The Complete Four Just Men Read online

He looked at his watch again and pulled a little face. ‘Stay here,’ he commanded. ‘I’m going to telephone.’

  ‘Can I – ’

  ‘You can’t!’ snapped the earl. He was gone some time, and when he returned to the library there was a smile on his face. ‘Your pal’s not coming,’ he said, and offered no explanation either for the inexplicable behaviour of the colonel or for his amusement.

  At dinner Horace Gresham found himself seated next to the most lovely woman in the world. She was also the kindest and the easiest to amuse. He was content to forget the world, and such of the world who were gathered about the earl, but Lord Verlond had other views.

  ‘Met a friend of yours today,’ he said abruptly and addressing Horace.

  ‘Indeed, sir?’ The young man was politely interested.

  ‘Sandford – that terribly prosperous gentleman from Newcastle.’

  Horace nodded cautiously.

  ‘Friend of yours too, ain’t he?’ The old man turned swiftly to Sir Isaac. ‘I asked his daughter to come to dinner – father couldn’t come. She ain’t here.’

  He glared round the table for the absent girl.

  ‘In a sense Sandford is a friend of mine,’ said Sir Isaac no less cautiously, since he must make a statement in public without exactly knowing how the elder man felt on the subject of the absent guests; ‘at least, he’s a friend of a friend.’

  ‘Black,’ snarled Lord Verlond, ‘bucket-shop swindler – are you in it?’

  ‘I have practically severed my connection with him,’ Sir Isaac hastened to say.

  Verlond grinned. ‘That means he’s broke,’ he said, and turned to Horace. ‘Sandford’s full of praise for a policeman who’s mad keen on his girl – friend of yours?’

  Horace nodded. ‘He’s a great friend of mine,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a policeman,’ said Horace.

  ‘And I suppose he’s got two legs and a head and a pair of arms,’ said the earl. ‘You’re too full of information – I know he’s a policeman. Everybody seems to be talking about him. Now, what does he do, where does he come from – what the devil does it all mean?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any information,’ said Horace. ‘The only thing that I am absolutely certain about in my own mind is that he is a gentleman.’

  ‘A gentleman and a policeman?’ asked the earl incredulously.

  Horace nodded.

  ‘A new profession for the younger son, eh?’ remarked Lord Verlond sardonically. ‘No more running away and joining the army; no more serving before the mast; no more cow-punching on the pampas – ’

  A look of pain came into Lady Mary’s eyes. The old lord swung round on her.

  ‘Sorry’ he growled. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that young fool. No more dashing away to the ends of the earth for the younger son; no dying picturesquely in the Cape Mounted Rifles, or turning up at an appropriate hour with a bag of bullion under each arm to save the family from ruin. Join the police force, that’s the game. You ought to write a novel about that: a man who can write letters to the sporting papers can write anything.’

  ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘I am coming down to Lincoln on Tuesday to see that horse of yours lose.’

  ‘You will make your journey in vain,’ said Horace. ‘I have arranged for him to win.’

  He waited later for an opportunity to say a word in private to the old man. It did not come till the end of the dinner, when he found himself alone with the earl. ‘By the way,’ he said, with an assumption of carelessness, ‘I want to see you on urgent private business.’

  ‘Want money?’ asked the earl, looking at him suspiciously from underneath his shaggy brows.

  Horace smiled. ‘No, I – don’t think I am likely to borrow money,’ he said.

  ‘Want to marry my niece?’ asked the old man with brutal directness.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Horace coolly. He could adapt himself to the old man’s mood.

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ said the earl. ‘You have arranged for your horse to win, I have arranged for her to marry Ikey. At least,’ he corrected himself, ‘Ikey has arranged with me.’

  ‘Suppose she doesn’t care for this plan?’ asked Horace.

  ‘I don’t suppose she does,’ said the old man with a grin. ‘I can’t imagine anybody liking Ikey, can you? I think he’s a hateful devil. He doesn’t pay his debts, he has no sense of honour, very little sense of decency; his associates, including myself, are the worst men in London.’

  He shook his head suspiciously.

  ‘He’s being virtuous now,’ he growled, ‘told me so confidentially; informed me that he was turning over a new leaf. What a rotten confession for a man of his calibre to make! I mistrust him in his penitent mood.’

  He looked up suddenly.

  ‘You go and cut him out,’ he said, the tiny flame of malice, which gave his face such an extraordinary character, shining in his eyes. ‘Good idea, that! Go and cut him out; it struck me Mary was a little keen on you. Damn Ikey! Go along!’

  He pushed the astonished youth from him.

  Horace found the girl in the conservatory. He was bubbling over with joy. He had never expected to make so easy a conquest of the old man – so easy that he almost felt frightened. It was as if the Earl of Verlond, with that sardonic humour of his, was devising some method of humiliating him. Impulsively he told her all that had happened.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he cried, ‘he was so ready, so willing. He was brutal, of course, but that was natural.’

  She looked at him with a little glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘I don’t think you know uncle,’ she said quietly.

  ‘But – but – ’ he stammered.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she went on, ‘everybody thinks they do. They think he’s the most horrid old man in the world. Sometimes,’ she confessed, ‘I have shared their opinion. I can never understand why he sent poor Con away.’

  ‘That was your brother?’ he asked.

  She nodded. Her eyes grew moist.

  ‘Poor boy,’ she said softly, ‘he didn’t understand uncle. I didn’t then. I sometimes think uncle doesn’t understand himself very well,’ she said with a sad little smile. ‘Think of the horrid things he says about people – think of the way he makes enemies – ’

  ‘And yet, I am ready to believe he is a veritable Gabriel,’ said Horace fervently. ‘He is a benefactor of the human race, a king among men, the distributor of great gifts – ’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, and laying her hand on his arm, she led him to the farther end of the big palm court.

  Whatever pleasure the old lord brought to Horace, it found no counterpart in his dealings with Sir Isaac.

  He alternately patted and kicked him, until the baronet was writhing with rage. The old man seemed to take a malicious pleasure in ruffling the other. That the views he expressed at ten o’clock that night were in absolute contradiction to those that he had put into words at eight o’clock on the same night did not distress him; he would have changed them a dozen times during the course of twenty-four hours if he could have derived any pleasure from so doing.

  Sir Isaac was in an evil frame of mind when a servant brought him a note. He looked round for a quiet place in which to read it. He half suspected its origin. But why had Black missed so splendid an opportunity of meeting Lord Verlond? The note would explain, perhaps.

  He crossed the room and strolled towards the conservatory, reading the letter carefully. He read it twice, then he folded it up and put it into his pocket; he had occasion to go to that pocket again almost immediately, for he pulled out his watch to see the time.

  When he had left the little retreat on his way to the hall, he left behind him a folded slip of paper on the floor.

&nb
sp; This an exalted Horace, deliriously happy, discovered on his way back to the card-room. He handed it to Lord Verlond who, having no scruples, read it – and, reading it in the seclusion of his study, grinned.

  Chapter 10

  A policeman’s business

  There was living at Somers Town at that time a little man named Jakobs. He was a man of some character, albeit an unfortunate person with ‘something behind him’. The something behind him, however, had come short of a lagging. ‘Carpets’ (three months’ hard labour) almost innumerable had fallen to his share, but a lagging had never come his way.

  A little wizened-faced man, with sharp black eyes, very alert in his manner, very neatly dressed, he conveyed the impression that he was enjoying a day off, but so far as honest work was concerned Jakobs’s day was an everlasting one.

  Mr Jakobs had been a pensioner of Colonel Black’s for some years. During that period of time Willie Jakobs had lived the life of a gentleman. That is to say, he lived in the manner which he thought conformed more readily to the ideal than that which was generally accepted by the wealthier classes.

  There were moments when he lived like a lord – again he had his own standard – but these periods occurred at rare intervals, because Willie was naturally abstemious. But he certainly lived like a gentleman, as all Somers Town agreed, for he went to bed at whatsoever hour he chose, arose with such larks as were abroad at the moment, or stayed in bed reading his favourite journal.

  A fortunate man was he, never short of a copper for a half-pint of ale, thought no more of spending a shilling on a race than would you or I, was even suspected of taking his breakfast in bed, a veritable hall-mark of luxury and affluence by all standards.

  To him every Saturday morning came postal orders to the value of two pounds sterling from a benefactor who asked no more than that the recipient should be happy and forget that he ever saw a respected dealer in stocks and shares in the act of rifling a dead man’s pockets.

  For this William Jakobs had seen.

  Willie was a thief, born so, and not without pride in his skilful-fingered ancestry. He had joined the firm of Black and Company less with the object of qualifying for a pension twenty years hence than on the off chance of obtaining an immediate dividend.

  He was guarded by the very principles which animated the head of his firm.

  There was an obnoxious member of the board – obnoxious to the genial Colonel Black – who had died suddenly. A subsequent inquisition came to the conclusion that he died from syncope: even Willie knew no better. He had stolen quietly into the managing director’s office one day in the ordinary course of business, for Master Jakobs stole quietly, but literally and figuratively. He was in search of unconsidered stamps and such loose coinage as might be found in the office of a man notoriously careless in the matter of small change. He had expected to find the room empty, and was momentarily paralysed to see the great Black himself bending over the recumbent figure of a man, busily searching the pockets of a dead man for a letter – for the silent man on the floor had come with his resignation in his pocket and had indiscreetly embodied in this letter his reasons for taking the step. Greatest indiscretion of all, he had revealed the existence of this very compromising document to Colonel Black.

  Willie Jakobs knew nothing about the letter – had no subtle explanation for the disordered pocket-book. To his primitive mind Colonel Black was making a search for money: it was, in fact, a stamp-hunt on a large scale, and in his agitation he blurted this belief.

  At the subsequent inquest Mr Jakobs did not give evidence. Officially he knew nothing concerning the matter. Instead he retired to his home in Somers Town, a life pensioner subject to a continuation of his reticence. Two years later, one Christmas morning, Mr Jakobs received a very beautiful box of chocolates by post, “with every good wish”, from somebody who did not trouble to send his or her name. Mr Jakobs, being no lover of chocolate drops, wondered what it had cost and wished the kindly donor had sent beer.

  ‘Hi, Spot, catch!’ said Mr Jakobs, and tossed a specimen of the confectioner’s art to his dog, who possessed a sweet tooth.

  The dog ate it, wagging his tail, then he stopped wagging his tail and lay down with a shiver – dead.

  It was some time before Willie Jakobs realized the connection between the stiff little dog and this bland and ornate Christmas gift.

  He tried a chocolate on his landlord’s dog, and it died. He experimented on a fellow-lodger’s canary, and it died too – he might have destroyed the whole of Somers Town’s domestic menagerie but for the timely intervention of his landlord, who gave him in charge for his initial murder. Then the truth came out. The chocolates were poisoned. Willie Jakobs found his photograph in the public Press as the hero of a poisoning mystery: an embarrassment for Willie, who was promptly recognized by a Canning Town tradesman he had once victimized, and was arrested for the second time in a week.

  Willie came out of gaol (it was a ‘carpet’) expecting to find an accumulation of one-pound postal orders awaiting him. Instead he found one five-pound note and a typewritten letter, on perfectly plain uncompromising paper, to the effect that the sender regretted that further supplies need not be expected.

  Willie wrote to Colonel Black, and received in reply a letter in which ‘Colonel Black could not grasp the contents of yours of the 4th. He has never sent money, and fails to understand why the writer should have expected’, etc., etc.

  Willie, furious and hurt at the base ingratitude and duplicity of his patron, carried the letter and a story to a solicitor, and the solicitor said one word – ‘Blackmail!’ Here, then, was a disgruntled Willie Jakobs forced to work: to depend upon chance bookings and precarious liftings. Fortunately his right hand had not lost its cunning, nor, for the matter of that, had his left. He ‘clicked’ to good stuff, fenced it with the new man in Eveswell Road (he was lagged eventually because he was only an amateur and gave too much for the stuff), and did well – so well, indeed, that he was inclined to take a mild view of Black’s offences.

  On the evening of Lord Verlond’s dinner party – though, to do him justice, it must be confessed that Jakobs knew nothing of his lordship’s plans – he sallied forth on business intent.

  He made his way through the tiny court and narrow streets which separated him from Stibbington Street, there turning southwards to the Euston Road, and taking matters leisurely, he made his way to Tottenham Court Road, en route to Oxford Street.

  Tottenham Court Road, on that particular night, was filled with interested people.

  They were interested in shop windows, interested in one another, interested in boarding and alighting from buses. It was an ideal crowd from Jakobs’s point of view.

  He liked people who concentrated, who fixed their minds on one thing and had no thought for any other. In a sense he was something of a psychologist, and he looked round to find some opulent person whose powers of concentration might be of service to himself.

  Gathered round the steps of an omnibus, impatiently waiting for other passengers to disembark, was a little crowd of people, and Jakobs, with his quick, keen eye, spotted a likely client.

  He was a stout man of middle age. His hat was placed at such an angle on his head that the Somers Towner diagnosed him as ‘canned’. He may or may not have been right in his surmise. It is sufficient that he appeared comfortably off, and that not only was his coat of good material, but he had various indications of an ostentatious character testifying to his present affluence. Willie Jakobs had had no intention of taking a bus ride. I doubt very much whether he changed his plans even now, but certain it is that he began to elbow his way into the little throng which surrounded the bus, by this time surging forward to board it.

  He elbowed his way with good effect, for suddenly ceasing his efforts, as though he had remembered some very important engagement, he began to back out. He reached the ou
tskirts of the little knot, then turned to walk briskly away.

  At that moment a firm hand dropped on his shoulder in quite a friendly way. He looked round quickly. A tall young man in civilian dress stood behind him.

  ‘Hullo!’ said the young man, kindly enough, ‘aren’t you going on?’

  ‘No, Mr Fellowe,’ he said. ‘I was going down for a blow, but I remember I left the gas burning at home.’

  ‘Let’s go back and put it out,’ said Constable Fellowe, who was on a very special duty that night.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ said Jakobs reflectively, ‘I don’t think it’s worth while. After all, it’s one of those penny-in-the-slot machines and it can only burn itself out.’

  ‘Then come along and see if my gas is burning,’ said Frank humorously.

  He held the other’s arm lightly, but when Jakobs attempted to disengage himself he found the pressure on his arm increased. ‘What’s the game?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘The same old game,’ said Frank, with a little smile. ‘Hullo. Willie, you’ve dropped something.’

  He stooped quickly, without releasing his hold, and picked up a pocket-book.

  The bus was on the point of moving off as Frank swung round and with a signal stopped the conductor.

  ‘I think someone who has just boarded your bus has lost a pocket-book. I think it is that stoutish gentleman who has just gone inside.’

  The stoutish gentleman hastily descended to make a public examination of his wardrobe. He discovered himself minus several articles which should, by all laws affecting the right of property, have been upon his person.

  Thereafter the matter became a fairly commonplace incident.

  ‘It’s a cop,’ said Willie philosophically. I didn’t see you around, Mr Fellowe.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you did, yet I’m big enough.’

  ‘And ugly enough,’ added Willie impartially.

  Frank smiled. ‘You’re not much of an authority on beauty, Willie, are you?’ he asked jocosely, as they threaded their way through the streets which separated them from the nearest police-station.