The Council of Justice quotes

Frankly I say of the three men who killed Sir Philip Ramon, and who slew ruthlessly in the name of Justice, that my sympathies are with them.

There are crimes for which there is no adequate punishment, and offences that the machinery of the written law cannot efface.

Therein lies the justification for the Four Just Men—the Council of Justice as they presently came to call themselves—a council of great intellects, passionless.

“

I have yet to learn that it is an offence in England to hold opinions.

”

“Who knows?” replied the other. “

There are no straight roads, and you cannot judge where lies your destination by the direction the first line of path takes.

”

Starque was an ingenious man and had learnt many things in Russia.

Men who gather round a green baize-covered table with locked doors are apt to be dealt with summarily if no adequate excuse for their presence is evident, and it is more satisfactory to be fined a hundred roubles for gambling than to be dragged off at a moment’s notice to an indefinite period of labour in the mines on suspicion of being concerned in a revolutionary plot.

Starque now initiated the business of the evening. If the truth be told, there was little in the earlier proceedings that differed from the procedure of the typical committee.

Bartholomew, renegade and adventurer, said it mechanically.

It was nothing to him a brave gentleman should die for no other reason than that he had served his master faithfully.

“Marquis de Santo-Strato, private secretary to the Prince of the Escorial,” read Starque.

“You need no introduction to us,” said Manfred coldly, “and you will understand we do not intend taking you into our confidence.

Our agreement is that we share your confidence, not that you shall share ours.

”

He saw a chance of escape from both, freedom from the four-walled control of these organizations, and before him the wide expanse of a trackless wilderness, where the vengeance of neither could follow.

Eden in sight⁠—he pleaded for an Eve.

The very thought of the freedom ahead overcame the depression her coldness laid upon him.

These British audiences did not lose their heads so quickly; they refused to be confounded by noise and smoke, and a writhing figure here and there. Von Dunop was no exponent of the Glory of Death school.

He greatly desired glory, but the smaller the risk, the greater the glory. This was his code.

He stood for a moment outside the Hotel Ritz. A party of diners were leaving, and motorcars were being steered up to carry these accursed plutocrats to the theatre.

“He shall be tried—tonight,” and she spent the day anticipating her triumph.

Conspirators do not always choose dark arches for their plottings.

The Red Hundred especially were notorious for the likeliness of their rendezvous.

“

Crime and criminals run in grooves. They’re hardy annuals with perennial methods.

Extraordinary circumstances baffle the police as they baffle other folks. You can’t run a business on business lines and be absolutely prepared for anything that turns up.

“Crime and criminals run in grooves. They’re hardy annuals with perennial methods. Extraordinary circumstances baffle the police as they baffle other folks.

You can’t run a business on business lines and be absolutely prepared for anything that turns up.

Whiteley’s will supply you with a flea or an elephant, but if a woman asked a shopgirl to hold her baby whilst she went into the tinned meat department, the girl and the manager and the whole system would be floored, because there is no …

I know you will forgive me and believe that I do not say this from any desire to hurt you, but I have reached, too, a phase of conviction where I am adamant to outside influence.

For good or ill, I must stand by the conceptions that I have built out of my own life and its teachings.

“There is another, and a more practical reason,” he added, “why I should not do you or any other chaplain the disservice of taking up your time—I have no intention of dying.”

Here’s a feller been killed and not once has the prosecution talked about ‘this poor man struck down in the prime of life’ or said anything that made you look at the prisoner to see how he takes it.

It’s a philosophical discussion with a hanging at the end of it.

”

We represented a law—we executed expeditiously. We murdered if you like. In the spirit and the letter of the laws of England, we did murder. I acknowledge the justice of my condemnation. I do not desire to extenuate the circumstances of my crime.

Yet none the less the act I cannot justify to your satisfaction I justify to my own.

”

“You are almost encyclopaedic,” said Poiccart.

“My dear Poiccart,” said Leon resentfully, “you have got a trick of accepting the most wonderful information from me without paying me the due of adopting the following flattering attitudes: primary, incredulous surprise; secondary, ecstatic wonder; tertiary, admiration blended with awe.”

Poiccart laughed outright: an unusual circumstance.

There was the task of printing it, arranging the immediate publication, the placing of the book in the list, and generally thrusting it under the noses of an unappreciative public.

As sailors store lifebelts for possible contingencies, so, in every country had the Four Just Men stored the equipment of rescue against their need.

Poiccart, paying many flying visits to the Midlands, brought back with him from time to time strange parts of machinery. The lighter he carried with his luggage, the heavier parts he smuggled into Chelmsford in a strongly-built motorcar.

“The real thing—the porters they sometimes impersonate,” said the enthusiast, and added dolefully,

“It’s terribly uphill business though, getting characters for the men who want to go straight and have only a ticket of leave to identify them.”

As he rose to go, Manfred shook hands.

“It is impossible to do anything with him,” said the despairing minister. “I am the veriest child in his hands.

He makes me feel like a lay preacher interviewing Socrates.

”