(1929) The Three Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  He pointed to them the three approaches to the house: the open railway arches and the long lane, at the end of which the crowd at that moment was beginning to gather.

  “From only these places can the ground be approached,” he said, “and my little quick-firers cover them!”

  Just before eleven there came down Hangman’s Lane, drawn by a motor tractor, a long tree-trunk, suspended about the middle by chains, and Oberzohn, examining it carefully through his field-glasses, realized that no door in the world could stand against the attack of that battering-ram. He took up one of the dozen rifles that lay on the floor, sighted it carefully, resting his elbow on the parapet, and fired.

  He saw the helmet of a policeman shoot away from the head of the astonished man, and fired again. This time he was more successful, for a policeman who was directing the course of the tractor crumpled up and fell in a heap.

  A shrill whistle blew; the policemen ran to cover, leaving the machine unattended. Again he fired, this time at the driver of the tractor. He saw the man scramble down from his seat and run for the shelter of the fence.

  A quarter of an hour passed without any sign of activity on the part of his enemies, and then eight men, armed with rifles, came racing across the ground towards the wire barrier. Oberzohn dropped his rifle, and, taking a grip of the first machine-gun in his hand, sighted it quickly. The staccato patter of the Maxim awakened the echoes. One man dropped; the line wavered. Again the shrill whistle, and they broke for cover, dragging their wounded companion with them.

  “I was afraid of that,” said Leon, biting his knuckles—sure evidence of his perturbation.

  He had put a ladder against the wall of the factory, and now he climbed up on to the shaky roof and focussed his glasses.

  “There’s another Maxim on this side,” he shouted down. And then, as he saw a man’s head moving above the parapet, he jerked up his pistol and fired. He saw the stone splinters fly up and knew that it was not bad practice at four hundred yards. The shot had a double effect; it made the defenders cautious and aroused in them the necessary quantity of resentment.

  He was hardly down before there was a splutter from the roof, and the whine and snap of machine-gun bullets; one slate tile shivered and its splinters leapt high in the air and dropped beside his hand.

  The presence of the girl was the only complication. Without her, the end of Oberzohn and his companions was inevitable. Nobody realized this better than the doctor, eating a huge ham sandwich in the shelter of the parapet—an unusual luxury, for he ate few solids.

  “This will be very shocking for our friends of Curzon Street,” he said. “At this moment they bite their hands in despair.” (He was nearly right here.)

  He peeped over the parapet. There was no policeman in sight. Even the trains that had roared at regular intervals along the viaduct had ceased to run, traffic being diverted to another route.

  At half-past twelve, looking through a peep-hole, he saw a long yellow line of men coming down Hangman’s Lane, keeping to the shelter of the fence.

  “Soldiers,” he said, and for a second his voice quavered.

  Soldiers they were. Presently they began to trickle into the grounds, one by one, each man finding his own cover. Simultaneously there came a flash and a crack from the nearest viaduct. A bullet smacked against the parapet and the sound of the ricochet was like the hum of a bee.

  Another menace had appeared simultaneously; a great, lumbering, awkward vehicle, that kept to the middle of the lane and turned its ungainly nose into the field. It was a tank, and Oberzohn knew that only the girl’s safety stood between him and the dangling noose.

  He went down to see her, unlocked the door, and found her, to his amazement, fast asleep. She got up at the sound of the key in the lock, and accepted the bread and meat and water he brought her without a word.

  “What time is it?”

  Oberzohn stared at her.

  “That you should ask the time at such a moment!” he said.

  The room was in darkness but for the light he had switched on.

  “It is noon, and our friends have brought soldiers. Ach! how important a woman you are, that the whole army should come out for you!”

  Sarcasm was wasted on Mirabelle.

  “What is going to happen—now?”

  “I do not know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They have brought a diabolical instrument into the grounds. They may use it, to give them cover, so that the door may be blown in. At that moment I place you in the snake-room. This I shall tell our friends very quickly.”

  She gazed at him in horror.

  “You wouldn’t do anything so wicked, Mr. Oberzohn!”

  Up and down went the skin of his forehead.

  “That I shall tell them and that I shall do,” he said, and locked her in with this comfortless assurance.

  He went into his study and, fastening the door, took two strands of wire from his pocket and repaired the broken telephone connections.

  “I wish to speak to Meadows,” he said to the man who answered him—a police officer who had been stationed at the exchange to answer any call from this connection.

  “I will put you through to him,” was the reply.

  For a moment the doctor was surprised that Meadows was not at the exchange. He did not know then that a field telephone line had been organized, and that the factory headquarters of the directing staff was in communication with the world.

  It was not Meadows, but another man who answered him, and by his tone of authority Oberzohn guessed that some higher police official than Meadows was on the spot.

  “I am the doctor Oberzohn,” he barked. “You have brought a tank machine to attack me. If this approaches beyond the wire fence, I shall place the woman Leicester in the home of the snakes, and there I will bind her and release my little friends to avenge me.”

  “Look here—” began the officer, but Oberzohn hung up on him.

  He went out and locked the door, putting the key in his pocket. His one doubt was of the loyalty of his companions. But here, strangely enough, he underrated their faith in him. The very mildness of the attack, the seeming reluctance of the soldiers to fire, had raised their hopes and spirits; and when, a quarter of an hour later, they saw the tank turn and go out into Hangman’s Lane, they were almost jubilant.

  “You’re sure that he will carry out his threat?” asked the police chief.

  “Certain,” said Leon emphatically. “There is nothing on earth that will stop Oberzohn. You will force the house to find a man who has died by his own hand, and—” He shuddered at the thought. “The only thing to be done is to wait for the night. If Washington arrives on time, I think we can save Miss Leicester.”

  From the roof Dr. Oberzohn saw that the soldiers were digging a line of trenches, and sent a spatter of machine-gun bullets in their direction. They stopped their work for a moment to look round, and then went on digging, as though nothing had happened.

  The supply of ammunition was not inexhaustible, and he determined to reserve any further fire until the attack grew more active. Looking over the top of the parapet to examine the ground immediately below, something hot and vicious snicked his ear. He saw the brickwork of the chimney behind him crumble and scatter, and, putting up his hand, felt blood.

  “You’d better keep down, Oberzohn,” said Cuccini, crouching in the shelter of the parapet. “They nearly got you then. They’re firing from that railway embankment. Have you had a talk with the boss of these birds?”

  “They are weakening,” said Oberzohn promptly. “Always they are asking me if I will surrender the men; always I reply, ‘Never will I do anything so dishonourable.’”

  Cuccini grunted, having his own views of the doctor’s altruism.

  Late in the afternoon, a flight of aeroplanes appeared in, the west: five machines flying in V formation. None of the men on the roof recognized the danger, standing rather in the attitude and spirit of sightseers. The machines were flying low; with th
e naked eye Cuccini could read their numbers long before they came within a hundred yards of the house. Suddenly the roof began to spout little fountains of asphalt. Oberzohn screamed a warning and darted to the stairway, and three men followed him out. Cuccini lay spread-eagled where he fell, two machine-gun bullets through his head.

  The fighting machines mounted, turned and came back. Standing on the floor below, Oberzohn heard the roar of their engines as they passed, and went incautiously to the roof, to discover that the guns of flying machines fire equally well from the tail. He was nearer to death then than he had ever been. One bullet hit the tip of his finger and sliced it off neatly. With a scream of pain he half fell, half staggered to safety, spluttering strange oaths in German.

  The aeroplanes did not return. He waited until their noise had died away before he again ventured to the roof, to find the sky clear. Cuccini was dead, and it was characteristic of his three friends that they should make a thorough search of his pockets before they heaved the body over the parapet.

  Oberzohn left the three on the roof, with strict instructions that they were to dive to cover at the first glint of white wings, and went down into his study. The death of Cuccini was in some ways a blessing. The man was full of suspicion; his heart was not in the fight, and the aeroplane gunner had merely anticipated the doctor’s own plan.

  Cuccini was a Latin, who spoke English well and wrote it badly. He had a characteristic hand, which it amused Oberzohn to copy, for the doctor was skilful with his pen. All through the next three hours he wrote, breaking off his labours at intervals to visit the guard on the roof. At last he had finished, and Cuccini’s sprawling signature was affixed to the bottom of the third page. Oberzohn called down one of the men.

  “This is the statement of Cuccini which he left. Will you put your name to his signature?”

  “What is it?” asked the man surlily.

  “It is a letter which the good Cuccini made—what generosity! In this he says that he alone was to blame for bringing you here, and nobody else. Also that he kept you by threats.”

  “And you?” asked the man.

  “Also me,” said Oberzohn, unabashed. “What does it matter? Cuccini is dead. May he not in his death save us all? Come, come, my good friend, you are a fool if you do not sign. After that, send down our friends that they may also sign.”

  A reluctant signature was fixed, and the other men came one by one, and one by one signed their names, content to stand by the graft which the doctor indicated, exculpating themselves from all responsibility in the defence.

  Dusk fell and night came blackly, with clouds sweeping up from the west and a chill rain falling. Gonsalez, moodily apart from his companions, watched the dark bulk of the house fade into the background with an ever-increasing misery. What these men did after did not matter—to them. A policeman had been killed, and they stood equally guilty of murder in the eyes of the law. They could now pile horror upon horror, for the worst had happened. His only hope was that they did not know the inevitability of their punishment.

  No orders for attack had been given. The soldiers were standing by, and even the attack by the aeroplanes had been due to a misapprehension of orders. He had seen Cuccini’s body fall, and as soon as night came he determined to approach the house to discover if there was any other way in than the entrance by the front door.

  The aeroplanes had done something more than sweep the roof with their guns. Late in the evening there arrived by special messenger telescopic photographs of the building, which the military commander and the police chief examined with interest.

  Leon was watching the house when he saw a white beam of light shoot out and begin a circular sweep of the grounds. He expected this; the meaning of the connections in the wall was clear. He knew, too, how long that experiment would last. A quarter of an hour after the searchlight began its erratic survey of the ground, the lamp went out, the police having disconnected the current. But it was only for a little while, and in less than an hour the light was showing again.

  “He has power in the house—a dynamo and a gas engine,” explained Gonsalez.

  Poiccart had been to town and had returned with a long and heavy steel cylinder, which Leon and Manfred carried between them into the open and left. They were sniped vigorously from the roof, and although the firing was rather wild, the officer in charge of the operations forbade any further movement in daylight.

  At midnight came the blessed Washington. They had been waiting for him with eagerness, for he, of all men, knew something that they did not know. Briefly, Leon described the snake-room and its contents. He was not absolutely certain of some of the species, but his description was near enough to give the snake expert an idea of the species.

  “Yes, sir, they’re all deadly,” said Washington, shaking his head. “I guess there isn’t a thing there, bar the scorps, who wouldn’t put a grown man to sleep in five minutes—ten minutes at the most.”

  They showed him the remains of the dead snake and he instantly recognized the kind, as the zoological expert had done in the afternoon.

  “That’s mamba. He’s nearly the deadliest of all. You didn’t see a fellow with a long bill-shaped head? You did? Well that’s fer-de-lance, and he’s almost as bad. The little red fellows were corals…”

  Leon questioned him more closely.

  “No, sir, they don’t leap—that’s not their way. A tree snake will hang on to something overhead and get you as you pass, and they’ll swing from the floor, but their head’s got to touch the floor first. The poor little fellow that killed Gurther was scared, and when they’re scared they’ll lash up at you—I’ve known a man to be bitten in the throat by a snake that whipped up from the ground. But usually they’re satisfied to get your leg.”

  Leon told him his plan.

  “I’ll come along with you,” said Washington without hesitation.

  But this offer neither of the three would accept. Leon had only wanted the expert’s opinion. There were scores of scientists in London, curators of museums and keepers of snakes, who could have told him everything there was to be known about the habits of the reptile in captivity. He needed somebody who had met the snake in his native environment.

  An hour before daylight showed in the sky, there was a council of war, Leon put his scheme before the authorities, and the plan was approved. He did not wait for the necessary orders to be given, but, with Poiccart and Manfred, went to the place where they had left the cylinder, and, lifting it, made their slow way towards the house. In addition, Leon carried a light ladder and a small bag full of tools.

  The rays of the searchlight were moving erratically, and for a long time did not come in their direction. Suddenly they found themselves in a circle of dazzling light and fell flat on their faces. The machine-gun spat viciously, the earth was churned up under the torrent of bullets, but none of the men was hit; and, more important, the cylinder was not touched.

  Then suddenly, from every part of the ground, firing started. The target was the searchlight, and the shooting had not gone on for more than a minute before the light went out, so jerkily that it was obvious that one bullet at least had got home.

  “Now,” said Manfred, and, lifting up the cylinder, they ran. Poiccart put his hand on the fence wire and was hurled back. The top wire was alive, but evidently the doctor’s dynamo was not capable of generating a current that would be fatal. Leon produced an insulated wire cutter and snipped off a six-foot length, earthing the broken ends of the wire. They were now under the shadow of the wall of the house, and out of danger so far as bullets were concerned.

  Leon planted his ladder against the window under which they stopped, and in a second had broken the glass, turned the catch and sent up the sash. From his bag he produced a small diamond drill and began to work through the thick steel plate. It was a terribly arduous job, and after ten minutes’ labour he handed over the work to Manfred, who mounted in his place.

  Whatever damage had been done to the searchli
ght had now been repaired, and its beam had concentrated on the spot where they had been last seen. This time no fusillade greeted its appearance, and Oberzohn was surprised and troubled by the inaction.

  The light came into the sky, the walls grew grey and all objects sharply visible, when he saw the tank move out of the lane where it had been standing all the previous day, turn into the field, and slowly move towards the house. He set his teeth in a grin and, darting down the stairs, flung himself against the door of the girl’s room, and his agitation was such that for a time he could not find the keyhole of the two locks that held the door secure.

  It opened with a crash, and he almost fell into the room in his eagerness. Mirabelle Leicester was standing by the bed, her face white as death. Yet her voice was steady, almost unconcerned, when she asked:

  “What do you want?”

  “You!” he hissed. “You, my fine little lady—you are for the snakes!”

  He flung himself upon her, though she offered no resistance, threw her back on the bed and snapped a pair of rusty handcuffs on her wrists. Pulling her to her feet, he dragged her from the room and down the stairs. He had some difficulty in opening the door of the snake-room, for he had wedged it close. The door was pushed open at last: the radiators were no longer burning. He could not afford the power. But the room was stiflingly hot, and when he turned on the lights, and she saw the long line of boxes, her knees gave way under her, and she would have fallen had he not put his arm about her waist. Dragging a heavy chair to the centre of the room, he pushed her down into it.

  “Here you wait, my friend!” he yelled. “You shall wait…but not long!”

  On the wall there were three long straps which were used for fastening the boxes when it was necessary to travel with them. In a second one thong was about her and buckled tight to the back of the chair. The second he put under the seat and fastened across her knee.