THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
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catered for, there were certain weeklies, The Times, and a collection of complimentary timetables to be obtained for the asking, and Bartholomew sought and found particulars of sailings. He might leave London on the next morning and overtake (via Brindisi and Suez) the German boat that would land him in Uganda in a couple of weeks.
On the whole he thought this course would be wise.
To tell the truth, the Red Hundred was becoming too much of a serious business; he had a feeling that he was suspect, and was more certain that the end of his unlimited financing was in sight. That much he had long since recognized, and had made his plans accordingly. As to the Four Just Men, they would come in with Menshikoff; it would mean only a duplication of treachery. Turning the pages of a Bradshaw, he mentally reviewed his position. He had in hand some seven hundred pounds, and his liabilities were of no account because the necessity for discharging them never occurred to him. Seven hundred pounds — and the red bean, and Menshikoff.
‘If they mean business,’ he said to himself, ‘I can count on three thousand.’
The obvious difficulty was to get into touch with the Four. Time was everything and one could not put an advertisement in the paper:
‘If the Four Just Men will communicate with L — B — they will hear of something to their advantage.’
Nor was it expedient to make in the agony columns of the London press even the most guarded reference to Red Beans after what had occurred at the Council Meeting. The matter of the Embassy was simple. Under his breath he cursed the Four Just Men for their unbusinesslike communication. If only they had mentioned or hinted at some rendezvous the thing might have been arranged.
A man in evening dress asked him if he had finished with the Bradshaw. He resigned it ungraciously, and calling a club waiter, ordered a whisky and soda and flung himself into a chair to think out a solution.
The man returned the Bradshaw with a polite apology.
‘So sorry to have interrupted, but I’ve been called abroad at a moment’s notice,’ he said.
Bartholomew looked up resentfully. This young man’s face seemed familiar.
‘Haven’t I met you somewhere?’ he asked.
The stranger shrugged his shoulders.
‘One is always meeting and forgetting,’ he smiled. ‘I thought I knew you, but I cannot quite place you.’
Not only the face but the voice was strangely familiar.
‘Not English,’ was Bartholomew’s mental analysis, ‘possibly French, more likely Slav — who the dickens can it be?’
In a way he was glad of the diversion, and found himself engaged in a pleasant discussion on fly fishing.
As the hands of the clock pointed to midnight, the stranger yawned and got up from his chair.
‘Going west?’ he asked pleasantly.
Bartholomew had no definite plans for spending the next hour, so he assented and the two men left the club together. They strolled across Piccadilly Circus and into Piccadilly, chatting pleasantly.
Through Half Moon Street into Berkeley Square, deserted and silent, the two men sauntered, then the stranger stopped. I’m afraid I’ve taken you out of your way,’ he said. ‘Not a bit,’ replied Bartholomew, and was conventionally amiable. Then they parted, and the ex-captain walked back by the way he had come, picking up again the threads of the problem that had filled his mind in the earlier part of the evening.
Halfway down Half Moon Street was a motorcar, and as he came abreast, a man who stood by the curb — and whom he had mistaken for a waiting chauffeur — barred his further progress. ‘Captain Bartholomew?’ he asked respectfully. ‘That is my name,’ said the other in surprise. ‘My master wishes to know whether you have decided.’
‘What — ?’
‘If,’ went on his imperturbable examiner, ‘if you have decided on the red — here is the car, if you will be pleased to enter.’
‘And if I have decided on the black?’ he asked with a little hesitation.
‘Under the circumstances,’ said the man without emotion, ‘my master is of opinion that for his greater safety, he must take steps to ensure your neutrality.’
There was no menace in the tone, but an icy matter-of-fact confidence that shocked this hardened adventurer.
In the dim light he saw something in the man’s hand — a thin bright something that glittered.
‘It shall be red!’ he said hoarsely.
The man bowed and opened the door of the car.
Bartholomew had regained a little of his self-assurance by the time he stood before the men.
He was not unused to masked tribunals. There had been one such since his elevation to the Inner Council.
But these four men were in evening dress, and the stagey setting that had characterized the Red Hundred’s Court of Justice was absent. There was no weird adjustment of lights, or rollings of bells, or partings of sombre draperies. None of the cheap trickery of the Inner Council.
The room was evidently a drawingroom, very much like a hundred other drawingrooms he had seen.
The four men who sat at equal distance before him were sufficiently ordinary in appearance save for their masks. He thought one of them wore a beard, but he was not sure. This man did most of the speaking.
‘I understand,’ he said smoothly, ‘you have chosen the red.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about my private affairs,’ replied Bartholomew.
‘You have chosen the red — again?’ said the man.
‘Why — again?’ demanded the prisoner.
The masked man’s eyes shone steadily through the holes in the mask.
‘Years ago,’ he said quietly, ‘there was an officer who betrayed his country and his comrades.’
‘That is an old lie.’
‘He was in charge of a post at which was stored a great supply of foodstuffs and ammunition,’ the mask went on. ‘There was a commandant of the enemy who wanted those stores, but had not sufficient men to rush the garrison.’
‘An old lie,’ repeated Bartholomew sullenly.
‘So the commandant hit upon the ingenious plan of offering a bribe. It was a risky thing, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, it would have been a futile business. Indeed, I am sure that I am understating the proportion — but the wily old commandant knew his man.’
There is no necessity to continue,’ said Bartholomew.
‘No correspondence passed,’ Manfred went on; ‘our officer was too cunning for that, but it was arranged that the officer’s answer should be conveyed thus.’
He opened his hand and Bartholomew saw two beans, one red and the other black, reposing in the palm.
‘The black was to be a refusal, the red an acceptance, the terms were to be scratched on the side of the red bean with a needle — and the sum agreed was £1,000.’ Bartholomew made no answer.
‘Exactly that sum we offer you to place us from time to time in possession of such information as we require concerning the movements of the Red Hundred.’
‘If I refuse?’
‘You will not refuse,’ replied the mask calmly; ‘you need the money, and you have even now under consideration a plan for cutting yourself adrift from your friends.’
‘You know so much—’ began the other with a shrug.
‘I