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THE FOUR JUST MEN,

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THE FOUR JUST MEN, BY .iJ; EDGAR WALLACE, Author of "Writ in Barracks," "Unofficial Despatches/' "Smithy," etc.. etc. CHARACTERS IN THE STORY. MANUEL- GARCIA. the Carlist leader, a. I refugee in England, who will be "as good as dead" if a, Bill iu6t introduced by a member of the English Government passes I into law. I LEON GONZALEZ. POICC vRT. and GEORGE -MANFRED, CariLstt-. engaged in 3, con- spiracy to kiil the English. Minister. I THERY. or GATMONT. a well-known .criminal. the instrument by which the con- 8Plato hope to effect the assassination. SIR PHILIP RAMON. the English Foreign Secretary, responsible for the introduction of the Aliens Extradition (Political Offences; ) BilK wh<) -i,eceives a threatening letter signed by the "Pour Just M-en." SYNOPSIS. I PJLOI,OGT-E.-I,eoii Gonsalez. Poiccart, George Jfanfred, and Thery. in the Cafe of the j Nations, Cadiz, disown "the measures to 00 taken t.() ensure the -afety of Manuel Garcia, and decide that the British Minister MtobokiiM CHAPTER 1.—The "Daily Magaphone" con- tains an account of a £ 50 reward offered by the Enlisb Foreign Senetary ?Sh'P.hihp Eamon? far info?na?or) as to the authors of a letter- received by him and signed by .rust Men. in which he is threatened with murder if lie does not with- Heavy, black-Iookihg posters stared down from blank wall. I ,rl,pa wt bc- Aliens Extradition iPolitica) i Offenwei Biii. The Fou- Ju?t Men" CQTI sider ?bat j u8te as meted out here or earth is inadequate, and have Pet them j t selves about correcting the law. They have already committed sixteen murders, and have so far defeated all. efforts to identify th £om C,FIAPTVR TT.A. letter from the Four Just Men." appealing to the tcember" to uve tbeir influence to force the withdrawal of the Bill, in order to save the life of the Foreign Secretary, is mysteriously intro- duced into the lobby of the House of Com- iteons. Tn the same room, underneath a j table, is aim discovered a. fuseless infernal machine. which 11a-" been put there by j the Just Four "3. an earnest that our threat is no idle one. I CHAPTER III. ONE THOUSAND POUNÐS REWARD. To say that England was stirred to its depths—to quote more than one leading j article on the subject—by the extraordinary o-currenee in the House of Commons would: be Stating the matter exactly. The first intimation of the existence of the Four Just" Men had been received with pardonable derision, particularly by those newspapers that were behindhand with the fereti rews. Only the "Daily Megaphone had "truly and earnestly recognised how real was the! danger which threatened the Minister in ( I charge of the obnoxious Act. -?ow, b<>weT6t. even th6 most scornful could not ignore the i significance of the communication that haid j so mysteriously found its way into the very heart of Britain's most jealously guarded I institution. The story of the Bomb Out. rage" filled the pages of every newspaper throughout the country, and the latest daring venture of the Four was placarded I the leiigth and breadth of the Isles. Stories, most apocryphal, of the men who were responsible for the newest sensation 1 made their appearance from day to day, d t and there was no other topic in the months I of men wherever they met. but the strange quartette who seemed to hold the lives of the r mighty in the hollows of their hands. ¡ Never since the days of the Fenian out- ¡ rages had the mind of the public been so ¡ filled with apprehension as it was during the l two days following the appearance in the Commons of the blank bomb," as one ) journal felicitously. described it. Perhaps not exactly the same kind of I apprehension, since there was a general belief, which grew out of the trend of the letters; that the Four menaced none other I than one man. The first intimation of their intentions had excited widespread interest. But the fact tt the threat had been launched from a small French town, and that in consequence the danger was very remote, had somehow ribbed the threat of come of its force. Such was the vague reasoning of an nngeographi- cat people that did not realise that Dax is no farther from London than Aberdeen. But here was the Hidden Terror in the Metropolis itself. Why, argued London, with suspicious sidelong glances, every man we 1 rub elbows with: iriay be one of the Four, &nd we none the wiser. I Heavy, black-l-ooking posters stared down from blank waits-, -end IIIW* the breadth of I evfery police .notfc^3J5rfC"T" ~*7T )' *1,000 REWARD. Whereas, on August 18, at about 4.30 1. o'clock in the- afternoon, an infernal machine was deposited in the members' smoke-room by some person or persona un- known. i And whereas there is reason to believe that the person or persons implicated in the disposal of the aforesaid machine are members of an organised body of criminals known as "The Four Just Men," against ¡ whom warrants have been issued on charges of wilful murder in London, Paris, ■ New York, New Orleans, Sattle (U.S.A.), Barcelona, Tozhsk, Belgrade. Christiana, j Cape tow n. and Caracas. Now, therefore, the above Teward will be paid by his Majesty's Government to any person or persons who shall lay such in- formation as shall lead to the apprehen- sion of any or the whole of the persons styling themselves "The Four Just men" and identical with the band before men-I tioned. And, furthermore, a free pardon and the reward will be paid to any member of the hand for such information, providing the person laying such information has neither I committed nor has been an accessory ¡ before or after the act of any of the fol- lowing murders. I Signed' RYDAY MONTGOMERY. His Majesty's Secre- tary of State for Home Atfairff. J. B. CALFORT, Commissioner of Police. I (Here foHowed a list of the sixteen crimes alleged against the four men.) GOD SAVE THE KING. I All day long little knots of people gathered before the broad sheets, digesting the mag- nificent offer. It was an unusual hue and cry, differing from tftQoite with which Londoners were best acquainted. For there was no appended des- eriptior. of the men wanted; no portraits by which they might be identified, no stereo- typed. "when last seen was wearing a dark blue serge suit, cloth cap, clieck tie." on which the searcher might baae his scrutiny of the paoqer-by. I It was a search for four men whom no person had er consciously seen, a hant for a ivi.il o' the wisp, a groping in the dark after indefinite shadow*. Detective Superintendent Falmouth, who was & very plain-spoken man he once brusquely explained to a Royal person age that he hadn't got eyes in the back of hi* bead). told the Assistant Commissioner exa,L-ti,y what be thought about it. You can't catch men when you haven t fot the slightest Jea who or what you're ■oridvx for. For the sake of argument, they night be women for all we know-they might he Chinamen or niggers; they might be tall or short: they might-why, we don t even frnow their nationality, y oooHBrtted crimes in almost every ccuatry in the world. J They're not French because they killed a man in Paris, or Yankee because they strangled Judge Anderson.' "The writing," said the Commissioner, referring to a bunch of letters he held in his hand. "Latin; but that may be a fake. And gnp- pose it i--n't? There'h no difference between t.he handwriting of a Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, Italian, South American. Creole -and, as I s&y, it might be a fake, and pro- bably is." "What have you done?" asked the Com- i mis.icnr. "We've pulled in all the suspicious charac- ters we know. We cleaned out Little Italy, combed Bioomsbury, been through Soho, and searched all the colonies. We ralcled a place at Nunliead tzlst Tiight-a lot of Armenians live down there, hut The detective's face bore a hopeless look. "As likely" as-not," he went on. "weehould find them at one of the swagger hotels—that's if they were fools enough to bunch together; but you may be sure they're living apart, and meeting at.some unlikely spot once or twice a day." He paused, and tapped his fingers absently on the big èk at which he and his superior sat. "Veve had de C-ou rville over," he resumed. "He saw the Soho crowd, and what is more important. saw his own man who livee amongst them—and it's none of them, I'll svrea,-r-or at least he swears, and I'm pre-1 pared to accept his word." The Commissioner shook his head patheti- cally. "They're in an awful stew in Downing- screet." he said. "They do not know exactly what is going to happen next." Mr. Falmouth rose to his feet with a sigh and fingered the brim of his hat. "Nice time ahead of us—I don't think," he remarked paradoxically. "What are the peopTe thinking about it?" asked the Commissioner. .iou ve seen the papers?" Mr. Commissioner's shrug was uncompli- mentary to British idlirnalisni. The papers? Who in Heaverr^s name is going to take the slightest notice of what is in the- papers-?" he faid petulantly. "I am, for one," replied the calm detec- tive; "newspapers are more often than not led by the public; and it seems to me the idea of running a newspaper in a nutshell is fo write so thait the public will say, That's fcmart—it's what I've said all along. But. the public themselves—have you had an opportunity of gatherin-g their idea. Detective Falmouth nodded. "I wa talking in the park to a man only this evening—a master-mati by the look of him, a.ud presumably intelligent. *What's I your idea of this Four Just Men business?' I asked. It's very queer.' he said; 'do you think there's anything in it?'—and that. concluded the disgusted police-officer, "is all the public thinks about it." But if there was sorrow at Scotland Yard. i Fleet-Street itself was all a-twitter with pleasurable excitement. Here was great news I indeed: news that might be heralded across double columne. bi-ared. forth in headlines, shouted by placards, illustrated, diagramised, and illuminated by rtatistics. Is it the Mafia?" asked the "Comet" noisily, and went on to prove that it was. The Evening World," with its editorial mind lingering lovingly in the sixties, mildly suggested a vendetta, and instanced "The Corsican Brothers." The "Megaphone" stuck to the story of the Four Just Men, and printed pages of details oonceming their nefarious acts. It I disinterred from dusty files. Continental and American, the full circumstances of each murder: it gave the portraits and careers of the men who were slain, and, whilst in no way palliating the offence of the Four, yet set forth justly and dispassionately the t lives of the victims, showing the sort of men they were. It accepted warily the reams of contribu- tions that flowed into the office; for a news- paper that hlWl received the stigma "yellow" exercises more <5aUtion than its more sober competitors, in. newspaperland a dull lie is seldom detected, but an interesting exaggera- tion drives an unimaginative rival to hys- terical denunciations. And reams of Four Men anecdotes did I flow in. For,"suddenly, as if by magic, every outside contributor,, every literary gentleman who made a speciality of personal notes, every kiiid of man who wrote, discovered that he had known the Four intimately all his life. "Whtn I was in Italy wrote the author of "Come Again" (Haokworth Press, 6e.i shghtl-y soiled,' Farringdon Book Mart, ZdJ. "I remember I heard a curious etory about these Men of Blood. Or- No spot in London is more likely to prove I the hiding place of the Pour Villains than Tidal Basin." wrote another gentleman who struck ".Collins" in the north-east corner of his manuscript. "Tidal Basin in the reign of Charles II. was known as "Who's Collins?" asked the super-chief of the "Megaphone" of-hie hard-worked editor. "A liner," described the editor wearily, thereby revealing that even the newer jour- nalism has not driven the promiscuous con- tributor from his hard-fought field; "he does police-courts, fires, inquests and thingis. Lately he's taken to literature, and writes Picturesq-us Bits of Old London, and Famous Tombstones of H, epics Throughout the ZZ*e,-of the newspaper the same thing was happening1. Every cable that arrived, every pieoe of information that reached the cub-editors basket wae coloured with the impending tragedy uppermost in men's minds. Even the police-court reports contained some allusion to the Four. It waa the overnight drunk and disorderly's justifi- cation for his indiscretion. The lad has always been honeet," said the peccant errand boy's tearful mother; it's reading these horrible stories about the Four Foreigners that's made him turn out like this"; and the magistrate took a lenient view of the offence. I To all outward showing. Sir Philip Ramon, the man mostly intereeted in the develop- ment of the plot, was the least concerned. He refused to be interviewed any further; he declined to discuss the possibilities of assassination even with the Premier, and his answer to letters of appreciation that came to him from all parts of the ooiratry was an announcement in the Morning Post asking his correspondents to "be good enough to refrain from persecuting him with picture postcirds. which found no other repository than his waiii-c-pa"r basket. He had thouight of adding an announcement oS his intention of carrying the Bill through Parliament at whatever cost, and was only deterred by the fear of theatricality. To Pad mouth, upon whom had naturalLy devolved the duty of protecting the Foreign Secretary from harm. Sir Philip was nn- usually eraeiotw. and incidentally permitted that astute officer to get a glimpse of the terror in which a threatened man lives. Do you think there s any danger, super- intendent?" he asked, not once but a score of times: and the officer, stout defender of an i nfaWible police force, was very re- assuring. For," he argued to himself, what is the ut» of frightening a man who is b&U- scaied to <-eath already? If nothing happens h will see I hspoken the truth, and i* —if—*reil, be won't be able to call me a liar." Sir Philip was a constant source of interest to the detective, who must have shown his thoughts once or twice. For the Foreign Secretary, who was a remarkably shrewd man, intercepting a curious glance of the police-officer, said sharply, "You wonder why I still go on with the Bill knowing the danger? Well, it will surprise you to learn that I do not know the danger, nor c-an I imagine it, I have never been conscious of physical pain in my life, and, in spite of the fa<t that I have a weak heart, I have never had. so much as a tingle aohe. What, death will be, what pangs or peace it may bring, I have no conception. I argue with Epictetus that the fear of death is byway of be?n £ an impertinent assumption of a krowledge of the hereafter, and that we ha.ve no reason to believe it is any worse condi- tion than our present. I am not afraid to dde, -but, I am afraid of dyirxg." Quite so, sir," murmured the sympathetic but wholely uncomprehending detective, who had no mind for nice distinctions. But." resumed the Minister—he was fit- ting in his study in Portland-place—"if I cannot imagine the exaoct process of dissolu- tion. I can imagine, and have experienced, the result of breaking faith with the chan- celleries, and I have certainly no intention of :i.} ing up a store of future embarrass- ments for fear of something that may after all be comparatively trifling." Which picoe of reasoning will be sufficient to indicate what the Opposition of the hour was pk«scd to term The tortuous mind of the right honourab'e Zent,lempn." And Inspector Falmouth, listening with every indication of attention, yawned inwardly and wondered who Epictetus was. I have taken all pofisible precautions, sir," said the detective in the pause that fol- lowed the recital of this creed. I hope YO¡1 von't mind for a week or two being followed about by some of my men I want you to allow two or three officers to remain in the house whilst you are here, and. of course. there will be quite a number on duty at the Foreign Office." Sir Philip expressed his approval, and later, when he and the detective drove down to the Houms in a closed brougham, he understood why cyclists rode before and on either side of the carriage, and why two cabs followed the brougham into Palace Yaiyl. At Notice time. wit,h a House ppa,raely ftlled. Sir Philip rose in his place and gave notice that he would move the second read- ing of the Aliens Extradition (Politicil Offences) Bill on Tuesday week, or, to be exact, in ten days That evening Manfred met Gonsalez ;.I, North Tower Gardens and remarked on th«> fairy-Uke splendour of the Crystal Palaoe grounds by night. A Guards' band was playing the overture to Tan nha user, and the men talked music. Then— Wba-t, or Thery?" asked Manfred. loiccart, has him to-day; he is showing him the sights." They both laughed. "And your" asked Gonsalez. "I lave had an interesting day: I met that delightfully naive detective in Green Park, who asked me what I thought of our- feh Gonsalez commented on the movement in G minor, and Manfred nodded his head, keeping time with thq music. "Are we ptepare-cle" a-Aed JJOOn quietly. .Manfred still nodded and softly whispered th. number. He stopped with the final crath of the band. and joined in the applause that greeted the musicians. I have taken a place." he said, clapping, his hat de. "e had better come together." Is everything there?" Manfred looked at his companion with a twinkle in his eye. "Almost everything." I The band broke into the National Anthem, and the two men rose and uncovered. The throng about the band-stand melted away in the gloom, and Manfred and his companion turned to go. Thousands of fairy lamps gleamed in the grounds, and there was a strong smell of ga.s in the air "Not that way this time?" questioned, rather than assertftd. GonsaJez. Most- certainly not that way," replied Manfred decidedly. (TO BE CONTINUED TO-MORBOW.) L. j <

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