THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace

Ollmanns was the other. They were both young men, and before they left the motorcar they completed their arrangement.

      ‘You will occupy the box on the opposite side, but I will endeavour to enter the box. If I succeed — it will be finished. The knife is best,’ there was pride in the Italian’s tone.

      ‘If I cannot reach him the honour will be yours.’ He had the stilted manner of the young Latin. The other man grunted. He replied in halting French.

      ‘Once I shot an egg from between fingers — so,’ he said.

      They made their entry separately.

      In the manager’s office, Superintendent Falmouth relieved the tedium of waiting by reading the advertisements in an evening newspaper.

      To him came the manager with a message that under no circumstances was his Highness in Box A to be disturbed until the conclusion of the performance.

      In the meantime Signor Selleni made a cautious way to Box A. He found the road clear, turned the handle softly, and stepped quickly into the dark interior of the box.

      Twenty minutes later Falmouth stood at the back of the dress circle issuing instructions to a subordinate.

      ‘Have a couple of men at the stage door — my God!’

      Over the soft music, above the hum of voices, a shot rang out and a woman screamed. From the box opposite the Prince’s a thin swirl of smoke floated.

      Karl Ollmanns, tired of waiting, had fired at the motionless figure sitting in the shadow of the curtain. Then he walked calmly out of the box into the arms of two breathless detectives.

      ‘A doctor!’ shouted Falmouth as he ran. The door of the Box A was locked, but he broke it open.

      A man lay on the floor of the box very still and strangely stiff.

      ‘Why, what — !’ began the detective, for the dead man was bound hand and foot.

      There was already a crowed at the door of the box, and he heard an authoritative voice demand admittance.

      He looked over his shoulder to meet the eye of the commissioner.

      ‘They’ve killed him, sir,’ he said bitterly.

      ‘Whom?’ asked the commissioner in perplexity.

      ‘His Highness.’

      ‘His Highness!’ the commissioner’s eyebrows rose in genuine astonishment. ‘Why, the Prince left Charing Cross for the Continent half an hour ago!’

      The detective gasped.

      ‘Then who in the name of Fate is this?’

      It was M. Menshikoff, who had come in with the commissioner, who answered.

      ‘Antonio Selleni, an anarchist of Milan,’ he reported.

      Carlos Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of the Escorial, Duke of Buda-Gratz, and heir to three thrones, was married, and his many august cousins scattered throughout Europe had a sense of heartfelt relief.

      A prince with admittedly advanced views, an idealist, with Utopian schemes for the regeneration of mankind, and, coming down to the mundane practical side of life, a reckless motorcar driver, an outrageously daring horseman, and possessed of the indifference to public opinion which is equally the equipment of your fool and your truly great man, his marriage had been looked forward to throughout the courts of Europe in the light of an international achievement.

      Said his Imperial Majesty of Central Europe to the grizzled chancellor:

      ‘Te Deums — you understand, von Hedlitz? In every church.’

      ‘It is a great relief,’ said the chancellor, wagging his head thoughtfully.

      ‘Relief!’ the Emperor stretched himself as though the relief were physical, ‘that young man owes me two years of life. You heard of the London essay?’

      The chancellor had heard — indeed, he had heard three or four times — but he was a polite chancellor and listened attentively. His Majesty had the true storytelling faculty, and elaborated the introduction.

      ‘…if I am to believe his Highness, he was sitting quietly in his box when the Italian entered. He saw the knife in his hand and half rose to grapple with the intruder. Suddenly, from nowhere in particular, sprang three men, who had the assassin on the floor bound and gagged. You would have thought our Carlos Ferdinand would have made an outcry! But not he! He sat stock still, dividing his attention between the stage and the prostrate man and the leader of this mysterious band of rescuers.’

      ‘The Four Just Men!’ put in the chancellor.

      ‘Three, so far as I can gather,’ corrected the imperial storyteller. ‘Well, it would appear that this leader, in quite a logical calm, matter-of-fact way, suggested that the prince should leave quietly; that his motorcar was at the stage door, that a saloon had been reserved at Charing Cross, a cabin at Dover, and a special train at Calais.’

      His Majesty had a trick of rubbing his knee when anything amused him, and this he did now.

      ‘Carl obeyed like a child — which seems the remarkably strange point about the whole proceedings — the captured anarchist was trussed and bound and sat on the chair, and left to his own unpleasant thoughts.’

      ‘And killed,’ said the chancellor.

      ‘No, not killed,’ corrected the Emperor. ‘Part of the story I tell you is his — he told it to the police at the hospital — no, no, not killed — his friend was not the marksman he thought.’