The Complete Four Just Men Page 42

  It could not have been a patient: he never admitted patients – he had none worth mentioning. The practice was a blind. Besides, the door had been locked, and he alone had the key. He tore the envelope open and took out the contents. It was a half-sheet of note-paper. The three lines of writing ran –

  You escaped tonight, and have only seven days to prepare yourself for the fate which awaits you.

  The Four Just Men

  He sank into his chair, crushed by the knowledge. They were the Just Men – and he had escaped them. The Just Men! He buried his face in his hands and tried to think. Seven days they gave him. Much could be done in seven days. The terror of death was upon him, he who had without qualm or remorse sent so many on the long journey. But this was he – himself! He clutched at his throat and glared round the room. Essley the poisoner – the expert; a specialist in death – the man who had revived the lost art of the Medicis and had hoodwinked the law. Seven days! Well, he would settle the business of the ironmaster. That was necessary to Black.

  He began to make feverish preparations for the future. There were no papers to destroy. He went into the surgery and emptied three bottles down the sink. The fourth he would want. The fourth had been useful to Black: a little green bottle with a glass stopper. He slipped it into his pocket.

  He let the tap run to wash away all trace of the drug he had spilt. The bottles he smashed and threw into a waste-bin.

  He went upstairs to his room, but he could not sleep. He locked his door and put a chair against it. With a revolver in his hand, he searched the cupboard and beneath the bed. He placed the revolver under his pillow and tried to sleep.

  Next morning found him haggard and ill, but none the less he made his toilet with customary care. Punctually at noon he presented himself at Hampstead and was shown into the drawing-room. The girl was alone when he entered. He noted with approval that she was very beautiful.

  That May Sandford did not like him he knew by instinct. He saw the cloud come to her pretty face as he came into her presence, and was amused in his cold way.

  ‘My father is out.’ she said.

  ‘That is good,’ said Essley, ‘for now we can talk.’ He seated himself without invitation.

  ‘I think it is only right to tell you, Dr Essley, that my father’s fears regarding me are quite groundless.’

  At that moment the ironmaster came in and shook hands warmly with the doctor. ‘Well, how do you think she looks?’ he asked.

  ‘Looks tell you nothing,’ said the other. It was not the moment for the feather. He had other things to do, and the feather was not the way. He chatted for a while and then rose. ‘I will send you some medicine,’ he said.

  She pulled a wry face.

  ‘You need not worry to take it,’ he said, with the touch of rancour that was one of his characteristics.

  ‘Can you come to dinner on Tuesday?’ asked Sandford.

  Essley considered. This was Saturday – three days out of seven, and anything might turn up in the meantime. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will come.’

  He took a cab to some chambers near the Thames Embankment. He had a most useful room there.

  Chapter 8

  Colonel Black has a shock

  Mr Sandford had an appointment with Colonel Black. It was the final interview before the break.

  The City was busy with rumours. A whisper had circulated; all was not well with the financier – the amalgamation on which so much depended had not gone through. Black sat at his desk that afternoon, idly twiddling a paper-knife. He was more sallow than usual; the hand that held the knife twitched nervously. He looked at his watch. It was time Sandford came. He pushed a bell by the side of his desk and a clerk appeared.

  ‘Has Mr Sandford arrived?’ he asked.

  ‘He has just come, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘Show him in.’

  The two men exchanged formal greetings, and Black pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, Sandford,’ he said curtly. ‘Now, exactly how do we stand?’

  ‘Where we did,’ said the other uncompromisingly.

  ‘You will not come into my scheme?’

  ‘I will not,’ said the other.

  Colonel Black tapped the desk with his knife, and Sandford looked at him. He seemed older than when he had last seen him. His yellow face was seamed and lined.

  ‘It means ruin for me,’ he said suddenly. ‘I have more creditors than I can count. If the amalgamation went through I should be established. There are lots of people in with me too – Ikey Tramber – you know Sir Isaac? He’s a friend of – er – the Earl of Verlond.’

  But the elder man was not impressed. ‘It is your fault if you’re in a hole,’ said he. ‘You have taken on too big a job – more than that, you have taken too much for granted.’

  The man at the desk looked up from under his straight brows. ‘It is all very well for you to sit there and tell me what I should do,’ he said, and the shakiness of his voice told the other something of the passion he concealed. ‘I do not want advice or homily – I want money. Come into my scheme and amalgamate, or – ’

  ‘Or – ’ repeated the ironmaster quietly.

  ‘I do not threaten you,’ said Black sullenly; ‘I warn you. You are risking more than you know.’

  ‘I’ll take the risk,’ said Sandford. He got up on to his feet. ‘Have you anything more to say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then I’ll bid you goodbye.’

  The door closed with a slam behind him, and Black did not move. He sat there until it was dark, doing no more than scribble aimlessly upon his blotting-pad. It was nearly dark when he drove back to the flat he occupied in Victoria Street and let himself in.

  ‘There is a gentleman waiting to see you, sir,’ said the man who came hurrying to help him out of his coat.

  ‘What sort of a man?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, sir, but I have got a feeling that he is a detective.’

  ‘A detective?’ He found his hands trembling, and cursed his folly. He stood uncertainly in the centre of the hall. In a minute he had mastered his fears and turned the handle of the door.

  A man rose to meet him. He had a feeling that he had met him before. It was one of those impressions that it is so difficult to explain.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, a note of deference in his voice. ‘I have called to make a few inquiries.’

  It was on the tip of Black’s tongue to ask him whether he was a police officer, but somehow he had not the courage to frame the words. The effort was unnecessary, as it proved, for the next words of the man explained his errand.

  ‘I have been engaged,’ he said, ‘by a firm of solicitors to discover the whereabouts of Dr Essley.’

  Black looked hard at him.

  ‘There ought to be no difficulty,’ he said, ‘in that. The doctor’s name is in the Directory.’

  ‘That is so,’ said the man, ‘and yet I have had the greatest difficulty in running him to earth. As a matter of fact,’ explained the man, ‘I was wrong when I said I wanted to discover his whereabouts. It is his identity I wish to establish.’

  ‘I do not follow you,’ said the financier.

  ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘I don’t know exactly how to put it. If you know Dr Essley, you will recall the fact that he was for some years in Australia.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Black. ‘He and I came back together.’

  ‘And you were there some years, sir?’

  ‘Yes, we were there for a number of years, though we were not together all the time.’

  ‘I see,’ said the man. ‘You went out together, I believe?’

  ‘No,’ replied the other sharply, ‘we went at different periods.’

  ‘Have you se
en him recently?’

  ‘No, I have not seen him, although I have frequently written to him on various matters.’ Black was trying hard not to lose his patience. It would not do for this man to see how much the questions were irritating him.

  The man jotted down something in his notebook, closed it and put it in his pocket. ‘Would you be surprised to learn,’ he asked quietly, ‘that the real Dr Essley who went out to Australia died there?’

  Black’s fingers caught the edge of the table and he steadied himself.

  ‘I did not know that,’ he said. ‘Is that all you have to ask?’ he said, as the man finished.

  ‘I think that will do, sir,’ said the detective.

  ‘Can I ask you on whose behalf you are inquiring?’ demanded the colonel.

  ‘That I am not at liberty to tell.’

  After he had gone, Black paced the apartment, deep in thought.

  He took down from the shelf a continental Baedeker and worked out with a pencil and paper a line of retirement. The refusal of Sandford to negotiate with him was the crowning calamity.

  He crossed the room to the safe which stood in the corner, and opened it. In the inside drawer were three flat packets of notes. He picked them out and laid them on the table. They were notes on the Bank of France, each for a thousand francs.

  It would be well to take no risks. He put them in the inside pocket of his coat. If all things failed, they were the way to freedom. As for Essley – he smiled.He must go any way. He left his flat and drove east-wards to the City. Two men followed him, though this he did not know.

  * * *

  Black boasted that his corporation kept no books, maintained no record, and this fact was emphasized the night that the Four had visited him unbidden. Their systematic search for evidence, which they had intended to use against him at a recognized tribunal, had failed to disclose the slightest vestige of documentary evidence which might be employed. Yet, if the truth be told, Black kept a very complete set of books, only they were in a code of his own devising, the key of which he had never put on paper, and which he only could understand.

  He was engaged on the evening of the detective’s visit in placing even these ledgers beyond the reach of the Four. He had good reason for his uneasiness. The Four had been very active of late, and they had thought fit to issue another challenge to Colonel Black. He was busy from nine o’clock to eleven, tearing up apparently innocent letters and burning them. When that hour struck, he looked at his watch and confirmed the time. He had very important business that night.

  He wrote a note to Sir Isaac Tramber, asking him to meet him that night. He had need of every friend, every pull, and every bit of help that could come to him.

  Chapter 9

  Lord Verlond gives a dinner

  Lord Verlond was an afternoon visitor at the Sandford establishment. He had come for many reasons, not the least of which nobody expected. He was a large shareholder in the Sandford Foundries, and with rumours of amalgamation in the air there was excuse enough for his visit. Doubly so, it seemed, when the first person he met was a large, yellow-faced man, confoundedly genial (in the worst sense of the word) and too ready to fraternize for the old man’s liking.

  ‘I have heard of you, my lord,’ said Colonel Black.

  ‘For the love of Heaven, don’t call me “my lord”!’ snapped the earl. ‘Man’ alive, you are asking me to be rude to you!’

  But no man of Verlond’s standing could be rude to the colonel, with his mechanical smile and his beaming eye.

  ‘I know a friend of yours, I think,’ he said, in that soothing tone which in a certain type of mind passes for deference.

  ‘You know Ikey Tramber, which is not the same thing,’ said the earl.

  Colonel Black made a noise indicating his amusement. ‘He always – ’ he began.

  ‘He always speaks well of me and says what a fine fellow I am, and how the earth loses its savour if he passes a day without seeing me,’ assisted Lord Verlond, his eyes alight with pleasant malice, ‘and he tells you what a good sportsman I am, and what a true and kindly heart beats behind my somewhat unprepossessing exterior, and how if people only knew me they would love me – he says all this, doesn’t he?’

  Colonel Black bowed.

  ‘I don’t think!’ said Lord Verlond vulgarly. He looked at the other for a while. ‘You shall come to dinner with me tonight – you will meet a lot of people who will dislike you intensely.’

  ‘I shall be delighted,’ murmured the colonel.

  He was hoping that in the conference which he guessed would be held between Sandford and his lordship he would be invited to participate. In this, however, he was disappointed. He might have taken his leave there and then, but he chose to stay and discuss art (which he imperfectly understood) with a young and distracted lady who was thinking about something else all the time.

  She badly wanted to bring the conversation round to the Metropolitan police force, in the hope that a rising young constable might be mentioned. She would have asked after him, but her pride prevented her. Colonel Black himself did not broach the subject.

  He was still discussing lost pictures when Lord Verlond emerged from the study with Sandford. ‘Let your daughter come,’ the earl was saying.

  Sandford was undecided. ‘I’m greatly obliged – I should not like her to go alone.’

  Something leapt inside Colonel Black’s bosom. A chance . . . !

  ‘If you are talking of the dinner tonight,’ he said with an assumption of carelessness, ‘I shall be happy to call in my car for you.’

  Still Sandford was not easy in his mind. It was May who should make the decision.

  ‘I think I’d like to, daddy,’ she said.

  She did not greatly enjoy the prospect of going anywhere with the colonel, but it would only be a short journey.

  ‘If I could stand in loco parentis to the young lady,’ said Black, nearly jocular, ‘I should esteem it an honour.’

  He looked round and caught a curious glint in Lord Verlond’s eyes. The earl was watching him closely, eagerly almost, and a sudden and unaccountable fear gripped the financier’s heart.

  ‘Excellent, excellent!’ murmured the old man, still watching him through lowered lids. ‘It isn’t far to go, and I think you’ll stand the journey well.’

  The girl smiled, but the grim fixed look on the earl’s face did not relax.

  ‘As you are an invalid, young lady,’ he went on, despite May’s laughing protest – ‘as you’re an invalid, young lady, I will have Sir James Bower and Sir Thomas Bigland to meet you – you know those eminent physicians, colonel? Your Dr Essley will, at any rate – experts both on the action of vegetable alkaloids.’

  Great beads of sweat stood on Black’s face, but his features were under perfect control. Fear and rage glowed in his eyes, but he met the other’s gaze defiantly. He smiled even – a slow, laboured smile. ‘That puts an end to any objection,’ he said almost gaily.

  The old man took his leave and was grinning to himself all the way back to town.

  The Earl of Verlond was a stickler for punctuality: a grim, bent old man, with a face that, so Society said, told eloquently the story of his life, his bitter tongue was sufficient to maintain for him the respect – or if not the respect, the fear that so ably substitutes respect – of his friends.

  ‘Friends’ is a word which you would never ordinarily apply to any of the earl’s acquaintances. He had apparently no friends save Sir Isaac Tramber. ‘I have people to dine with me,’ he had said cynically when this question of friendship was once discussed by one who knew him sufficiently well to deal with so intimate a subject.

  That night he was waiting in the big library of Carnarvon Place. The earl was one of those men who observed a rigid time-table every day of his life. He glanced at his watch; in two minute
s he would be on his way to the drawing-room to receive his guests.

  Horace Gresham was coming. A curious invitation, Sir Isaac Tramber had thought, and had ventured to remark as much, presuming his friendship.

  ‘When I want your advice as to my invitation list, Ikey,’ said the earl, ‘I will send you a prepaid telegram.’

  ‘I thought you hated him,’ grumbled Sir Isaac.

  ‘Hate him! Of course I hate him. I hate everybody. I should hate you, but you are such an insignificant devil,’ said the earl. ‘Have you made your peace with Mary?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by “making my peace”,’ said Sir Isaac complainingly. ‘I tried to be amiable to her, and I only seemed to succeed in making a fool of myself.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the nobleman with a little chuckle, ‘she would like you best natural.’

  Sir Isaac shot a scowling glance at his patron. ‘I suppose you know,’ he said, ‘that I want to marry Mary.’

  ‘I know that you want some money without working for it,’ said the earl. ‘You have told me about it twice. I am not likely to forget it. It is the sort of thing I think about at nights.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t pull my leg,’ growled the baronet. ‘Are you waiting for any other guests?’

  ‘No,’ snarled the earl, ‘I am sitting on the top of Mont Blanc eating rice pudding.’ There was no retort to this. ‘I’ve invited quite an old friend of yours,’ said the earl suddenly, ‘but it doesn’t look as if he was turning up.’

  Ikey frowned. ‘Old friend?’

  The other nodded. ‘Military gent,’ he said laconically. ‘A colonel in the army, though nobody knows the army.’

  Sir Isaac’s jaw dropped. ‘Not Black?’

  Lord Verlond nodded. He nodded several times, like a gleeful child confessing a fault of which it was inordinately proud. ‘Black it is,’ he said, but made no mention of the girl.