THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
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to visit a theatre — the same night he was found dead in the public square with a sword thrust through his heart. There were two extraordinary things about it.” The foreign editor ticked them on off his fingers. “First, the General was a noted swordsman, and there was every evidence that he had not been killed in cold blood, but had been killed in a duel; the second was that he wore corsets, as many of these Germanised officers do, and one of his assailants had discovered this fact, probably by a sword thrust, and had made him discard them; at any rate when he was found this frippery was discovered close by his body.”
“Was it known at the time that it was the work of the Four?” asked the editor.
Welby shook his head.
“Even I had never heard of them before,” he said resentfully. Then asked, “What have you done about your little scare?”
“I’ve seen the hall porters and the messengers, and every man on duty at the time, but the coming and the going of our mysterious friend — I don’t suppose there was more than one — is unexplained. It really is a remarkable thing. Do you know, Welby, it gives me quite an uncanny feeling; the gum on the envelope was still wet; the letter must have been written on the premises and sealed down within a few seconds of my entering the room.”
“Were the windows open?”
“No; all three were shut and fastened, and it would have been impossible to enter the room that way.”
The detective who came to receive a report of the circumstances endorsed this opinion.
“The man who wrote this letter must have left your room not longer than a minute before you arrived,” he concluded, and took charge of the letter.
Being a young and enthusiastic detective, before finishing his investigations he made a most minute search of the room, turning up carpets, tapping walls, inspecting cupboards, and taking laborious and unnecessary measurements with a foot-rule.
“There are a lot of our chaps who sneer at detective stories,” he explained to the amused editor, “but I have read almost everything that has been written by Gaboriau and Conan Doyle, and I believe in taking notice of little things. There wasn’t any cigar ash or anything of that sort left behind, was there?” he asked wistfully.
“I’m afraid not,” said the editor gravely.
“Pity,” said the detective, and wrapping up the ‘infernal machine’ and its appurtenances, he took his departure.
Afterwards the editor informed Welby that the disciple of Holmes had spent half an hour with a magnifying glass examining the floor.
“He found half a sovereign that I lost weeks ago, so it’s really an ill wind — —”
All that evening nobody but Welby and the chief knew what had happened in the editor’s room. There was some rumour in the subeditor’s department that a small accident had occurred in the sanctum.
“Chief busted a fuse in his room and got a devil of a fright,” said the man who attended to the Shipping List.
“Dear me,” said the weather expert, looking up from his chart, “do you know something like that happened to me: the other night — —”
The chief had directed a few firm words to the detective before his departure.
“Only you and myself know anything about this occurrence,” said the editor, “so if it gets out I shall know it comes from Scotland Yard.”
“You may be sure nothing will come from us,” was the detective’s reply: “we’ve got into too much hot water already.”
“That’s good,” said the editor, and ‘that’s good’ sounded like a threat.
So that Welby and the chief kept the matter a secret till half an hour before the paper went to press.
This may seem to the layman an extraordinary circumstance, but experience has shown most men who control newspapers that news has an unlucky knack of leaking out before it appears in type.
Wicked compositors — and even compositors can be wicked — have been known to screw up copies of important and exclusive news, and throw them out of a convenient window so that they have fallen close to a patient man standing in the street below and have been immediately hurried off to the office of a rival newspaper and sold for more than their weight in gold. Such cases have been known.
But at half past eleven the buzzing hive of Megaphone House began to hum, for then it was that the subeditors learnt for the first time of the ‘outrage’.
It was a great story — yet another Megaphone scoop, headlined half down the page with the ‘Just four’ again — outrage at the office of the Megaphone — devilish ingenuity — Another Threatening Letter — The Four Will Keep Their Promise — Remarkable Document — Will the Police save Sir Philip Ramon?
“A very good story,” said the chief complacently, reading the proofs.
He was preparing to leave, and was speaking to Welby by the door.
“Not bad,” said the discriminating Welby. “What I think — hullo!”
The last was addressed to a messenger who appeared with a stranger.
“Gentleman wants to speak to somebody, sir — bit excited, so I brought him up; he’s a foreigner, and I can’t understand him, so I brought him to you” — this to Welby.
“What do you want?” asked the chief in French.
The man shook his head, and said a few words in a strange tongue.
“Ah!” said Welby, “Spanish — what do you wish?” he said in that language.
“Is this the office of that paper?” The man produced a grimy copy of the Megaphone.
“Yes.”
“Can I speak to the editor?”
The chief looked suspicious.
“I am the editor,” he said.
The man looked over his shoulder, then leant forward.
“I am one of The Four Just Men,” he said hesitatingly. Welby took a step towards him and scrutinised him closely.
“What is your name?” he asked quickly.
“Miguel Thery of Jerez,” replied the man.
It was half past ten when, returning from a concert, the cab that bore Poiccart and Manfred westward passed through Hanover Square and turned off to Oxford Street.
“You ask to see the editor,” Manfred was explaining; “they take you up to the offices; you explain your business to somebody; they are very sorry, but they cannot help you; they are very polite, but not to the extent of seeing you off the premises, so, wandering about seeking your way out, you come to the editor’s room and, knowing that he is out, slip in, make your arrangements, walk out, locking the door after you if nobody is about, addressing a few farewell words to an imaginary occupant, if you are seen, and voila!”
Poiccart bit the end of his cigar.
“Use for your envelope a gum that will not dry under an hour and you heighten the mystery,” he said quietly, and Manfred was amused.
“The envelope-just-fastened is an irresistible attraction to an English detective.”
The cab speeding along Oxford Street turned into Edgware Road, when Manfred put up his hand and pushed open the trap in the roof.
“We’ll get down here,” he called, and the driver pulled up to the sidewalk.
“I thought you said Pembridge Gardens?” he remarked as Manfred paid him.
“So I did,” said Manfred; “goodnight.”
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