* * * * *
[Cover Illustration]
NOVELS BY
EDGAR WALLACE
The Black Abbot
Sanders
The Door with Seven Locks
Penelope of the Polyantha
The Day of Uniting
We Shall See
The Four Just Men
The Yellow Snake
The Terrible People
The Three Just Men
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
HODDER AND
STOUGHTON
Ltd., London
The
Three Just Men
By EDGAR WALLACE
H o d d e r a n d S t o u g h t o n
Limited London
Made and Printed in Great Britain. Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
_Contents_
I THE FIRM OF OBERZOHN
II THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET
III THE VENDETTA
IV THE SNAKE STRIKES
V THE GOLDEN WOMAN
VI IN CHESTER SQUARE
VII “MORAL SUASION”
VIII THE HOUSE OF OBERZOHN
IX BEFORE THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
X WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
XI GURTHER
XII LEON THEORIZES
XIII MIRABELLE GOES HOME
XIV THE PEDLAR
XV TWO “ACCIDENTS”
XVI RATH HALL
XVII WRITTEN IN BRAILLE
XVIII THE STORY OF MONT D’OR
XIX AT HEAVYTREE FARM
XX GURTHER REPORTS
XXI THE ACCOUNT BOOK
XXII IN THE STORE CELLAR
XXIII THE COURIER
XXIV ON THE NIGHT MAIL
XXV GURTHER RETURNS
XXVI IN CAPTIVITY
XXVII MR. NEWTON’S DILEMMA
XXVIII AT FRATER’S
XXIX WORK FOR GURTHER
XXX JOAN A PRISONER
XXXI THE THINGS IN THE BOX
XXXII THE SEARCH
XXXIII THE SIEGE
XXXIV THE DEATH TUBE
_Chapter I_ _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 GOOD friend sent one of the issues containing this advertisement 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 constantly 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 tuppence-ha’penny
on postage and paper when the circled paragraph 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!”
“Dear me!” said Aunt Alma, a lady whose gaunt and terrifying appearance
was the terror of tradesmen and farm hands, though a milder woman never
knitted stockings.
“Isn’t 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.
“It 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 I 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 herself 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 rejoinder), “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 pardoned 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. Mirabelle 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 their readers that the scare was
childish and a shocking commentary on the neurotic tendencies of the
age; they also published, 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 paragraph 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
before 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 blameless 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 you wouldn’t
keep these horrors in your scrap-book.”
“They are Life,” said Alma soberly, and then: “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 hour later she intercepted the village postman and handed him a
letter.
And that was the beginning of the adventure which involved 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
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.”
“Is 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 up.”
The chauffeur withdrew apologetically.
The girl waited in the ornate ante-room for ten minutes before the pale
youth with the stiff, upstanding hair and the huge rimless spectacles
returned. His face was large, expressionless, unhealthy. Mirabelle had
noted as a curious circumstance 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; Germans, she imagined,
and was surprised 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 fire-place—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 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 fire-place.
He was tall and grey; her first impression was of an enormously 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 German. 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 costume. He saw
that she wore a little hat with a straight brim that framed her face
just above the lift of her curved eyebrows. A German would have seen
these things, being a hopeless 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
you 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 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.
“I’m 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 sensations 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 qualified——”
“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 reason 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.
“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 desirable; 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.
“I’ll 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 engraved 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, ranging 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—quantities. 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.
“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 afternoon, 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 II_ _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. 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 injunction 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
crossings 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 appearances, George Manfred and his friends
listening in silence and offering no help. But apart from Elver and an
Assistant Commissioner 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 inevitably 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 punctually 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.
“I am afraid that you cannot see Mr. Manfred without an appointment,” he
said. His voice and manner were most unexpectedly gentle in such a
forbidding man.
“I’ve 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, I’d
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 I’ll 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. . . .”
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 behind 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 story to tell me—you are
from the Cape?”
“No, I’m not,” said Mr. Barberton. “I’ve never been at the Cape in my
life.”
The man behind the desk nodded.
“Now, if you will tell me——”
“I’m 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 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.
“It’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—Villa is certain to have cabled ’em, and
according to him they’re hot!”
Mr. Manfred leant back in his padded chair, the glint of an amused smile
in his grey eyes.
“I 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?”
“I 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 intention.
“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 amusement 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 question. Manfred bent forward as though he had not
heard aright.
“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 pardon: I saw that in
the _Cape Times_—the bit I tore the advertisement from.”
“The last I heard of them, they were in Spain,” said Manfred, 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.”
“I wish I could have seen his feet,” said the chauffeur, whose veritable
name was Leon Gonsalez. He spoke with regret. “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. “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 all.”
The keen face of Gonsalez was thrust forward through a cloud of smoke.
“I 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 advertisement 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.
“I think I know,” said Manfred, and nodded. “The question is: how long
has Mr. Samuel Barberton to live?”
“Exactly,” said Gonsalez with satisfaction. “You are beginning to
understand the mentality of Oberzohn!”
_Chapter III_ _The Vendetta_
THE 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 handkerchief 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 propitiated 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 extravagant parties, 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.
“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.—=Miss Mirabelle
Leicester.=”
“She’s here, is she?” Captain Newton glanced at the laboratory door.
“You’re not going to send that wire? ‘Miss Mirabelle Leicester!’
‘Expeditiously return!’ She’d tumble it in a minute. Who is Alma
Goddard?”
“The aunt,” said Oberzohn. “I did not intend the dispatching 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.—MIRABELLE.”
“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. I’ll 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 Oberzohn 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.
“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 convictions 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
alarmingly 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——”
“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 distorted with
fury. “To leave them alone, is it? Of my brother what? Of my brother in
heaven, sainted martyr . . . !”
He spun round, gripped the silken tassel of the cord above the
fire-place, 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
attitude which cheap photographers believe is the acme of grace. His big
face, idealized as it was by the artist, was brutal and 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 fire-place
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 Oberzohn & 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.
“I’ll 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:
“To Mirabelle Leicester, care Oberzohn (Phone) London. 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 telegrams 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 IV_ _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 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 no 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 tantalizingly
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-Carlton 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.”
“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 upturned. “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.”