extent of the responsibility you ask to undertake. You are a wealthy man?’
‘Yes,’ said Courtlander, ‘as wealth goes; I have large estates in Hungary.’
‘I do not ask that question aimlessly, yet it would make no difference if you were poor,’ said Manfred. ‘Are you prepared to sell your estates — Buda-Gratz I believe they are called — Highness?’
For the first time the young man smiled.
‘I did not doubt but that you knew me,’ he said; ‘as to my estates I will sell them without hesitation.’
‘And place the money at my disposal?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, instantly. ‘Without reservation?’
‘Without reservation.’
‘And,’ said Manfred, slowly, ‘if we felt disposed to employ this money for what might seem our own personal benefit, would you take exception?’
‘None,’ said the young man, calmly.
‘And as a proof?’ demanded Poiccart, leaning a little forward.
‘The word of a Hap—’
‘Enough,’ said Manfred; ‘we do not want your money — yet money is the supreme test.’ He pondered awhile before he spoke again.
‘There is the Woman of Gratz,’ he said abruptly; ‘at the worst she must be killed.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Courtlander, a little sadly. He had answered the final test did he but know it. A too willing compliance, an over-eagerness to agree with the supreme sentence of the ‘Four’, any one thing that might have betrayed the lack of that exact balance of mind, which their word demanded, would have irretrievably condemned him.
‘Let us drink an arrogant toast,’ said Manfred, beckoning a waiter. The wine was opened and the glasses filled, and Manfred muttered the toast.
‘The Four who were three, to the Fourth who died and the Fourth who is born.’
Once upon a time there was a fourth who fell riddled with bullets in a Bordeaux cafe, and him they pledged. In Middlesex Street, in the almost emptied hall, Falmouth stood at bay before an army of reporters.
‘Were they the Four Just Men, Mr. Falmouth?’
‘Did you see them?’
‘Have you any clue?’
Every second brought a fresh batch of newspaper men, taxi after taxi came into the dingy street, and the string of vehicles lined up outside the hall was suggestive of a fashionable gathering. The Telephone Tragedy was still fresh in the public mind, and it needed no more than the utterance of the magical words ‘Four Just Men’ to fan the spark of interest to flame again. The delegates of the Red Hundred formed a privileged throng in the little wilderness of a forecourt, and through these the journalists circulated industriously.
Smith of the Megaphone and his youthful assistant, Maynard, slipped through the crowd and found their taxi.
Smith shouted a direction to the driver and sank back in the seat with a whistle of weariness.
‘Did you hear those chaps talking about police protection?’ he asked; ‘all the blessed anarchists from all over the world — and talking like a mothers’ meeting! To hear ’em you would think they were the most respectable members of society that the world had ever seen. Our civilization is a wonderful thing,’ he added, cryptically.
‘One man,’ said Maynard, ‘asked me in very bad French if the conduct of the Four Just Men was actionable!’
At that moment, another question was being put to Falmouth by a leader of the Red Hundred, and Falmouth, a little ruffled in his temper, replied with all the urbanity that he could summon.
‘You may have your meetings,’ he said with some asperity, ‘so long as you do not utter anything calculated to bring about a breach of the peace, you may talk sedition and anarchy till you’re blue in the face. Your English friends will tell you how far you can go — and I might say you can go pretty far — you can advocate the assassination of kings, so long as you don’t specify which king; you can plot against governments and denounce armies and grand dukes; in fact, you can do as you please — because that’s the law.’
‘What is — a breach of the peace?’ asked his interrogator, repeating the words with difficulty.
Another detective explained.
Francois and one Rudulph Starque escorted the Woman of Gratz to her Bloomsbury lodgings that night, and they discussed the detective’s answer.
This Starque was a big man, strongly built, with a fleshy face and little pouches under his eyes. He was reputed to be well off, and to have a way with women.
‘So it would appear,’ he said, ‘that we may say “Let the kings be slain”, but not “Let the king be slain”; also that we may preach the downfall of governments, but if we say “Let us go into this cafe” — how do you call it?— “public-house, and be rude to the proprietaire” we commit a — er — breach of the peace — ne c’est pas?
‘It is so,’ said Francois, ‘that is the English way.’
‘It is a mad way,’ said the other.
They reached the door of the girl’s pension. She had been very quiet during the walk, answering questions that were put to her in monosyllables. She had ample food for thought in the events of the night.
Francois bade her a curt good night and walked a little distance. It had come to be regarded as Starque’s privilege to stand nearest the girl. Now he took her slim hands in his and looked down at her. Some one has said the East begins at Bukarest, but there is a touch of the Eastern in every Hungarian, and there is a crudeness in their whole attitude to womankind that shocks the more tender susceptibilities of the Western.
‘Good night, little Maria,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Some day you will be kinder, and you will not leave me at the door.’ She looked at him steadfastly. ‘That will never be,’ she replied, without a tremor.
Chapter III
Jessen, Alias Long
The front page of every big London daily was again black with the story of the Four Just Men.
‘What I should like,’ said the editor of the Megaphone, wistfully, ‘is a sort of official propaganda from the Four — a sort of inspired manifesto that we could spread into six columns.’
Charles Garret, the Megaphone’s ‘star’ reporter, with his hat on the back of his head, and an apparently inattentive eye fixed on the electrolier, sniffed.
The editor looked at him reflectively.
‘A smart man might get into touch with them.’
Charles said, ‘Yes,’ but without enthusiasm.
‘If it wasn’t that I knew you,’ mused the editor, ‘I should say you were afraid.’
‘I am,’ said Charles shamelessly.
‘I don’t want to put a younger reporter on this job,’ said the editor sadly, ‘it would look bad for you; but I’m afraid I must.’
‘Do,’ said Charles with animation, ‘do, and put me down ten shillings toward the wreath.’
He left the office a few minutes later with the ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and one fixed determination in the deepest and most secret recesses of his heart. It was rather like Charles that, having by an uncompromising firmness established his right to refuse work of a dangerous character,