left the house punc- tually at six, for Mr. Manfred dined out most nights.

He advertised only in the more exclusive newspapers, and not in his own name; no interviews were granted except by appointment, so that the arrival of Mr. Sam Barberton was in every sense an irregularity.

He knocked at the door just as the maids were leaving, and since they knew little about Manfred and his ways except that he liked poached eggs and spinach for breakfast, the stranger was allowed to drift into the hall, and here the taciturn butler, hastily summoned from his room, found him.

The visitor was a stubby, thick-set man with a brick-red face and a head that was both grey and bald. His dress and his speech were equally rough. The butler saw that he was no ordinary artisan because his boots were of a kind known as veldtschoons. They were of undressed leather, patchily bleached by the sun.

“I want to see the boss of this Triangle,” he said in a loud voice, and, diving into his waistcoat pocket, brought out a soiled newspaper cutting.

The butler took it from him without a word. It was the Cape Times—he would have known by the type and the spacing even if on the back there had not been printed the bisected notice of a church bazaar at Wynberg. The butler studied such things.

18 THE THREE JUST MEN

“I am afraid that you cannot see Mr. Manfred without an appointment,” he said. His voice and manner were most un- expectedly gentle in such a forbidding man.

“Dye got to see him, if I sit here all night,” said the man stubbornly, and symbolized his immovability by squatting down in the hall chair.

Not a muscle of the servant’s face moved. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry or amused.

“I got this cutting out of a paper I found on the Benguella —she docked at Tilbury this afternoon—and I came straight here. I should never have dreamt of coming at all, only I want fair play for all concerned. That Portuguese feller with a name like a cigar—Villa, that’s it! —he said, ‘What’s the good of going to London when we can settle everything on board ship?’ But half-breed Portuguese! My God, Pd rather deal with bushmen! Bushmen are civilized—look here.”

Before the butler realized what the man was doing, he had slipped off one of his ugly shoes. He wore no sock or stocking underneath, and he upturned the sole of his bare foot for inspection. The flesh was seamed and puckered into red weals, and the butler knew the cause.

“Portuguese,” said the visitor tersely as he resumed his shoe. “Not niggers—Portugooses—half-bred, I'll admit. They burnt me to make me talk, and they’d have killed me only one of those hell-fire American traders came along—full of fight and fire-water. He brought me into the town.” |

“Where was this?” asked the butler.

“Mosamades: I went ashore to look round, like a fool. I was on a Woerman boat that was going up to Boma. The skipper was a Hun, but white—he warned me.”

“And what did they want to know from you?”

The caller shot a suspicious glance at his interrogator.

“Are you the boss?” he demanded.

“No--I’m Mr. Manfred’s butler. What name shall I tell him?”

“Barberton—Mister Samuel Barberton. Tell him I want certain things found out. The address of a young lady by the name of Miss Mirabelle Leicester. And PII tell your governor something too. This Portugoose got drunk one night, and spilled it about the fort they’ve got in England. Looks like a house but it’s a fort: he went there. ...”

‘

THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET 19

No, he was not drunk; stooping to pick up an imaginary match-stalk, the butler’s head had come near the visitor; there was a strong aroma of tobacco but not of drink.

“Would you very kindly wait?” he asked, and disappeared up the stairs.

He was not gone long before he returned to the first landing and beckoned Mr. Barberton to come. The visitor was ushered into a room at the front of the house, a small room, which was made smaller by the long grey velvet curtains that hung be- hind the empire desk where Manfred was standing.

“This is Mr. Barberton, sir,” said the butler, bowed, and went out, closing the door.

“Sit down, Mr. Barberton.” He indicated a chair and seated himself. “My butler tells me you have quite an exciting isa i to tell me—you are from the Cape?”

“No, I’m not,” said Mr. Barberton. “Tve never been at nee i Cape in my life.”

The man behind the desk nodded.

“Now, if you will tell me——”

“Pm not going to tell you much,” was the surprisingly blunt reply. “It’s not likely that I’m going to tell a stranger what I wouldn’t even tell Elijah Washington—and he saved my life!”

Manfred betrayed no resentment at this cautious attitude. In that room he had met many clients who had shown the

f same reluctance to accept him as their confidant. Yet he had at the back of his mind the feeling that this man, unlike the rest, might remain adamant to the end: he was curious to discover the real object of the visit.

Barberton drew his chair, nearer the writing-table and rested his elbows on the edge.

“Tt’s like this, Mr. What’s-your-name. There’s a certain secret which doesn’t belong to me, and yet does in a way. It is worth a lot of money. Mr. Elijah Washington knew that and tried to pump me, and Villa got a gang of Kroomen to burn my feet, but I’ve not told yet. What I want you to do is to find Miss Mirabelle Leicester; and I want to get her quick, because there’s only about two weeks, if you understand me, before this other crowd gets busy—vVilla is certain to have cabled ’em, and according to him they’re hot!”

Mr. Manfred leant back in his padded chair, the glint of

20 THE THREE JUST MEN

an amused smile in his grey eyes.

«T take it that what you want us to do is to find Miss Leicester?”

The man nodded energetically.

“Have you the slightest idea as to where she is to be found? Has she any relations in England?”

“J don’t know,” interrupted the man. “All I know is that she lives here somewhere, and that her father died three years ago, on the twenty-ninth of May—make a note of that: he died in England on the twenty-ninth of May.”

That was an important piece of information, and it made the search easy, thought Manfred.

“And you're going to tell me about the fort, aren’t you?” he said, as he looked up from his notes.

Barberton hesitated.

“I was,” he admitted, “but I’m not so sure that I will now, until I’ve found this young lady. And don’t forget,”—he rapped the table to emphasize his words—“that crowd is hot!”

“Which crowd?” asked Manfred good-humouredly. He knew many “crowds,” and wondered if it was about one which was in his mind that the caller was speaking.

“The crowd I’m talking about,” said Mr. Barberton, who spoke with great deliberation and was evidently weighing every word he uttered for fear that he should involuntarily betray his secret.

That seemed to be an end of his requirements, for he rose and stood a little awkwardly, fumbling in his inside pocket.

“There is nothing to pay,” said Manfred, guessing his in- tention. “Perhaps, when we have located your Miss Mirabelle Leicester, we shall ask you to refund our out-of-pocket expenses.”

“I can afford to pay——” began the man.

“And we can afford to wait.” Again the gleam of amuse- ment in the deep eyes.

Still Mr. Barberton did not move.

“There’s another thing I meant to ask you. You know all that’s happening in this country?”

“Not quite everything,” said the other with perfect gravity.

“Have you ever heard of the Four Just Men?”

It was a surprising cuestion. Manfred bent forward as though he had not heard aright.

THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET 2I

“The Four

“The Four Just Men—three, as a matter of fact. I’d like to get in touch with those birds.”

Manfred nodded.

“I think I have heard of them,” he said.

“They’re in England now somewhere. They’ve got a par- don: I saw that in the Cape Times—the bit I tore the adver- tisement from.”

“The last I heard of them, they were in Spain,” said Man- fred, and walked round the table and opened the door. “Why do you wish to get in touch with them?”

“Because,” said Mr. Barberton impressively, “the crowd are scared of ’em—that’s why.”

Manfred walked with his visitor to the landing.

“You have omitted one important piece of information,” he said with a smile, “but I did not intend your going until you told me. What is your address?”

“Petworth Hotel, Norfolk Street.” .

Barberton went down the stairs; the butler was waiting in the hall to show him out, and Mr. Barberton, having a vague idea that something of the sort was usual in the houses of the aristocracy, slipped a silver coin in his hand. The dark- faced man murmured his thanks: his bow was perhaps a little lower, his attitude just a trifle more deferential.

He closed and locked the front door and went slowly up the , stairs to the office room. Manfred was sitting on the empire table, lighting a cigarette. The chauffeur-valet had come through the grey curtains to take the chair which had been vacated by Mr. Barberton.

“He gave me half a crown—generous fellow,” said Poiccart, the butler. “I like him, George.” g:

“I wish I could have seen his feet,” said the chauffeur, whose veritable name was Leon Gonsalez. He spoke with re- gret. “He comes from West Sussex, and there is insanity in his family. The left parietal is slightly recessed and the face is asymmetrical.”

“Poor soul!” murmured Manfred, blowing a cloud of smoke to the ceiling. “It’s a great trial introducing one’s friends to you, Leon.”

“Fortunately, you have no friends,” said Leon, reaching out and taking a cigarette from the open gold case on the table.

pa

22 THE THREE JUST MEN

“Well, what do you think of our Mr. Barberton’s mystery?”

George Manfred shook his head.

“He was vague, and, in his desire to be diplomatic, a little incoherent. What about your own mystery, Leon? You have

` been out all day . . . have you found a solution?”

Gonsalez nodded.

“Barberton is afraid of something,” said Poiccart, a slow and sure analyst. “He carried a gun between his trousers and his waistcoat—you saw that?”

George nodded.

“The question is, who or which is the crowd? Question two is, where and who is Miss Mirabelle Leicester? Question three is, why did they burn Barberton’s feet? . . . and I think that is 133? ž

The keen face of Gonsalez was thrust forward through a cloud of smoke.

«IĮ will answer most of them and propound two more,” he said. “Mirabelle Leicester took a job to-day at Oberzohn’s— laboratory secretary!”

George Manfred frowned.

“Laboratory? I didn’t know that he had one.”

“He hadn’t till three days ago—it was fitted in seventy-two hours by experts who worked day and night; the cost of its installation was sixteen hundred pounds—and it came into existence to give Oberzohn an excuse for engaging Mirabelle Leicester. You sent me out to clear up that queer advertise- ment which puzzled us all on Monday—I have cleared it up. It was designed to bring our Miss Leicester into the Oberzohn establishment. We all agreed when we discovered who was the advertiser, that Oberzohn was working for something—I watched his office for two days, and she was the only applicant for the job—hers the only letter they answered. Oberzohn lunched with her at the Ritz-Carlton—she sleeps to-night in Chester Square.”

There was a silence which was broken by Poiccart.

“And what is the question you have to propound?” he asked mildly.

“J think I know,” said Manfred, and nodded. “The ques- tion is: how long has Mr. Samuel Barberton to live?”

“Exactly,” said Gonsalez with satisfaction. “You are begin- ning to understand the mentality of Oberzohn!”

THE VENDETTA 23

CHAPTER THREE THE VENDETTA

Tue man who that morning walked without announcement into Dr. Oberzohn’s office might have stepped from the pages of a catalogue of men’s fashions. He was, to the initiated eye, painfully new. His lemon gloves, his dazzling shoes, the splendour of his silk hat, the very correctness of his handker- chief display, would have been remarkable even in the Ascot paddock on Cup day. He was good-looking, smooth, if a trifle plump, of face, and he wore a tawny little moustache and_a monocle. People who did not like Captain Monty Newton— and their names were many—said of him that he aimed at achieving the housemaid’s conception of a guardsman. They did not say this openly, because he was a man to be propi- tiated rather than offended. He had money, a place in the country, a house in Chester Square, and an assortment of cars. He was a member of several good clubs, the committees of which never discussed him without offering the excuse of war- time courtesies for his election. Nobody knew how he made his money, or, if it were inherited, whose heir he was. He gave amien, A played cards well, and enjoyed exceptional luck, especially when he was the host and held the bank after one of the splendid dinners he gave in his Chester Square mansion.

“Good morning, Oberzohn—how is Smitts?”

It was his favourite jest, for there was no Smitts, and had been no Smitts in the firm since ’96.

The doctor, peering down at the telegram he was writing, looked up. \ i

“Good morning, Captain Newton,” he said precisely.

Newton passed to the back of him and read the message he was writing. It was addressed to “Miss Alma Goddard, Heavytree Farm, Daynham, Gloucester,” and the wire ran:

“Have got the fine situation. Cannot expeditiously return to-night, I am sleeping at our pretty flat in Doughty Court. Do not come up until I send for you—Muiss MIRABELLE LEICESTER.”

Skee ee

meen i

See ae aa

24 THE THREE JUST MEN

“She’s here, is she?” Captain Newton glanced at the labora- tory door. “You're not going to send that wire? ‘Miss Mira- belle Leicester!’ ‘Expeditiously return!’ She’d tumble it in a minute. Who is Alma Goddard?”

“The aunt,” said Oberzohn. “I did not intend the dispatch- ing until you had seen it. My English is too correct.”

He made way for Captain Newton, who, having taken a sheet of paper from the rack on which to deposit with great care his silk hat, and having stripped his gloves and deposited them in his hat, sat down in the chair from which the older man had risen, pulled up the knees of his immaculate trousers, tore off the top telegraph form, and wrote under the address:

“Have got the job. Hooray! Don’t bother to come up, darling, until I am settled. Shall sleep at the flat as usual. Too busy to write. Keep my letters.—MuRABELLE.”

“That’s real,” said Captain Newton, surveying his work with satisfaction. “Push it off.”

He got up and straddled his legs before the fire.

“The hard part of the job may be to persuade the lady to come to Chester Square,” he said.

“My own little house——” began Oberzohn.

“Would scare her to death,” said Newton with a loud laugh. “That dog-kennel! No, it is Chester Square or nothing. Pll get Joan or one of the girls to drop in this afternoon and chum up with her. When does the Benguella arrive?”

“This afternoon: the person has booked rooms by radio at the Petworth Hotel.”

“Norfolk Street . . . humph! One of your men can pick him up and keep an eye on him. Lisa? So much the better. That kind of trash will talk for a woman. I don’t suppose he has seen a white woman in years. You ought to fire Villa— crude beast! Naturally the man is on his guard now.”

«Villa is the best of my men on the coast,” barked Ober- zohn fiercely. Nothing so quickly touched the raw places of his amazing vanity as a reflection upon his organizing qualities.

“How is trade?”

Captain Newton took a long ebony holder from his tail pocket, flicked out a thin platinum case and lit a cigarette in one uninterrupted motion.

THE VENDETTA 25

“Bat!” When Dr. Oberzohn was annoyed the purity of his pronunciation suffered, “There is nothing but expense!” `

Oberzohn & Smitts had once made an enormous income from the sale of synthetic alcohol. They were, amongst other things, coast traders. They bought rubber and ivory, paying in cloth and liquor. They sold arms secretly, organized tribal wars for their greater profit, and had financed at least two Portuguese revolutions nearer at home. And with the growth of their fortune, the activities of the firm had extended. Guns and more guns went out of Belgian and French workshops. To Kurdish insurrectionaries, to ambitious Chinese generals, to South American politicians, planning to carry their con- victions into more active fields. There was no country in the world that did not act as host to an O. & S. agent—and agents can be very expensive. Just now the world was alarm- ingly peaceful. A revolution had failed most dismally in Venezuela, and Oberzohn & Smitts had not been paid for two. ship-loads of lethal weapons ordered by a general who, two days after the armaments were landed, had been placed against an adobe wall and incontinently shot to rags by the soldiers of the Government against which he was in rebellion.

“But that shall not matter.” Oberzohn waved bad trade from the considerable factors of life. “This shall succeed: and then I shall be free to well punish 7

“To punish well,” corrected the purist,. stroking his moustache. “Don’t split your infinitives, Eruc—it’s silly. You’re thinking of Manfred and Gonsalez and Poiccart? Leave them alone. They are nothing! ”

“Nothing!” roared the doctor, his sallow face instantly dis- torted with fury. “To leave them alone, is it? Of my brother what? Of my brother in heaven, sainted martyr... I”

He spun round, gripped the silken tassel of the cord above the fireplace, and pulled down, not a map, but a picture. It had been painted from a photograph by an artist who specialized in the gaudy banners which hang before every booth at every country fair. In this setting the daub was a shrieking incongruity; yet to Dr. Oberzohn it surpassed in beauty the masterpieces of the Prado. A full-length portrait of a man in a frock-coat. He leaned on a pedestal in the atti- tude which cheap photographers believe is the acme of grace. His big face, idealized as it was by the artist, was brutal and

26 THE THREE JUST MEN

stupid. The carmine lips were parted in a simper. In one hand he held a scroll of paper, in the other a Derby hat which was considerably out of drawing.

“My brother!” Dr. Oberzohn choked. “My sainted Adolph _. . murdered! By the so-called Three Just Men . . . my brother!”

“Very interesting,” murmured Captain Newton, who had not even troubled to look up. He flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fireplace and said no more.

‘Adolph Oberzohn had certainly been shot dead by Leon Gonsalez: there was no disputing the fact. That Adolph, at the moment of his death, was attempting to earn the generous profits which come to those who engage in a certain obnoxious trade between Europe and the South American states, was less open to question. There was a girl in it: Leon followed his man to Porto Rico, and in the Café of the Seven Virtues they had met. Adolph was by training a gunman and drew first—and died first. That was the story of Adolph Oberzohn: the story of a girl whom Leon Gonsalez smuggled back to Europe belongs elsewhere. She fell in love with her rescuer and frightened him sick.

Dr. Oberzohn let the portrait roll up with a snap, blew his nose vigorously, and blinked the tears from his pale eyes.

“Yes, very sad, very sad,” said the captain cheerfully. “Now what about this girl? There is to be nothing rough or raw, you understand, Eruc? I want the thing done sweetly. Get that bug of the Just Men out of your mind—they are out of business. When a man lowers himself to run a detective agency he’s a back number. If they start anything we'll deal with them scientifically, eh? Scientifically!”

He chuckled with laughter at this good joke. It was obvious that Captain Newton was no dependant on the firm of Ober- zohn & Smitts. If he was not the dominant partner, he dominated that branch which he had once served in a minor capacity. He owed much to the death of Adolph—he never regretted the passing of that unsavoury man.

“T’]] get one of the girls to look her over this afternoon— where is your telephone pad—the one you write messages received?”

The doctor opened a drawer of his desk and took out a little memo pad, and Newton found a pencil and wrote:

THE VENDETTA 27

“To Mirabelle Leicester, care Oberzohn (Phone) Lon- don. Sorry I can’t come up to-night. Don’t sleep at flat alone. Have wired Joan Newton to put you up for night. She will call.—ALMa.”

“There you are,” said the gallant captain, handing the pad to the other. “That message came this afternoon. All tele- grams to Oberzohn come by ’phone—never forget it!”

“Ingenious creature!” Dr. Oberzohn’s admiration was almost reverential.

“Take her out to lunch . . . after lunch, the message. At four o’clock, Joan or one of the girls. A select dinner. To- morrow the office . . . gently, gently. Bull-rush these schemes and your plans die the death of a dog.”

He glanced at the door once more.

“She won’t come out, I suppose?” he suggested.

“Deuced awkward if she came out and saw Miss Newton’s — brother!”

“I have locked the door,” said Dr. Oberzohn proudly.

Captain Newton’s attitude changed: his face went red with sudden fury.

“Then you’re a—you’re a fool. Unlock the door when I’ve gone—and keep it unlocked! Want to frighten her?”

“It was my idea to risk nothing,” pleaded the long-faced Swede.

“Do as I tell you.”

Captain Newton brushed his speckless coat with the tips of his fingers. He pulled on his gloves, fitted his hat with the aid of a small pocket-mirror he took from his inside pocket, took up his clouded cane and strolled from the room,

“Ingenious creature,” murmured Dr. Oberzohn again, and went in to offer the startled Mirabelle an invitation to lunch.

CHAPTER FOUR THE SNAKE STRIKES

THE great restaurant, with its atmosphere of luxury and wealth, had been a little overpowering. The crowded tables, the soft lights, the very capability and nonchalance of the

28 THE THREE JUST MEN

waiters, were impressive. When her new employer had told her that it was his practice to take the laboratory secretary to lunch, “for I have not other time to speak of business things,” she accepted uncomfortably. She knew little of office routine, but she felt that it was not customary for principals to drive their secretaries from the City Road to the Ritz-Carlton to lunch expensively at that resort of fashion and the epicure. It added nothing to her self-possession that her companion was an object of interest to all who saw him. The gay luncheon- parties forgot their dishes and twisted round to stare at the extraordinary-looking man with the high forehead.

At a little table alone she saw a man whose face was tan- talizingly familiar. A keen, thin face with eager, amused eyes. Where had she seen him before? Then she remembered: the chauffeur had such a face—the man who had followed her into Oberzohn’s when she arrived that morning. It was absurd, of course; this man was one of the leisured class, to whom lunching at the Ritz-Calton was a normal event. And yet the likeness was extraordinary.

She was glad when the meal was over. Dr. Oberzohn did not talk of “business things.” He did not talk at all, but spent his time shovelling incredible quantities of food through his wide slit of a mouth. He ate intently, noisily—Mirabelle was glad the band was playing, and she went red with suppressed laughter at the whimsical thought; and after that she felt less embarrassed. ,

No word was spoken as the big car sped citywards. The doctor had his thoughts and ignored her presence. The only reference he made to the lunch was as they were leaving the hotel, when he had condescended to grunt a bitter complaint about the quality of English-made coffee.

He allowed her to go back to her weighing and measuring without displaying the slightest interest in her progress.

And then came the crowning surprise of the afternoon—it followed the arrival of a puzzling telegram from her aunt. She was weighing an evil-smelling mass of powder when the door opened and there floated into the room a delicate-looking girl, beautifully dressed. A small face framed in a mass of little golden-brown curls smiled a greeting.

“You're Mirabelle Leicester, aren’t you? I’m Joan Newton. —your aunt wired me to call on you.”

a: É

pea

THE SNAKE STRIKES 29

“Do you know my aunt?” asked Mirabelle in astonishment. She had never heard Alma speak of the Newtons, but then, Aunt Alma had queer reticences. Mirabelle had expected a middle-aged dowd—it was amazing that her unprepossessing relative could claim acquaintance with this society butterfly.

“Oh yes—we know Alma very well,” replied the visitor. “Of course, I haven’t seen her since I was quite a little girl— she’s a dear.”

She looked round the laboratory with curious interest.

“What a nasty-smelling place!” she said, her nose up- turned, “And how do you like old—er—Mr. Oberzohn?”

“Do you know him?” asked Mirabelle, astounded at the possibility of this coincidence.

“My brother knows him—we live together, my brother and I, and he knows everybody. A man about town has to, hasn’t he, dear?”

“Man about town” was an expression that grated a little; Mirabelle was not of the “dearing” kind. The combination of errors in taste made her scrutinize the caller more closely. Joan Newton was dressed beautifully but not well. There was something . . . Had Mirabelle a larger knowledge of life, she might have thought that the girl had been dressed to play the part of a lady by somebody who wasn’t quite sure of the constituents of the part. Captain Newton she did not know at the time, or she would have guessed the dress authority.

“I’m going to take you back to Chester Square after Mr. Oberzohn—such a funny name, isn’t it?—has done with you. Monty insisted upon my bringing the Rolls. Monty is my brother; he’s rather classical.”

Mirabelle wondered whether this indicated a love of the Greek poets or a passion for the less tuneful operas. Joan (which was her real name) meant no more than classy: it was a favourite word of hers; another was “morbid.”

Half an hour later the inquisitive chauffeur put his foot on the starter and sent his car on the trail of the Rolls, wonder- ing what Mirabelle Leicester had in common with Joan Alice Murphy, who had brought so many rich young men to the green board in Captain Newton’s beautiful drawing-room, where stakes ran high and the captain played with such phenomenal luck.

* * * * *

30 THE THREE JUST MEN

“And there you are,” said Gonsalez complacently. “Tve done a very good day’s work. Oberzohn has gone back to his rabbit-hutch to think up new revolutions—Miss Mirabelle Leicester is to be found at 307, Chester Square. Now the point is, what do we do to save the valuable life of Mr. Sam Barberton?”

Manfred looked grave.

“I hardly like the thought of the girl spending the night in Newton’s house,” he said.

“Why allow her to remain there?” asked Poiccart in his heavy way.

“Exactly!” Leon nodded.

George Manfred looked at his watch.

“Obviously the first person to see is friend Barberton,” he said. “If we can prevail on him to spend the evening with us, the rest is a simple matter——” i

The telephone bell rang shrilly and Leon Gonsalez monopo- lized the instrument.

“Gloucester? Yes.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “I took the liberty of asking Miss Alma Goddard to ring me up... her address I discovered very early in the day: Heavy- tree Farm, Daynham, near Gloucester . . . yes, yes, it is Mr. Johnson speaking. I wanted to ask you if you would take a message to Miss Leicester . . - oh, she isn’t at home?” Leon listened attentively, and, after a few minutes: “Thank you very much. She is staying at Doughty Court? She wired you . . . oh, nothing very important. I—er—am her old science master and I saw an advertisement . . . oh, she has seen it, has she?”

He hung up the receiver.

“Nothing to go on,” he said. “The girl has wired to say she is delighted with her job. The aunt is not to come up until she is settled, and Mirabelle is sleeping at Doughty Court.”

“And a very excellent place too,” said Manfred. “When we’ve seen Mr. Barberton I shouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t sleep there after all.”

Petworth Hotel in Norfolk Street was a sedate residential hostel, greatly favoured by overseas visitors, especially South Africans. The reception clerk thought Mr. Barberton was out: the hall porter was sure.

“He went down to the Embankment—he said he’d like to

THE SNAKE STRIKES hy 31

see the river before it was dark,” said that confidant of so many visitors.

Manfred stepped into the car by Leon’s side—Poiccart seldom went abroad, but sat at home piecing together the little jigsaw puzzles of life that came to Curzon Street for solution. He was the greatest of all the strategists: even Scot- land Yard brought some of its problems for his inspection.

“On the Embankment?” Manfred looked up at the blue and pink sky. The sun had gone down, but the light of day remained. “If it were darker I should be worried . . . stop, there’s Dr. Elver.”

The little police surgeon who had passed them with a cheery wave of his hand turned and walked back.

“Well, Children of the Law’—he was inclined to be dramatic—‘on what dread errand of vengeance are you bound?”

“We are looking for a man named Barberton to ask him to dinner,” said Manfred, shaking hands.

“Sounds tame to me: has he any peculiarities which would appeal to me?”

“Burnt feet,” said Leon promptly. “If you would like to learn how the coastal intelligence department extract infor- mation from unwilling victims, come along.”

Elver hesitated. He was a man burnt up by the Indian suns, wizened like a dried yellow apple, and he had no interest in the world beyond his work.

“Pll go with you,” he said, stepping into the car. “And if your Barberton man fails you, you can have me as a guest. I like to hear you talking. One cannot know too much of the criminal mind! And life is dull since the snake stopped biting!”

The car made towards Blackfriars Bridge, and Manfred kept watch of the sidewalk. There was no sign of Barberton, and he signalled Leon to turn and come back. This brought the machine to the Embankment side of the broad boulevard. They had passed under Waterloo Bridge and were nearing Cleopatra’s Needle when Gonsalez saw the man they were seeking.

He was leaning against the parapet, his elbows on the coping and his head sunk forward as though he were studying the rush of the tide below. The car pulled up near a police- man who was observing the lounger thoughtfully. The officer

32 THE THREE JUST MEN

recognized the police surgeon and saluted.

“Can't understand that bird, sir,” he said. “He’s been standing there for ten minutes—I’m keeping an eye on him, because he looks to me like a suicide who’s thinkin’ it over!”

Manfred approached the man, and suddenly, with a shock, saw his face. It was set in a grin—the eyes were wide open, the skin a coppery red.

“Elver! Leon!”

As Leon sprang from the car, Manfred touched the man’s shoulder and he fell limply to the ground. In a second the doctor was on his knees by the side of the still figure.

“Dead,” he said laconically, and then: “Good God!”

He pointed to the neck, where a red patch showed.

“What is that?” asked Manfred steadily.

“The snake!” said the doctor.

CHAPTER FIVE THE GOLDEN WOMAN

BARBERTON had been stricken down in the heart of London, under the very eyes of the policeman, it proved.

“Yes, sir, Pve had him under observation for a quarter of an hour. I saw him walking along the Embankment, admiring the view, long before he stopped here.”

“Did anybody go near him to speak to him?” asked Dr. Elver, looking up.

“No, sir, he stood by himself. I’ll swear that nobody was within two yards of him. Of course, people have been passing — to and fro, but I have been looking at him all the time, and Pye not seen man or woman within yards of him, and my eyes were never off him.”

A second policeman had appeared on the scene, and he was sent across to Scotland Yard in Manfred’s car for the ambu- lance and the police reserves necessary to clear and keep in circulation the gathering crowd. These returned simul- taneously, and the two friends watched the pitiable thing lifted into a stretcher, and waited until the white-bodied vehicle had disappeared with its sad load before they returned to their machine.

THE GOLDEN WOMAN 33

Gonsalez took his place at the wheel; George got in by his side. No word was spoken until they were back at Curzon Street. Manfred went in alone, whilst his companion drove the machine to the garage. When he returned, he found Poiccart and George deep in discussion.

“You were right, Raymond.” Leon Gonsalez stripped his thin coat and threw it on a chair. “The accuracy of your fore- casts is almost depressing. I am waiting all the time for the inevitable mistake, and I am irritated when this doesn’t occur. You said the snake would reappear, and the snake has re- appeared. Prophesy now for me, O seer!”

Poiccart’s heavy face was gloomy; his dark eyes almost hidden under the frown that brought his bushy eyebrows lower.

“One hasn’t to be a seer to know that our association with Barberton will send the snake wriggling towards Curzon Street,” he said. “Was it Gurther or Pfeiffer?”

Manfred considered.

“Pfeiffer, I think. He is the steadier of the two. Gurther has brain-storms; he is on the neurotic side. And that nine- thonged whip of yours, Leon, cannot have added to his mental stability. No, it was Pfeiffer, I’m sure.”

“I suppose the whip unbalanced him a little,” said Leon. He thought over this aspect as though it were one worth con- sideration. “Gurther is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, except that there is no virtue to him at all. It is difficult to believe, seeing him dropping languidly into his seat at the opera, that this exquisite young man in his private moments would not change his linen more often than once a month, and would shudder at the sound of a running bath-tap! That almost sounds as though he were a morphia fiend. I remember a ease in ’99.. . but I am interrupting you?”

“What precautions shall you take, Leon?” asked George Manfred.

“Against the snake?” Leon shrugged his shoulders. “The old military precaution against Zeppelin raids; the precaution the farmer takes against a plague of wasps. You cannot kneel on the chest of the vespa vulgaris and extract his sting with an anesthetic. You destroy his nest—you bomb his hangar. Personally, I have never feared dissolution in any form, but I have a childish objection to being bitten by a snake.”

T.J.M.—2

34 THE THREE JUST MEN

Poiccart’s saturnine face creased for a moment in a smile.

“You've no objection to stealing my theories,” he said dryly, and the other doubled up in silent laughter.

Manfred was pacing the little room, his hands behind him, a thick Egyptian cigarette between his lips.

“There’s a train leaves Paddington for Gloucester at ten forty-five,” he said. “Will you telegraph to Miss Goddard, Heavytree Farm, and ask her to meet the train with a cab? ‘After that I shall want two men to patrol the vicinity of the farm day and night.”

Poiccart pulled open a drawer of the desk, took out a small book and ran his finger down the index.

“I can get this service in Gloucester,” he said. “Gordon, Williams, Thompson and Elfred—they’re reliable people and have worked for us before.”

Manfred nodded.

“Send them the usual instructions by letter. I wonder who will be in charge of this Barberton case? If it’s Meadows, I can work with him. On the other hand, if it’s Arbuthnot, we shall have to get our information by subterranean methods.”

“Call Elver,” suggested Leon, and George pulled the tele- phone towards him.

It was some time before he could get into touch with Dr. Elver, and then he learnt, to his relief, that the redoubtable Inspector Meadows had complete charge.

“He's coming up to see you,” said Elver. “As a matter of fact, the chief_was here when I arrived at the Yard, and he. particularly asked Meadows to consult with you. There’s go- ing to be an awful kick at the Home Secretary’s office about this murder. We had practically assured the Home Office that there would be no repetition of the mysterious deaths and that the snake had gone dead for good.”

Manfred asked a few questions and then hung up.

“They are worried about the public—you never know what masses will do in given circumstances. But you can gamble that the English mass does the same thing—Governments hate intelligent crowds. This may cost the Home Secretary his job, poor soul! And he’s doing his best.”

A strident shout in the street made him turn his head with a smile.

“The late editions have got it—naturally. It might have

bS

THE GOLDEN WOMAN ; 35

been committed on their doorstep.”

“But why?” asked Poiccart. “What was Barberton’s offence?”

“His first offence,” said Leon promptly, without waiting for Manfred to reply, “was to go in search of Miss Mirabelle Leicester. His second and greatest was to consult with us. He was a dead man when he left the house.”

The faint sound of a bell ringing sent Poiccart down to the hall to admit an unobtrusive, middle-aged man, who might have been anything but what he was: one of the cleverest trackers of criminals that Scotland Yard had known in thirty years. A sandy-haired, thin-faced man, who wore pince-nez and looked like an actor, he had been a visitor to Curzon Street before, and now received a warm welcome. With little preliminary he came to the object of his call, and Manfred told him briefly what had happened, and the gist of his con- versation with Barberton.

“Miss Mirabelle Leicester is——” began Manfred.

“Employed by Oberzohn—I know,” was the surprising reply. “She came up to London this morning and took a job as laboratory assistant. I had no idea that Oberzohn & Smitts had a laboratory on the premises.”

“They hadn’t until a couple of days ago,” interrupted Leon. “The laboratory was staged especially for her.”

Meadows nodded, then turned to Manfred.

“He didn’t give you any idea at all why he ary to meet Miss Leicester?”

George shook his head.

“No, he was very mysterious indeed on that subject,” he said.

“He arrived by the Benguella, eh?” said Meadows, making a note. “We ought to get something from the ship before they pay off their stewards. If a man isn’t communicative on board ship, he’ll never talk at all! And we may find something in his belongings. Would you like to come along, Manfred?”

“PII come with pleasure,” said George gravely. “I may help you a little—you will not object to my making my own inter- pretation of what we see?”

Meadows smiled.

“You will be allowed your private mystery,” he said.

A taxi set them down at the Petworth Hotel in Norfolk

t

36 THE THREE JUST MEN

Street, and they were immediately shown up to the room which the dead man had hired but had not as yet occupied. His trunk, still strapped and locked, stood on a small woòden trestle, his overcoat was hanging behind the door; in one cor- ner of the room was a thick hold-all, tightly strapped, and containing, as they subsequently discovered, a weather-stained mackintosh, two well-worn blankets and an air pillow, to- gether with a collapsible canvas chair, also showing consider- able signs of usage. This was the object of their preliminary search.

The lock of the trunk yielded to the third key which the detective tried. Beyond changes of linen and two suits, one of which was practically new and bore the tab of a storè in St. Paul de Loanda, there was very little to enlighten them. They found an envelope full of papers, and sorted them out one by one on the bed. Barberton was evidently a careful man; he had preserved his hotel bills, writing on their backs brief but pungent comments about the accommodation he had enjoyed or suffered. There was an hotel in Lobuo which was full of vermin; there was one at Mossamedes of which he had written: “Rats ate one boot. Landlord made no allowance. Took three towels and pillow-slip.”

“One of the Four Just Men in embryo,” said Meadows dryly.

Manfred smiled.

On the back of one bill were closely written columns of figures: “12/6, 13/15, 10/7, 17/12, about 24,” etc. Against a number of these figures the word “about” appeared, and Manfred observed that invariably this qualification marked one of the higher numbers. Against the 10/7 was a thick pencil mark.

There were amongst the papers several other receipts. In St. Paul he had bought a “pistol automatic of precision” and ammunition for the same. The “pistol automatic of precision” was not in the trunk. j

“We found it in his pocket,” said Meadows briefly. “That fellow was expecting trouble, and was entitled to, if it is true that they tortured him at Mosamodes.”

“foss-am-o-dees,” Manfred corrected the mispronuncia- tion. It almost amounted to a fad in him that to hear a place miscalled gave him a little pain.

Meadows was reading a letter, turning the pages slowly.

THE GOLDEN WOMAN 37

“This is from his sister: she lives at Brightlingsea, and there’s nothing in it except . . .” He read a portion of the letter aloud: j

“|... thank you for the books. The children will appre- ciate them. It must have been like old times writing them— but I can understand how it helped pass the time. Mr. Lee came over and asked if I had heard from you. He is wonderful.”

The letter was in an educated hand.

“He didn’t strike me as a man who wrote books,” said Meadows, and continued his search.

Presently he unfolded a dilapidated map, evidently of Angola. It was rather on the small scale, so much so that it took in a portion of the Kalahari Desert in the south, and showed in the north the undulatiofs of the rolling Congo.

“No marks of any kind,” said Meadows, carrying the chart to the window to examine it more carefully. “And that, I think, is about all—unless this is something.”

“This” was wrapped in a piece of cloth, and was fastened to the bottom and the sides of the trunk by two improvised canvas straps. Meadows tried to pull it loose and whistled.

“Gold,” he said. “Nothing else can weigh quite as heavily as this.”

He lifted out the bundle eventually, unwrapped the cover- ing, and gazed in amazement on the object that lay under his eyes. It was an African bete, a nude, squat idol, rudely shaped, the figure of a native woman.

“Gold?” said Manfred incredulously, and tried to lift it with his finger and thumb. He took a firmer grip and examined the discovery closely. -

There was no doubt that it was gold, and fine gold. His thumb-nail made a deep scratch in the base of the statuette, He could see the marks where the knife of the inartistic sculptor had sliced and carved.

Meadows knew the coast fairly well: he had made many trips to Africa and had stopped off at various ports en route.

“Tve never seen anything exactly like it before,” he said, “and it isn’t recent workmanship either. When you see this” —he pointed to a physical peculiarity of the figure—“you can bet that you’ve got something that’s been made at least a

38 THE THREE JUST MEN

couple of hundred years, and probably before then. The natives of West and Central Africa have not worn toe-rings, for example, since the days of the Cæsars.”

He weighed the idol in his hand.

“Roughly ten pounds,” he said. “In other words, eight hundred pounds’ worth of gold.”

He was examining the cloth in which the idol had been wrapped, and uttered an exclamation.

“Look at this,” he said.

Written on one corner, in indelible pencil, were the words:

“Second shelf up left Gods lobby sixth.”

Suddenly Manfred remembered.

“Would you have this figure put on the scales right away?” he said. “I’m curious to know the exact weight.”

“Why?” asked Meadows in surprise, as he rang the bell.

The proprietor himself, who was aware that a police search was in progress, answered the call, and, at the detective’s re- quest, hurried down to the kitchen and returned in a few minutes with a pair of scales, which he piaced on the table. He was obviously curious to know the purpose for which they were intended, but Inspector Meadows did not enlighten him, standing pointedly by the door until the gentleman had gone.

The figure was taken from under the cloth where it had been hidden whilst the scales were being placed, and put in one shallow pan on the machine.

“Ten pounds seven ounces,” nodded Manfred triumph- antly. “I thought that was the one!” -

“One what?” asked the puzzled Meadows.

“Look at this list.”

Manfred found the hotel bill with the rows of figures and pointed to the one which had a black cross against it.

“19/7,” he said. “That is our little fellow, and the explana- tion is fairly plain. Barberton found some treasure-house filled with these statues. He took away the lightest. Look at the figures! He weighed them with a spring balance, one of those which register up to 21 Ib. Above that he had to guess—he puts ‘about 24, ‘about DAFIN

Meadows looked at his companion blankly, but Manfred was not deceived. That clever brain of the detective was working.

«Not for robbery—the trunk is untouched. They did not

THE GOLDEN WOMAN 39

even burn his feet to find the idol or the treasure house: they must have known nothing of that. It was easy to rob him—or, if they knew of his gold idol, they considered it too small loot to bother with.”

He looked slowly round the apartment. On the mantelshelf was a slip of brown paper like a pipe-spill.

He picked it up, looked at both sides, and, finding the paper blank, put it back where he had found it. Manfred took it down and absently drew the strip between his sensitive finger- tips.

“The thing to do,” said Meadows, taking one final look round, “is to find Miss Leicester.”

Manfred nodded.

“That is one of the things,” he said slowly. “The other, of course, is to find Johnny.”

“Johnny?” Meadows frowned suspiciously. “Who is Johnny?” he asked.

“Johnny is my private mystery.” George Manfred was smiling. “You promised me that I might have one!”

CHAPTER SIX IN CHESTER SQUARE

Waen Mirabelle Leicester went to Chester Square, her emotions were a curious discord of wonder, curiosity and embarrassment. The latter was founded on the extraordinary effusiveness of her companion, who had suddenly, and with no justification, assumed the position of dearest friend and lifelong acquaintance. Mirabelle thought the girl was an actress: a profession in which sudden and violent friendships are not a rare occurrence. She wondered why Aunt Alma had not made an effort to come to town, and wondered more that she had known of Alma’s friendship with the Newtons, That the elder woman had her secrets was true, but there was no reason why she should have refrained from speaking of a family who were close enough friends to be asked to chaperon her in town.

She had time for thought, for Joan Newton chattered away all the time, and if she asked a question, she either did not

40 $ THE THREE JUST MEN

wait for approval, or the question was answered to her own satisfaction before it was put.

Chester Square, that dignified patch of Belgravia, is an im- posing quarter. The big house into which the girl was ad- mitted by a footman had that air of luxurious comfort which would have appealed to a character less responsive to refine- ment than Mirabelle Leicester’s. She was ushered into a big drawing-room which ran from the front to the back of the house, and did not terminate even there, for a large, cool conservatory, bright with flowers, extended a considerable distance.

“Monty isn’t back from the City yet,” Joan rattled on. “My dear! Hes awfully busy just now, what with stocks and shares and things like that.”

She spoke as though “stocks and shares and things like that” were phenomena which had come into existence the day before yesterday for the occupation of Monty Newton.

“Ts there a boom?” asked Mirabelle with a smile, and the term seemed to puzzle the girl.

“Ye-es, I suppose there is. You know what the Stock Ex- change is, my dear? Everybody connected with it is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The money they make is simply wicked! And they can give a girl an awfully good time— theatres, parties, dresses, pearls—why, Monty would think nothing of giving a string of pearls to a girl if he took a liking to her!”

In truth Joan was walking on very uncertain ground. Her instructions had been simple and to the point. “Get her to Chester Gardens, make friends with her, and don’t mention the fact that I know Oberzohn.” What was the object of bringing Mirabelle Leicester to the house, what was behind this move of Monty’s, she did not know. She was merely play- ing for safety, baiting the ground, as it were, with her talk of good times and vast riches, in case that was required of her. For she, no less than many of her friends, entertained a wholesome dread of Monty Newton’s disapproval, which usually took a definite unpleasant shape.

Mirabelle was laughing softly.

“I didn’t know that stockbrokers were so rich,” she said dryly, “and I can assure you that some of them aren’t!”

She passed tactfully over the gaucherie of the pearls that

IN CHESTER SQUARE 41

Monty would give to any girl who took his fancy. By this time she had placed Joan: knew something of her upbringing, guessed pretty well the extent of her intelligence, and mar- velled a little that a man of the unknown Mr. Newton’s posi- tion should have allowed his sister to come through the world without the benefit of a reasonably good education.

“Come up to your room, my dear,” said Joan. “We've got a perfectly topping little suite for you, and I’m sure you'll be comfortable. It’s at the front of the house, and if you can get used to the milkmen yowling about the streets before they’re aired, you'll have a perfectly topping time.”

When Mirabelle inspected the apartment she was en- chanted. It fulfilled Joan’s vague description. Here was luxury beyond her wildest dreams. She admired the silver bed and the thick blue carpet, the silken panelled walls, the exquisite fittings, and stood in rapture before the entrance of a little bathroom, with its silver and glass, its shaded lights and marble walls.

“TI have a cup of tea sent up to you, my dear. You'll want to rest after your horrible day at that perfectly terrible fac- tory, and I wonder you can stand Oberzohn, though they tell me he’s quite a nice man. . . .”

She seemed anxious to go, and Mirabelle was no less desirous of being alone.

“Come down when you feel like it,” said Joan at parting, and ran down the stairs, reaching the hall in time to meet Mr. Newton, who was handing his hat and gloves to his valet.

“Well, is she here?”

“She’s here all right,” said Joan, who was not at all em- barrassed by the presence of the footman. “Monty, isn’t she a bit of a fool? She couldn’t say boo to a goose. What is the general scheme?”

He was brushing his hair delicately in the mirror above the hall-stand.

“What’s what scheme?” he asked, after the servant had gone, as he strolled into the drawing-room before her.

“Bringing her here—is she sitting into a game?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Monty without heat, as he dropped wearily to a low divan and drew a silken cushion behind him. “Nor inquisitive,” he added. “You haven’t scared her, have you?”

THE THREE JUST MEN

“J like that! ” she said indignantly.

She was one of those ladies who speak more volubly and with the most assurance when there is a mirror in view, and she had her eyes fixed upon herself all the time she was talk- ing, patting a strand of hair here and there, twisting her head this way and that to get a better effect, and never once looking at the man until he drew attention to himself.

“Scared! I’ll bet she’s never been to such a beautiful house in her life! What is she, Monty? A typist or something? I don’t understand her.”

“She’s a lady,” said Monty offensively. “Thats the type that’ll always seem like a foreign language to you.”

She lifted one shoulder delicately.

“J don’t pretend to be a lady, and what I am, you’ve made me,” she said, and the reproach was mechanical. He had heard it before, not only from her, but from others similarly placed. “J don’t think it’s very kind to throw my education up in my face, considering the money I’ve made for you.”

“And for yourself.” He yawned. “Get me some tea.”

“You might say ‘please’ now and again,” she said resent- fully, and he smiled as he took up the evening paper, paying her no more attention, until she had rung the bell with a vicious jerk and the silver tray came in and was deposited on a table near him.

“ Where are you going to-night?”

His interest in her movements was unusual, and she was flattered. ;

“You know very well, Monty, where I’m going to-night,” she said reproachfully. “You promised to take me, too. I think you'd look wonderful as a Crusader—one of them—those old knights in armour.”

He nodded, but not to her comment.

“J remember, of course—the Arts Ball.”

His surprise was so well simulated that she was deceived.

“Fancy your forgetting! I’m going as Cinderella, and Minnie Gray is going as a pierrette——”

“Minnie Gray isn’t going as anything,” said Monty, sipping his tea. “I’ve already telephoned to her to say that the engage- ment is off. Miss Leicester is going with you.”

“But, Monty——” protested the girl.

“Don’t ‘but Monty’ me,” he ordered. “I’m telling you! Go

IN CHESTER SQUARE 43

up and see this girl, and put it to her that you’ve got a spare ticket for the dance.”

“But her costume, Monty! The girl hasn’t got a fancy dress. And Minnie——”

“Forget Minnie, will you? Mirabelle Leicester is going to the Arts Ball to-night.” He tapped the tray before him to emphasize every word. “You have a ticket to spare, and you simply can’t go alone because I have a very important business engagement and your friend has failed you. Her dress will be here in a few minutes: it is a bright green domino with a bright red hood.”

“How perfectly hideous!” She forgot for the moment her disappointment in this outrage. “Bright green! Nobody has:a complexion to stand that!”

Yet he ignored her. d

“You will explain to Miss Leicester that the dress came from a friend who, through illness or any cause you like to invent, is unable to go to the dance—she’ll jump at the chance. It is one of the events of the year and tickets are selling at a premium.”

She asked him what that meant, and he explained patiently.

“Maybe she’ll want to spend a quiet evening—have one of those headaches,” he went on. “If that is so, you can tell her that I’ve got a party coming to the house to-night, and they will be a little noisy. Did she want to know anything about me?”

“No, she didn’t,” snapped Joan promptly. “She didn’t want to know about anything. I couldn’t get her to talk. She’s like a dumb oyster.”

Mirabelle was sitting by the window, looking down into the square, when there was a gentle tap at the door and Joan came in.

“T’ve got wonderful news for you,” she said.

“For me?” said Mirabelle in surprise.

Joan ran across the room, giving what she deemed to be a surprisingly life-like representation of a young thing full of innocent joy.

“Tve got an extra ticket for the Arts Ball to-night. They’re selling at a—they’re very expensive. Aren’t you a lucky girl!”

“I?” said Mirabelle in surprise. “Why am I the lucky girl?”

N

44 THE THREE JUST MEN

Joan rose from the bed and drew back from her reproach- fully.

“You surely will come with me? If you don’t, I shan’t be able to go at all. Lady Mary and I were going together, and now she’s sick! ”

Mirabelle opened her eyes wider.

“But I can’t go, surely. It is a fancy dress ball, isn’t it? I read something about it in the papers. And I’m awfully tired to-night.”

Joan pouted prettily.

“My dear, if you lay down for an hour you'd be fit. Besides, you couldn’t sleep here early to-night: Monty’s having one of his men parties, and they’re a noisy lot of people—though thoroughly respectable,” she added hastily.

Poor Joan had a mission outside her usual range.

“Pd love to go,’—Mirabelle was anxious not to be a kill- joy—“if I could get a dress.”

“Pye got one,” said the girl promptly, and ran out of the room.

She returned very quickly, and threw the domino on the bed.

“It’s not pretty to look at, but it’s got this advantage, that you can wear almost anything underneath.”

“What time does the ball start?” Mirabelle, examining her mind, found that she was not averse to going; she was very human, and a fancy dress ball would be a new experience.

“Ten o’clock,” said Joan. “We can have dinner before Monty’s friends arrive. You’d like to see Monty, wouldn’t you? He’s downstairs—such a gentleman, my dear!”

The girl could have laughed.

A little later she was introduced to the redoubtable Monty, and found his suave and easy manner a relief after the jerky efforts of the girl to be entertaining. Monty had seen most parts of the world and could talk entertainingly about them all. Mirabelle rather liked him, though she thought he was something of a fop, yet was not sorry when she learned that, so far from having friends to dinner, he did not expect them to arrive until after she and Joan had left.

The meal put her more at her ease. He was a polished man of the world, courteous to the point of pomposity; he neither said nor suggested one thing that could offend her; they were

IN CHESTER SQUARE 45

half-way through dinner when the cry of a newsboy was heard in the street. Through the dining-room window she saw the footman go down the steps and buy a newspaper. He glanced at the stop-press space and came back slowly up the stairs reading. A little later he came into the room, and must have signalled to her host, for Monty went out immediately and she heard their voices in the passage. Joan was uneasy.

“I wonder what’s the matter?” she asked, a little irritably. “It’s very bad manners to leave ladies in the middle of dinner——”

At that moment Monty came back. Was it imagination on her part, or had he gone suddenly pale? Joan saw it, and her brows met, but she was too wise to make a comment upon his appearance.

Mr. Newton seated himself in his place with a word of apology and poured out a glass of champagne. Only for a second did his hand tremble, and then, with a smile, he was his old self.

“What is wrong, Monty?”

“Wrong? Nothing,” he said curtly, and took up the topic of conversation where he had laid it down before leaving the room.

“Tt isn’t that old snake, is it?” asked Joan with a shiver. “Lord! that unnerves me! I never go to bed at night with- out looking under, or turning the clothes right down to the foot! They ought to have found it months ago if the police——”

At this point she caught Monty Newton’s eye, cold, menacing, malevolent, and the rest of her speech died on her lips.

Mirabelle went upstairs to dress, and Joar would have followed but the man beckoned her.

“You're a little too talkative, Joan,” he said, more mildly than she had expected. “The snake is not a subject we wish to discuss af dinner. And listen!” He walked into the passage and looked round, then came back and closed the door. “Keep that girl near you.”

“Who is going to dance with me?” she asked petulantly. “I look like having a hell of a lively night! ”

“Benton will be there to look after you, and one of the ‘Old Guard’—_”

F RES

46 THE THREE. JUST MEN

He saw the frightened look in her face and chuckled.

“What’s the matter, you fool?” he asked good-humouredly. “He'll dance with the girl.”

«T wish those fellows weren’t going to be there,” she said uneasily, but he went on, without noticing her:

“I shall arrive at half-past eleven. You had better meet me near the entrance to the American bar. My party didn’t turn up, you understand. You'll get back here at mid- night.”

“Sy goon?” she said in dismay. “Why, it doesn’t end

“You'll be back here at midnight,” he said evenly. “Go into her room, clear up everything she may have left behind. You understand? Nothing is to be left.”

“But when she comes back she’Il——”

“She'll not come back,” said Monty Newton, and the girl’s blood ran cold.

CHAPTER SEVEN “MORAL SUASION”

“THERE’S a man wants to see you, governor.”

It was a quarter-past nine. The girls had been gone ten minutes, and Montague Newton had settled himself down to pass the hours of waiting before he had to dress. He put down the patience cards he was shuffling.

“A man to see me? Who is he, Fred?”

“J don’t know: Ive never seen him before. Looks to me like a ‘busy.’ ”

‘A detective! Monty’s eyebrows rose, but not in trepidation. He had met many detectives in the course of his chequered career and had long since lost his awe of them.

“Show him in,” he said with a nod. ®

The slim man in evening dress who came softly into the room was a stranger to Monty, who knew most of the prominent figures in the world of criminal detection. And yet his face was in some way familiar.

“Captain Newton?” he asked.

- “That is my name.” Newton rose with a smile.

“MORAL SUASION” 47

The visitor looked slowly round towards the door through which the footman had gone.

“Do your servants always listen at the keyhole?” he asked, in a quiet, measured tone, and Newton’s face went a dusky red.

In two strides he was at the door and had flung it open, . just in time to see the disappearing heels of the footman.

“Here, you!” He called the man back, a scowl on his face. “If you want to know anything, will you come in and ask?” he roared. “If I catch you listening at my door, Pll murder you!”

The man with a muttered excuse made a hurried escape.

“How did you know?” growled Newton, as he came back into the room and slammed the door behind him.

“I have an instinct for espionage,” said the stranger, and went on, without a break: “I have called for Miss Mirabelle Leicester.”

Newton’s eyes narrowed. a

“Oh, you have, have you?” he said softly. “Miss Leicester is not in the house. She left a quarter of an hour ago.”

“T did not see her come out of the house.”

“No, the fact is, she went out by way of the mews. My— er”—he was going to say “sister” but thought better of it— “my young friend 4

“Flash Jane Smith,” said the stranger. “Yes?”

Newton’s colour deepened. He was rapidly reaching the point when his sang-froid, nine-tenths of his moral assets, was in danger of deserting him.

“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.

The stranger wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, a curiously irritating action of his, for some inexplicable reason.

“My name is Leon Gonsalez,” he said simply.

Instinctively the man drew back. Of course! Now he remembered, and the colour had left his cheeks, leaving him grey. With an effort he forced a smile.

“One of the redoubtable Four Just Men? What extra- ordinary birds you are!” he said. “I remember ten-fifteen years ago, being scared out of my life by the very mention of your name—you came to punish where the law failed, eh?”

“You must put that in your reminiscences,” said Leon

48 | THE THREE JUST MEN

gently. “For the moment I am not in an autobiographical mood.”

But Newton could not be silenced.

“J know a man”—he was speaking slowly, with quiet vehemence—“who will one day cause you a great deal of inconvenience, Mr. Leon Gonsalez: a man who never forgets you in his prayers. I won’t tell you who he is.”

“It is unnecessary. You are referring to the admirable Oberzohn. Did I not kill his brother... ? Yes, I thought I was right. He was the man with the oxycephalic head and the queerly prognathic jaw. An interesting case: I would like to have had his measurements, but I was in rather a hurry.”

He spoke almost apologetically for his haste.

“But were getting away from the subject, Mr. Newton. You say this young lady has left your house by the mews, and you were about to suggest she left in the care of Miss —I don’t know what you call her. Why did she leave that way?”

Leon Gonsalez had something more than an instinct for espionage: he had an instinct for truth, and he knew two things immediately: first, that Newton was not lying when he said the girl had left the house; secondly, that there was an excellent, but not necessarily a sinister, reason for the furtive departure.

“Where has she gone?”

“Home,” said the other laconically. “Where else should she go?”

“She came to dinner . . . intending to stay the night?”

“Look here, Gonsalez,” interrupted Monty Newton savagely. “You and your gang were wonderful people twenty years ago, but a lot has happened since then—and we don’t shiver at the name of the Three Just Men. I’m not a child— do you get that? And you're not so very terrible at close range. If you want to complain to the police 4

“Meadows is outside. I persuaded him to let me see you first,” said Leon, and Newton started.

“Outside?” incredulously.

In two strides he was at the window and had pulled aside the blind. On the other side of the street a man was stand- ing on the edge of the sidewalk, intently surveying the gutter. He knew him at once.

“MORAL SUASION” 49

“Well, bring him in,” he said.

“Where has this young lady gone? That is all I want to know.”

“She has gone home, I tell you.”

Leon went to the door and beckoned Meadows; they spoke together in low tones, and then Meadows entered the room and was greeted with a stiff nod from the owner of the house.

“What’s the idea of this, Meadows—sending this bird to cross-examine me?”

“This bird came on his own,” said Meadows coldly, “if you mean Mr. Gonsalez? I have no right to prevent any person from cross-examining you. Where is the young lady?”

“I tell you, she has gone home. If you don’t believe me, search the house—either of you.”

He was not bluffing: Leon was sure of that. He turned to the detective.

“I personally have no wish to trouble this gentleman any

He was leaving the room when, from over his shoulder:

“That snake is busy again, Newton.”

“What snake are you talking about?”

“He killed a man to-night on the Thames Embankment. I hope it will not spoil Lisa Marthon’s evening.”

Meadows, watching the man, saw him change colour.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said loudly.

“You arranged with Lisa to pick up Barberton to-night and get him talking. And there she is, poor girl, all dressed to kill, and only a dead man to vamp—only a murdered man.” He turned suddenly, and his voice grew hard. “That is a good word, isn’t it, Newton—murder?”

“I didn’t know anything about it.”

As Newton’s hand came towards the bell:

“We can show ourselves out,” said Leon.

He shut the door behind him, and presently there was a slam of the outer door. Monty got to the window too late to see his unwelcome guests depart, and went up to his room to change, more than a little perturbed in mind.

The footman called him from the hall.

“Pm sorry about that affair, sir. I thought it was a ‘busy’...”

“You think too much, Fred”—Newton threw the words

5° THE THREE JUST MEN

down at his servitor with a snarl. “Go back to your place, which is the servants’ hall. PI ring you if I want you.”

He resumed his progress up the stairs and the man turned sullenly away.

He opened the door of his room, switched on the light, had closed the door and was half-way to his dressing-table, when an arm like steel closed round his neck, he was jerked sud- denly backward on to the floor, and looked up into the in- scrutable face of Gonsalez.

“Shout and you die!” whispered a voice in his ear.

Newton lay quiet.

“Pil fix you for this,” he stammered.

The other shook his head.

“I think not, if by. ‘fixing’ me you mean you’re going to complain to the police. You’ve been under my watchful eye for quite a long time, Monty Newton, and you'll be amazed to learn that I’ve made several visits to your house. There is a little wall safe behind that curtain”—he nodded towards the corner of the room—“would you be surprised to learn that I’ve had the door open and every one of its documentary con- tents photographed?”

He saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he snapped a pair of aluminium handcuffs of curious design about Monty’s wrists. With hardly an effort he lifted him, heavy as he was, threw him on the bed, and, having locked the door, returned, and, sitting on the bed, proceeded first to strap his ankles and then leisurely to take off his prisoner’s shoes.

“What are you going to do?” asked Monty in alarm.

“J intend finding out where Miss Leicester has been taken,” said Gonsalez, who had stripped one shoe and, pulling off the silken sock, was examining the man’s bare foot critically. “Ordinary and strictly legal inquiries take time and fail at the end—unfortunately for you, I have not a minute to spare.”

“T tell you she’s gone home.”

Leon did not reply. He pulled open a drawer of the bureau,

searched for some time, and presently found what he sought: ,

a thin silken scarf. This, despite the struggles of the man on the bed, he fastened about his mouth.

“In Mosamodes,” he said—“and if you ever say that before my friend George Manfred, be careful to give its correct pronunciation: he is rather touchy on the point—some friends

See a

“MORAL SUASION” 5I

of yours took a man named Barberton, whom they subse- quently murdered, and tried to make him talk by burning his feet. He was a hero. I’m going to see how heroic you are.”

“For God’s sake don’t do it!” said the muffled voice of Newton.

Gonsalez was holding a flat metal case which he had taken from his pocket, and the prisoner watched him, fascinated, as he removed the lid, and snapped a cigar-lighter close to its blackened surface. A blue flame rose and swayed in the draught.

“The police force is a most excellent institution,” said Leon. He had found a silver shoe-horn on the table and was calmly heating it in the light of the flame, holding the rapidly warm- ing hook with a silk handkerchief. “But unfortunately, when you are dealing with crimes of violence, moral suasion and gentle treatment produce nothing more poignant in the bosom of your adversary than a sensation of amused and derisive contempt. The English, who make a god of the law, gave up imprisoning thugs and flogged them, and there are few thugs left. When the Russian gunmen came to London, the authori- ties did the only intelligent thing—they held back the police and brought up the artillery, having only one desire, which

was to kill the gunmen at any expense. Violence fears violence...

The gunman lives in the terror of the gun—by the way, I

understand the old guard is back in full strength?” ‘When Leon started in this strain he could continue for hours.

“I don’t know what you mean,” mumbled Monty.

“You wouldn’t.” The intruder lifted the blackened, smoking shoe-horn, brought it as near to his face as he dared.

“Yes, I think that will do,” he said, and came slowly to- wards the bed.

The man drew up his feet in anticipation of pain, but a long hand caught him by the ankles and drew them straight again.

“They've gone to the Arts Ball.” Even through the hand- .

kerchief the voice sounded hoarse.

“The Arts Ball?” Gonsalez looked down at him, and then, throwing the hot shoe-horn into the fire-place, he removed the gag. “Why have they gone to the Arts Ball?”

“I wanted them out of the way to-night.”

“Ts—Oberzohn likely to be at the Arts Ball?”

52 THE THREE JUST MEN

“Oberzohn!” The man’s laugh bordered on the hysterical.

“Or Gurther?”

This time Mr. Newton did not laugh.

“I don’t know who you mean,” he said.

“We'll go into that later, replied Leon lightly, pulling the knot of the handkerchief about the ankles. “You may get up now. What time do you expect them back?”

“I don’t know. I told Joan not to hurry, as I was meeting * somebody here to-night.”

Which sounded plausible. Leon remembered that the Arts Ball was a fancy dress affair, and there was some reason for the departure from the mews instead of from the front of the house. As though he were reading his thoughts, Newton said:

“Tt was Miss Leicester’s idea, going through the back. She was rather shy . .. she was wearing a domino.”

“Colour?”

“Green, with a reddish hood.”

Leon looked at him quickly.

“Rather distinctive. Was that the idea?”

“I don’t know what the idea was,” growled Newton, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a sock. “But I do know this, Gonsalez,” he said, with an outburst of anger which was half fear; “that you’ll be sorry you did this to me! ”

Leon walked to the door, turned the key and opened it.

“I only hope that you will not be sorry I did not kill you,” he said, and was gone.

Monty Newton waited until from his raised window he saw the slim figure pass along the sidewalk and disappear round a corner, and then he hurried down, with one shoe on and one off, to call New Cross 93.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN

IN a triangle two sides of which were expressed by the via- ducts of converging railroads and the base by the dark and sluggish waters of the Grand Surrey Canal, stood the gaunt ruins of a store in which had once been housed the mer- chandise of the O. & S. Company. A Zeppelin in passing had

THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN 53

dropped an incendiary bomb at random, and torn a great ugly gap in the roof. The fire that followed left the iron frames of the windows twisted and split; the roof by some miracle remained untouched except for the blackened edges about the hole through which the flames had rushed to the height of a hundred feet.

The store was flush with the canal towing-path; barges had moored here, discharging rubber in bales, palm nut, nitrates even, and had restocked with Manchester cloth and case upon case of Birmingham-made geegaws of brass and lacquer.

Mr. Oberzohn invariably shipped his spirituous cargoes from Hamburg, since Germany is the home of synthesis. In the centre of the triangle was a red-brick villa, more unlovely than the factory, missing as it did that ineffable grandeur, made up of tragedy and pathos, attaching to a burnt-out building, however ugly it may have been in its prime.

The villa was built from a design in Mr. Oberzohn’s possession, and was the exact replica of the house in Sweden where he was born. It had high, gabled ends at odd and un- expected places. The roof was shingled with grey tiles; there were glass panels in the curious-looking door, and iron orna- ments in the shape of cranes and dogs flanking the narrow path through the rank nettle and dock which constituted his garden.

Here he dwelt, in solitude, yet not in solitude, for two men lived in the house, and there was a stout Swedish cook and a very plain Danish maid, a girl of vacant countenance, who worked from sun-up to midnight without complaint, who seldom spoke and never smiled. The two men were some- where in the region of thirty. They occupied the turret rooms at each end of the building, and had little community of interest. They sometimes played cards together with an old and greasy pack, but neither spoke more than was necessary. They were lean, hollow-faced men, with a certain physiog- nomical resemblance. Both had thin, straight lips; both had round, staring, dark eyes filled with a bright but terrifying curiosity.

“They look,” reported Leon Gonsalez, when he went to examine the ground, “as if they are watching pigs being killed and enjoying every minute of it. Iwan Pfeiffer is one, Sven Gurther is the other. Both have escaped the gallows or

54 THE THREE JUST MEN

the axe in Germany; both have convictions against them. They are typical German-trained criminals—as pitiless as wolves. Dehumanized.”

The “Three,” as was usual, set the machinery of the law in motion, and found that the hands of the police were tied. Only by stretching the law could the men be deported, and the law is difficult to stretch. To all appearance they offended in no respect. A woman, by no means the most desirable of citizens, laid a complaint against one. There was an investiga- tion—proof was absent; the very character of the com- plainant precluded a conviction, and the matter was dropped —by the police.

Somebody else moved swiftly.

One morning, just before daybreak, a policeman patrolling the tow-path heard a savage snarl and looked round for the dog. He found instead, up one of those narrow entries leading to the canal bank, a man. He was tied to the stout sleeper fence, and his bare back showed marks of a whip. Somebody had held him up at night as he prowled the bank in search of amusement, had tied and flogged him. Twenty-five lashes: an expert thought the whip used was the official cat-o’-nine-tails.

Scotland Yard, curious, suspicious, sought out the Three . Just Men. They had alibis so complete as to be unbreakable. Sven Gurther went unavenged—but he kept from the tow- path thereafter.

In this house of his there were rooms which only Dr. Oberzohn visited. The Danish maid complained to the cook that when she had passed the door of one as the doctor came out, a blast of warm, tainted air had rushed out and made her cough for an hour. There was another room in which from time to time the doctor had installed a hotchpotch of apparatus. Vulcanizing machines, electrical machines (older and more used than Mirabelle had seen in her brief stay in the City Road), a liquid air plant, not the most up-to-date but serviceable.

He was not, curiously enough, a doctor in the medical sense. He was not even a doctor of chemistry. His doctorate was in Literature and Law. These experiments of his were hobbies— hobbies that he had pursued from his childhood.

On this evening he was sitting in his stuffy parlour reading a close-printed and closer-reasoned volume of German

THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN FADD.

philosophy, and thinking of something else. Though the sun. had only just set, the blinds and curtains were drawn; a wood fire crackled in the grate, and the bright lights of three half- watt lamps made glaring radiance.

An interruption came in the shape of a telephone call. He listened, grunting replies.

“So!” he said at last, and spoke a dozen words in his strange English.

Putting aside his book, he hobbled in his velvet slippers across the room and pressed twice upon the bell-push by the side of the fire-place. Gurther came in noiselessly and stood waiting.

He was grimy, unshaven. The pointed chin and short upper lip were blue. The V of his shirt visible above the waistcoat was soiled and almost black at the edges. He stood at attention, smiling vacantly, his eyes fixed at a point above the doctor’s head.

Dr. Oberzohn lifted his eyes from his book.

“I wish you to be a gentleman of club manner to-night,” he said. He spoke in that hard North-German tongue which the Swede so readily acquires.

“Ja, Herr Doktor!” í

The man melted from the room.

Dr. Oberzohn for some reason hated Germans. So, for the matter of that, did Gurther and Pfeiffer, the latter being Polish by extraction and Russian by birth. Gurther hated Germans because they stormed the little jail at Altostadt to kill him after the dogs found Frau Siedlitz’s body. He would have died then but for the green police, who scented a Com- munist rising, scattered the crowd and sent Gurther by road to the nearest big town under escort. The two escorting police- men were neyer seen again, Gurther reappeared mysteriously in England two years after, bearing a veritable passport. There was no proof even that he was Gurther. Leon knew, Manfred knew, Poiccart knew.

There had been an alternative to the whipping.

“Tt would be a simple matter to hold his head under water until he was drowned,” said Leon.

They debated the matter, decided against this for no senti- mental or moral reason—none save expediency. Gurther had his whipping and never knew how near to the black and

56 THE THREE JUST MEN

greasy water of the canal he had been.

Dr. Oberzohn resumed his book—a fascinating book that was all about the human soul and immortality and time. He was in the very heart of an analysis of eternity when Gurther reappeared dressed in the “gentleman-club manner.” His dress-coat fitted perfectly; shirt and waistcoat were exactly the right cut. The snowy shirt, the braided trousers, the butterfly bow, and winged collar. . . .

“That is good.” Dr. Oberzohn went slowly over the figure. “But the studs should be pearl—not enamel. And the watch- chain is demode—it is not worn. The gentleman-club manner does not allow of visible ornament. Also I think a mous- tache..

“Ja, Herr Doktor!”

Gurther, who was once an actor, disappeared again. When | he returned the enamel studs had gone: there were small pearls in their place, and his white waistcoat had no chain across. And on his upper lip had sprouted a small brown moustache, so natural that even Oberzohn, scrutinizing closely, could find no fault with it. The doctor took a case from his pocket, fingered out three crisp notes.

“Your hands, please?”

_. Gurther took three paces to the old man, halted, clicked his heels and held out his hands for inspection.

“Good! You know Leon Gonsalez? He will be at the Arts Ball. He wears no fancy dress. He was the man who whipped you.”

“He was the man who whipped me,” said Gurther without heat.

There was a silence, Dr. Oberzohn pursing his lips.

“Also, he did that which brands him as an infamous assassin . . . I think . . . yes, I think my dear Gurther . . . there will be a girl also, but the men of my police will be there to arrange such matters. Benton will give you instruc- tions. For you, only Gonsalez.”

Gurther bowed stiffly.

“I have implored the order,” he said, bowed again and withdrew. Later, Dr. Oberzohn heard the drone of the little car as it bumped and slithered across the grass to the road. He resumed his book: this matter of eternity was fascinating.

* * * * *

THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN 57

The Arts Ball at the Corinthian Hall was one of the events of the season, and the tickets, issued exclusively to the mem- bers of three clubs, were eagerly sought by society people who could not be remotely associated with any but the art of living.

When the girl came into the crowded hall, she looked around in wonder. The balconies, outlined in soft lights and half-hidden with flowers, had been converted into boxes; the roof had been draped with blue and gold tissue; at one end of the big hall was a veritable bower of roses, behind which one of the two bands was playing. Masks in every conceivable guise were swinging rhythmically across the polished floor. To the blasé, there was little difference between the Indians, the pierrots and the cavaliers to be seen here and those they had seen a hundred times on a hundred different floors.

As the girl gazed round in wonder and delight, forgetting all her misgivings, two men, one in evening dress, the other in the costume of a brigand, came from under the shadow of the balcony towards them..

“Here are our partners,” said Joan, with sudden vivacity. “Mirabelle, I want you to know Lord Evington.”

The man in evening dress stroked his little moustache, clicked his heels and bent forward in a stiff bow. He was thin-faced, a little pallid, unsmiling. His round, dark eyes surveyed her for a second, and then:

“Tm glad to meet you, Miss Leicester,” he said, in a high, harsh voice, that had just the trace of a foreign accent.

This struck the girl with as much surprise as the cold kiss he had implanted upon her hand, and, as if he read her thoughts, he went on quickly:

“I have lived so long abroad that England and English manners are strange to me. Won’t you dance? And had you not better mask? I must apologise to you for my costume.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But there was no gala dress available.”

She fixed the red mask, and in another second she was gliding through the crowd and was presently lost to view.

“I don’t understand it all, Benton.”

Joan was worried and frightened. She had begun to realize that the game she played was something different . . , her part more sinister than any rôle she had yet filled. To jolly

58 THE THREE JUST MEN

along the gilded youth to the green tables of Captain Monty Newton was one thing; but never before had she seen the i gang working against a woman.

“I don’t know,” grumbled the brigand, who was not inaptly arrayed, “There’s -been a hurry call for everybody.” He glanced round uneasily as though he feared his words might be overheard. “All the guns are here—Defson, Cuccini, Jewy 3 Stubbs...”

“The guns?” she whispered in horror, paling under her rouge. “You mean... ?”

“The guns are out: that’s all I know,” he said doggedly. “They started drifting in half an hour before you came.”

Joan was silent, her heart racing furiously. Then Monty i had told her the truth. She knew that somewhere behind- Oberzohn, behind Monty Newton, was a force perfectly dove- tailed into the machine, only one cog of which she had seen working. These card parties of Monty’s were profitable enough, but for a long time she had had a suspicion that they were the merest side-line. The organization maintained a regular corps of gunmen, recruited from every quarter of the globe. Monty Newton talked sometimes in his less ecber moments of what he facetiously described as the “Old ; Guard.” How they were employed, on what excuse, for what b purpose, she had never troubled to think. They came and 4 went from England in batches. Once Monty had told her that Oberzohn’s people had gone to Smyrna, and he talked vaguely of unfair competition that had come to the traders of the O. & S. outfit. Afterwards she read in the paper of a “religious riot” which resulted in the destruction by fire of a great block of business premises. After that Monty spoke no more of competition. The Old Guard returned to England, minus one of its number, who had been shot in the stomach 4 in the course of this “religious riot.” What particular faith he possessed in such a degree as to induce him to take up arms for the cause, she never learned. She knew he was dead, be- cause Monty had written to the widow, who lived in the Bronx.

Joan knew a lot about Monty’s business, for an excellent reason. She was with him most of the time; and whether she posed as his niece or daughter, his sister, or some closer relationship, she was undoubtedly the nearest to a confidante he possessed.

En TEN

THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN 59

“Who is that man with the moustache—is he one?” she asked.

“No; he’s Oberzohn’s man—for God’s sake don’t tell Monty I told you all this! I got orders to-night to put him wise about the girl.”

“What about her . . . what are they doing with her?” she gasped in terror.

“Let us dance,” said Benton, and half guided, half carried her into the throng.

They had reached the centre of the floor when, with no warning, every light in the hall went out.

CHAPTER NINE BEFORE THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

Tue band had stopped, a rustle of hand-clapping came from the hot dancers, and almost before the applause had started the second band struck up “Kulloo.”

Mirabelle was not especially happy. Her partner was the most correct of dancers, but they lacked just that unity of purpose, the oneness of interest which makes all the difference between the ill- and the well-matched.

“May we sit down?” she begged. “I am rather hot.”

“Will the gracious lady come to the little hall?” he asked. “It is cooler there, and the chairs are comfortable.”

She looked at him oddly,

“ ‘Gracious lady’ is a German expression—why do you use it, Lord Evington? I think it is very pretty,” she hastened to assure him. z!

“I lived for many years in Germany,” said Mr. Gurther. “I do not like the German people—they are so stupid.”

If he had said “German police” he would have been nearer to the truth; and had he added that the dislike was mutual, he might have gained credit for his frankness.

At the end of the room, concealed by the floral decorations of the bandstand, was a door which led to a smaller room, ordinarily separated from the main hall by folding doors which were seldom opened. To-night the annexe was to be. used as a conservatory. Palms and banked flowers were every-

60 THE THREE JUST MEN

where. Arbours had been artificially created, and there were cosy nooks, half-hidden by shrubs, secluded seats and tables, all that ingenuity could design to meet the wishes of sitters- out.

He stood invitingly at the entrance of a little grotto, dimly illuminated by one Chinese lantern.

“T think we will sit in the open,” said Mirabelle, and pulled out a chair.

“Excuse me.”

Instantly he was by her side, the chair arranged, a cushion found, and she sank down with a sigh of relief. It was early yet for the loungers: looking round, she saw that, but for a solitary waiter fastening his apron with one eye upon possible customers, they were alone.

“You will drink wine . . . no? An orangeade? Good!” He beckoned the waiter and gave his order. ““You must excuse me if I am a little strange. I have been in Germany for many years—except during the war, when I was in France.”

Mr. Gurther had certainly been in Germany for many years, but he had never been in France. Nor had he heard a shot fired in the war. It is true that an aerial bomb had ex- ploded perilously near the prison at Mainz in which he was serving ten years for murder, but that represented his sole warlike experience.

“You live in the country, of course?”

“In London: I am working with Mr. Oberzohn.”

“So: he is a good fellow. A gentleman.”

She had not been very greatly impressed by the doctor’s breeding, but it was satisfying to hear a stranger speak with such heartiness of her new employer. Her mind at the moment was on Heavytree Farm: the cool parlour with its chintzes— a room, at this hour, fragrant with the night scents of flowers which came stealing through the open casement. There was a fox-terrier, Jim by name, who would be wandering discon- solately from room to room, sniffing unhappily at the hall door. A lump came up into her throat. She felt very far from home and very lonely. She wanted to get up and run back to where she had left Joan and tell her that she had changed her mind and must go back to Gloucester that night . . . she looked impatiently for the waiter. Mr. Gurther was fiddling with some straws he had taken from the glass container in

BEFORE THE LIGHTS WENT OUT ór

the centre of the table. One end of the straws showed above the edge of the table, the others were thrust deep in the wide- necked little bottle he had in the other hand. The hollow straws held half an inch of the red powder that filled the bottle.

“Excuse! ”

The waiter put the orangeades on the table and went away to get change. Mirabelle’s eyes were wistfully fixed on a little door at the end of the room. It gave to the street, and there were taxicabs which could get her to Paddington in ten minutes,

When she looked round he was stirring the amber contents of her glass with a spoon. Two straws were invitingly pro- truding from the foaming orangeade. She smiled and lifted the glass as he fitted a cigarette into his black holder.

“I may smoke—yes?”

The first taste she had through the straws was one of ex- treme bitterness. She made a wry face and put down the glass.

“How horrid! ”

“Did it taste badly . . . ?” he began, but she was pouring out water from a bottle.

“It was most unpleasant——”

“Will you try mine, please?” He offered the glass to her and she drank. “It may have been something in the straw.” Here he was telling her the faet.

“It was.. ?

The room was going round and round, the floor was rising up and down like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. She rose, swayed, and caught him by the arm. '

“Open the little door, waiter, please—the lady is faint.”

The waiter turned to the door and threw it open, A man stood there—just outside the door. He wore over his dinner dress a long cloak in the Spanish style. Gurther stood staring, a picture of amused dismay, his cigarette still unlit, He did not move his hands. Gonsalez was waiting there, alert . . . death grinning at him . . . and then the room went inky black. Somebody had turned the main switch.

62 THE THREE JUST MEN

CHAPTER TEN WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

Five, ten minutes passed before the hall-keeper tripped and stumbled and cursed his way to the smaller room and, smash- ing down the hired flowers, he passed through the wreckage of earthen pots and tumbled mould to the control. Another second and the rooms were brilliantly lit again—the band struck up a two-step and fainting ladies were escorted to the decent obscurity of their retiring rooms.

The manager of the hall came flying into the annexe.

“What happened—the main fuse gone?”

“No,” said the hall-keeper sourly, “some fool turned over the switch.”

The agitated waiter protested that nobody had been near the switch-box.

“There was a lady and gentleman here, and another gentle- man outside.” He pointed to the open door.

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. The lady was faint.”

The three had disappeared when the manager went out into a small courtyard that led round the corner of the building to a side street. Then he came back on a tour of inspection.

“Somebody did it from the yard. There’s a window open— you can reach the switch easily.”

The window was fastened and locked.

“There is no lady or gentleman in the yard,” he said. “Are you sure they did not go into the big hall?”

“Tn the dark—maybe.”

The waiter’s nervousness was understandable. Mr. Gurther had given him a five-pound note and the man had not as yet delivered the change. Never would he return to claim it if all that his keen ears heard was true.

Four men had appeared in the annexe: one shut the door and stood by it. The three others were accompanied by the manager, who called Phillips, the waiter.

“This man served them,” he said, troubled. Even the most innocent do not like police visitations.

“What was the gentleman like?”

WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT 63

Phillips gave a brief and not inaccurate description.

“That is your man, I think, Herr Fluen?”

The third of the party was bearded and plump; he wore a Derby hat with evening dress.

“That is Gurther,” he nodded. “It will be a great pleasure to meet him. For eight months the Embassy has been striving for his extradition. But our people at home... 1”

He shrugged his shoulders. All properly constituted officials behave in such a manner when they talk of Governments.

“The lady now”—Inspector Meadows -was patently worried —“she was faint, you say. Had she drunk anything?”

“Orangeade—there is the glass. She said there was some- thing nasty in the straws. These.”

Phillips handed them to the detective. He wetted his finger from them, touched his tongue and spat out quickly.

“Yes,” he said, and went out by the little door.

Gonsalez, of course: but where had he gone, and how, with a drugged girl on his hands and the Child of the Snake? Gurther was immensely quick to strike, and an icy-hearted man: the presence of a woman would not save Leon.

“When the light went out ” began the waiter, and the trouble cleared from Mr. Meadow’s face.

“Of course—I had forgotten that,” he said softly. “The lights went out! ”

All the way back to the Yard he was trying to bring some- thing from the back of his mind—something that was there, the smooth tip of it tantalizingly displayed, yet eluding every grasp. It had nothing to do with the lights—nor Gonsalez, nor yet the girl. Gurther? No. Nor Manfred? What was it? A name had been mentioned to him that day—it had a mys- terious significance. A golden idol! He picked up the end of the thought . . . Johnny! Manfred’s one mystery. That was the dust which lay on all thought. And now that he remem- bered he was disappointed. It was so ridiculously unimpor- tant a matter to baffe him.

He left his companions at the corner of Curzon Street and went alone to the house. There was a streak of light showing between the curtains in the upstairs room. The passage was illuminated—Poiccart answered his ring at once.

“Yes, George and Leon were here a little time back—the girl? No, they said nothing about a girl. They looked rather

64 THE THREE JUST MEN

worried, I thought. Miss Leicester, I suppose? Won’t you come in?”

“No, I can’t wait. There’s a light in Manfred’s room.”

- The ghost of a smile lit the heavy face and faded as in- stantly.

“My room also,” he said. “Butlers take vast liberties in the absence of their masters. Shall I give a message to George?”

“Ask him to call me at the Yard.”

Poiccart closed the door on him; stopped in the passage to arrange a salver on the table and hung up a hat. All this Meadows saw through the fanlight and walking-stick peri- scope which is so easily fitted and can be of such value. And seeing, his doubts evaporated.

Poiccart went slowly up the stairs into the little office room, pulled back the curtains and opened the window at the top. The next second, the watching detective saw the light go out and went away.

“Tm sorry to keep you in the dark,” said Poiccart.

The men who were in the room waited until the shutters were fast and the curtains pulled across, and then the light flashed on. White of face, her eyes closed, her breast scarcely moving, Mirabelle Leicester lay on the long settee. Her domino was a heap of shimmering green and scarlet on the floor, and Leon was gently sponging her face, George Manfred watching from the back of the settee, his brows wrinkled.

“Will she die?” he asked bluntly.

“I don’t know: they sometimes die of that stuff,” replied Leon cold-bloodedly. “She must have had it pretty raw. Gurther is a crude person.”

“What was it?” asked George.

Gonsalez spread out his disengaged hand in a gesture of uncertainty.

“Jf you can imagine morphia with a kick in it, it was that. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t die: she is rather young— it would be the worst of bad luck.”

Poiccart stirred uneasily. He alone had within his soul what Leon would call “a trace” of sentiment.

“Could we get Elver?” he asked anxiously, and Leon looked up with his boyish smile.

“Growing onions in Seville has softened you, Raymondo

WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT 65

mio!” He never failed in moments of great strain to taunt the ` heavy man with his two years of agricultural experiment, and they knew that the gibes were deliberately designed to steady his mind. “Onions are sentimental things—they make you ery: a vegetable muchos simpatico! This woman is alive!”

Her eyelids had fluttered twice. Leon lifted the bare arm, inserted the needle of a tiny hypodermic and pressed home the plunger.

“To-morrow she will feel exactly as if she had been drunk,” he said calmly, “and in her mouth will be the taste of ten rank cigars. Oh, senorinetta, open thy beautiful eyes and look upon thy friends!”

The last sentence was in Spanish. She heard: the lids fluttered and rose.

“You're a long way from Heavytree Farm, Miss Leicester.”

She looked up wonderingly into the kindly face of George Manfred.

“Where am I?” she asked faintly, and closed her eyes again with a grimace of pain.

“They always ask that—just as they do in books,” said Leon oracularly. “If they don’t say ‘Where am I?’ they ask for their mothers. She’s quite out of danger.”

One hand was on her wrist, another at the side of her neck.

“Remarkably regular. She has a good head—mathematical probably.”

“She is very beautiful,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice.

“All people are beautiful—just as all onions are beautiful. What is the difference between a lovely maid and the ugliest of duennas—what but a matter of pigmentation and activity of tissue? Beneath that, an astounding similarity of the circu- latory, sustentacular, motorvascular A ty

“How long have we got?” Manfred interrupted him, and Leon shook his head.

“T don’t know—not long, I should think. Of course, we could have told Meadows and he’d have turned out police reserves, but I should like to keep them out of it.”

“The Old Guard was there?”

“Every man jack of them—those tough lads! They will be here just as soon as the Herr Doktor discovers what is going forward. Now, I think you can travel. I want her out of the way.”

T.J.M.—3

66 THE THREE JUST MEN

Stooping, he put his hands under her and lifted her. The strength in his frail body was a never-ending source of won- der to his two friends.

They followed him down the stairs and along the short passage, down another flight to the kitchen. Manfred opened a door and went out into the paved yard. There was a heavier door in the boundary wall. He opened this slowly and peeped out. Here was the inevitable mews. The sound of an engine running came from a garage near by. Evidently somebody was on the look out for them. A long-bodied car drew up noiselessly and a woman got out. Beside the driver at the wheel sat two men.

“I think you'll just miss the real excitement,” said Gon- salez, and then to the nurse he gave a few words of instruction and closed the door on her.

“Take the direct road,” he said to the driver. “Swindon— Gloucester. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

He watched anxiously as the machine swung into the main road. Still he waited, his head bent. Two minutes went by, and the faint sound of a motor-horn, a long blast and a short, and he sighed.

“They’re clear of the danger zone,” he said.

Plop!

He saw the flash, heard the smack of the bullet as it struck the door, and his hand stiffened. There was a thudding sound —a scream of pain from a dark corner of the mews and the sound of voices. Leon drew back into the yard and bolted the door.

“He had a new kind of silencer. Oberzohn is rather a clever old bird. But my air pistol against their gun for noiselessness.”’

“I didn’t expect the attack from that end of the mews.” Manfred was slipping a Browning back to his pocket.

“If they had come from the other end the car would 1.0t have passed—lI’d like to-get one of those silencers.”

They went into the house. Poiccart had already extin- guished the passage light.

“You hit your man—does that thing kill?”

“By accident—it is possible. I aimed at his stomach: I fear that I hit him in the head. He would not have squealed for a stomach wound. I fear he is alive.”

WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT 67

He felt his way up the stairs and took up the telephone. | Immediately a voice said, “Number?”

“Give me 8877 Treasury.”

He waited, and then a different voice asked:

“Yes—Scotland Yard speaking.”

“Can you give me Mr. Meadows?”

Manfred was watching him frowningly.

“That you, Meadows? . . . They have shot Leon Gonsalez —can you send police reserves and an ambulance?”

“At once.”

Leon hung up the receiver, hugging himself.

“The idea being ?” said Poiccart.

“These people are clever.” Leon’s voice was charged with admiration. “They haven’t cut the wires—they’ve simply tapped it at one end and thrown it out of order on the exchange side.”

“Phew!” Manfred whistled. “You deceived me—you were talking to Oberzohn?”

“Captain Monty and Lew Cuccini. They may or may not be deceived, but if they aren’t, we shall know all about it.”

He stopped dead. There was a knock on the front door, a single, heavy knock. Leon grinned delightedly.

“One of us is now supposed to open an upper window _ cautiously and look out, whereupon he is instantly gunned. I’m going to give these fellows a scare.”

He ran up the stairs to the top floor, and on the landing, outside an attic door, pulled at a rope. A fire ladder lying flat against the ceiling came down, and at the same time a small skylight opened. Leon went into the room, and his pocket- lamp located what he needed: a small papier-mâché cylinder, not unlike a seven-pound shell. With this on his arm, he climbed up the ladder on to the roof, fixed the cylinder on a flat surface, and, striking a match, lit a touch-paper. The paper sizzled and spluttered, there was a sudden flash and “boom!” a dull explosion, and a white ball shot up into the sky, described a graceful curve and burst into a shower of brilliant crimson stars. He waited till the last died out; then, with the hot cylinder under his arm, descended the ladder, released the rope that held it in place, and returned to his two friends.

“They will imagine a secret arrangement of signals with the

68 THE THREE JUST MEN

_police,” he said; “unless my knowledge of their psychology is at fault, we shall not be bothered again.” Ten minutes later there was another knock at the door, peremptory, almost official in its character. _ This,” said Leon, “is a policeman to summon us for dis- charging fireworks in the public street!” He ran lightly down into the hall and without hesitation pulled open the door. A tall, helmeted figure stood on the ` doorstep, notebook in hand. “Are you the gentleman that let off that rocket-——” he began. Leon walked past him, and looked up and down Curzon Street. As he had expected, the Old Guard had vanished.

CHAPTER ELEVEN GURTHER

Monty NEWTON dragged himself home, a weary angry man, and let himself in with his key. He found the footman lying on the floor of the hall asleep, his greatcoat pulled over him, and stirred him to wakefulness with the toe of-his boot.

“Get up,” he growled. “Anybody been here?”

Fred rose, a little dazed, rubbing his eyes.

“The old man’s in the drawing-room,” he said, and his employer passed on without another word. ;

As he opened the door, he saw that all the lights in the drawing-room were lit. Dr. Oberzohn had pulled a small table near the fire, and before this he sat bolt upright, a tiny chess- board before him, immersed in a problem. He looked across to the new-comer for a second and then resumed his study of the board, made a move....

“Ach!” he said in tones of satisfaction. “Leskina was wrong! It is possible to mate in five moves!”

He pushed the chess-men into confusion and turned squarely to face Newton.

“Well, have you concluded these matters satisfactorily?”

“He brought up the reserves,” said Monty, unlocking a tantalus on a side table and helping himself liberally to whisky. “They got Cuccini through the jaw. Nothing serious.”

GURTHER 69

Dr. Oberzohn laid his bony hands on his knees.

“Gurther must be disciplined,” he said. “Obviously he has lost his nerve; and when a man loses his nerve also he loses his sense of time. And his timing—how deplorable! The car had not arrived; my excellent police had not taken position ... deplorable! ”

“The police are after him: I suppose you know that?” Newton looked over his glass.

Dr. Oberzohn nodded.

“The extradition so cleverly avoided is now accomplished. But Gurther is too good a man to be lost. I have arranged a hiding-place for him. He is of many uses.”

“Where did he go?”

Dr. Oberzohn’s eyebrows wrinkled up and down.

“Who knows?” he said. “He has the little machine. Maybe he has gone to the house—the green light in the top window will warn him and he will move carefully.”

Newton walked to the window and looked out. Chester Square looked ghostly in the grey light of dawn. And then, out of the shadows, he saw a figure move and walk slowly towards the south side of the square.

“They're watching this house,” he said, and laughed. ` “Where is my young lady?” asked Oberzohn, who was staring glumly into the fire.

“I don’t know . . . there was a car pulled out of the mews as one of our men ‘closed’ the entrance. She has probably gone back to Heavytree Farm, and you can sell that laboratory of yours. There is only one way now, and that’s the rough way. We have time—we can do a lot in six weeks, Villa is coming this morning—I wish we’d taken that idol from the trunk. That may put the police on to the right track.”

Dr. Oberzohn pursed his lips as though he were going to whistle, but he was guilty of no such frivolity.

“I am glad they found him,” he said precisely. “To them it will be a scent. What shall they think, but that the unfor- tunate Barberton had come upon an old native treasure- house? No, I do not fear that.” He shook his head. “Mostly I fear Mr. Johnson Lee and the American, Elijah Washington.”

He put his hand into his jacket pocket and took out a thin pad of letters.

“Joknson Lee is for me difficult to understand. For what

7° THE THREE JUST MEN

should a gentleman have to do with this boor that he writes so friendly letters to him?”

“How did you get these?”

“Villa took them: it was one of the intelligent actions also to leave the statue.”

He passed one of the letters across to Newton. It was addressed “Await arrival, Poste Restante, Mosamedes.” The letter was written in a curiously round, boyish hand. Another remarkable fact was that it was perforated across the page at regular intervals, and upon the lines formed by this perfora- tion Mr. Johnson Lee wrote.

“Dear B.,” the letter ran, “I have instructed my banker to cable you £500. I hope this will carry you through and leave enough to pay your fare home. You may be sure that I shall not breathe a word, and your letters, of course, no- body in the house can read but me. Your story is amazing, and I advise you to come home at once and see Miss Leicester. ;

“Your friend, “JOHNSON LEE.”

The note-paper was headed “Rath Hall, January 13th.”

“They came to me to-day. If I had seen them before, there would have been no need for the regrettable happening.”

He looked thoughtfully at his friend.

“They will be difficult: I had that expectation,” he said, and Monty knew that he referred to the Three Just Men. “Yet they are mortal also—remember that, my Newton: they are mortal also.” 3 $

“As we are,” said Newton gloomily. ’

“That is a question,” said Oberzohn, “so far as I am con- cerned.”

Dr. Oberzohn never jested; he spoke with the greatest calm and assurance. The other man could only stare at him.

Although it was light, a green lamp showed clearly in the; turret room of the doctor’s house as he came within sight of the ugly place. And, seeing that warning, he did not expect to be met in the passage by Gurther. The man had changed from his resplendent kit and was again in the soiled and shabby garments he had discarded the night before.

GURTHER 71

“You have come, Gurther?”

“Ja, Herr Doktor.”

“To my parlour!” barked Dr. Oberzohn, and marched ahead,

Gurther followed him and stood with his back to the door, erect, his chin raised, his bright, curious eyes fixed on a point a few inches above his master’s head.

“Tell me now.” The doctor’s ungainly face was working ludicrously.

“I saw the man and struck, Herr Doktor, and then the lights went out and I went to the floor, expecting him to shoot. . . . I think he must have taken the gracious lady. I did not see, for there was a palm between us. I returned at once to the greater hall, and walked through the people on the floor. They were very frightened.”

“You saw them?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor,” said Gurther. “It is not difficult for me to see in the dark, After that I ran to the other entrance, but they were gone.”

“Come here.”

The man took two stilted paces towards the doctor and Oberzohn struck him twice in the face with the flat of his hand. Not a muscle of the man’s face moved: he stood erect, his lips framed in a half-grin, his curious eyes staring straight ahead.

“That is for bad time, Gurther. Nobody saw you return?”

“No, Herr Doktor, I came on foot.”

“You saw the light?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor, and I thought it best to be here.”

“You were right,” said Oberzohn. “March! ”

He went into the forbidden room, turned the. key, and passed into the super-heated atmosphere. Gurther stood atten- tively at the door. Presently the doctor came out, carrying a long case covered with baize under his arm. He handed it to the waiting man, went into the room, and, after a few minutes’ absence, returned with a second case, a little larger.

“March! ” he said.

Gurther followed him out of the house and across the rank, weed-grown “garden” towards the factory. A white mist had rolled up from the canal, and factory and grounds lay under the veil.

72 THE THREE JUST MEN

He led the way through an oblong gap in the wall where once a door had stood, and followed a tortuous course through the blackened beams and twisted girders that littered the floor. only a half-hearted attempt had been made to clear up the wreckage after the fire, and the floor was ankle-deep in the charred shreds of burnt cloth. Near the far end of the build- ing, Oberzohn stopped, put down his box and pushed aside the ashes with his foot until he had cleared a space about three feet square. Stooping, he grasped an iron ring and pulled, and a flagstone came up with scarcely an effort, for it was well counter-weighted. He took up the box again and descended the stone stairs, stopping only to turn on a light.

The vaults of the store had been practically untouched by the fire. There were shelves that still carried dusty bales of cotton goods. Oberzohn was in a hurry. He crossed the stone floor in two strides, pulled down the bar of another door, and, walking into the darkness, deposited his box’ on the floor.

The electric power of the factory had, in the old days, been carried on two distinct circuits, and the connection with the vaults was practically untouched by the explosion.

They were in a smaller room now, fairly comfortably fur- nished. Gurther knew it well, for it was here that he had spent the greater part of his first six months in England. Ventilation came through three small gratings near the roof. There was a furnace, and, as Gurther knew, an ample supply of fuel in one of the three cellars that opened into the vault.

“Here will you stay until I send for you,” said Oberzohn. “To-night, perhaps, after they have searched. You have a pistol?”

“Ja, Herr Doktor.”

“Food, water, bedding—all you need.” Oberzohn jerked open another of the cellars and took stock of the larder. “To- night I may come for you—to-morrow night—who knows? You will light the fire at once.” He pointed to the two baize- covered boxes. “Good morning, Gurther.” _

“Good morning, Herr Doktor.”

Oberzohn went up to the factory level, dropped the trap and his foot pushed back the ashes which hid its presence, and with a cautious look round he crossed the field to his house. He was hardly in his study before the first police car came bumping along the lane.

LEON THEORIZES 73

CHAPTER TWELVE “LEON THEORIZES

MAKING inquiries, Detective-Inspector Meadows discovered that, on the previous evening at eight o’clock, two men had called upon Barberton. The first of these was described as tall and rather aristocratic in appearance. He wore dark, horn- rimmed spectacles. The hotel manager thought he might have been an invalid, for he walked with a stick. The second man seemed to have been a servant of some kind, for he spoke respectfully to the visitor,

“No, he gave no name, Mr. Meadows,” said the manager. “I told him of the terrible thing which had happened to Mr. Barberton, and he was so upset that I didn’t like to press the question.”

Meadows was on his circuitous way to Curzon Street when he heard this, and he arrived in time for breakfast. Manfred’s servants regarded it as the one eccentricity of an otherwise normal gentleman that he invariably breakfasted with his butler and chauffeur. This matter had been discussed thread- bare in the tiny servants’ hall, and it no longer excited com- ment when Manfred telephoned down to the lower regions and asked for another plate.

The Triangle were in cheerful mood. Leon Gonsalez was especially bright and amusing, as he invariably was after such a night as he had spent.

“We searched Oberzohn’s house from cellar to attic,” said Meadows when the plate had been laid.

“And of course you found nothing. The elegant-Gurther?”

“He wasn’t there. That fellow will keep at a distance if he knows that there’s a warrant out for him, I suspect some sort of signal. There was a very bright green light burning in one of those ridiculous Gothic turrets.”

Manfred stifled a yawn.

“Gurther went back soon after midnight,” he said, “and was there until Oberzohn’s return.” i:

“Are you sure?” asked the astonished detective.

Leon nodded, his eyes twinkling.

“After that, one of those infernal river mists blotted out

4o THE THREE JUST MEN

observation,” he said, “but I should imagine Herr Gurther is not far away. Did you see his companion, Pfeiffer?”

Meadows nodded.

“Yes, he was cleaning boots when I arrived.”

“How picturesque!” said Gonsalez. “I think he will have a valet the next time he goes to prison, unless the system has altered since your days, George?”

George Manfred, who had once occupied the condemned cell in Chelmsford Prison, smiled.

“An interesting man, Gurther,” mused Gonsalez, “I have a feeling that he will escape hanging. So you could not find him? I found him last night. But for the lady, who was both an impediment and an interest, we might have put a period to his activities.’ He caught Meadows’ eye. “I should have handed him to you, of course.”

“Of course,” said the detective dryly.

“A remarkable man, but nervous. You are going to see Mr. Johnson Lee?”

“What made you say that?” asked the detective in astonish- ment, for he had not as yet confided his intention to the three men.

“He will surprise you,” said Leon. “Tell me, Mr. Meadows: when you and George so thoroughly and carefully searched Barberton’s box, did you find anything that was suggestive of his being a cobbler, let us say—or a bookbinder?”

“J think in his sister’s letter there was a reference to the books he had made. I found nothing particular except an awl and a long oblong of wood which was covered with pinpricks. As a matter of fact, when I saw it my first thought was that, living the kind of life he must have done in the wilderness, it was rather handy to be able to repair his own shoes. The idea of bookbinding is a new one.”

“I should say he never bound a book in his life, in the ordinary sense of the word,” remarked Manfred; “and as Leon says, you will find Johnson Lee a very surprising man.”

“Do you know him?”

Manfred nodded gravely.

“I have just been on the telephone to him,” he said. “You'll have to be careful of Mr. Lee, Meadows. Our friend the snake may be biting his way, and will, if he hears a breath of sus- picion that he was in Barberton’s confidence.”

LEON THEORIZES 75

The detective put down his knife and fork.

“I wish you fellows would stop being mysterious,” he said, half annoyed, half amused. “What is behind this business? You talk of the snake as though you could lay your hands on him.”

“And we could,” they said in unison.

“Who is he?” challenged the detective.

“The Herr Doktor,” smiled Gonsalez.

“Oberzohn?”

Leon nodded.

“I thought you would have discovered that by connecting the original three murders together—and murders they were.

first” —he ticked the names off on his fingers—“we have a stockbroker. This gentleman was a wealthy speculator who occasionally financed highly questionable deals. Six months before his death he drew from the bank a very large sum of money in notes. By an odd coincidence the bank clerk, going out to luncheon, saw his client and Oberzohn driving past in a taxicab, and as they came abreast he saw a large blue enve- lope go into Oberzohn’s pocket. The money had been put into a blue envelope when it was drawn. The broker had financed’ the doctor, and when the scheme failed and the money was lost, he not unnaturally asked for its return. He trusted Ober- zohn not at all; carried his receipt about in his pocket, and never went anywhere unless he was armed—that fact did not emerge at the inquest, but you know it is true.”

Meadows nodded.

“He threatened Oberzohn with exposure at a meeting they had in Winchester Street, on the day of his death, That night he returns from a theatre or from his club, and is found dead on the doorstep. No receipt is found. What follows?

“A man, a notorious blackmailer, homeless and penniless, was walking along the Bayswater Road, probably looking for easy money, when he saw the broker’s car going into Orme Place. He followed on the off-chance of begging a few coppers. The chauffeur saw him. The tramp, on the other hand, must have seen something else. He slept the next night at Rowton House, told a friend, who had been in prison with him, that he had a million pounds as good as in his hand. .. .”

Meadows laughed helplessly.

“Your system of investigation is evidently more thorough than ours.”

76 THE THREE JUST MEN

“Tt is complementary to yours,” said George quietly. “Go on, Leon.”

“Now what happened to our friend the burglar? He evi- dently saw somebody in Orme Place whom he either recog- nized or trailed to his home. For the next day or two he was in and out of public telephone booths, though no number has been traced. He goes to Hyde Park, obviously by appoint- ment—and the snake bites!

“There was another danger to the confederacy. The bank clerk, learning of the death of the client, is troubled. I have proof that he called Oberzohn on the ’phone. If you remem- ber, when the broker’s affairs were gone into, it was found that he was almost insolvent. A large sum of money had been drawn out of the bank and paid to ‘X? The certainty that he knew who ‘X’ was worried this decent bank clerk, and he called Oberzohn, probably to ask him why he had not made a statement, On the day he telephoned the snake man, that day he died.”

The detective was listening in silent wonder.

“Tt sounds like a page out of a sensational novel,” he said, “yet it hangs together.”

“It hangs together because it is true.” Poiccart’s deep voice broke into the conversation. “This has been Oberzohn’s method all his life. He is strong for logic, and there is no

more logical action in the world than the destruction of those-

who threaten your safety and life.”

Meadows pushed away his plate, his breakfast half eaten.

“Proof,” he said briefly.

“What proof can you have, my dear fellow?” scoffed Leon.

“The proof is the snake,” persisted Meadows. “Show me how he could educate a deadly snake to strike, as he did, when the victim was under close observation, as in the case of Barberton, and I will believe you.”

The Three looked at one another and smiled together.

“One of these days I will show you,” said Leon. “They have certainly tamed their snake! He can move so quickly that the human eye cannot follow him. Always he bites on the most vital part, and at the most favourable time. He struck at me last night, but missed me. The next time he strikes”—he was speaking slowly and looking at the detective through the veriest slits of his half-closed eyelids—“the next time he

LEON THEORIZES 77

strikes, not all Scotland Yard on the one side, nor his agree- able company of gunmen on the other, will save him!”

Poiccart rose suddenly. His keen ears had heard the ring of a bell, and he went noiselessly down the stairs.

“The whole thing sounds like a romance to me.” Meadows was rubbing his chin irritably. “I am staring at the covers of a book whilst you are reading the pages. I suppose you devils have the A and Z of the story?”

Leon nodded.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Because I value your life,” said Leon simply. “Because I wish—we all wish—to keep the snake’s attention upon ourselves.”

Poiccart came back at that moment and put his head in the door.

“Would you like to see Mr. Elijah Washington?” he asked, and they saw by the gleam in his eyes that Mr. Elijah Wash- ington was well worth meeting.

He arrived a second or two later, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a reddish face. He wore pince-nez, and behind the rimless glasses his eyes were alive and full of bubbling laugh- ter. From head to foot he was dressed in white; the cravat which flowed over the soft silk shirt was a bright yellow; the belt about his waist as bright as scarlet.

He stood beaming upon the company, his white panama crushed under his arm, both huge hands thrust into his trousers pockets.

“Glad to know you folks,” he greeted them in a deep boom of a voice. “I guess Mr. Barberton told you all about me. That poor little guy! Listen: he was a he-man all right, but kinder mysterious. They told me Pd find the police chief here —Captain Meadows?”

“Mister,” said the inspector, “I’m that man.”

Washington put out his huge paw and caught the detec- tive’s hand with a grip that would have been notable in a boa constrictor.

“Glad to know you. My name is Elijah Washington—the Natural History Syndicate, Chicago.”

“Sit down, Mr. Washington.” Poiccart pushed forward a chair.

“I want to tell you gentleman that this Barberton was

78 THE THREE JUST MEN

murdered. Snake? Listen, I know snakes—brought up with ’um! Snakes are my hobby: I know ’um from egg-eaters to ‘tigers’—notechis sentatus, moccasins, copperheads, corals, mamba, fer de lance—gosh! snakes are just common objects like flies. An’ I tell you boys right here and now, that there ain’t a snake in this or the next world that can climb up a parapet, bite a man and get away with it with a copper looking on.”

He beamed from one to the other: he was almost paternal.

“Pd like to have shown you folks a worse-than-mamba,” he said regretfully, “but carrying round snakes in your pocket is just hot dog: it’s like a millionaire wearin’ diamond ear-rings just to show he can afford ’em. I liked that little fellow; I’m . mighty sorry he’s dead, but if any man tells you that a snake bit him, go right up to him, hit him on the nose, and say ‘Liar!’ ”

“You will have some coffee?” Manfred had rung the bell.

“Sure I will: never have got used to this tea-drinking habit. I’m on the wagon too: got scared up there in the back- lands of Angola——”

“What were you doing there?” asked Leon.

“Snakes,” said the other briefly. “I represent an organiza- tion that supplies specimens to zoos and museums. I was look- ing for a flying snake—there ain’t such a thing, though the natives say there is. I got a new kinder cobra—viperide crotaline—and yet not!”

He scratched his head, bringing his scientific perplexity into the room. Leon’s heart went out to him.

He had met Barberton by accident. Without shame he con- fessed that he had gone to a village in the interior for a real solitary jag, and returning to such degree of civilization as Mossamedes represented, he found a group of Portuguese breeds squatting about a fire at which the man’s feet were . toasting.

“I don’t know what he was—a prospector, I guess. He was one of those what-is-its you meet along that coast. ’ve met his kind most everywhere—as far south as Port Nottosh. In Angola there are scores: they go native at the end.”

“You can tell us nothing about Barberton?”

Mr. Elijah Washington shook his head.

“No, sir: I know him same as I might know you. It got

LEON THEORIZES 79

me curious when I found out the why of the torturing: he wouldn’t tell where it was.” ;

“Where what was?” asked Manfred quickly, and Mr. Washington was surprised.

“Why, the writing they wanted to get. I thought maybe he’d told you. He said he was coming right along to spill all that part of it. It was a letter he’d found in a tin box—that was all he’d say.”

They looked at one another.

“I know no more about it than that,” Mr. Washington added, when he saw Gonsalez’ lips move. “It was just a letter. Who it was from, why, what it was about, he never told me. My first idea was that he’d been flirting round about here, but divorce laws are mighty generous and they wouldn’t trouble to get evidence that way. A man doesn’t want any documents to get rid of his wife. I dare say you folks wonder why I’ve come along.” Mr. Washington raised his steaming cup of coffee, which must have been nearly boiling, and drank it at one gulp. “That’s fine,” he said, “the nearest to coffee I’ve had since I left home.”

He wiped his lips with a large and vivid silk handker- chief.

“I’ve come along, gentleman, because I’ve got a pretty good idea that I’d be useful to anybody who’s snake-hunting in this little dorp.”

“It’s rather a dangerous occupation, isn’t it?” said Manfred quietly.

Washington nodded.

“To you, but not to me,” he said. “I am snake-proof.”

He pulled up his sleeve: the forearm was scarred and pitted with old wounds. As

“Snakes,” he said briefly. “That’s cobra.” He pointed proudly. “When that snake struck, my boys didn’t wait for anything, they started dividing my kit. Sort of appointed themselves a board of executors and joint heirs of the family estate.”

“But you were very ill?” said Gonsalez.

Mr. Washington shook his head.

“No, sir, not more than if a bee bit me, and not so much as if a wasp had got in first punch. Some people can eat arsenic, some people can make a meal of enough morphia to decimate

80 THE THREE JUST MEN

a province. ’m snake-proof—been bitten ever since I was five.”

He bent over towards them, and his jolly face went sud- denly serious.

“Pm the man you want,” he said.

“J think you are,” said Manfred slowly.

“Because this old snake ain’t finished biting. There’s a graft in it somewhere, and I want to find it. But first I want to vindicate the snake. Anybody who says a snake’s naturally vicious doesn’t understand. Snakes are timid, quiet, respectful things, and don’t want no trouble with nobody. If a snake sees you coming, he naturally lights out for home. When momma snake’s running around with her family, she’s naturally touchy for fear you’d tread on any of her boys and girls, but she’s a lady, and if you give her time she’ll Maggie ’um and get ’um into the parlour where the foot of white man never trod.”

Leon was looking at him with a speculative eye.

“Tt is queer to think,” he said, speaking half to himself, “that you may be the only one of us who will be alive this day week!”

Meadows, not easily shocked, felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN MIRABELLE GOES HOME

Tue prediction that Leon Gonsalez had made was not wholly fulfilled, though he himself had helped to prevent the supreme distress he prophesied. When Mirabelle Leicester awoke in the morning, her head was thick and dull, and for a long time she lay between sleeping and waking, trying to bring order to the confusion of her thoughts, her eyes on the ceiling towards a gnarled oak beam which she had seen before somewhere; and when at last she summoned sufficient energy to raise herself on her elbow, she looked upon the very familiar surroundings of her own pretty little room.

Heavytree Farm! What a curious dream she had had! A dream filled with fleeting visions of old men with elongated heads, of dance music and a crowded ball-room, of a slightly over-dressed man who had been very polite to her at dinner.

MIRABELLE GOES HOME 81

Where did she dine? She sat up in bed, holding her throbbing head.

Again she looked round the room and slowly, out of her dreams, emerged a few tangible facts. She was still in a state of bewilderment when the door opened and Aunt Alma came in, and the unprepossessing face of her relative was accen- tuated by her look of anxiety.

“Hullo, Alma!” said Mirabelle dully. “I’ve had such a queer dream.”

Alma pressed her lips tightly together as she placed a tray on a table by the side of the bed.

“I think it was about that advertisement I saw.” And then, with a gasp: “How did I come here?”

“They brought you,” said Alma. “The nurse is downstairs having her breakfast. She’s a nice woman and keeps press- cuttings.”

“The nurse?” asked Mirabelle in bewilderment.

“You arrived here at three o’clock in the morning in a motor-car. You had a nurse with you.” Alma enumerated the circumstances in chronological order. “And two men. First one of the men got out and knocked at the door. I was worried to death. In fact, I’d been worried all the afternoon, ever since I had your wire telling me not to come up to London.”

“But I didn’t send any such wire,” replied the girl.

“After I came down, the man—he was really a gentleman and very pleasantly spoken—told'me that you’d been taken ill and a nurse had brought you home. They then carried you, the two men and the nurse, upstairs and laid you on the bed, and nurse and I undressed you. I simply couldn’t get you to wake up: all you did was to talk about the orangeade.”

“T remember! It was so bitter, and Lord Evington let me drink some of his. And then I... I don’t know what hap- pened after that,” she said, with a little grimace.

“Mr. Gonsalez ordered the car, got the nurse from a nurs- ing home,” explained Alma.

“Gonsalez! Not my Gonsalez—the—the Four Just Men Gonsalez?” she asked in amazement.

“Tm sure it was Gonsalez: they made no secret about it. You can see the gentleman who brought you: he’s about the house somewhere. I saw him in Heavytree Lane not five

82. THE THREE JUST MEN

‘minutes ago, strolling up and down and smoking. A pipe,” added Alma.

The girl got out of bed; her knees were curiously weak under her, but she managed to stagger to the window, and, pushing open the casement still farther, looked out across the patchwork quilt of colour. The summer flowers were in bloom; the delicate scents came up on the warm morning air, and she stood for a moment, drinking in great draughts of the exquisite perfume, and then, with a sigh, turned back to the waiting Alma.

“J don’t know how it all happened and what it’s about, but my word, Alma, I’m glad to be back! ‘That dreadful man... ! We lunched at the Ritz-Carlton. . . . I never want to see another restaurant or a ball-room or Chester Square, or any- thing but old Heavytree! ”

She took the cup of tea from Alma’s hand, drank greedily, and put it down with a little gasp.

“That was wonderful! Yes, the tea was too, but I’m think- ing about Gonsalez. If it should be he!”

“T don’t see why you should get excited over a man who’s committed I don’t know how many murders.”

“Don’t be silly, Alma!” scoffed the girl. “The Just Men have never murdered, any’ more than a judge and jury murder.”

The room was still inclined to go round, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could condense the two Almas who stood before her into one tangible individual.

“There’s a gentleman downstairs: he’s been waiting since twelve.” -

And when she asked, she was to learn, to her dismay, that it was half-past one.

“PII be down in a quarter of an hour,” she said recklessly. “Who is it?”

“Pye never heard of him before, but he’s a gentleman,” was the unsatisfactory reply. “They didn’t want to let him come in.”

“Who didn’t?”

“The gentlemen who brought you here in the night.”

Mirabelle stared at her.

“You mean... they’re guarding the house?”

“Thats how it strikes me,” said Alma bitterly. “Why they

Ces MIRABELLE GOES HOME 83

should interfere with us, I don’t know. Anyway, they let him | in. Mr. Johnson Lee.”

The girl frowned.

“I don’t know the name,” she said.

Alma walked to the window.

“There’s his car,” she said, and pointed.

It was just visible, standing at the side of the road beyond the box hedge, a long-bodied Rolls, white with dust. The chauffeur was talking to a strange man, and from the fact that he was smoking a pipe Mirabelle guessed that this was one of her self-appointed custodians. ;

She had her bath, and with the assistance of the nurse, dressed and came shakily down the stairs. Alma was waiting in the brick-floored hall.

“He wants to see you alone,” she said in a stage whisper. “I don’t know whether I ought to allow it, but there’s evidently something wrong. These men prowling about the house have got thoroughly on my nerves.”

Mirabelle laughed softly as she opened the door and walked in. At the sound of the door closing, the man who was sitting stiffly on a deep settee in a window recess got up. He was tall and bent, and his dark face was lined. His eyes she couid not see; they were hidden behind dark green glasses, which were turned in her direction as she came across the room to greet him.

“Miss Mirabelle Leicester?” he asked, in the quiet, modu- lated voice of an educated man.

He took her hand in his.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said, for he remained standing after she had seated herself.

“Thank you.” He sat down gingerly, holding between his knees the handle of the umbrella he had brought into the drawing-room. “I’m afraid my visit may be inopportune, Miss Leicester,” he said. “Have you by any chance heard about Mr. Barberton?”

Her brows wrinkled in thought.

“Barberton? I seem to have heard the name.”

“He was killed yesterday on the Thames Embankment.”

Then she recollected.

“The man who was bitten by the snake?” she asked in horror.

84 THE THREE JUST MEN

The visitor nodded. ;

“Tt was a great shock to me, because I have been a friend of his for many years, and had arranged to call at his hotel on the night of his death.” And then abruptly he turned the con- versation in another and a surprising direction. “Your father was a scientist, Miss Leicester?”

She nodded.

“Yes, he was an astronomer, an authority upon meteors.”

“Exactly. I thought that was the gentleman, I have only recently had his book read to me. He was in Africa for some years?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “he died there. He was studying meteors for three years in Angola. You probably know that a very large number of shooting stars fall in that country. My father’s theory was that it was due to the ironstone mountains which attract them—so he set up a little observatory in the interior.” Her lips trembled for a second. “He was killed in a native rising,” she said. i

“Do you know the part of Angola where he had his observatory?”

She shook her head.

“Pm not sure. I have never been in Africa, but perhaps Aunt Alma may know.”

She went out to find Alma waiting in the passage, in con- versation with the pipe-smoker. The man withdrew hastily at the sight of her.

“Alma, do you remember what part of Angola father had his observatory?” she asked.

Alma did not know off-hand, but one of her invaluable scrap-books contained all the information that the girl wanted, and she carried the book to Mr. Lee.

“Here are the particulars,” she said, and laid the book open before them.

“Would you read it for me?” he requested gently, and she read to him the three short paragraphs which noted that Pro- fessor Leicester had taken up his residence in Bishaka.

“That is the place,” interrupted the visitor. “Bishaka! You are you sure that Mr. Barberton did not communicate’ with

ou?”

“With me?” she said in amazement. “No—why should he?”

MIRABELLE GOES HOME 85

He did not answer, but sat for a long time, turning the matter over in his mind.

“You're perfectly certain that nobody sent you a document, probably in the Portuguese language, concerning”—he hesi- tated—“Bishaka?”

She shook her head, and then, as though he had not seen the gesture, he asked the question again.

“Tm certain,” she said. “We have very little correspondence at the farm, and it isn’t possible that I could overlook any- thing so remarkable.”

Again he turned the problem over in his mind.

“Have you any documents in Portuguese or in English . . . any letters from your father about Angola?”

“None,” she said. “The only reference my father ever made to Bishaka was that he was getting a lot of information which he thought would be valuable, and that he was a little troubled because his cameras, which he had fixed in various parts of the country to cover every sector of the skies, were being disturbed by wandering prospectors.”

“He said that, did he?” asked Mr. Lee eagerly. “Come now, that explains a great deal!”

In spite of herself she laughed.

“It doesn’t explain much to me, Mr. Lee,” she said frankly. And then, in a more serious tone: “Did Barberton come from Angola?”

“Yes, Barberton came from that country,” he said in a lower voice. “I should like to tell you”—he hesitated—“but I am rather afraid.”

“Afraid to tell me? Why?”

He shook his head.

“So many dreadful things have happened recently to poor Barberton and others, that knowledge seems a most dangerous thing. I wish I could believe that it would not be dangerous to you,” he added kindly, “and then I could speak what is in my mind and relieve myself of a great deal of anxiety.” He rose slowly. “I think the best thing I can do is to consult my lawyer. I was foolish to keep it from him so long. He is the only man I can trust to search my documents.”

She could only look at him in astonishment.

“But surely you can search your own documents?” she said good-humouredly.

86 THE THREE JUST MEN

“No, I’m afraid I can’t. Because”—he spoke with the sim- plicity of a child—“TI am blind.”

“Blind?” gasped Mirabelle, and the man laughed gently.

“I am pretty capable for a blind man, am I not? I can walk across a room and avoid all the furniture. The only thing I cannot do is to read—at least, read the ordinary print. I can read Braille: poor Barberton taught me. He was a school- master,” he explained, “at a blind school near Brightlingsea. Not a particularly well-educated man, but a marvellously quick writer of Braille. We have corresponded for years through that medium. He could write a Braille letter almost as quickly as you can with pen and ink.” ’

Her heart was full of pity for the man: he was so cheery, so confident, and withal so proud of his own accomplishments, that pity turned to admiration. He had the ineffable air of obstinacy which is the possession of so many men similarly stricken, and she began to realize that self-pity, that greatest of all afflictions which attends blindness, had been eliminated from his philosophy.

“T should like to tell you more,” he said, as he held out his hand. “Probably I will dictate a long letter to you to-morrow, or else my lawyer will do so, putting all the facts before you. For the moment, however, I must be sure of my ground. I

have no desire to raise in your heart either fear or—hope. Do ` you know a Mr. Manfred?”

“I don’t know him personally,” she said quickly. “George Manfred?”

He nodded.

“Have you met him?” she asked eagerly. “And Mr. Poiccart, the Frenchman?”

“No, not Mr. Poiccart. Manfred was on the telephone to me very early this morning. He seemed to know all about my relationships with my poor friend. He knew also of my blindness. A remarkable man, very gentle and courteous. It was he who gave me your address. Perhaps,” he mused, “it would be advisable if I first consulted him.”

“Pm sure it would!” she said enthusiastically. “They are wonderful. You have heard of them, of course, Mr. Lee—the Four Just Men?”

He smiled.

“That sounds as though you admire them,” he said. “Yes,

MIRABELLE GOES HOME 87

I have heard of them. They are the men who, many years ago, set out to regularize the inconsistencies of the English law, to punish where no punishment is provided by the code. Strange I never associated them. . . .”

He meditated upon the matter in silence for a long while, and then:

“I wonder,” he said, but did not tell her what he was wondering.

She walked down the garden path with him into the road- way and stood chatting about the country and the flowers that he had never seen, and the weather and such trivialities as people talk about when their minds are occupied with*more serious thoughts which they cannot share, until the big limousine pulled up and he stepped into its cool interior. He had the independence which comes to the educated blind and gently refused the offer of her guidance, an offer she did not attempt to repeat, sensing the satisfaction he must have had in making his way without help. She waved her hand to the car as it moved off, and so naturally did his hand go up in salute that for a moment she thought he had seen her.

So he passed cut of her sight, and might well have passed out of her life, for Mr. Oberzohn had decreed that the re- maining hours of blind Johnson Lee were to be few.

But it happened that the Three Men had reached the same decision in regard to Mr. Oberzohn, only there was some in- decision as to the manner of his passing. Leon Gonsalez had original views.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE PEDLAR

THE man with the pipe was standing within half a dozen paces of her. She was going back through the gate, when she remembered Aunt Alma’s views on the guardianship.

“Are you waiting here all day?” she asked.

“Till this evening, miss. We’re to be relieved by some men from Gloucester—we came from town, and we’re going back with the nurse, if you can do without her?”

“Who placed you here?” she asked.

88 THE THREE JUST MEN

“Mr. Gonsalez. He thought it would be wise to have some- body around.”

“But why?”

The big man grinned.

“Tye known Mr. Gonsalez many years,” he said. “I’m a police pensioner, and I can remember the time when Pd have given a lot of money to lay my hands on him—but I’ve never asked him why, miss. There is generally a good reason for everything he does.”

Mirabelle went back into the farmhouse, very thoughtful. Happily, Alma was not inquisitive; she was left alone in the drawing-room to reconstruct her exciting yesterday.

Mirabelle harboured very few illusions. She had read much, guessed much, and in the days of her childhood had been in the habit of linking cause to effect. The advertisement was de- signed especially for her: that was her first conclusion. It was designed to bring her into the charge of Oberzohn. For now she recognized this significant circumstance: never once, since she had entered the offices of Oberzohn & Smitts, until the episode of the orangeade, had she been free to come and go as she wished. He had taken her to lunch, he had brought her back; Joan Newton had been her companion in the drive from the house, and from the house to the hall; and from then on she did not doubt that Oberzohn’s surveillance had continued, until...

Dimly she remembered the man in the cloak who had stood in the rocking doorway. Was that Gonsalez? Somehow she thought it must have been. Gonsalez, watchful, alert—why? She had been in danger—was still in danger. Though why anybody should have picked unimportant her was the greatest

- of all mysteries.

In some inexplicable way the death of Barberton had been associated with that advertisement and the attention she had received from Dr. Oberzohn and his creatures. Who was Lord Evington? She remembered his German accent and his “gracious lady,” the curious click of his heels and his stiff bow. That was a clumsy subterfuge which she ought to have seen through from the first. He was another of her watchers. And the drugged orangeade was his work. She shuddered. Suppose Leon Gonsalez, or whoever it was, had not arrived so providentially, where would she be at this moment?

THE PEDLAR 89

Walking to the window, she looked out, and the sight of the two men just inside the gate gave her a sense of infinite relief and calm; and the knowledge that she, for some reason, was under the care and protection of this strange organization about which she had read, thrilled her.

She walked into the vaulted kitchen, to find the kitchen table covered with fat volumes, and Aunt Alma explaining to the interested nurse her system of filing. Two subjects in- terested that hard-featured lady: crime and family records. She had two books filled with snippings from country news- papers relating to the family of a distant cousin who had been raised to a peerage during the war. She had another devoted to the social triumphs of a distant woman, Goddard, who had finally made a sensational appearance as petitioner in the most celebrated divorce suit of the age. But crime, generally speak- ing, was Aunt Alma’s chief preoccupation. It was from these voluminous cuttings that Mirabelle had gained her complete knowledge of the Four Just Men and their operations. ‘There were books packed with the story of the Ramon murder, arranged with loving care in order of time, for chronology was almost a vice in Alma Goddard. Only one public sensation was missing from her collection, and she was explaining the reason to the nurse as Mirabelle came into the kitchen.

“No, my dear,” she was saying, “there is nothing about The Snake. I won’t have anything to do with that: it gives me the creeps. In fact, I haven’t read anything that has the slightest reference to it.”

“Pye got every line,” said the nurse enthusiastically. “My brother is a reporter on the Megaphone, and he says this is the best story they’ve had for years——”

Mirabelle interrupted this somewhat gruesome conversa- tion to make inquiries about luncheon. Her head was steady now and she had developed an appetite.

The front door stood open, and as she turned to go into the dining-room to get her writing materials, she heard an alter- cation at the gate. A third man had appeared: a grimy-looking pedlar who carried a tray before him, packed with all manner of cheap buttons and laces. He was a middle-aged man with a ragged beard, and despite the warmth of the day, was wearing a long overcoat that almost reached to his heels.

“You may or you may not be,” the man with the pipe was

go : THE THREE JUST MEN saying, “but you’re not going in here.”

“Pye served this house for years,” snarled the pedlar. “What do you mean by interfering with me? You're not a policeman.”

“Whether I’m a policeman or a dustman or a postman,” said the patient guard, “you don’t pass through this gate—do you understand that?”

At this moment the pedlar caught sight of the girl at the door and raised his battered hat with a grin. He was unknown to the girl; she did not remember having seen him at the house before. Nor did Alma, who came out at that moment.

“He’s a stranger here, but were always getting new people up from Gloucester,” she said. “What does he want to sell?”

She stalked out into the garden, and at the sight of her the grin left the pedlar’s face.

“Pye got some things Pd like to sell to the young lady, ma’am,” he said.

“[’m not so old, and I’m a lady,” replied Alma sharply. “And how long is it since you started picking and choosing your customers?”

The man grumbled something under his breath, and with- out waiting even to display his wares, shuffled off along the dusty road, and they watched him until he was out of sight.

Heavytree Farm was rather grandly named for so small a property. The little estate followed the road to Heavytree Lane, which formed the southern boundary of the property. The lane itself ran at an angle to behind the house, where the third boundary was formed by a hedge dividing the farmland from the more pretentious estate of a local magnate. It was down the lane the pedlar turned.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said the companion of the man with the pipe.

He opened the gate, walked in, and, making a circuit of the house, reached the orchard behind. Here a few outhouses were scattered, and, clearing these, he came to the meadow, where Mirabelle’s one cow ruminated in the lazy manner of her kind. Half hidden by a thick-boled apple-tree, the watcher waited, and presently, as he expected, he saw a head appear through the boundary hedge. After an observation the pedlar sprang into the meadow and stood, taking stock of his ground. He had left his tray and his bag, and, running with surprising

THE PEDLAR gi

swiftness for a man of his age, he gained a little wooden barn, and, pulling open the door, disappeared into its interior. By this time the guard had been joined by his companion and they had a short consultation, the man with the pipe going back to his post before the house, whilst the other walked slowly across the meadow until he came to the closed door of the barn. +

Wise in his generation, he first made a circuit of the build- ing, and discovered there were no exits through the blackened gates. Then, pulling both doors open wide:

“Come out, bo’! ” he said.

The barn was empty, except for a heap of hay that lay in one corner and some old and wheelless farm-wagons propped up on three trestles awaiting the wheelwright’s attention.

A ladder led to a loft, and the guard climbed slowly. His head was on a level with the dark opening, when:

“Put up your hands! ”

He was looking into the adequate muzzle of an automatic pistol. 4

“Come down, bo’!”

“Put up your hands,” hissed the voice in the darkness, “or you’re a dead man!”

The watcher obeyed, cursing his folly that he had come alone.

“Now climb up.”

With some difficulty the guard brought himself up to the floor level.

“Step this way, and step lively,” said the pedlar. “Hold your hands out.”

He felt the touch of cold steel on his wrist, heard a click.

“Now the other hand.” ‘3

The moment he was manacled, the pedlar began a rapid search,

“Carry a gun, do you?” he sneered, as he drew a pistol from the man’s hip pocket. “Now sit down.”

In a few seconds the discomfited guard was bound and gagged. The pedlar, crawling to the entrance of the loft, looked out between a crevice in the boards. He was watching, not the house, but the hedge through which he had climbed, ‘Two other men had appeared there, and he grunted his satis- faction. Descending into the barn, he pulled away the ladder

92 THE THREE JUST MEN

and let it fall on the floor, before he came out into the open and made a signal.

The second guard had made his way back by the shortest cut to the front of the house, passing through the garden and in through the kitchen door. He stopped to shoot the bolts, and the girl, coming into the kitchen, saw him.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked anxiously.

“J don’t know, miss.” He was looking at the kitchen win- dows: they were heavily barred. “My mate has just seen that pedlar go into the barn.”

She followed him to the front door. He had turned to go, but, changing his mind, came back, and she saw him put his hand into his hip pocket and was staggered to see him pro- duce a long-barrelled Browning.

“Can you use a pistol, miss?”

She nodded, too surprised to speak, and watched him as he jerked back the jacket and put up the safety catch.

“J want to be on the safe side, and Fd feel happier if you were armed.”

There was a gun hanging on the wall and he took it down.

“Have you any shells for this?” he asked.

She pulled open the drawer of the hall-stand and took out a cardboard carton.

“They may be useful,” he said.

“But surely, Mr. ¥

“Digby.” He supplied his name.

“Surely you’re exaggerating? I don’t mean that you’re do- ing it with any intention of frightening me, but there isn’t any danger to us?”

«I don’t know. I’ve got a queer feeling—had it all morning. How far is the nearest house from here?”

“Not half a mile away,” she said.

“You're on the phone?”

She nodded.

“I'm scared, maybe. I’ll just go out into the road and have a look round. I wish that fellow would come back,” he added fretfully.

He walked slowly up the garden path and stood for a moment leaning over the gate. As he did so, he heard the rattle and asthmatic wheezing of an ancient car, and saw a trades- man’s trolley come round a corner of Heavytree Lane. Its pace

©

THE PEDLAR 93

grew slower as it got nearer to the house, and opposite the gate it stopped altogether. The driver, getting down with a curse, lifted up the battered tin bonnet, and, groping under the seat, brought out a long spanner. Then, swift as thought, he half turned and struck at Digby’s head. The girl heard the sickening impact, saw the watcher drop limply to the path, and in another second she had slammed the door and thrust home the bolts.

She was calm; the hand that took the revolver from the hall-table did not tremble.

“Alma!” she called, and Alma came running downstairs.

“What on earth ?” she began, and then saw the pistol in Mirabelle’s hands.

“They are attacking the house,” said the girl quickly. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they’ve just struck down one of the men who was protecting us. Take the gun, Alma.”

Alma’s face was contorted, and might have expressed fear or anger or both. Mirabelle afterwards learnt that the domi- nant emotion was one of satisfaction to find herself in so war- like an environment.

Running into the drawing-room, the girl pushed open the window, which commanded a view of the road. The gate was unfastened and two men, who had evidently been concealed inside the trolley, were lifting the unconscious man, and she watched, with a calm she could not understand in herself, as they threw him into the interior and fastened the tailboard. She counted four in all, including the driver, who was climb- ing back to his seat, One of the new-comers, evidently the leader, was pointing down the road towards the lane, and she guessed that he was giving directions as to where the car should wait, for it began to go backwards almost.immediately and with surprising smoothness, remembering the exhibition it had given of decrepitude a few minutes before.

The man who had given instructions came striding down the path towards the door.

“Stop! »

He looked round with a start into the levelled muzzle of a Browning, and his surprise would, in any other circumstances, have been comical.

“Its all right, miss——” he began.

“Put yourself outside that gate,” said Mirabelle coolly.

THE THREE JUST MEN

“I wanted to see you... very important——”

Bang!

Mirabelle fired a shot, aimed above his head, towards the old poplar. The man ducked and ran. Clear of the gate he dropped to the cover of a hedge, where his men already were, and she heard the murmur of their voices distinctly, for the day was still, and the far-off chugging of the trolley’s engine sounded close at hand. Presently she saw a head peep round the hedge.

“Can I have five minutes’ talk with you?” asked the leader loudly.

He was a thick-set, bronzed man, with a patch of lint plastered to his face, and she noted unconsciously that he wore gold ear-rings.

“There’s no trouble coming to you,” he said, opening the gate as he spoke. “You oughtn’t to have fired, anyway. No- body’s going to hurt you——”

He had advanced a yard into the garden as he spoke.

Bang, bang!

In her haste she had pressed’ butt and trigger just a fraction too long, and, startled by the knowledge that another shot was coming, her hand jerked round, and the second shot missed - his head by the fraction of an inch. He disappeared in a flash, and a second later she saw their hats moving swiftly above the box. They were running towards the waiting car.

“Stay here, Alma!”

Alma Goddard nodded grimly, and the girl flew up the stairs to her room. From this elevation she commanded a better view. She saw them climb into the van, and in another second the limp body of the guard was thrown out into the hedge; then, after a brief space of time, the machine began moving and, gathering speed, disappeared in a cloud of dust on the Highcombe Road.

Mirabelle came down the stairs at a run, pulled back the bolts and flew out and along the road towards the still figure of the detective. He was lying by the side of the ditch, his head a mass of blood, and she saw that he was still breathing. She tried to lift him, but it was too great a task. She ran back to the house. The telephone was in the hall: an old-fashioned instrument with a handle that had to be turned, and she had not made two revolutions before she realized that the wire had been cut.

THE PEDLAR 95.

Alma was still in the parlour, the gun gripped tight in her hand, a look of fiendish resolution on her face.

“You must help me to get Digby into the house,” she said.

“Where is he?”

Mirabelle pointed, and the two women, returning to the man, half lifted, half dragged him back to the hall. Laying him down on the brick floor, the girl went in search of clean linen. The kitchen, which was also the drying place for Alma’s more intimate laundry, supplied all that she needed. Whilst Alma watched unmoved the destruction of her wardrobe, the girl bathed the wound and the frightened nurse (who had disappeared at the first shot) applied a rough dressing. The wound was an ugly one, and the man showed no signs of recovering consciousness.

“We shall have to send Mary into Gloucester for an ambu- lance,” said Mirabelle. “We can’t send nurse—she doesn’t know the way.”

“Mary,” said Alma calmly, “is at this moment having hysterics in the larder. I’ll harness the dog-cart and go myself. But where is the other man?”

Mirabelle shook her head.

“I don’t like to think what has happened to him,” she said. “Now, Alma, do you think we can get him into the drawing- room?”

Together they lifted the heavy figure and staggered with it into the pretty little room, laying him at last upon the settee under the window.

“He can rest there till we get the ambulance,” began Mira- belle, and a chuckle behind her made her turn with a gasp.

It was the pedlar, and in his hand he held the pistol which she had discarded. N

“I only want you”—he nodded to the girl. “You other two women can come out here.” He jerked his head to the passage. Under the stairs was a big cupboard and he pulled the door open invitingly. “Get in here. If you make a noise, you'll be sorry for yourselves.”

Alma’s eyes wandered longingly to the gun she had left in the corner, but before she could make a move he had placed himself between her and the weapon.

“Get inside,” said the pedlar, and Mirabelle was not much surprised when Aunt Alma meekly obeyed.

95 THE THREE JUST MEN

He shut the door on the two women cnd fastened the hatch.

“Now, young lady, put on your hat and be lively!”

He followed her up the stairs into her room and watched her while she found a hat and a cloak. She knew only too well that it was a waste of time even to temporize with him. He, for his part, was so exultant at his success that he grew almost loquacious.

“I suppose you saw the boys driving away and you didn’t remember that I was somewhere around? Was that you doing the shooting?”

She did not answer.

“Tt couldn’t have been Lew, or you’d have been dead,” he said. He was examining the muzzle of the pistol. “It was you all right.” He chuckled. “Ain’t you the game one! Sister, you ought to be——”

He stopped dead, staring through the window. He was paralysed with amazement at the sight of a bare-headed Aunt Alma flying along the Gloucester Road. With an oath he turned to the girl.

“How did she get out? Have you got anybody here? Now speak up.”

“The cupboard under the stairs leads to the wine cellar,” said Mirabelle coolly, “and there are two ways out of the wine cellar. I think Aunt Alma found one of them.”

With an oath, he took a step towards her, gripped her by the arm and jerked her towards the door.

“Lively!” he said, and dragged her down the stairs through the hall, into the kitchen.

He shot back the bolts, but the lock of the kitchen door had been turned.

“This way.” He swore cold-bloodedly, and, her arm still in his powerful grip, he hurried along the passage and pulled open the door.

It was an unpropitious moment. A man was walking down the path, a half-smile on his face, as though he was thinking over a remembered jest. At the sight of him the pedlar dropped the girl’s arm and his hand went like lightning to his pocket.

“When will you die?” said Leon Gonsalez softly. “Make a choice, and make it quick!”

And the gun in his hand seemed to quiver with homicidal eagerness.

TWO “ACCIDENTS” 97

CHAPTER FIFTEEN TWO “ACCIDENTS”

Tue pedlar, his face twitching, put up his shaking hands.

Leon walked to him, took the Browning from his moist grip and dropped it into his pocket.

“Your friends are waiting, of course?” he said pleasantly.

The pedlar did not answer.

“Cuccini too? I thought I had incapacitated him for a long time,”

“They’ve gone,” growled the pedlar.

Gonsalez looked round in perplexity.

“I don’t want to take you into the house. At the same time, I don’t want to leave you here,” he said. “I almost wish you’d drawn that gun of yours,” he added regretfully. “It would have solved so many immediate problems.”

This particular problem was solved by the return of the dishevelled Alma and the restoration to her of her gun.

“I would so much rather you shot him than I,” said Leon earnestly. “The police are very suspicious of my shootings, and they never wholly believe that they are done in self- defence.”

With a rope he tied the man, and tied him uncomfortably, wrists to ankles. That done, he made a few inquiries and went swiftly out to the barn, returning in a few minutes with the unhappy guard.

“It can’t be helped,” said Leon, cutting short the man’s apologies. “The question is, where are the rest of the brethren?” g

Something zipped past him: it had the intensified hum of an angry wasp, and a second later he heard a muffled “Plop!” In a second he was lying flat on the ground, his Browning covering the hedge that hid Heavytree Lane.

“Run to the house,” he called urgently. “They won’t bother about you.” And the guard, nothing loth, sprinted for the cover of walls.

Presently Leon located the enemy, and at a little distance off he saw the flat top of the covered trolley. A man walked slowly and invitingly across the gap in the hedge, but Gon-

T.J.M.—4

ht:

98 THE THREE JUST MEN

salez held his fire, and presently the manœuvre was repeated. Obviously they were trying to concentrate his mind upon the gap whilst they were moving elsewhere. His eyes swept the meadow boundary—running parallel, he guessed, was a brook or ditch which would make excellent cover.

Again the man passed leisurely across the gap. Leon steadied his elbow, and glanced along the sight. As he did so, the man reappeared.

Crack!

Gonsalez aimed a foot behind him. The man saw the flash and jumped back, as he had expected. In another second he was writhing on the ground with a bullet through his leg.

Leon showed his teeth in a smile and switched his body round to face the new point of attack. It came from the spot that he had expected: a little rise of ground that commanded his position.

The first bullet struck the turf to his right with an angry buzz, sent a divot flying heavenward, and ricochetted with a smack against a tree. Before the raised head could drop to cover, Gonsalez fired; fired another shot to left and right, then, rising, raced for the shelter of the tree, and reached it in time to see three heads bobbing back to the road. He waited, covering the gap, but the people who drew the wounded man out of sight did not show themselves, and a minute later he saw the trolley moving swiftly down the by-road, and knew that danger was past.

The firing had attracted attention. He had not been back in the house a few minutes before a mounted policeman, his horse in a lather, came galloping up to the gate and dis- mounted. A neighbouring farm had heard the shots and tele- phoned to constabulary head-quarters. For half an hour the mounted policeman took notes, and by this time half the far- mers in the neighbourhood, their guns under their arms, had assembled in Mirabelle’s parlour.

She had not seen as much of the redoubtable Leon as she could have wished, and when they had a few moments to themselves she seized the opportunity to tell him of the call which Lee had made that morning. Apparently he knew all about it, for he expressed no surprise, and was only em- barrassed when she showed a personal interest in himself and his friends.

TWO “ACCIDENTS” 99

It was not a very usual experience for him, and he was rather annoyed with himself at this unexpected glimpse of enthusiasm and hero-worship, sane as it was, and based, as he realized, upon her keen sense of justice.

“I’m not so sure that we’ve been very admirable really,” he said. “But the difficulty is to produce at.the moment a judg- ment which would be given from a distance of years. We have sacrificed everything which to most men would make life worth living, in our desire to see the scales held fairly.”

“You are not married, Mr. Gonsalez?”

He stared into the frank eyes.

“Married! Why, no,” he said, and she laughed.

“You talk as though that were a possibility that had never occurred to you.”

“It hasn’t,” he admitted. “By the very nature of our work we are debarred from that experience. And is it an offensive thing to say that I have never felt my singleness to be a deprivation?”

“It is very rude,” she said severely, and Leon was laughing to himself all the way back to town as at a great joke that improved upon repetition.

“I think we can safely leave her for a week,” he reported, on his return to Curzon Street. “No, nothing happened. I was held up in a police trap near Newbury for exceeding the speed limit. They said I was doing fifty, but I should imagine it was nearer eighty. Meadows will get me out of that. Otherwise, I must send the inevitable letter to the magistrate and pay the inevitable fine. Have you done anything about Johnson Lee?”

Manfred nodded.

“Meadows and the enthusiastic Mr. Washington have gone round to see him. I have asked Washington to ga. because”— he hesitated—“the snake is a real danger, so far as he is con- cerned. Elijah Washington promises to be a very real help. He is afraid of nothing, and has undertaken to stay with Lee and to apply such remedies for snake-bites as he knows.”

He was putting on his gloves as he spoke, and Leon Gon- salez looked at him with a critical admiration.

“Are you being presented at Court, or are you taking tea with a duchess?”

“Neither. I’m calling upon friend Oberzohn.”

“The devil you are!” said Leon, his eyebrows rising.

100 THE THREE JUST MEN

“I have taken the precaution of sending him a note, asking him to keep his snakes locked up,” said Manfred, “and as I have pointedly forwarded the carbon copy of the letter, to impress the fact that another exists and may be brought in evidence against him, I think I shall leave Oberzohn & Smitts’ main office without hurt. If you are not too tired, Leon, I would rather prefer the Buick to the Spanz.”

“Give me a quarter of an hour,” said Leon, and went up to his room to make himself tidy.

It was fifteen minutes exactly when the Buick stopped at the door, and Manfred got into the saloon. ‘There was no partition between driver and passenger, and conversation was possible.

“It would have been as well if you’d had Brother Newton there,” he suggested.

“Brother Newton will be on the spot: I took the precaution of sending him a similar note,” said Manfred. “I shouldn’t imagine they’ll bring out their gunmen.”

“I know two, and possibly three, they won’t bring out.” Gonsalez grinned at the traffic policeman who waved him into Oxford Street. “That Browning of mine throws high, Man- fred: I’ve always had a suspicion it did. Pistols are queer things, but this may wear into my hand.” He talked arms and ammunition until the square block of Oberzohn & Smitts came into sight. “Good hunting!” he said, as he got out, opened the saloon door and touched his hat to Manfred as he alighted.

He got back into his seat, swung the little car round in a circle, and sat on the opposite side of the road, his eyes alter- nately on the entrance and on the mirror which gave him a view of the traffic approaching him from the rear.

Manfred was not kept in the waiting-room for more than two minutes. At the end of that time, a solemn youth in spec- tacles, with a little bow, led him across the incurious office into the presence of the illustrious doctor.

The old man was at his desk. Behind him, his debonair self, Monty Newton, a large yellow flower in his buttonhole, a smile on his face. Oberzohn got up like a man standing to attention.

“Mr. Manfred, this is a great honour,” he said, and held out his hand stiffly.

TWO “ACCIDENTS” IOI

An additional chair had been placed for the visitor: a rich- looking tapestried chair, to which the doctor waved the hand which Manfred did not take.

“Good morning, Manfred.” Newton removed his cigar and nodded genially. “Were you at the dance last night?”

“I was there, but I didn’t come in,” said Manfred, seating himself. “You did not turn up till late, they tell me?”

“It was of all occurrences the most unfortunate,” said Dr. Oberzohn, and Newton laughed.

“Tve lost his laboratory secretary and he hasn’t forgiven me,” he said almost jovially. “The-girl he took on yesterday. Rather a stunner in the way of looks. She didn’t wish to go back to the country where she came from,