The Council of Justice - Edgar Wallace (best autobiographies to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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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 motor-car 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 story-telling 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
story-teller. ‘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 motor-car 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.’
CHAPTER IX. The Four v. The Hundred
Some workmen, returning home of an evening and taking a short cut
through a field two miles from Catford, saw a man hanging from a
tree.
They ran across and found a fashionably dressed gentleman of foreign
appearance. One of the labourers cut the rope with his knife, but the
man was dead when they cut him down. Beneath the tree was a black bag,
to which somebody had affixed a label bearing the warning, ‘Do not
touch—this bag contains explosives: inform the police.’ More
remarkable still was the luggage label tied to the lapel of the dead
man’s coat. It ran: ‘This is Franz Kitsinger, convicted at Prague in
1904, for throwing a bomb: escaped from prison March 17, 1905, was one
of the three men responsible for the attempt on the Tower Bridge today.
Executed by order of The Council of Justice.’
‘It’s a humiliating confession,’ said the chief commissioner when
they brought the news to him, ‘but the presence of these men takes a
load off my mind.’
But the Red Hundred were grimly persistent.
That night a man, smoking a cigar, strolled aimlessly past the
policeman on point duty at the corner of Kensington Park Gardens, and
walked casually into Ladbroke Square. He strolled on, turned a corner
and, crossing a road, he came to where one great garden served for a
double row of middle-class houses. The backs of these houses opened on
to the square. He looked round and, seeing the coast clear, he
clambered over the iron railings and dropped into the big pleasure
ground, holding very carefully an object that bulged in his pocket.
He took a leisurely view of the houses before he decided on the
victim. The blinds of this particular house were up and the French
windows of the dining-room were open, and he could see the laughing
group of young people about the table. There was a birthday party or
something of the sort in progress, for there was a great parade of
Parthian caps and paper sunbonnets.
The man was evidently satisfied with the possibilities for tragedy,
and he took a pace nearer…
Two strong arms were about him, arms with muscles like cords of
steel.
‘Not that way, my friend,’ whispered a voice in his ear…
The man showed his teeth in a dreadful grin.
The sergeant on duty at Notting Hill Gate Station received a note at
the hands of a grimy urchin, who for days afterwards maintained a
position of enviable notoriety.
‘A gentleman told me to bring this,’ he said.
The sergeant looked at the small boy sternly and asked him if he
ever washed his face. Then he read the letter:
‘The second man of the three concerned in the attempt to blow up the
Tower Bridge will be found in the garden of Maidham Crescent, under the
laurel bushes, opposite No. 72.’
It was signed ‘The Council of Justice’.
The commissioner was sitting over his coffee at the Ritz, when they
brought him the news. Falmouth was a deferential guest, and the chief
passed him the note without comment.
‘This is going to settle the Red Hundred,’ said Falmouth. ‘These
people are fighting them with their own weapons—assassination with
assassination, terror with terror. Where do we come in?’
‘We come in at the end,’ said the commissioner, choosing his words
with great niceness, ‘to clean up the mess, and take any scraps of
credit that are going’—he paused and shook his head. ‘I hope—I should
be sorry—’ he began.
‘So should I,’ said the detective sincerely, for he knew that his
chief was concerned for the ultimate safety of the men whose arrest it
was his duty to effect. The commissioner’s brows were wrinkled
thoughtfully.
‘Two,’ he said musingly; ‘now, how on earth do the Four Just Men
know the number in this—and how did they track them down—and who is
the third?—heavens! one could go on asking questions the whole of the
night!’
On one point the Commissioner might have been informed earlier in
the evening—he was not told until three o’clock the next morning. The
third man was Von Dunop. Ignorant of the fate of his fellow-Terrorists,
he sallied forth to complete the day notably.
The crowd at a theatre door started a train of thought, but he
rejected that outlet to ambition. It was too public, and the chance of
escape was nil. These British audiences did not lose their heads so
quickly; they refused to be confounded by noise and smoke, and a
writhing figure here and there. Von Dunop was no exponent of the Glory
of Death school. He greatly desired glory, but the smaller the risk,
the greater the glory. This was his code.
He stood for a moment outside the Hotel Ritz. A party of diners were
leaving, and motor-cars were being steered up to carry these accursed
plutocrats to the theatre. One soldierly-looking gentleman, with a grey
moustache, and attended by a quiet, observant, cleanshaven man,
interested the anarchist. He and the soldier exchanged glances.
‘Who the dickens was that?’ asked the commissioner as he stepped
into the taxi. ‘I seem to know his face.’
‘I have seen him before,’ said Falmouth. ‘I won’t go with you, sir—
I’ve a little business to do in this part of the world.’
Thereafter Von Dunop was not permitted to enjoy his walk in
solitude, for, unknown to him, a man ‘picked him up’ and followed him
throughout the evening. And as the hour grew later, that one man became
two, at eleven o’clock he became three, and at quarter to twelve, when
Von Dunop had finally fixed upon the scene and scope of his exploit, he
turned from Park Lane into Brook Street to discover, to his annoyance,
quite a number of people within call. Yet he suspected nothing. He did
not suspect the night wanderer mooching along the curb with downcast
eyes, seeking the gutter for the stray cigar end; nor the two loudly
talking men in suits of violet check who wrangled as they walked
concerning the relative merits of the favourites for the Derby; nor the
commissionaire trudging home with his bag in his hand and a pipe in his
mouth, nor the cleanshaven man in evening dress.
The Home Secretary had a house in Berkeley Square. Von Dunop knew
the number very well. He slackened pace to allow the man in evening
dress to pass. The slow-moving taxi that was fifty yards away he must
risk. This taxi had been his constant attendant during the last hour,
but he did not know
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