(1929) The Three Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  “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 I’d find the police chief here—Captain Meadows?”

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

  Washington put out his huge paw and caught the detective’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 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.

  “I’d 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 organization that 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—viperidae crotalinae—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 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, 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.

  “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 cat 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 THIRTEEN - 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 gir
l.

  “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 gentleman 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 at 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 be 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 scrapbooks 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 you 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 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.

  “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?”