The Complete Four Just Men (94 page)

The footman had hardly left the room before Leon was at the Empire desk, turning over the papers rapidly. But he found what he sought on the blotting-pad, face downwards.

A letter addressed to a firm of wine merchants complaining of some deficiency in a consignment of champagne. He read this through rapidly – it was only half finished – folded the paper and put it into his pocket.

Carefully and rapidly he examined the drawers of the table: two were locked – the middle drawer was, however, without fastening. What he found interested him and gave him some little occupation. He had hardly finished before he heard a car stop before the house and, looking through the curtains, saw a man and woman alight.

Dark as it was, he recognized his unconscious host, and he was sitting demurely on the edge of a chair when Lethersohn burst into the room, his face white with fury.

‘What the hell is the meaning of this?’ he demanded as he slammed the door behind him. ‘By God, I’ll have you arrested for impersonating me – ’

‘You guessed that I had telephoned – that was almost intelligent,’ smiled Leon Gonsalez.

The man swallowed.

‘Why are you here – I suppose it concerns the poor woman who escaped from a mental hospital today – I only just heard before I went out . . . ’

‘So we gathered from the fact that your watchers have been on duty again tonight,’ said Leon, ‘but they were a little too late.’

The man’s face went a shade paler.

‘You’ve seen her?’ he asked jerkily. ‘And I suppose she told you a cock and bull story about me?’

Leon took from his pocket a piece of discoloured linen and held it up.

‘You’ve not seen this?’ he asked. ‘When Mark Stamford died, this drawing was found on his sheet. He could draw these strange little things, you know that?’

Lewis Lethersohn did not answer.

‘Shall I tell you what this is – it is his last will.

‘That’s a lie!’ croaked the other.

‘His last will,’ nodded Leon sternly. ‘Those three queer rhomboids are rough plans of his three estates. That house is a pretty fair picture of the Southern Bank premises and the little circles are money.’

Lethersohn was staring at the drawing.

‘No court would accept that foolery,’ he managed to say.

Leon showed his teeth in a mirthless grin..

‘Nor the “awl” which means “all,” nor the four strokes which stand as “for,” nor the “Margaret,” nor the final “Mark”? be asked.

With an effort Lethersohn recovered his composure. ‘My dear man, the idea is fantastical – he wrote a will with his own hand – ’

Leon stood with his head thrust forward. So far Lethersohn got, when: ‘He couldn’t write!’ he said softly, and Lethersohn turned pale. ‘He could draw these pictures but he couldn’t write his own name. If Mrs Stamford had seen the registrar’s certificate she would have seen that it was signed with a cross – that is why you put in the little bit about her not attempting to prove her marriage – why you kept her prisoner at Harlow in case she made independent inquiries.’

Suddenly Lethersohn flew to his desk and jerked open a drawer. In a second an automatic appeared in his hand. Running back to the door, he flung it open.

‘Help . . . murder!’ he shouted.

He swung round on the motionless Gonsalez and, levelling his gun, pulled the trigger. A click – and no more.

‘I emptied the magazine,’ said Leon coolly, ‘so the little tragedy you so carefully staged has become a farce. Shall I telephone to the police or will you?’

Scotland Yard men arrested Lewis Lethersohn as he was stepping on to the boat at Dover.

‘There may be some difficulty in proving the will,’ said Manfred, reading the account in the evening newspapers; ‘but the jury will not take long to put friend Lewis in his proper place . . . ’

Later, when they questioned Leon – Poiccart was all for pinning down his psychology – he condescended to explain.

‘The rebus told me he could not write – the fact that the will did not instruct Mrs Stamford to marry Lewis showed me that he was married and loved his wife. The rest was ridiculously easy.’

The Happy Travellers

Of the three men who had their headquarters in Curzon Street, George Manfred was by far the best looking. His were the features and poise of an aristocrat. In a crowd he stood out by himself, not alone because of his height, but the imponderable something which distinguishes breeding.

‘George looks like a racehorse in a herd of Shetland ponies!’ said the enthusiastic Leon Gonsalez on one occasion. Which was very nearly true.

Yet it was Leon who attracted the average woman, and even women above the average. It was fatal to send him to deal with a case in which women were concerned, not because he himself was given to philandering, but because it was as certain as anything could be that he would come back leaving at least one sighing maiden to bombard him with letters ten pages long.

Which really made him rather unhappy.

‘I’m old enough to be their father,’ he wailed on one occasion, ‘and as I live I said no more than “Good morning” to the wench. Had I held her hand or chanted a canto or two into her pink ear, I would stand condemned. But, George, I swear – ’

But George was helpless with laughter.

Yet Leon could act the perfect lover. Once in Cordova he paid court to a certain
señorita
– three knife scars on his right breast testify to the success of his wooing. As to the two men who attacked him, they are dead, for by his courting he lured into the open the man for whom the police of Spain and France were searching.

And he was especially effusive one spring morning to a slim and beautiful dark-eyed lady whom he met in Hyde Park. He was on foot, when he saw her walking past slowly and unattended. A graceful woman of thirty with a faultless skin and grey eyes that were almost black.

It was by no accident that they met, for Leon had been studying her movements for weeks.

‘This is an answer to prayer, beautiful lady,’ he said, and his extravagance was the more facile since he spoke in Italian.

She laughed softly, gave him one swift, quizzical glance from under the long lashes, and signalled him to replace the hat that was now in his hand.

‘Good morning, Signor Carrelli,’ she smiled, and gave him a small gloved hand. She was simply but expensively dressed. The only jewels she wore were the string of pearls about her white throat.

‘I see you everywhere,’ she said. ‘You were dining at the Carlton on Monday night, and before that I saw you in a box at a theatre, and yesterday afternoon I met you!’

Leon showed his white teeth in a delighted smile.

‘That is true, illustrious lady,’ he said, ‘but you make no reference to my searching London to find somebody who would introduce me. Nor do you pity my despair as I followed you, feasting my eyes upon your beauty, or my sleepless nights – ’

All this he said with the fervour of a love-sick youth, and she listened without giving evidence of disapproval.

‘You shall walk with me,’ she said, in the manner of a queen conveying an immense privilege.

They strolled away from the crowd towards the open spaces of the park, and they talked of Rome and the hunting season, of runs on Campagna and the parties of Princess Leipnitz-Savalo – Leon read the society columns of the Roman press with great assiduity and remembered all that he read.

They came at last to a place of trees and comfortable garden chairs. Leon paid the watchful attendant, and, after he had strolled away: ‘How beautiful it is to sit alone with divinity!’ he began ecstatically. ‘For I tell you this, signorita . . . ’

‘Tell me something else, Mr Leon Gonsalez,’ said the lady, and this time she spoke in English and her voice had the qualities of steel and ice. ‘Why are you shadowing me?’

If she expected to confound him it was because she did not know her Leon.

‘Because you are an extremely dangerous lady, Madame Koskina,’ he said coolly, ‘and all the more dangerous because the Lord has given you kissable lips and a graceful body. How many impressionable young attachés of embassies have discovered these charms in you!’

She laughed at this and was seemingly well pleased.

‘You have been reading,’ she said. ‘No, my dear Mr Gonsalez, I am out of politics – they bore me. Poor Ivan is in Russia struggling with the work of the Economic Commission and living in dread because of his well-known liberal views, and I am in London, which is delightfully capitalistic and comfortable! Believe me, Leningrad is no place for a lady!’

Isola Koskina had been Isola Caprevetti before she married a dashing young Russian attaché. She had been a revolutionary from birth; and now she had developed a zeal for revolution that amounted to fanaticism.

Leon smiled.

‘There are worse places for a lady even than Leningrad. I should be grieved indeed, my dear Isola, to see you making coarse shirts in Aylesbury convict establishment.’

She looked at him steadily, insolently.

‘That is a threat, and threats bore me. In Italy I have been threatened with . . . all sorts of dreadful things if I ever showed myself on the wrong side of the Simplon Pass. And really I am the most inoffensive person in the world, Monsieur Gonsalez. You are, of course, employed by the Government – how eminently respectable! Which government?’

Leon grinned, but was serious again in a second.

‘The Italian frontiers are practically closed since the last attempt,’ he said. ‘You and your friends are causing everybody an immense amount of trouble. Naturally the Government are concerned. They do not wish to wake up one morning and find that they are implicated, and that some successful assassin made a jump from – England, shall we say?’

The lady shrugged her pretty shoulders. ‘How very dramatic! And therefore poor Isola Koskina must be watched by detectives and reformed murderers – I suppose you and your precious comrades are reformed?’

The smile on the thin face of Leon Gonsalez widened. ‘If we were not, signorita, what would happen? Should I be sitting here talking pretty-pretty talk with you? Would you not be picked out of the Thames at Limehouse all cold and clammy some morning, and lie on the slab till a coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Found drowned”?’

He saw the colour leave her face: fear came to her eyes. ‘You had better threaten Ivan – ’ she began.

‘I will cable him: he is not in Leningrad but living in Berlin under the name of Petersohn – Martin Lutherstrasse 904. How easy it would be if we were not reformed! A dead man in a gutter and a policeman searching his pockets for a card of identity – ’

She rose hurriedly; her very lips were bloodless.

‘You do not amuse me,’ she said and, turning from him, walked quickly away.

Leon made no attempt to follow her. It was two days after this encounter that the letter came. Many people wrote to the Just Men, a few abusively, quite a number fatuously. But now and again there could be extracted from the morning correspondence quite a pretty little problem. And the dingy letter with its finger-marks and creases was quite worth the amount that the postman charged them – for it came unstamped. The address was:

Four Just Men

Curzon Street

May Fair

West End, London

The writing was that of an illiterate, and the letter went:

Dear Sir

You are surposed to go in for misteries well hear is a mistery. I was a boiler makers mate in Hollingses but now out of work and one Sunday I was photoed by a foren lady she come in front of me with a camra and took me. There was a lot of chaps in the park but she only took me. Then she ast me my name and address and ast me if I knew a clergyman. And when I said yes she wrote down the name of the Rev J. Crewe, and then she said shed send me a picture dear sir she didn’t send me a pictur but ast me to joyne the Happy Travlers to go to Swizzleland Rome, etc. and nothing to pay all expences payed also loss of time (Ten £) and soots of close everything done in stile. Well dear sir I got ready and she did everything close ten £ &. also she got tickets &c. But now the lady says I got to go to Devonshire not that I mind. Now dear sir thats a mistery because I just met a gentleman from Leeds and has had his photo took and joyned the Happy Travlers and hes going to Cornwall and this lady who took the picture of him ast him if he knew a clergyman and wrote it down. Now what is the mistery is it something to do with religion?

Yours Sincerely, T. Barger

George Manfred read the ill-spelt scrawl and threw the letter across the breakfast table to Leon Gonsalez.

‘Read me that riddle, Leon,’ he said.

Leon read and frowned.

‘
“Happy Travellers”, eh? That’s odd.’

The letter went to Raymond, who studied it with an expressionless face.

‘Eh, Raymond?’ Leon asked, his eyes alight.

‘I think so,’ said Raymond, nodding slowly.

‘Will you let me into your “mistery”?’ asked Manfred.

Leon chuckled.

‘No mystery at all, my dear George. I will see this T. Barger, whose name is surely “Thomas” and will learn certain particulars as, for example, the colour of his eyes and the testimonial he has received from the Foreign Secretary.’

‘Mistery on mistery,’ murmured George Manfred as he sipped his coffee – though in truth the matter was no longer a mystery to him. The reference to the Foreign Secretary was very illuminating.

‘As to the lady – ’ said Leon, and shook his head.

His big Bentley created a mild sensation in the street where T. Barger lived. It was situated near the East India Dock, and T. Barger – whose front name was surprisingly Theophilus – proved to be a tall, dark man of thirty with a small black moustache and rather heavy black eyebrows. He was obviously wearing his new ‘soot’ and had expended at least a portion of his ‘ten £’ on alcoholic refreshment, for he was in a loud and confident mood.

‘I’m leavin’ tomorrow,’ he said thickly, ‘for Torquay – everything paid. Travellin’ like a swell . . . first class. You one of them Justers!’

Leon induced him to go into the house.

‘It’s a myst’ry to me,’ said Mr Barger, ‘why she done it. Happy Trav’ler – that’s what I am. She might have took me abroad – I’d like to have seen them mountains, but she says if I don’t speak the Swiss language I’d be out of it. Anyway, what’s the matter with Torquay?’

‘The other man is going to Cornwall?’

Mr Barger nodded solemnly. ‘An’ his mate’s goin’ to Somerset – funny meetin’ him at all . . . ’ He explained the coincidence, which had to do with a public-house where Mr Barger had called for a drink.

‘What was his name?’

‘Rigson – Harry Rigson. I told him mine, he told me his. The other man? Harry’s pal? I call him Harry – we’re like pals – now let me think, mister . . . ’

Leon let him think.

‘Funny name
.
.
Coke
.
.
.
no, Soke
.
.
.
Lokely! That’s it – Joe Lokely.’

Leon asked a few more questions which were seemingly irrelevant but were not.

‘Of course I had to be passed by the committee,’ said the communicative Theophilus. ‘Accordin’ to Harry, this lady photoed a friend of his but he didn’t pass.’

‘I see,’ said Leon. ‘What time do you leave for Devonshire?’

‘Tomorrow mornin’ – seven o’clock. Bit early, ain’t it? But this lady says that Happy Travellers must be early risers. Harry’s goin’ by the same train but in another coach . . . ’

Leon went back to Curzon Street well satisfied. The question he had to decide was: was Isola an early riser too?

‘I hardly think so,’ said Raymond Poiccart. ‘She would not take the risk – especially if she knows that she is watched.’

That night Scotland Yard was a very hive of industry, and Leon Gonsalez did without sleep. Fortunately Isola had been under police observation, and the Yard knew every district in England she had visited for the past month. By midnight two thousand ministers of religion had been awakened from their sleep by local police and asked to furnish certain particulars.

Isola went to a dinner and dance that night and her partner was a very nice young man, tall and dark of face. She chose the L’Orient, which is the most exclusive and plutocratic of night clubs. Men and women turned to admire or criticize her beauty as she entered, a radiant figure in a scarlet dress with a dull gold stole. The colours set off the glories of her lovely face, and there was sinuous grace in every movement.

They had reached the dessert when suddenly she laid two fingers on the table-cloth.

‘Who is it?’ asked her companion carelessly as he saw the danger signal.

‘The man I told you about – he is at the table immediately opposite.’

Presently the dark young man looked. ‘So that is the famous Gonsalez! A wisp of a man that I could break – ’

‘A wisp of a man who has broken giants, Emilio,’ she interrupted. ‘Have you heard of Saccoriva – was he not a giant? That man killed him – shot him down in his own headquarters when there was a guard of revolutionary brethren within call – and escaped!’

‘He is anti-revolutionary?’ Emilio was impressed.

She shook her head. ‘Comrade Saccoriva was very foolish – with women. It was over some girl he had taken – and left. He is looking this way: I will call him over.’

Leon rose lazily at the signal and came across the crowded dance floor.

‘Signorita, you will never forgive me!’ he said in despair. ‘Here am I watching you again! And yet I only came here because I was bored.’

‘Bore me also,’ she said with her sweetest smile, and then, remembering her companion: ‘This is Herr Halz from Leipzig.’

Leon’s eyes twinkled.

‘Your friends change their nationalities as often as they change their names,’ he said. ‘I remember Herr Halz of Leipzig when he was Emilio Cassini of Turin!’

Emilio shifted uncomfortably, but Isola was amused.

‘This man is omniscient! Dance with me, Señor Gonsalez, and promise that you will not murder me!’

They went twice round the dance floor before Leon spoke. ‘If I had your face and figure and youth, I should have a good time and not bother with politics,’ he said.

‘And if I had your wisdom and cunning I should remove tyrants from their high positions,’ she retorted, her voice quivering.

That was all that was said. Going out into the vestibule, Leon discovered the girl and her escort waiting. It was raining heavily and Isola’s car could not be found.