The Council of Justice

by Otto Penzler

Twenty minutes later, Falmouth stood at the back of the dress circle issuing instructions to a subordinate.

  ‘Have a couple of men at the stage door—my God!’

  Over the soft music, above the hum of voices, a shot rang out and a woman screamed. From the box opposite the Prince’s, a thin swirl of smoke floated.

  Karl Ollmanns, tired of waiting, had fired at the motionless figure sitting in the shadow of the curtain. Then he walked calmly out of the box into the arms of two breathless detectives.

  ‘A doctor!’ shouted Falmouth as he ran. The door of the Box A was locked, but he broke it open.

  A man lay on the floor of the box very still and strangely stiff.

  ‘Why, what—!’ began the detective, for the dead man was bound hand and foot.

  There was already a crowd at the door of the box, and he heard an authoritative voice demand admittance.

  He looked over his shoulder to meet the eye of the commissioner.

  ‘They’ve killed him, sir,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Whom?’ asked the commissioner in perplexity.

  ‘His Highness.’

  ‘His Highness!’ the commissioner’s eyebrows rose in genuine astonishment. ‘Why, the Prince left Charing Cross for the Continent half an hour ago!’

  The detective gasped.

  ‘Then who in the name of Fate is this?’

  It was M. Menshikoff, who had come in with the commissioner, who answered.

  ‘Antonio Selleni, an anarchist of Milan,’ he reported.

  Carlos Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of the Escorial, Duke of Buda-Gratz, and heir to three thrones, was married, and his many august cousins scattered throughout Europe had a sense of heartfelt relief.

  A prince with admittedly advanced views, an idealist with Utopian schemes for the regeneration of mankind, and, coming down to the mundane practical side of life, a reckless motorcar driver, an outrageously daring horseman, and possessed of the indifference to public opinion, which is equally the equipment of your fool and your truly great man, his marriage had been looked forward to throughout the courts of Europe in the light of an international achievement.

  Said his Imperial Majesty of Central Europe to the grizzled chancellor:

  ‘Te Deums—you understand, von Hedlitz? In every church.’

  ‘It is a great relief,’ said the chancellor, wagging his head thoughtfully.

  ‘Relief!’ the Emperor stretched himself as though the relief were physical. ‘That young man owes me two years of life. You heard of the London essay?’

  The chancellor had heard—indeed, he had heard three or four times—but he was a polite chancellor and listened attentively. His Majesty had the true storytelling faculty and elaborated the introduction.

  ‘…if I am to believe his Highness, he was sitting quietly in his box when the Italian entered. He saw the knife in his hand and half rose to grapple with the intruder. Suddenly, from nowhere in particular, sprang three men, who had the assassin on the floor bound and gagged. You would have thought our Carlos Ferdinand would have made an outcry! But not he! He sat stock still, dividing his attention between the stage and the prostrate man and the leader of this mysterious band of rescuers.’

  ‘The Four Just Men!’ put in the chancellor.

  ‘Three, so far as I can gather,’ corrected the imperial storyteller. ‘Well, it would appear that this leader, in quite a logical, calm, matter-of-fact way, suggested that the prince should leave quietly, that his motorcar was at the stage door, that a saloon had been reserved at Charing Cross, a cabin at Dover, and a special train at Calais.’

  His Majesty had a trick of rubbing his knee when anything amused him, and this he did now.

  ‘Carl obeyed like a child—which seems the remarkably strange point about the whole proceedings. The captured anarchist was trussed and bound and sat on the chair, and left to his own unpleasant thoughts.’

  ‘And killed,’ said the chancellor.

  ‘No, not killed,’ corrected the Emperor. ‘Part of the story I tell you is his—he told it to the police at the hospital—no, no, not killed—his friend was not the marksman he thought.’

  CHAPTER IX.

  The Four v. The Hundred

  SOME WORKMEN, RETURNING HOME of an evening and taking a shortcut through a field two miles from Catford, saw a man hanging from a tree.

  They ran across and found a fashionably dressed gentleman of foreign appearance. One of the labourers cut the rope with his knife, but the man was dead when they cut him down. Beneath the tree was a black bag, to which somebody had affixed a label bearing the warning, ‘Do not touch—this bag contains explosives: inform the police.’ More remarkable still was the luggage label tied to the lapel of the dead man’s coat. It ran: ‘This is Franz Kitsinger, convicted at Prague in 1904, for throwing a bomb; escaped from prison March 17, 1905, was one of the three men responsible for the attempt on the Tower Bridge today. Executed by order of The Council of Justice.’

  ‘It’s a humiliating confession,’ said the chief commissioner when they brought the news to him, ‘but the presence of these men takes a load off my mind.’

  But the Red Hundred were grimly persistent.

  That night, a man smoking a cigar strolled aimlessly past the policeman on point duty at the corner of Kensington Park Gardens and walked casually into Ladbroke Square. He strolled on, turned a corner, and, crossing a road, came to where one great garden served for a double row of middle-class houses. The backs of these houses opened on to the square. He looked round and, seeing the coast clear, he clambered over the iron railings and dropped into the big pleasure ground, holding very carefully an object that bulged in his pocket.

  He took a leisurely view of the houses before he decided on the victim. The blinds of this particular house were up, and the French windows of the dining room were open, and he could see the laughing group of young people about the table. There was a birthday party or something of the sort in progress, for there was a great parade of Parthian caps and paper sunbonnets.

  The man was evidently satisfied with the possibilities for tragedy, and he took a pace nearer …

  Two strong arms were about him, arms with muscles like cords of steel.

  ‘Not that way, my friend,’ whispered a voice in his ear …

  The man showed his teeth in a dreadful grin.

  The sergeant on duty at Notting Hill Gate Station received a note at the hands of a grimy urchin, who for days afterward maintained a position of enviable notoriety.

  ‘A gentleman told me to bring this,’ he said.

  The sergeant looked at the small boy sternly and asked him if he ever washed his face. Then he read the letter:

  ‘The second man of the three concerned in the attempt to blow up the Tower Bridge will be found in the garden of Maidham Crescent, under the laurel bushes, opposite No. 72.’

  It was signed ‘The Council of Justice’.

  The commissioner was sitting over his coffee at the Ritz when they brought him the news. Falmouth was a deferential guest, and the chief passed him the note without comment.

  ‘This is going to settle the Red Hundred,’ said Falmouth. ‘These people are fighting them with their own weapons—assassination with assassination, terror with terror. Where do we come in?’

  ‘We come in at the end,’ said the commissioner, choosing his words with great niceness, ‘to clean up the mess and take any scraps of credit that are going’—he paused and shook his head. ‘I hope—I should be sorry—’ he began.

  ‘So should I,’ said the detective sincerely, for he knew that his chief was concerned for the ultimate safety of the men whose arrest it was his duty to effect. The commissioner’s brows were wrinkled thoughtfully.

  ‘Two,’ he said musingly; ‘now, how on earth do the Four Just Men know the number in this—and how did they track them down—and who is the third?—heavens! One could go on asking questions the whole of the night!’

  On one point the Commissioner might have been informed
earlier in the evening—he was not told until three o’clock the next morning. The third man was Von Dunop. Ignorant of the fate of his fellow Terrorists, he sallied forth to complete the day notably.

  The crowd at a theatre door started a train of thought, but he rejected that outlet to ambition. It was too public, and the chance of escape was nil. These British audiences did not lose their heads so quickly; they refused to be confounded by noise and smoke and a writhing figure here and there. Von Dunop was no exponent of the Glory of Death school. He greatly desired glory, but the smaller the risk, the greater the glory. This was his code.

  He stood for a moment outside the Hotel Ritz. A party of diners were leaving, and motorcars were being steered up to carry these accursed plutocrats to the theatre. One soldierly-looking gentleman with a grey moustache, attended by a quiet, observant, clean-shaven man, interested the anarchist. He and the soldier exchanged glances.

  ‘Who the dickens was that?’ asked the commissioner as he stepped into the taxi. ‘I seem to know his face.’

  ‘I have seen him before,’ said Falmouth. ‘I won’t go with you, sir—I’ve a little business to do in this part of the world.’

  Thereafter Von Dunop was not permitted to enjoy his walk in solitude, for, unknown to him, a man ‘picked him up’ and followed him throughout the evening. And as the hour grew later, that one man became two; at eleven o’clock, he became three; and at quarter to twelve, when Von Dunop had finally fixed upon the scene and scope of his exploit, he turned from Park Lane into Brook Street to discover, to his annoyance, quite a number of people within call. Yet he suspected nothing. He did not suspect the night wanderer mooching along the curb with downcast eyes, seeking the gutter for the stray cigar end, nor the two loudly talking men in suits of violet check who wrangled as they walked concerning the relative merits of the favourites for the Derby, nor the commissionaire trudging home with his bag in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, nor the clean-shaven man in evening dress.

  The Home Secretary had a house in Berkeley Square. Von Dunop knew the number very well. He slackened pace to allow the man in evening dress to pass. The slow-moving taxi that was fifty yards away he must risk. This taxi had been his constant attendant during the last hour, but he did not know it.

  He dipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and drew forth the machine. It was one of Culveri’s masterpieces and, to an extent, experimental—that much the master had warned him in a letter that bore the datemark ‘Riga’. He felt with his thumb for the tiny key that ‘set’ the machine and pushed it.

  Then he slipped into the doorway of No. 196 and placed the bomb. It was done in a second, and so far as he could tell, no man had seen him leave the pathway, and he was back again on the sidewalk very quickly. But as he stepped back, he heard a shout, and a man darted across the road, calling on him to surrender. From the left two men were running, and he saw the man in evening dress blowing a whistle.

  He was caught; he knew it. There was a chance of escape—the other end of the street was clear—he turned and ran like the wind. He could hear his pursuers pattering along behind him. His ear, alert to every phase of the chase, heard one pair of feet check and spring up the steps of 196. He glanced round. They were gaining on him, and he turned suddenly and fired three times. Somebody fell; he saw that much. Then right ahead of him a tall policeman sprang from the shadows and clasped him round the waist.

  ‘Hold that man!’ shouted Falmouth, running up. Blowing hard came the night wanderer, a ragged object but skilful, and he had Von Dunop handcuffed in a trice.

  It was he who noticed the limpness of the prisoner.

  ‘Hullo!’ he said, then held out his hand. ‘Show a light here.’

  There were half a dozen policemen and the inevitable crowd on the spot by now, and the rays of the bull’s-eye focused on the detective’s hand. It was red with blood. Falmouth seized a lantern and flashed it on the man’s face.

  There was no need to look farther. He was dead—dead with the inevitable label affixed to the handle of the knife that killed him.

  Falmouth rapped out an oath.

  ‘It is incredible; it is impossible! He was running till the constable caught him, and he has not been out of our hands! Where is the officer who held him?’

  Nobody answered, certainly not the tall policeman, who was at that moment being driven eastward, making a rapid change into the conventional evening costume of an English gentleman.

  CHAPTER X.

  The Trial

  TO FATHOM THE MIND of the Woman of Gratz is no easy task, and one not to be lightly undertaken. Remembering her obscure beginning, the bare-legged child drinking in revolutionary talk in the Transylvanian kitchen, and the development of her intellect along unconventional lines—remembering also that early in life she made acquaintance with the extreme problems of life and death in their least attractive forms, and that the proportion of things had been grossly distorted by her teachers, you may arrive at a point where your vacillating judgement hesitates between blame and pity.

  I would believe that the power of introspection had no real place in her mental equipment; else how can we explain her attitude toward the man whom she had once defied and reconcile those outbursts of hers wherein she called for his death, for his terrible punishment, wherein, too, she allowed herself the rare luxury of unrestrained speech; how can we reconcile these tantrums with the fact that this man’s voice filled her thoughts day and night, the recollection of this man’s eyes through his mask followed her every movement, till the image of him became an obsession?

  It may be that I have no knowledge of women and their ways (there is no subtle smugness in the doubt I express) and that her inconsistency was general to her sex. It must not be imagined that she had spared either trouble or money to secure the extermination of her enemies and the enemies of the Red Hundred. She had described them, as well as she could, after her first meeting, and the sketches made under her instruction had been circulated by the officers of the Reds.

  Sitting near the window of her house, she mused, lulled by the ceaseless hum of traffic in the street below and half dozing.

  The turning of the door handle woke her from her dreams.

  It was Schmidt, the unspeakable Schmidt, all perspiration and excitement. His round, coarse face glowed with it, and he could scarcely bring his voice to tell the news.

  ‘We have him! We have him!’ he cried in glee and snapped his fingers. ‘Oh, the good news!—I am the first! Nobody has been, Little Friend? I have run and have taken taxis—’

  ‘You have—whom?’ she asked.

  ‘The man—one of the men’ he said, ‘who killed Starque and Francois, and—’

  ‘Which—which man?’ she said harshly.

  He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a discoloured sketch.

  ‘Oh!’ she said; it could not be the man whom she had defied, ‘Why, why?’ she asked stormily, ‘Why only this man? Why not the others—why not the leader? Have they caught him and lost him?’

  Chagrin and astonishment sat on Schmidt’s round face. His disappointment was almost comic.

  ‘But, Little Mother!’ he said, crestfallen and bewildered, ‘this is one—we did not hope even for one and—’

  The storm passed over.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said wearily, ‘one—even one is good. They shall learn that the Red Hundred can still strike—this leader shall know—This man shall have a death,’ she said, looking at Schmidt, ‘worthy of his importance. Tell me how he was captured.’

  ‘It was the picture,’ said the eager Schmidt, ‘the picture you had drawn. One of our comrades thought he recognized him and followed him to his house.’

  ‘He shall be tried—tonight,’ and she spent the day anticipating her triumph.

  Conspirators do not always choose dark arches for their plottings. The Red Hundred especially were notorious for the likeliness of their rendezvous. They went to nature for a precedent, and as she endows the tiger with stripes that are
undistinguishable from the jungle grass, so the Red Hundred would choose for their meetings such a place where meetings were usually held.

  It was in the Lodge Room of the Pride of Millwall, AOSA—which may be amplified as the Associated Order of the Sons of Abstinence—that the trial took place. The financial position of the Pride of Millwall was not strong. An unusual epidemic of temperate seafaring men had called the Lodge into being, the influx of capital from eccentric bequests had built the tiny hall, and since the fiasco attending the first meeting of the League of London, much of its public business had been skilfully conducted in these riverside premises. It had been raided by the police during the days of terror, but nothing of an incriminating character had been discovered. Because of the success with which the open policy had been pursued, the Woman of Gratz preferred to take the risk of an open trial in a hall liable to police raid.

  The man must be so guarded that escape was impossible. Messengers sped in every direction to carry out her instruction. There was a rapid summoning of leaders of the movement, the choice of the place of trial, the preparation for a ceremony, which was governed by well-established precedent, and the arrangement of the properties that played so effective a part in the trials of the Hundred.

  In the black-draped chamber of trial, the Woman of Gratz found a full company. Maliscrivona, Tchezki, Vellantini, De Romans, to name a few who were there sitting altogether side by side on the low forms, and they buzzed a welcome as she walked into the room and took her seat at the higher place. She glanced round the faces, bestowing a nod here and a glance of recognition there. She remembered the last time she had made an appearance before the rank and file of the movement. She missed many faces that had turned to her in those days: Starque, Francois, Kitsinger—dead at the hands of the Four Just Men. It fitted her mood to remember that tonight she would judge one who had at least helped in the slaying of Starque.

  Abruptly she rose. Lately she had had few opportunities for the display of that oratory, which was once her sole title to consideration in the councils of the Red Hundred. Her powers of organization had come to be respected later. She felt the want of practice as she began speaking. She found herself hesitating for words, and once she felt her illustrations were crude. But she gathered confidence as she proceeded, and she felt the responsive thrill of a fascinated audience.