The Complete Four Just Men Page 58

  ‘A.W.,’ he repeated, dazed. ‘A.W.’

  What did ‘A.W.’ stand for? And then the truth flashed on him.

  Assistant Warder! He glared round the room. There was one window, heavily barred and covered with thick glass. On the wall was pasted a sheet of printed paper. He staggered out of bed and read, still open-mouthed: ‘Regulations for His Majesty’s Prisons.’

  He looked down at himself. He had evidently gone to bed with his breeches and stockings on and his breeches were of coarse yellow material and branded with faded black arrows. He was in prison! How long had he been there?

  ‘Are you going to behave today?’ asked the warder curtly. ‘We don’t want any more of those scenes you gave us yesterday!’

  ‘How long have I been here?’ croaked Ballam.

  ‘You know how long you’ve been here. You’ve been here three weeks, yesterday.’

  ‘Three weeks!’ gasped Ballam. ‘What is the charge?’

  ‘Now don’t come that game with me, Ballam,’ said the warder, not unkindly. ‘You know I’m not allowed to have conversations with you. Go back and sleep. Sometimes I think you are as mad as you profess to be.’

  ‘Have I been – bad?’ asked Ballam.

  ‘Bad?’ The warder jerked up his head. ‘I wasn’t in the court with you, but they say you behaved in the dock like a man demented, and when the Judge was passing sentence of death – ’

  ‘My God!’ shrieked Ballam and fell back on the bed, white and haggard. ‘Sentenced to death!’ He could hardly form the words. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘You killed a young lady, you know that,’ said the warder. ‘I’m surprised at you, trying to come it over me after the good friend I’ve been to you, Ballam. Why don’t you buck up and take your punishment like a man?’

  There was a calendar above the place where the warder had been sitting.

  ‘Twelfth of April,’ read Ballam and could have shrieked again, for it was the first day of March that he met that mysterious stranger. He remembered it all now. Bal! The drug that drove men mad.

  He sprang to his feet.

  ‘I want to see the Governor! I want to tell them the truth! I’ve been drugged!’

  ‘Now you’ve told us all that story before,’ said the warder with an air of resignation. ‘When you killed the young lady – ’

  ‘What young lady?’ shrieked Ballam. ‘Not Maggiore! Don’t tell me – ’

  ‘You know you killed her right enough,’ said the warder. ‘What’s the good of making all this fuss? Now go back to bed, Ballam. You can’t do any good by kicking up a shindy this night of all nights in the world.’

  ‘I want to see the Governor! Can I write to him?’

  ‘You can write to him if you like,’ and the warder indicated the table.

  Ballam staggered up to the table and sat down shakily in a chair. There was half a dozen sheets of blue note-paper headed in black: ‘H.M. Prison, Wandsworth, S.W.1.’

  He was in Wandsworth prison! He looked round the cell. It did not look like a cell and yet it did. It was so horribly bare and the door was heavy looking. He had never been in a cell before and of course it was different to what he had expected.

  A thought struck him.

  ‘When – when am I to be punished?’ he said chokingly.

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  The word fell like a sentence of doom and the man fell forward, his head upon his arms and wept hysterically. Then of a sudden he began to write with feverish haste, his face red with weeping.

  His letter was incoherent. It was about a man who had come to the club and had given him a drug and then he had spent a whole eternity in darkness seeing lights and being chased by people and hearing whispering voices. And he was not guilty. He loved Genee Maggiore. He would not have hurt a hair of her head.

  He stopped here to weep again. Perhaps he was dreaming? Perhaps he was under the influence of this drug. He dashed his knuckles against the wall and the shock made him wince.

  ‘Here, none of that,’ said the warder sternly. ‘You get back to bed.’

  Ballam looked at his bleeding knuckles. It was true! It was no dream! It was true, true!

  He lay on the bed and lost consciousness again and when he awoke the warder was still sitting in his place reading. He seemed to doze again for an hour, although in reality it was only for a few minutes, and every time he woke something within him said: ‘This morning you die!’

  Once he sprang shrieking from the bed and had to be thrown back.

  ‘If you give me any more trouble I’ll get another officer in and we’ll tie you down. Why don’t you take it like a man? It’s no worse for you than it was for her,’ said the warder savagely.

  After that he lay still and he was falling into what seemed a longer sleep when the warder touched him. When he awoke he found his own clothes laid neatly by the side of the bed upon a chair and he dressed himself hurriedly.

  He looked around for something.

  ‘Where’s the collar?’ he asked trembling.

  ‘You don’t need a collar,’ the warder’s voice had a certain quality of sardonic humour.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ said the man roughly. ‘Other people have gone through this. From what I’ve heard you ran an opium den. A good many of your clients gave us a visit. They had to go through with it, and so must you.’

  He waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands and then the door opened and a man came in. He was a slight man with a red beard and a mop of red hair.

  The warder swung the prisoner round.

  ‘Put your hands behind you,’ he said and Ballam sweated as he felt the strap grip his wrists.

  The light was extinguished. A cap was drawn over his face and he thought he heard voices behind him. He wasn’t fit to die, he knew that. There always was a parson in a case like this. Someone grasped his arm on either side and he walked slowly forward through the door across a yard and through another door. It was a long way and once his knees gave under him but he stood erect. Presently they stopped.

  ‘Stand where you are,’ said a voice and he found a noose slipped round his neck and waited, waited in agony, minutes, hours it seemed. He took no account of time and could not judge it. Then he heard a heavy step and somebody caught him by the arm.

  ‘What are you doing here, governor?’ said a voice.

  The bag was pulled from his head. He was in the street. It was night and he stood under the light of a street-lamp. The man regarding him curiously was a policeman.

  ‘Got a bit of rope round your neck, too, somebody tied your hands. What is it – a hold-up case?’ said the policeman as he loosened the straps. ‘Or is it a lark?’ demanded the representative of the law. ‘I’m surprised at you, an old gentleman like you with white hair!’

  Gregory Ballam’s hair had been black less than seven hours before when Leon Gonsalez had drugged his coffee and had brought him through the basement exit into the big yard at the back of the club.

  For here was a nice new garage as Leon had discovered when he prospected the place, and here they were left uninterrupted to play the comedy of the condemned cell with blue sheets of prison notepaper put there for the occasion and a copy of Prison Regulations which was donated quite unwittingly by Mr Fare, Commissioner of Police.

  The Man who hated Amelia Jones

  There was a letter that came to Leon Gonsalez, and the stamp bore the image and superscription of Alphonse XIII. It was from a placid man who had written his letter in the hour of siesta, when Cordova slept, and he had scribbled all the things which had come into his head as he sat in an orange bower overlooking the lordly Guadalquivir, now in yellow spate.

  ‘It is from Poiccart,’ said Leon.

  ‘Yes?’ replied George Manfred, half asleep in a big armchair before the f
ire.

  That and a green-shaded reading lamp supplied the illumination to their comfortable Jermyn Street flat at the moment.

  ‘And what,’ said George, stretching himself, ‘what does our excellent friend Poiccart have to say?’

  ‘A blight has come upon his onions,’ said Leon solemnly and Manfred chuckled and then was suddenly grave.

  There was a time when the name of these three, with one who now lay in the Bordeaux cemetery, had stricken terror to the hearts of evil-doers. In those days the Four Just Men were a menace to the sleep of many cunning men who had evaded the law, yet had not evaded this ubiquitous organisation, which slew ruthlessly in the name of Justice.

  Poiccart was growing onions! He sighed and repeated the words aloud.

  ‘And why not?’ demanded Leon. ‘Have you read of the Three Musketeers?’

  ‘Surely,’ said Manfred, with a smile at the fire.

  ‘In what book, may I ask?’ demanded Leon.

  ‘Why, in The Three Musketeers, of course,’ replied Manfred in surprise.

  ‘Then you did wrong,’ said Leon Gonsalez promptly. ‘To love the Three Musketeers, you must read of them in The Iron Mask. When one of them has grown fat and is devoting himself to his raiment, and one is a mere courtier of the King of France, and the other is old and full of sorrow for his love-sick child. Then they become human, my dear Manfred, just as Poiccart becomes human when he grows onions. Shall I read you bits?’

  ‘Please,’ said Manfred, properly abashed.

  ‘H’m,’ read Gonsalez, ‘I told you about the onions, George. “I have some gorgeous roses. Manfred would love them . . . do not take too much heed of this new blood test, by which the American doctor professes that he can detect degrees of relationship . . . the new little pigs are doing exceedingly well. There is one that is exceptionally intelligent and contemplative. I have named him George.’’ ’

  George Manfred by the fire squirmed in his chair and chuckled.

  ‘ “This will be a very good year for wine, I am told,” ’ Leon read on, ‘ “but the oranges are not as plentiful as they were last year . . . do you know that the finger-prints of twins are identical? Curiously enough the fingerprints of twins of the anthropoid ape are dissimilar. I wish you would get information on this subject . . . ” ’

  He read on, little scraps of domestic news, fleeting excursions into scientific side-issues, tiny scraps of gossip – they filled ten closely written pages.

  Leon folded the letter and put it in his pocket. ‘Of course he’s not right about the finger-prints of twins being identical. That was one of the illusions of the excellent Lombroso. Anyway the finger-print system is unsatisfactory.’

  ‘I never heard it called into question,’ said George in surprise. ‘Why isn’t it satisfactory?’

  Leon rolled a cigarette with deft fingers, licked down the paper and lit the ragged end before he replied.

  ‘At Scotland Yard, they have, let us say, one hundred thousand finger-prints. In Britain there are fifty million inhabitants. One hundred thousand is exactly one five-hundredth of fifty millions. Suppose you were a police officer and you were called to the Albert Hall where five hundred people were assembled and told that one of these had in his possession stolen property and you received permission to search them. Would you be content with searching one and giving a clean bill to the rest?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Manfred, ‘but I don’t see what you mean.’

  ‘I mean that until the whole of the country and every country in Europe adopts a system by which every citizen registers his finger-prints and until all the countries have an opportunity of exchanging those finger-prints and comparing them with their own, it is ridiculous to say that no two prints are alike.’

  ‘That settles the finger-print system,’ said Manfred, sotto voce.

  ‘Logically it does,’ said the complacent Leon, ‘but actually it will not, of course.’

  There was a long silence after this and then Manfred reached to a case by the side of the fireplace and took down a book.

  Presently he heard the creak of a chair as Gonsalez rose and the soft ‘pad’ of a closing door. Manfred looked up at the clock and, as he knew, it was half past eight.

  In five minutes Leon was back again. He had changed his clothing and, as Manfred had once said before, his disguise was perfect. It was not a disguise in the accepted understanding of the word, for he had not in any way touched his face, or changed the colour of his hair.

  Only by his artistry he contrived to appear just as he wished to appear, an extremely poor man. His collar was clean, but frayed. His boots were beautifully polished, but they were old and patched. He did not permit the crudity of a heel worn down, but had fixed two circular rubber heels just a little too large for their foundations.

  ‘You are an old clerk battling with poverty, and striving to the end to be genteel,’ said Manfred.

  Gonsalez shook his head.

  ‘I am a solicitor who, twenty years ago, was struck off the rolls and ruined because I helped a man to escape the processes of the law. An ever so much more sympathetic role, George. Moreover, it brings people to me for advice. One of these nights you must come down to the public bar of the Cow and Compasses and hear me discourse upon the Married Woman’s Property Act.’

  ‘I never asked you what you were before,’ said George. ‘Good hunting, Leon, and my respectful salutations to Amelia Jones!’

  Gonsalez was biting his lips thoughtfully and looking into the fire and now he nodded.

  ‘Poor Amelia Jones?’ he said softly.

  ‘You’re a wonderful fellow,’ smiled Manfred, ‘only you could invest a charwoman of middle age with the glamour of romance.’

  Leon was helping himself into a threadbare overcoat.

  ‘There was an English poet once – it was Pope, I think – who said that everybody was romantic who admired a fine thing, or did one. I rather think Amelia Jones has done both.’

  The Cow and Compasses is a small public-house in Treet Road, Deptford. The gloomy thoroughfare was well-nigh empty, for it was a grey cold night when Leon turned into the bar. The uninviting weather may have been responsible for the paucity of clients that evening, for there were scarcely half a dozen people on the sanded floor when he made his way to the bar and ordered a claret and soda.

  One who had been watching for him started up from the deal form on which she had been sitting and subsided again when he walked toward her with glass in hand.

  ‘Well, Mrs Jones,’ he greeted her, ‘and how are you this evening?’

  She was a stout woman with a white worn face and hands that trembled spasmodically.

  ‘I am glad you’ve come, sir,’ she said.

  She held a little glass of port in her hand, but it was barely touched. It was on one desperate night when in an agony of terror and fear this woman had fled from her lonely home to the light and comfort of the public-house that Leon had met her. He was at the time pursuing with the greatest caution a fascinating skull which he had seen on the broad shoulders of a Covent Garden porter. He had tracked the owner to his home and to his place of recreation and was beginning to work up to his objective, which was to secure the history and the measurements of this unimaginative bearer of fruit, when the stout charwoman had drifted into his orbit. Tonight she evidently had something on her mind of unusual importance, for she made three lame beginnings before she plunged into the matter which was agitating her.

  ‘Mr Lucas,’ (this was the name Gonsalez had given to the habitués of the Cow and Compasses) ‘I want to ask you a great favour. You’ve been very kind to me, giving me advice about my husband, and all that. But this is a big favour and you’re a very busy gentleman, too.’

  She looked at him appealingly, almost pleadingly.

  ‘I have plenty of time just now,’
said Gonsalez.

  ‘Would you come with me into the country tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘I want you to – to – to see somebody.’

  ‘Why surely, Mrs Jones,’ said Gonsalez.

  ‘Would you be at Paddington Station at nine o’clock in the morning? I would pay your fare,’ she went on fervently. ‘Of course, I shouldn’t allow you to go to any expense – I’ve got a bit of money put by.’

  ‘As to that,’ said Leon, ‘I’ve made a little money myself today, so don’t trouble about the fare. Have you heard from your husband?’

  ‘Not from him,’ she shook her head, ‘but from another man who has just come out of prison.’

  Her lips trembled and tears were in her eyes.

  ‘He’ll do it, I know he’ll do it,’ she said, with a catch in her voice, ‘but it’s not me that I’m thinking of.’

  Leon opened his eyes.

  ‘Not you?’ he repeated.

  He had suspected the third factor, yet he had never been able to fit it in the scheme of this commonplace woman.

  ‘No, sir, not me,’ she said miserably. ‘You know he hates me and you know he’s going to do me in the moment he gets out, but I haven’t told you why.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Leon.

  ‘Devizes Gaol, he’s gone there for his discharge. He’ll be out in two months.’

  ‘And then he’ll come straight to you, you think?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not he,’ she said bitterly. ‘That ain’t his way. You don’t know him, Mr Lucas. But nobody does know him like I do. If he’d come straight to me it’d be all right, but he’s not that kind. He’s going to kill me, I tell you, and I don’t care how soon it comes. He wasn’t called Bash Jones for nothing. I’ll get it all right!’ she nodded grimly. ‘He’ll just walk into the room and bash me without a word and that’ll be the end of Amelia Jones. But I don’t mind, I don’t mind,’ she repeated. ‘It’s the other that’s breaking my heart and has been all the time.’