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

of the locality in which the interview had taken

place. On his way thither he had tried in vain to follow the direction

the shuttered motor-car had taken.

 

By what method the Four would convey their instructions he had no

idea. He was quite satisfied that they would find a way.

 

He reached his flat with his head swimming from the effects of the I

drug they had given him, and flung himself, dressed as he was, upon his

bed and slept. He slept well into the afternoon, then rose stiff and

irritable. A bath and a change refreshed him, and he walked out to keep

an appointment he had made.

 

On his way he remembered impatiently that there was a call to the

Council at five o’clock. It reminded him of his old rehearsal days.

Then he recollected that no place had been fixed for the council

meeting. He would find the quiet Francois in Leicester Square, so he

turned his steps in that direction.

 

Francois, patient, smiling, and as deferential as ever, awaited him.

‘The council was held at two o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I am to tell you

that we have decided on two projects.’ He looked left and right, with

elaborated caution.

 

‘There is at Gravesend’—he pronounced it ‘Gwayvse-end’—‘a

battleship that has put in for stores. It is the Grondovitch. It

will be fresh in your mind that the captain is the nobleman Svardo—we

have no reason to love him.’

 

‘And the second?’ asked Bartholomew.

 

Again Francois went through the pantomime that had so annoyed his

companion before.

 

‘It is no less than the Bank,’ he said triumphantly.

 

Bartholomew was aghast.

 

‘The Bank—the Bank of England! Why, you’re mad—you have taken

leave of your senses!’

 

Francois shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.

 

‘It is the order,’ he said; then, abruptly, ‘Au revoir,’ he

said, and, with his extravagant little bow, was gone.

 

If Bartholomew’s need for cutting himself adrift from the Red

Hundred existed before, the necessity was multiplied now a thousand

times. Any lingering doubt he might have had, any remote twinge of

conscience at the part he was playing, these vanished.

 

He glanced at his watch, and hurried to his destination.

 

It was the Red Room of the Hotel Larboune that he sought.

 

He found a table and ordered a drink.

 

The waiter was unusually talkative.

 

He stood by the solitary table at which Bartholomew sat, and chatted

pleasantly and respectfully. This much the other patrons of the

establishment noticed idly, and wondered whether it was racing or house

property that the two had in common.

 

The waiter was talking.

 

‘…I am inclined to disbelieve the story of the Grondovitch,

but the Embassy and the commander shall know—when do you leave?’

 

‘Just as soon as I can,’ said Bartholomew.

 

The waiter nodded and flicked some cigarette ash from the table with

his napkin.

 

‘And the Woman of Gratz?’ he asked.

 

Bartholomew made a gesture of doubt.

 

‘Why not,’ said the waiter, looking thoughtfully out of the window,

‘why not take her with you?’

 

There had been the germ of such a thought in Bartholomew’s mind, but

he had never given form to it—even to himself.

 

‘She is very beautiful, and, it occurred to me, not altogether

indifferent to your attractions—that kind of woman has a penchant for

your type, and frankly we would gladly see her out of the way—or

dead.’

 

M. Menshikoff was by no means vindictive, but there was obvious

sincerity in his voice when he pronounced the last two words. M.

Menshikoff had been right-hand man of the Grand Master of the Secret

Police for too many years to feel any qualms at the project of removing

an enemy to the system.

 

‘I thought we had her once,’ he said meditatively; ‘they would have

flogged her in the fortress of St Peter and Paul, but I stopped them.

She was grateful I think, and almost human…but it passed off.’

 

Bartholomew paid for his drink, and ostentatiously tipped the

obsequious man before him. He remembered as he did so that Menshikoff

was reputedly a millionaire.

 

‘Your change, m’sieur,’ said Menshikoff gravely, and he handed back

a few jingling coppers and two tightly folded banknotes for a hundred

pounds. He was a believer in the principle of ‘pay as you go’

Bartholomew pocketed the money carelessly.

 

‘Good day,’ he said loudly.

 

‘Au revoir, m’sieur, et ban voyage’, said the waiter.

 

CHAPTER VI. Princess Revolutionary

 

The Woman of Gratz was very human. But to Bartholomew she seemed a

thing of ice, passionless, just a beautiful woman who sat stiffly in a

straight-backed chair, regarding him with calm, questioning eyes. They

were in her flat in Bloomsbury on the evening of the day following his

interview with Menshikoff. Her coolness chilled him, and strangled the

very passion of his speech, and what he said came haltingly, and

sounded lame and unconvincing.

 

‘But why?’ that was all she asked. Thrice he had paused appealingly,

hoping for encouragement, but her answer had been the same.

 

He spoke incoherently, wildly. The fear of the Four on the one hand

and the dread of the Reds on the other, were getting on his nerves.

 

He saw a chance of escape from both, freedom from the four-walled

control of these organizations, and before him the wide expanse of a

trackless wilderness, where the vengeance of neither could follow.

 

Eden in sight—he pleaded for an Eve.

 

The very thought of the freedom ahead overcame the depression her

coldness laid upon him.

 

‘Maria—don’t you see? You are wasting your life doing this man’s

work—this assassin’s work. You were made for love and for me!’ He

caught her hand and she did not withdraw it, but the palm he pressed

was unresponsive and the curious searching eyes did not leave his

face.

 

‘But why?’ she asked again. ‘And how? I do not love you, I shall

never love any man—and there is the work for you and the work for me.

There is the cause and your oath. Your comrades—’

 

He started up and flung away her hand. For a moment he stood over

her, glowering down at her upturned face.

 

‘Work!—Comrades!’ he grated with a laugh. ‘D’ye think I’m going to

risk my precious neck any further?’

 

He did not hear the door open softly, nor the footfall of the two

men who entered.

 

‘Are you blind as well as mad?’ he went on brutally. ‘Don’t you see

that the thing is finished? The Four Just Men have us all in the hollow

of their hands! They’ve got us like that!’ He snapped his fingers

contemptuously. ‘They know everything—even to the attempt that is to

be made on the Prince of the Escorials! Ha! that startles you—yet it

is true, every word I say—they know.’

 

‘If it is true,’ she said slowly, ‘there has been a traitor.’

 

He waved his hand carelessly, admitting and dismissing the

possibility.

 

‘There are traitors always—when the pay for treachery is good,’ he

said easily; ‘but traitor or no traitor, London is too hot for you and

me.’

 

‘For you,’ corrected the girl.

 

‘And for you,’ he said savagely; he snatched up her hand again.

‘You’ve got to come—do you hear—you beautiful snow woman—you’ve got

to come with me!’

 

He drew her to him, but a hand grasped his arm, and he turned to

meet the face of Starque, livid and puckered, and creased with silent

anger.

 

Starque was prepared for the knife or for the pistol, but not for

the blow that caught him full in the face and sent him staggering back

to the wall.

 

He recovered himself quickly, and motioned to Francois, who turned

and locked the door.

 

‘Stand away from that door!’

 

‘Wait!’

 

Starque, breathing quickly, wiped the blood from his face with the

back of his hand.

 

Wait, he said in his guttural tone; ‘before you go there is a matter

to be settled.’

 

At any time, in any place,’ said the Englishman.

 

‘It is not the blow,’ breathed Starque, ‘that is nothing; it is the

matter of the Inner Council—traitor!’

 

He thrust out his chin as he hissed the last word.

 

Bartholomew had very little time to decide upon his course of

action. He was unarmed; but he knew instinctively that there would be

no shooting. It was the knife he had to fear and he grasped the back of

a chair. If he could keep them at a distance he might reach the door

and get safely away. He cursed his folly that he had delayed making the

coup that would have so effectively laid Starque by the heels.

 

‘You have betrayed us to the Four Just Men—but that we might never

have known, for the Four have no servants to talk. But you sold us to

the Embassy—and that was your undoing.’ He had recovered his calm.

 

‘We sent you a message telling you of our intention to destroy the

Bank of England. The Bank was warned—by the Four. We told you of the

attempt to be made on the Grondovitch—the captain was warned by

the Embassy—you are doubly convicted. No such attempts were ever

contemplated. They were invented for your particular benefit, and you

fell into the trap.’

 

Bartholomew took a fresh grip of the chair. He realized vaguely that

he was face to face with death, and for one second he was seized with a

wild panic.

 

‘Last night,’ Starque went on deliberately, ‘the Council met

secretly, and your name was read from the list.’ The Englishman’s mouth

went dry.

 

‘And the Council said with one voice…’ Starque paused to look at

the Woman of Gratz. Imperturbable she stood with folded hands, neither

approving nor dissenting. Momentarily Bartholomew’s eyes too sought her

face—but he saw neither pity nor condemnation. It was the face of

Fate, inexorable, unreasoning, inevitable.

 

‘Death was the sentence,’ said Starque in so soft a voice that the

man facing him could scarcely hear him. ‘Death…’

 

With a lightning motion he raised his hand and threw the knife…

‘Damn you…’ whimpered the stricken man, and his helpless hands groped

at his chest…then he slid to his knees and Francois struck

precisely…

 

Again Starque looked at the woman.

 

‘It is the law,’ he stammered, but she made no reply.

 

Only her eyes sought the huddled figure on the floor and her lips

twitched.

 

‘We must get away from here,’ whispered Starque.

 

He was shaking a little, for this was new work for him. The forces

of jealousy and fear for his personal safety had caused him to take

upon himself the office that on other occasions he left to lesser

men.

 

‘Who lives in the opposite flat?’

 

He had peeped through the door.

 

‘A student—a chemist,’ she replied in her calm, level tone.

 

Starque flushed, for her voice sounded almost strident coming after

the whispered conference between his companion and himself.

 

‘Softly, softly,’ he urged.

 

He stepped gingerly back to where the body was lying, made a circuit

about it, and pulled down the blind. He could not have explained the

instinct that made him do this. Then he came back to the door and

gently turned the handle, beckoning the others. It seemed to him that

the handle turned itself, or that somebody on the other side was

turning at the same time.

 

That this was so he discovered, for the door suddenly jerked open,

sending him staggering backward, and a man stood on the threshold.

 

With the drawn blind, the room was in