The Law of the Four Just Men

“The jury cannot accept the unsupported suggestion⁠—unsupported even by the prisoner’s testimony since he has not gone into the box⁠—that Mr. Noah Stedland is a blackmailer and that he obtained a large sum of money from the prisoner by this practice. That is a defence which is rather suggested by the cross-examination than by the production of evidence. The defence does not even tell us the nature of the threat which Stedland employed⁠ ⁠…”

The remainder of the summing up was creditable to the best traditions of the Bar, and the jury, without retiring, returned a verdict of “Guilty.”

There was a rustle of movement in the court and a thin babble of whispered talk as the Judge fixed his pince-nez and began to write.

The man in the big oaken pen looked down at the pale drawn face of a girl turned to him from the well of the court and smiled encouragingly. For his part, he did not blanch and his grave eyes went back to the figure on the Bench⁠—the puce-gowned, white-headed figure that was writing so industriously. What did a Judge write on these occasions, he wondered? Surely not a précis of the crime. He was impatient now to have done with it all; this airy court, these blurred rows of pink faces in the gloom of the public gallery, the indifferent counsel and particularly with the two men who had sat near the lawyer’s pews watching him intently.

He walked back into his room and the fireman followed and stood watching as he unlocked the safe. Then:

“I didn’t think it would be so easy,” he said.

Stedland swung round.

“Put up your hands,” said the fireman, “and don’t make trouble, or you’re going out, Noah. I’d just as soon kill you as talk to you.”

Then Noah Stedland saw that beneath the shade of the helmet the man’s face was covered with a black mask.

“Who⁠—who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

“I’m one of the Four Just Men⁠—greatly reviled and prematurely mourned. Death is my favourite panacea for all ills⁠ ⁠…”

With a howl of rage Ballam sprang to his feet and what happened after that he could not remember. Only something seemed to split in his head, and a blinding light flashed before his eyes and then a whole century of time went past, a hundred years of moving time and an eternity of flashing lights, of thunderous noises, of whispering voices, of ceaseless troubled movement. Sometimes he knew he was talking and listened eagerly to hear what he himself had to say. Sometimes people spoke to him and mocked him and he had a consciousness that he was being chased by somebody.

How long this went on he could not judge. In his half-bemused condition he tried to reckon time but found he had no standard of measurement. It seemed years after that he opened his eyes with a groan, and put his hand to his aching head. He was lying in bed. It was a hard bed and the pillow was even harder. He stared up at the whitewashed ceiling and looked round at the plain distempered walls. Then he peered over the side of the bed and saw that the floor as of concrete. Two lights were burning, one above a table and one in a corner of the room where a man was sitting reading a newspaper. He was a curious-looking man and Ballam blinked at him.

“I am dreaming,” he said aloud and the man looked up.

“Hello! Do you want to get up?”

Ballam did not reply. He was still staring, his mouth agape. The man was in uniform, in a dark, tight-fitting uniform.

Manfred understood better that night, when the silence of the sedate road in which Mr. Lynne’s detached house was situated was broken by the shrill sound of trumpets, and the rolling of drums, the clanging of bells, the simulated boom of cannon⁠—all the barbarian musical interjection which has made 1812 so popular with unmusical people.

“It sounds like a real band,” said Manfred in surprise.

A policeman strolled along, and seeing the car standing before the house, turned his head with a laugh.

“It’s an awful row, isn’t it?”

“I wonder it doesn’t wake everybody up,” suggested Manfred.

“It does,” replied the policeman, “or it did until they got used to it. It’s the loudest gramophone in the world, I should think: like one of those things you have at the bottom of the tube stairs, to tell the people to move on. A stentaphone, isn’t it?”

“How long does this go on? All night?” asked Manfred.

“For about an hour, I believe,” said the policeman. “The gentleman who lives in that house can’t go to sleep without music. He’s a bit artistic, I think.”

“He is,” said Leon grimly.

He sought for interests in all manner of places, and it is at the back of the grandstand on Hurst Park racecourse that he first saw “Spaghetti” Jones. It is one of the clear laws of coincidence, that if, in reading a book, you come across a word which you have not seen before, and which necessitates a reference to the dictionary, that same word will occur within three days on some other printed page. This law of the Inexplicable Recurrences applies equally to people, and Leon, viewing the bulk of the big man, had a queer feeling that they were destined to meet again⁠—Leon’s instincts were seldom at fault.

Mr. Spaghetti Jones was a tall, strong and stoutly built man, heavy eyed and heavy jawed. He had a long dark moustache which curled at the ends, and he wore a green and white bow tie that the startling pink of his shirt might not be hidden from the world. There were diamond rings on his fat fingers, and a cable chain across his figured waistcoat. He was attired in a very bright blue suit, perfectly tailored, and violently yellow boots encased his feet, which were small for a man of his size. In fact, Mr. Spaghetti Jones was a model of what Mr. Spaghetti Jones thought a gentleman should be.

It was not his rich attire, nor his greatness of bulk, which ensured for him Leon’s fascinated interest.