(1929) The Three Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  “Good-bye, gracious lady!”

  The rumble of the tank came to him in that room. But he had work to do. There was no time to open the boxes. The glass fronts might easily be broken. He ran along the line, hitting the glass with the barrel of his Mauser. The girl, staring in horror, saw a green head come into view through one opening; saw a sinuous shape slide gently to the floor. And then he turned out the lights, the door was slammed, and she was left alone in the room of terror.

  Oberzohn was no sooner in the passage than the first bomb exploded at the door. Splinters of wood flew past him, as he turned and raced up the stairs, feeling in his pocket as he went for the precious document which might yet clear him.

  Boom!

  He had not locked the door of the snake-room; Leon had broken the hasp. Let them go in, if they wished. The front door was not down yet. From the landing above he listened over the balustrade. And then a greater explosion than ever shook the house, and after an interval of silence he heard somebody running along the passage and shake at the snake-room door.

  Too late now! He grinned his joy, went up the last flight to the roof, to find his three men in a state of mutiny, the quelling of which was not left to him. The glitter of a bayonet came through the door opening, a khaki figure slipped en to the roof, finger on trigger.

  “Hands up, you!” he said, in a raucous Cockney voice.

  Four pairs of hands went upward.

  Manfred followed the second soldier and caught the doctor by the arm.

  “I want you, my friend,” he said, and Oberzohn went obediently down the stairs.

  They had to pass Gurther’s room: the door was open, and Manfred pushed his prisoner inside, as Poiccart and Leon ran up the stairs.

  “The girl’s all right. The gas killed the snakes the moment they touched the floor, and Brother Washington is dealing with the live ones,” said Leon rapidly.

  He shut the door quickly. The doctor was alone for the first time in his life with the three men he hated and feared.

  “Oberzohn, this is the end,” said Manfred.

  That queer grimace that passed for a smile flitted across the puckered face of the doctor.

  “I think not, my friends,” he said. “Here is a statement by Cuccini. I am but the innocent victim, as you will see. Cuccini has confessed to all and has implicated his friends. I would not resist—why should I? I am an honest, respectable man, and a citizen of a great and friendly country. Behold!”

  He showed the paper. Manfred took it from his hand but did not read it.

  “Also, whatever happens, your lady loses her beautiful hill of gold.” He found joy in this reflection. “For tomorrow is the last day—”

  “Stand over there, Oberzohn,” said Manfred, and pushed him against the wall. “You are judged. Though your confession may cheat the law, you will not cheat us.”

  And then the doctor saw something and he screamed his fear. Leon Gonsalez was fixing a cigarette to the long black holder he had found in Gurther’s room.

  “You hold it thus,” said Leon, “do you not?” He dipped the cigarette down and pressed the small spring that was concealed in the black ebonite. “The holder is an insulated chamber that holds two small icy splinters—I found the mould in your laboratory, Herr Doktor. They drop into the cigarette, which is a metal one, and then…”

  He lifted it to his lips and blew. None saw the two tiny icicles fly. Only Oberzohn put his hand to his cheek with a strangled scream, glared for a second, and then went down like a heap of rags.

  Leon met Inspector Meadows on his way up.

  “I’m afraid our friend has gone,” he said. “He has cheated the hangman of ten pounds.”

  “Dead?” said Meadows. “Suicide?”

  “It looks like a snake-bite to me,” said Leon carelessly, as he went down to find Mirabelle Leicester, half laughing, half crying, whilst an earnest Elijah Washington was explaining to her the admirable domestic qualities of snakes.

  “There’s five thousand dollars’ worth dead,” he said, in despair, “but there’s enough left to start a circus!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - THE DEATH TUBE

  LATER Manfred explained to an interested police chief.

  “Oberzohn secured the poison by taking a snake and extracting his venom—a simple process: you have but to make him angry, and he will bite on anything. The doctor discovered a way of blending these venoms to bring out the most deadly qualities of them all—it sounds fantastic, and, from the scientists’ point of view, unlikely. But it is nevertheless the fact. The venom was slightly diluted with water and enough to kill a dozen people was poured into a tiny mould and frozen.”

  “Frozen?” said the chief, in astonishment.

  Manfred nodded.

  “There is no doubt about it,” he said. “Snake venom does not lose its potency by being frozen, and this method of moulding their darts was a very sane one, from their point of view. It was only necessary for a microscopic portion of the splinter to pierce the flesh. Sufficient instantly melted to cause death, and if the victim rubbed the place where he had been struck, it was more certain that he would rub some of the venom, which had melted on his cheek, into the wound. Usually they died instantly. The cigarette holders that were carried by Gurther and the other assassin, Pfeiffer, were blowpipes, the cigarette a hollow metal fake. By the time they blew their little ice darts, it was in a half-molten condition and carried sufficient liquid poison to kill, even if the skin was only punctured. And, of course, all that did not enter the skin melted before there could be any examination by the police. That is why you never found darts such as the bush-men use, slithers of bamboo, thorns from trees. Oberzohn had the simplest method of dealing with all opposition: he sent out his snake-men to intercept them, and only once did they fail—when they aimed at Leon and caught that snake-proof man, Elijah Washington!”

  “What about Miss Leicester’s claim to the goldfields of Biskara?”

  Manfred smiled.

  “The renewal has already been applied for and granted. Leon found at Heavytree Farm some blank sheets of note-paper signed with the girl’s name. He stole one during the aunt’s absence and filled up the blank with a formal request for renewal. I have just had a wire to say that the lease is extended.”

  He and Poiccart had to walk the best part of the way to New Cross before they could find a taxicab. Leon had gone on with the girl. Poiccart was worried about something, and did not speak his mind until the providential cab appeared on the scene and they were trundling along the New Cross Road.

  “My dear George, I am a little troubled about Leon,” he said at last. “It seems almost impossible to believe, but—”

  “But what?” asked Manfred good-humouredly, and knowing what was coming.

  “You don’t believe,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice, as though he were discussing the advent of some world cataclysm—“you don’t believe that Leon is in love, do you?”

  Manfred considered for a moment.

  “Such things happen, even to just men,” he said, and Poiccart shook his head sadly.

  “I have never contemplated such an unhappy contingency,” he said, and Manfred was laughing to himself all the way back to town.