The Council of Justice - Edgar Wallace (best autobiographies to read TXT) 📗

who was farming in Uganda. It was not

remarkable that he should suddenly remember his friend’s existence and

call to mind a three years’ old invitation to spend a winter in that

part of Africa. Bartholomew had a club. It was euphemistically styled

in all the best directories as ‘Social, Literary and Dramatic’, but

knowing men about town called it by a shorter title. To them it was a

‘night club’. Poorly as were the literary members 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 motor-car, 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 drawing-room, very much like a hundred

other drawing-rooms 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 know a great deal. For instance, I know that you contemplate

immediate flight—by the way, are you aware that the Lucus

Woerhmann is in dock at Naples with a leaking boiler?’

 

Bartholomew started, as well he might, for nobody but himself knew

that the Lucus Woerhmann was the ship he had hoped to overtake

at Suez.

 

Manfred saw his bewilderment and smiled. ‘I do not ask credit for

supernatural powers,’ he said; ‘frankly, it was the merest guesswork,

but you must abandon your trip. It is necessary for our greater success

that you should remain.’

 

Bartholomew bit his lips. This scheme did not completely fall in

with his plans. He affected a sudden geniality.

 

‘Well, if I must, I must,’ he said heartily, ‘and since I agree, may

I ask whom I have the honour of addressing, and further, since I am now

your confidential agent, that I may see the faces of my employers?’

 

He recognized the contempt in Manfred’s laugh.

 

‘You need no introduction to us,’ said Manfred coldly, ‘and you will

understand we do not intend taking you into our confidence. Our

agreement is that we share your confidence, not that you shall share

ours.’

 

‘I must know something,’ said Bartholomew doggedly. ‘What am I to

do? Where am I to report! How shall I be paid?’

 

‘You will be paid when your work is completed.’ Manfred reached out

his hand toward a little table that stood within his reach.

 

Instantly the room was plunged into darkness.

 

The traitor sprang back, fearing he knew not what.

 

‘Come—do not be afraid,’ said a voice.

 

‘What does this mean?’ cried Bartholomew, and stepped forward.

 

He felt the floor beneath him yield and tried to spring backwards,

but already he had lost his balance, and with a scream of terror he

felt himself falling, falling…

 

‘Here, wake up!’

 

Somebody was shaking his arm and he was conscious of an icy coldness

and a gusty raw wind that buffeted his face.

 

He shivered and opened his eyes.

 

First of all he saw an iron camel with a load on its back; then he

realized dimly that it was the ornamental support of a garden seat;

then he saw a dull grey parapet of grimy stone. He was sitting on a

seat on the Thames Embankment, and a policeman was shaking him, not

ungently, to wakefulness.

 

‘Come along, sir—this won’t do, ye know.’

 

He staggered to his feet unsteadily. He was wearing a fur coat that

was not his.

 

‘How did I come here?’ he asked in a dull voice.

 

The policeman laughed good humouredly.

 

‘Ah, that’s more than I can tell you—you weren’t here ten minutes

ago, that I’ll swear.’

 

Bartholomew put his hand in his pocket and found some money.

 

‘Call me a taxi,’ he said shakily and one was found.

 

He left the policeman perfectly satisfied with the result of his

morning’s work and drove home to his lodgings. By what extraordinary

means had he reached the Embankment? He remembered the Four, he

remembered the suddenly darkened room, he remembered falling—Perhaps

he lost consciousness, yet he could not have been injured by his fall.

He had a faint recollection of somebody telling him to breathe and of

inhaling a sweet sickly vapour—and that was all.

 

The coat was not his. He thrust his hands into both pockets and

found a letter. Did he but know it was of the peculiar texture that had

made the greenish-grey paper of the Four Just Men famous throughout

Europe.

 

The letter was brief and to the point:

 

For faithful service, you will be rewarded; for treachery, there

will be no net to break your fall.

 

He shivered again. Then his impotence, his helplessness, enraged

him, and he swore softly and weakly.

 

He was ignorant