The Four Just Men

Four men sat about a table on the sidewalk in front of the Café of the Nations in the High Street of Cádiz and talked business.

Leon Gonsalez was one, Poiccart was another, George Manfred was a notable third, and one Thery, or Saimont, was the fourth. Of this quartet, only Thery requires no introduction to the student of contemporary history. In the Bureau of Public Affairs you will find his record. As Thery, alias Saimont, he is registered and to all students of Criminology and Physiognomy, he must need no introduction.

He sat at the little table, this man, obviously ill at ease, pinching his fat cheeks, smoothing his shaggy eyebrows, fingering the white scar on his unshaven chin, doing all the things that the lower classes do when they suddenly find themselves placed on terms of equality with their betters.

For although Gonsalez, with the light blue eyes and the restless hands, and Poiccart, heavy, saturnine, and suspicious, and George Manfred, with his grey shot beard and single eyeglass, were less famous in the criminal world, each was a great man, as you shall learn.

Manfred laid down the Heraldo de Madrid, removed his eyeglass, rubbed it with a spotless handkerchief, and laughed quietly.

“These Russians are droll,” he commented.

Poiccart frowned and reached for the newspaper. “Who is it⁠—this time?”

“A Governor of one of the Southern Provinces.”

“Killed?”

Manfred’s moustache curled in scornful derision.

“Listen,” interrupted the taciturn Poiccart; “once there was a girl, young and beautiful, up there”⁠—he waved his hand northward with unerring instinct⁠—“and a priest⁠—a priest, you understand⁠—and the parents winked at it because it is often done⁠ ⁠… but the girl was filled with loathing and shame, and would not go a second time, so he trapped her and kept her in a house, and then when the bloom was off turned her out, and I found her. She was nothing to me, but I said, ‘Here is a wrong that the law cannot adequately right.’ So one night I called on the priest with my hat over my eyes and said that I wanted him to come to a dying traveller. He would not have come then, but I told him that the dying man was rich and was a great person. He mounted the horse I had brought, and we rode to a little house on the mountain.⁠ ⁠… I locked the door and he turned round⁠—so! Trapped, and he knew it. ‘What are you going to do?’ he said with a gasping noise. ‘I am going to kill you, señor,’ I said, and he believed me. I told him the story of the girl.⁠ ⁠… He screamed when I moved towards him, but he might as well have saved his breath. ‘Let me see a priest,’ he begged; and I handed him⁠—a mirror.”

Poiccart stopped to sip his coffee.

“They found him on the road next day without a mark to show how he died,” he said simply.

“How?” Thery bent forward eagerly, but Poiccart permitted himself to smile grimly, and made no response.

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

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 can I imagine it! I have never been conscious of physical pain in my life, and in spite of the fact that I have a weak heart, I have never had so much as a single ache. 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 by way of being an impertinent assumption of a knowledge of the hereafter, and that we have no reason to believe it is any worse condition than our present. I am not afraid to die⁠—but I am afraid of dying.”

“Quite so, sir,” murmured the sympathetic but wholly uncomprehending detective, who had no mind for nice distinctions.

“But,” resumed the minister⁠—he was sitting in his study in Portland Place⁠—“if I cannot imagine the exact process of dissolution, I can imagine, and have experienced, the result of breaking

“There is a reward and a pardon,” he muttered doggedly.

“Hasten!” cried Welby. “You will receive your reward and the pardon also. Tell us, who are the Four Just Men; who are the other three; where are they to be found?”

“Here,” said a clear voice behind him; and he turned as a stranger, closing the door as he entered, stood facing the three men⁠—a stranger in evening dress, masked from brow to chin.

There was a revolver in the hand that hung at his side.

“I am one,” repeated the stranger calmly; “there are two others waiting outside the building.”

“How did you get here⁠—what do you want?” demanded the editor, and stretched his hand to an open drawer in his desk.

“Take your hand away”⁠—and the thin barrel of the revolver rose with a jerk. “How I came here your doorkeeper will explain, when he recovers consciousness. Why I am here is because I wish to save my life⁠—not an unreasonable wish. If Thery speaks I may be a dead man⁠—I am about to prevent his speaking. I have no quarrel with either of you gentlemen, but if you hinder me I shall kill you,” he said, simply. He spoke all the while in English, and Thery, with wide-stretched eyes and distended nostrils, shrank back against the wall, breathing quickly.

“You,” said the masked man, turning to the terror-stricken informer and speaking in Spanish, “would have betrayed your comrades⁠—you would have thwarted a great purpose, therefore it is just that you should die.”

The detective breathed deeply.

“Now, look here,” he said, lowering his voice, “you’ve heard about the Four Just Men?”

Billy nodded, opening his eyes in amazement at the question.

“Well,” exclaimed Falmouth impressively, “the man to whom this pocketbook belongs is one of them.”

“What!” cried Billy.

“For his capture there is a reward of a thousand pounds offered. If your description leads to his arrest that thousand is yours.”

Marks stood paralyzed at the thought.

“A thousand⁠—a thousand?” he muttered in a dazed fashion. “And I might just as easily have caught him!”

“Come, come!” cried the detective, sharply. “You may catch him yet⁠—tell us what he looked like.”

Billy knitted his brows in thought.

“He looked like a gentleman,” he said, trying to recall from the chaos of his mind a picture of his victim; “he had a white weskit, a white shirt, nice patent shoes⁠—”

“But his face⁠—his face!” demanded the detective.

“His face?” cried Billy, indignantly. “How do I know what it looked like? I don’t look a chap in the face when I’m pinching his watch, do I?”