Prologue

       Thery’s Trade

       Table of Contents

      If you leave the Plaza del Mina, go down the narrow street, where, from ten till four, the big flag of the United States Consulate hangs lazily; through the square on which the Hotel de la France fronts, round by the Church of Our Lady, and along the clean, narrow thoroughfare that is the High Street of Cadiz, you will come to the Cafe of the Nations.

      At five o’clock there will be few people in the broad, pillared saloon, and usually the little round tables that obstruct the sidewalk before its doors are untenanted.

      In the late summer (in the year of the famine) four men sat about one table 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.

      You may, if you are inquisitive, and have the necessary permission, inspect his photograph taken in eighteen positions — with his hands across his broad chest, full faced, with a three-days’ growth of beard, profile, with — but why enumerate the whole eighteen?

      There are also photographs of his ears — and very ugly, bat-shaped ears they are — and a long and comprehensive story of his life.

      Signor Paolo Mantegazza, Director of the National Museum of Anthropology, Florence, has done Thery the honour of including him in his admirable work (see chapter on ‘Intellectual Value of a Face’); hence I say that to all students of criminology and physiognomy, Thery must need no introduction.

      He sat at a 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 di 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.

      “Bah! Who ever killed a man with a bomb! Yes, yes; I know it has been done — but so clumsy, so primitive, so very much like undermining a city wall that it may fall and slay — amongst others — your enemy.”

      Poiccart was reading the telegram deliberately and without haste, after his fashion.

      “The Prince was severely injured and the would-be assassin lost an arm,” he read, and pursed his lips disapprovingly. The hands of Gonsalez, never still, opened and shut nervously, which was Leon’s sign of perturbation.

      “Our friend here” — Manfred jerked his head in the direction of Gonsalez and laughed— “our friend has a conscience and — —”

      “Only once,” interrupted Leon quickly, “and not by my wish you remember, Manfred; you remember, Poiccart” — he did not address Thery— “I advised against it. You remember?” He seemed anxious to exculpate himself from the unspoken charge. “It was a miserable little thing, and I was in Madrid,” he went on breathlessly, “and they came to me, some men from a factory at Barcelona. They said what they were going to do, and I was horror-stricken at their ignorance of the elements of the laws of chemistry. I wrote down the ingredients and the proportions, and begged them, yes, almost on my knees, to use some other method. ‘My children,’ I said, ‘you are playing with something that even chemists are afraid to handle. If the owner of the factory is a bad man, by all means exterminate him, shoot him, wait on him after