supplies specimens to zoos and museums. I was looking for a flying
snake—there ain’t such a thing, though the natives say there is. I got
a new kinder cobra—_viperidæ crotalinæ_—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 confessed 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. I’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 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 handkerchief.
“I’ve come along, gentlemen, 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.
“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 a province. I’m
snake-proof—been bitten ever since I was five.”
He bent over towards them, and his jolly face went suddenly serious.
“I’m the man you want,” he said.
“I 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.
“It 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 XIII_ _Mirabelle Goes Home_
THE 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. 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 accentuated 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.”
“I remember! It was so bitter, and Lord Evington let me drink some of
his. And then I . . . I don’t know what happened after that,” she said,
with a little grimace.
“Mr. Gonsalez ordered the car, got the nurse from a nursing home,”
explained Alma.
“Gonsalez! Not my Gonsalez—the—the Four Just Men Gonsalez?” she asked
in amazement.
“I’m sure it was Gonsalez: they made no secret about it. You can see the
gentlemen who brought you: he’s about the house somewhere. I saw him in
Heavytree Lane not five 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.
“I 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 anything 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 thinking about
Gonsalez. If it should be he!”
“I 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.
“I’ll be down in a quarter of an hour,” she said recklessly. “Who is
it?”
“I’ve 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?”
“That’s how it strikes me,” said Alma bitterly. “Why they 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 could 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, modulated 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.
The visitor nodded.
“It 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 conversation 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.
“Do you know the part of Angola where he had his observatory?”
She shook her head.
“I’m 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 conversation 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 Professor Leicester had taken up
his residence in Bishaka.
“That is the place,” interrupted the visitor. “Bishaka! You are sure
that Mr. Barberton did not communicate with you?”
“With me?” she said in amazement. “No—why should he?”
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 hesitated—“Bishaka?”
She shook her head, and then, as though he had not seen the gesture, he
asked the question again.
“I’m certain,” she said. “We have very little correspondence at the
farm, and it isn’t possible that I could overlook anything 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.
“No, I’m afraid I can’t. Because”—he spoke with the simplicity of a
child—“I 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 schoolmaster,” 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.
“I 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.”
“I’m 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, 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 roadway 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 out of her sight, and might well have passed out of her
life, for Mr. Oberzohn had decreed that the remaining 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 indecision as to the manner
of his passing. Leon Gonsalez had original views.
_Chapter XIV_ _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.
“Mr. Gonsalez. He thought it would be wise to have somebody around.”
“But why?”
The big man grinned.
“I’ve known Mr. Gonsalez many years,” he said. “I’m a police pensioner,
and I can remember the time when I’d 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 designed 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?
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 interested that hard-featured lady: crime
and family records. She had two books filled with snippings from country
newspapers 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 speaking, 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.”
“I’ve 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 conversation 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 altercation 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 saying, “but
you’re not going in here.”
“I’ve 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 we’re 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.
“I’ve got some things I’d like to sell to the young lady, ma’am,” he
said.
“I’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 without 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.