The Complete Four Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  The Daily Megaphone is able to publish a full list of sixteen murders committed by the four men.

  ‘Two years ago, after the shooting of le Blois, by some hitch in their almost perfect arrangements, one of the four was recognised by a detective as having been seen leaving le Blois’s house on the Avenue Kleber, and he was shadowed for three days, in the hope that the four might be captured together. In the end he discovered he was being watched, and made a bolt for liberty. He was driven to bay in a café in Bordeaux – they had followed him from Paris: and before he was killed he shot a sergeant de ville and two other policemen. He was photographed, and the print was circulated throughout Europe, but who he was or what he was, even what nationality he was, is a mystery to this day.’

  ‘But the four are still in existence?’

  Sir Philip shrugged his shoulders. ‘They have either recruited another, or they are working shorthanded,’ he said.

  In conclusion the Foreign Secretary said –

  ‘I am making this public through the Press, in order that the danger which threatens, not necessarily myself, but any public man who runs counter to the wishes of this sinister force, should be recognised. My second reason is that the public may in its knowledge assist those responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the execution of their office, and by their vigilance prevent the committal of further unlawful acts.’

  Inquiries subsequently made at Scotland Yard elicited no further information on the subject beyond the fact that the Criminal Investigation Department was in communication with the chiefs of the continental police.

  The following is a complete list of the murders committed by the Four Just Men, together with such particulars as the police have been able to secure regarding the cause for the crimes. We are indebted to the Foreign Office for permission to reproduce the list.

  London, October 7, 1899. – Thomas Cutler, master tailor, found dead under suspicious circumstances. Coroner’s jury returned a verdict of ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’.

  (Cause of murder ascertained by police: Cutler, who was a man of some substance, and whose real name was Bentvitch, was a sweater of a particularly offensive type. Three convictions under the Factory Act. Believed by the police there was a further and more intimate cause for the murder not unconnected with Cutler’s treatment of women employees.)

  Liège, February 28,1900. – Jacques Ellerman, prefect: shot dead returning from the Opera House. Ellerman was a notorious evil liver, and upon investigating his affairs after his death it was found that he had embezzled nearly a quarter of a million francs of the public funds.

  Seattle (Kentucky), October, 1900. – Judge Anderson. Found dead in his room, strangled. Anderson had thrice been tried for his life on charges of murder. He was the leader of the Anderson faction in the Anderson-Hara feud. Had killed in all seven of the Hara clan, was three times indicted and three times released on a verdict of Not Guilty. It will be remembered that on the last occasion, when charged with the treacherous murder of the Editor of the Seattle Star, he shook hands with the packed jury and congratulated them.

  New York, October 30, 1900. – Patrick Welch, a notorious grafter and stealer of public moneys. Sometime City Treasurer; moving spirit in the infamous Street Paving Syndicate; exposed by the New York Journal. Welch was found hanging in a little wood on Long Island. Believed at the time to have been suicide.

  Paris, March 4, 1901. – Madame Despard. Asphyxiated. This also was regarded as suicide till certain information came to hands of French police. Of Madame Despard nothing good can be said. She was a notorious ‘dealer in souls’.

  Paris, March 4, 1902 (exactly a year later). – Monsieur Gabriel Lanfin, Minister of Communication. Found shot in his brougham in the Bois de Boulogne. His coachman was arrested but eventually discharged. The man swore he heard no shot or cry from his master. It was raining at the time, and there were few pedestrians in the Bois.

  (Here followed ten other cases, all on a par with those quoted above, including the cases of Trelovitch and le Blois.)

  * * *

  It was undoubtedly a great story.

  The Editor-in-Chief, seated in his office, read it over again and said, ‘Very good indeed.’

  The reporter – whose name was Smith – read it over and grew pleasantly warm at the consequences of his achievement.

  The Foreign Secretary read it in bed as he sipped his morning tea, and frowningly wondered if he had said too much.

  The chief of the French police read it – translated and telegraphed – in Le Temps, and furiously cursed the talkative Englishman who was upsetting his plans.

  In Madrid, at the Café de la Paix, in the Place of the Sun, Manfred, cynical, smiling, and sarcastic, read extracts to three men – two pleasantly amused, the other heavy-jowled and pasty of face, with the fear of death in his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  The faithful Commons

  Somebody – was it Mr Gladstone? – placed it on record that there is nothing quite so dangerous, quite so ferocious, quite so terrifying as a mad sheep. Similarly, as we know, there is no person quite so indiscreet, quite so foolishly talkative, quite so amazingly gauche, as the diplomat who for some reason or other has run off the rails.

  There comes a moment to the man who has trained himself to guard his tongue in the Councils of Nations, who has been schooled to walk warily amongst pitfalls digged cunningly by friendly Powers, when the practice and precept of many years are forgotten, and he behaves humanly. Why this should be has never been discovered by ordinary people, although the psychological minority who can generally explain the mental processes of their fellows, have doubtless very adequate and convincing reasons for these acts of disbalancement.

  Sir Philip Ramon was a man of peculiar temperament.

  I doubt whether anything in the wide world would have arrested his purpose once his mind had been made up. He was a man of strong character, a firm, square-jawed, big-mouthed man, with that shade of blue in his eyes that one looks for in peculiarly heartless criminals, and particularly famous generals. And yet Sir Philip Ramon feared, as few men imagined he feared, the consequence of the task he had set himself.

  There are thousands of men who are physically heroes and morally poltroons, men who would laugh at death – and live in terror of personal embarrassments. Coroner’s courts listen daily to the tale of such men’s lives – and deaths.

  The Foreign Secretary reversed these qualities. Good animal men would unhesitatingly describe the Minister as a coward, for he feared pain and he feared death.

  ‘If this thing is worrying you so much,’ the Premier said kindly – it was at the Cabinet Council two days following the publication of the Megaphone’s story – ‘why don’t you drop the Bill? After all, there are matters of greater importance to occupy the time of the House, and we are getting near the end of the session.’

  An approving murmur went round the table.

  ‘We have every excuse for dropping it. There must be a horrible slaughtering of the innocents – Braithewaite’s Unemployed Bill must go; and what the country will say to that, Heaven only knows.’

  ‘No, no!’ The Foreign Secretary brought his fist down on the table with a crash. ‘It shall go through; of that I am determined. We are breaking faith with the Cortes, we are breaking faith with France, we are breaking faith with every country in the Union. I have promised the passage of this measure – and we must go through with it, even though there are a thousand “Just Men”, and a thousand threats.’

  The Premier shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Forgive me for saying so, Ramon,’ said Bolton, the Solicitor, ‘but I can’t help feeling you were rather indiscreet to give particulars to the Press as you did. Yes, I know we were agreed that you should have a free hand to deal with the matter as you wished, but somehow I did not think you woul
d have been quite so – what shall I say? – candid.’

  ‘My discretion in the matter, Sir George, is not a subject that I care to discuss,’ replied Ramon stiffly.

  Later, as he walked across Palace Yard with the youthful-looking Chancellor, Mr Solicitor-General, smarting under the rebuff, said, a propos of nothing, ‘Silly old ass.’ And the youthful guardian of Britain’s finances smiled.

  ‘If the truth be told,’ he said, ‘Ramon is in a most awful funk. The story of the Four Just Men is in all the clubs, and a man I met at the Carlton at lunch has rather convinced me that there is really something to be feared. He was quite serious about it – he’s just returned from South America and has seen some of the work done by these men.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A president or something of one of these rotten little republics . . . about eight months ago – you’ll see it in the list . . . They hanged him . . . most extraordinary thing in the world. They took him out of bed in the middle of the night, gagged him, blindfolded him, carried him to the public jail, gained admission, and hanged him on the public gallows – and escaped!’

  Mr Solicitor saw the difficulties of such proceedings, and was about to ask for further information when an under-secretary buttonholed the Chancellor and bore him off. ‘Absurd,’ muttered Mr Solicitor crossly.

  There were cheers for the Secretary for Foreign Affairs as his brougham swept through the crowd that lined the approaches to the House. He was in no wise exalted, for popularity was not a possession he craved. He knew instinctively that the cheers were called forth by the public’s appreciation of his peril; and the knowledge chilled and irritated him. He would have liked to think that the people scoffed at the existence of this mysterious four – it would have given him some peace of mind had he been able to think ‘the people have rejected the idea.’

  For although popularity or unpopularity was outside his scheme of essentials, yet he had an unswerving faith in the brute instincts of the mob. He was surrounded in the lobby of the House with a crowd of eager men of his party, some quizzical, some anxious, all clamouring for the latest information – all slightly in fear of the acid-tongued Minister.

  ‘Look here, Sir Philip – ’ it was the stout, tactless member for West Brondesbury – ‘what is all this we hear about threatenin’ letters? Surely you’re not goin’ to take notice of things of that sort – why, I get two or three every day of my life.’

  The Minister strode impatiently away from the group, but Tester – the member – caught his arm.

  ‘Look here – ’ he began.

  ‘Go to the devil,’ said the Foreign Secretary plainly, and walked quickly to his room.

  ‘Beastly temper that man’s got, to be sure,’ said the honourable member despairingly. ‘Fact is, old Ramon’s in a blue funk. The idea of making a song about threatenin’ letters! Why, I get – ’

  A group of men in the members’ smokeroom discussed the question of the Just Four in a perfectly unoriginal way.

  ‘It’s too ridiculous for words,’ said one oracularly. ‘Here are four men, a mythical four, arrayed against all the forces and established agencies of the most civilised nation on earth.’

  ‘Except Germany,’ interrupted Scott, MP, wisely.

  ‘Oh, leave Germany out of it for goodness’ sake,’ begged the first speaker tartly. ‘I do wish, Scott, we could discuss a subject in which the superiority of German institutions could not be introduced.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said the cheerful Scott, flinging loose the reins of his hobby horse: ‘remember that in steel and iron alone the production per head of the employee has increased 43 per cent., that her shipping – ’

  ‘Do you think Ramon will withdraw the bill?’ asked the senior member for Aldgate East, disentangling his attention from the babble of statistics.

  ‘Ramon? Not he – he’d sooner die.’

  ‘It’s a most unusual circumstance,’ said Aldgate East; and three boroughs, a London suburb, and a midland town nodded and ‘thought it was’.

  ‘In the old days, when old Bascoe was a young member – ’ Aldgate East indicated an aged senator bent and white of beard and hair, who was walking painfully toward a seat – ‘in the old days – ’

  ‘Thought old Bascoe had paired,’ remarked an irrelevant listener.

  ‘In the old days,’ continued the member for the East End, ‘before the Fenian trouble – ’

  ‘ – talk of civilisation,’ went on the enthusiastic Scott. ‘Rheinbaken said last month in the Lower House, “Germany had reached that point where – ” ’

  ‘If I were Ramon,’ resumed Aldgate East profoundly, ‘I know exactly what I should do. I should go to the police and say “Look here – ” ’

  A bell rang furiously and continuously, and the members went scampering along the corridor. ‘Division – ’vision.’

  Clause Nine of the Medway Improvement Bill having been satisfactorily settled and the words ‘Or as may hereafter be determined’ added by a triumphant majority of twenty-four, the faithful Commons returned to the interrupted discussion.

  ‘What I say, and what I’ve always said about a man in the Cabinet,’ maintained an important individual, ‘is that he must, if he is a true statesman, drop all consideration for his own personal feelings.’

  ‘Hear!’ applauded somebody.

  ‘His own personal feelings,’ repeated the orator. ‘He must put his duty to the state before all other – er – considerations. You remember what I said to Barrington the other night when we were talking out the Estimates? I said, “The right honourable gentleman has not, cannot have, allowed for the strong and almost unanimous desires of the great body of the electorate. The action of a Minister of the Crown must primarily be governed by the intelligent judgment of the great body of the electorate, whose fine feelings” – no – “whose higher instincts” – no – that wasn’t it – at any rate I made it very clear what the duty of a Minister was,’ concluded the oracle lamely.

  ‘Now I – ’ commenced Aldgate East, when an attendant approached with a tray on which lay a greenish-grey envelope.

  ‘Has any gentleman dropped this?’ he inquired, and, picking up the letter, the member fumbled for his eyeglasses.

  ‘To the Members of the House of Commons,’ he read, and looked over his pince-nez at the circle of men about him.

  ‘Company prospectus,’ said the stout member for West Brondesbury, who had joined the party; ‘I get hundreds. Only the other day – ’

  ‘Too thin for a prospectus,’ said Aldgate East, weighing the letter in his hand.

  ‘Patent medicine, then,’ persisted the light of Brondesbury. ‘I get one every morning – “Don’t burn the candle at both ends”, and all that sort of rot. Last week a feller sent me – ’

  ‘Open it,’ someone suggested, and the member obeyed. He read a few lines and turned red.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ he gasped, and read aloud.

  Citizens,

  The Government is about to pass into law a measure which will place in the hands of the most evil Government of modern times men who are patriots and who are destined to be the saviours of their countries. We have informed the Minister in charge of this measure, the title of which appears in the margin, that unless he withdraws this Bill we will surely slay him.

  We are loath to take this extreme step, knowing that otherwise he is an honest and brave gentleman, and it is with a desire to avoid fulfilling our promise that we ask the members of the Mother of Parliaments to use their every influence to force the withdrawal of this Bill.

  Were we common murderers or clumsy anarchists we could with ease wreak a blind and indiscriminate vengeance on the members of this assembly, and in proof thereof, and as an earnest that our threat is no idle one, we beg you to search beneath the table near the recess in this room. Th
ere you will find a machine sufficiently charged to destroy the greater portion of this building.

  (Signed) Four Just Men

  Postscript. – We have not placed either detonator or fuse in the machine, which may therefore be handled with impunity.

  As the reading of the letter proceeded the faces of the listeners grew pallid.

  There was something very convincing about the tone of the letter, and instinctively all eyes sought the table near the recess.

  Yes, there was something, a square black something, and the crowd of legislators shrank back. For a moment they stood spellbound – and then there was a mad rush for the door.

  * * *

  ‘Was it a hoax?’ asked the Prime Minister anxiously, but the hastily summoned expert from Scotland Yard shook his head.

  ‘Just as the letter described it,’ he said gravely, ‘even to the absence of fuses.’

  ‘Was it really – ’

  ‘Enough to wreck the House, sir,’ was the reply.

  The Premier, with a troubled face, paced the floor of his private room.

  He stopped once to look moodily through the window that gave a view of a crowded terrace and a mass of excited politicians gesticulating and evidently all speaking at once.

  ‘Very, very serious – very, very serious,’ he muttered. Then aloud, ‘We said so much we might as well continue. Give the newspapers as full an account of this afternoon’s happenings as they think necessary – give them the text of the letter.’ He pushed a button and his secretary entered noiselessly.

  ‘Write to the Commissioner telling him to offer a reward of a thousand pounds for the arrest of the man who left this thing and a free pardon and the reward to any accomplice.’