The Four Just Men quotes

“Your—way—my—dear—Thery”—he puffed—“is a fool’s way.

You kill for benefit; we kill for justice, which lifts us out of the ruck of professional slayers.

When we see an unjust man oppressing his fellows; when we see an evil thing done against the good God”—Thery crossed himself, “and against man—and know that by the laws of man this evildoer may escape punishment—we punish.”

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.

”

… had been much annoyed by the receipt of a number of threatening letters, and was prepared to pay a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would give such information as would lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons, etc.

The few people who read London’s most sober journal thought, in their ponderous Athenaeum Club way, that it was a remarkable thing that a minister of state should be annoyed at anything; more remarkable that he should advertise his annoyance, and most remarkable of all that he could imagine for one minute that the offer of a reward would put a stop to the annoyance.

News editors of less sober but larger circulated newspapers, wearily scanning the dull columns of Old Sobriety, read the paragraph with a newly acquired interest.

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.

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.

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 embarrassment.

Coroners’ courts listen daily to the tale of such men’s lives—and deaths.

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.”

But here was the hidden terror in the metropolis itself.

Why, argued London, with suspicious sidelong glances, every man we rub elbows with may be one of the Four, and we none the wiser.

Heavy, black-looking posters stared down from blank walls, and filled the breadth of every police notice-board.

For there was no appended description of the men wanted; no portraits by which they might be identified, no stereotyped “when last seen was wearing a dark blue serge suit, cloth cap, check tie,” on which the searcher might base his scrutiny of the passerby.

It was a search for four men whom no person had ever consciously seen, a hunt for a will-o’-the-wisp, a groping in the dark after indefinite shadows.

Detective Superintendent Falmouth, who was a very plainspoken man (he once brusquely explained to a Royal Personage that he hadn’t got eyes in the back of his head), told the assistant-commissioner exactly what he thought about it.

“

You can’t catch men when you haven’t got the slightest idea who or what you’re looking for.

For the sake of argument, they might be women for all we know—they might be Chinamen or niggers; they might be tall or short; they might—why, we don’t even know their nationality! They’ve committed crimes in almost every country in the world.

It accepted warily the reams of contributions that flowed into the office; for a newspaper that has received the stigma “yellow” exercises more caution than its more sober competitors.

In newspaperland a dull lie is seldom detected, but an interesting exaggeration drives an unimaginative rival to hysterical denunciations.

And reams of “Four Men” anecdotes did flow in. For suddenly, as if by magic, every outside contributor, every literary gentleman who made a specialty of personal notes, every kind of man who wrote, discovered that he had known the Four intimately all his life.

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.”

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.

”

“Years ago, when I first came to London,” said Manfred, “I learned the easiest way to conceal one’s identity was to disguise oneself as a public company.

There’s a wealth of respectability behind the word ‘limited,’ and the pomp and circumstance of a company directorship diverts suspicion, even as it attracts attention.

”

“

The envelope-just-fastened is an irresistible attraction to an English detective.

”

Sir Philip Ramon was a man with very few friends. He had none of the qualities that go to the making of a popular man. He was an honest man, a conscientious man, a strong man.

He was the cold-blooded, cynical creature that a life devoid of love had left him.

He had no enthusiasm—and inspired none. Satisfied that a certain procedure was less wrong than any other, he adopted it. Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end.

He had none of the qualities that go to the making of a popular man. He was an honest man, a conscientious man, a strong man. He was the cold-blooded, cynical creature that a life devoid of love had left him.

He had no enthusiasm⁠—and inspired none.

Satisfied that a certain procedure was less wrong than any other, he adopted it. Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end.

He had no enthusiasm—and inspired none. Satisfied that a certain procedure was less wrong than any other, he adopted it. Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end.

It may be said of him that he had no ambitions⁠—only aims.

He was the dangerous man in the cabinet, which he dominated in his masterful way, for he knew not the meaning of the blessed word “compromise.”

Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end. It may be said of him that he had no ambitions—only aims.

He was the dangerous man in the cabinet, which he dominated in his masterful way, for he knew not the meaning of the blessed word “compromise.”

If he held views on any subject under the sun, those views were to be the views of his colleagues.

Why, there never has been such a thing done—such—” he stopped dead, with flushed cheeks and kindling eyes, and met the gaze of his two companions, Poiccart, impassive, sphinxlike, Leon, interested and analytic. Manfred’s face went a duller red.

“I am sorry,” he said almost humbly; “for the moment I had forgotten the cause, and the end, in the strangeness of the means.”

He raised his hand deprecatingly.

In strange contrast were the faces of his employers. Not a muscle of either face stirred.

There was neither exultation nor remorse in their expressions⁠—only a curious something that creeps into the set face of the judge as he pronounces the dread sentence of the law.

Thery saw that something, and it froze him to his very marrow.

“I cannot say—like the judge at Granada when he says—when he says, ‘Let the thing be done’!”

“If we look so,” said Manfred harshly, “it is because we are judges⁠—and not alone judges but executioners of our judgment.”

“I thought you would have been pleased,” whimpered Thery.

they recognized that these were not ordinary criminals and that their pledge was inviolable. Indeed, had they thought otherwise, the elaborate precautions that they were taking to ensure the safety of Sir Philip would not have been made.

The honesty of the Four was their most terrible characteristic.

In this instance it served to raise a faint hope that the men who were setting at defiance the establishment of the law would overreach themselves.

The terror of the Four was ever with him, and this had so worked upon his nerves that the slightest noise irritated him. He played with the penholder that lay on the desk.

He scribbled inconsequently on the blotting-pad before him, and was annoyed to find that the scribbling had taken the form of numbers of figure 4.

Was the bill worth it? Was the sacrifice called for? Was the measure of such importance as to justify the risk? These things he asked himself again and again, and then immediately, What sacrifice? What risk?

As Sir Philip conned the paper he mechanically formed in his mind the line of attack—for, tragedy or none, the bill struck at too many interests in the House to allow of its passage without a stormy debate.

He was a master of dialectics, a brilliant casuist, a coiner of phrases that stuck and stung.

There was nothing for him to fear in the debate. If only—.

“

Either you’ll come out of it alive or, by the Lord, they’ll kill two

,” he said, and there was a gleam in his eye that spoke for his determination.

vague, shadowy figures stalking tragically through the world, condemning and executing the capitalist, the corner-maker, the tyrant—evil forces all, and all beyond reach of the law. We have said of these people, such of us as are touched with mysticism, that God would judge them.

Here are men arrogating to themselves the divine right of superior judgment.

If we catch them they will end their lives unpicturesquely, in a matter-of-fact, commonplace manner in a little shed in Pentonville Gaol, and the world will never realize how great the artists who perish.”

We have said of these people, such of us as are touched with mysticism, that God would judge them. Here are men arrogating to themselves the divine right of superior judgment.

If we catch them they will end their lives unpicturesquely, in a matter-of-fact, commonplace manner in a little shed in Pentonville Gaol, and the world will never realize how great the artists who perish.

”

“Great heavens!” he exclaimed in distress, “it never occurred to me that we should be compared with—him!”

“It is part of the eternal bathos,” said Poiccart serenely; “even De Quincey taught the English nothing.”

They were traversing that portion of Whitehall from which Scotland Yard runs.

If Billy Marks had not had a drop of drink he would have been perfectly satisfied with his night’s work.

Filled, however, with that false liquid confidence that leads so many good men astray, Billy thought it would be a sin to neglect the opportunities that the gods had shown him.

The excitement engendered by the threats of the Four Just Men had brought all suburban London to Westminster, and on the Surrey side of the Bridge Billy found hundreds of patient suburbanites waiting for conveyance to Streatham, Camberwell, Clapham, and Greenwich.

“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?

”

“Harry Moss would like to know who he owes his three stretch to—and the ten.

Men who’ve had the cat have a long memory, Billy.

”

“You’ve done your best, Billy,” he said, and then—“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.

You are the only man in the world who has ever seen one of the Four Just Men⁠—and lived to tell the story.

Now, although you cannot remember his face, perhaps if you met him again in the street you would know him—there may be some little trick of walking, some habit of holding the hands that you cannot recall now, but if you saw again you would …

He lay face downwards, a rug spread beneath him, his head resting on his hands.

Dawn, with its white, pitiless light, showed his strong face, seamed and haggard.

The white streaks in his trim beard were accentuated in the light of morning.

And yet it was so. Then again there was a sum in simple proportion to be worked out.

If one Just Man was worth a thousand pounds, what was the commercial value of four? Billy was a thief with a business head.

So that when Poiccart disappeared within the magnificent portals of the Royal Hotel in Northumberland Avenue, Billy was hipped. He realized in a flash that his captive had gone whither he could not follow without exposing his hand;

“I tell you, sir,” said the commissioner earnestly, “we can do no more than we have done, and I am still afraid.

These men affect me as would something supernatural.

I have a horrible dread that for all our precautions we have left something out of our reckoning; that we are leaving unguarded some avenue which by their devilish ingenuity they may utilize.

Or are they right; is this measure an unjust thing, an act of tyranny, a piece of barbarism dropped into the very centre of twentieth-century thought, an anachronism? If these men are right, then I am wrong.

So it has come to this, that I have to satisfy my mind as to the standard of right and wrong that I must accept⁠—and I accept my own.

”

The Commissioner plucked a leaf from one of the blooms and rolled it between his fingers.

“They look so real,” he said paradoxically, “that they might even be artificial.”

As he spoke he was conscious that he associated the roses in some way with—what?

For the commissioners of police were leaving nothing to chance. If they were satisfied that cunning could be matched by cunning, craft by craft, stealth by counter stealth, they would have been content to defend their charge on conventional lines. But they were outmanoevred.

The stake was too high to depend upon strategy⁠—this was a case that demanded brute force.

It is difficult, writing so long after the event, to realize how the terror of the Four had so firmly fastened upon the finest police organization in the world, to appreciate the panic that had come upon a body renowned for its clear-headedness.

A stranger arriving in London, bewildered by this gathering, asked for the cause. A man standing on the outskirts of the Embankment throng pointed across the river with the stem of his pipe.

“We’re waiting for a man to be murdered,” he said simply, as one who describes a familiar function.

About the edge of these throngs newspaper boys drove a steady trade. From hand to hand the pink sheets were passed over the heads of the crowd.

“Only two more hours to wait,” they said at six o’clock, and that sentence, or rather the tone of pleasurable anticipation in which it was said, indicated the spirit of the mob.

For a mob is a cruel thing, heartless and unpitying.

Seven o’clock boomed forth, and the angry hum of talk ceased. London watched in silence, and with a quicker beating heart, the last hour crawl round the great clock’s dial.

“They will be terribly disappointed if nothing happens,” he said bitterly. “

The people! God save me from the people, their sympathy, their applause, their insufferable pity.

”