The Council of Justice, Edgar Wallace [english novels to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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Charles stopped to threaten an office-boy who had misdirected a
letter, strolled into various quiet offices to ‘see who was there’ and
with his raincoat on his arm, and his stick in his hand, stopped at the
end of his wanderings before the chattering tape machine. He looked
through the glass box that shielded the mechanism, and was interested
in a message from Teheran in the course of transmission.
‘…at early date. Grand Vizier has informed Exchange Correspondent
that the construction of line will be pushed forward…’
The tape stopped its stuttering and buzzed excitedly, then came a
succession of quick jerks that cleared away the uncompleted
message.
Then ‘…the leader of the Four Just Men was arrested in London
tonight,’ said the tape, and Charles broke for the editor’s room.
He flung open the door without ceremony, and repeated the story the
little machine had told.
The grey chief received the news quietly, and the orders he gave in
the next five minutes inconvenienced some twenty or thirty unoffending
people.
The construction of the ‘story’ of the Four Just Men, began at the
lower rung of the intellectual ladder.
‘You boy! get half a dozen taxicabs here quick…Poynter, ‘phone the
reporters in…get the Lambs Club on the ‘phone and see if O’Mahony or
any other of our bright youths are there…There are five columns about
the Four Just Men standing in the gallery, get it pulled up, Mr.
Short…pictures—h’m…yet wire Massonni to get down to the police
station and see if he can find a policeman who’ll give him material for
a sketch…Off you go, Charles, and get the story.’
There was no flurry, no rush; it was for all the world like the
scene on a modern battleship when ‘clear lower deck for action’ had
sounded. Two hours to get the story into the paper was ample, and there
was no need for the whip.
Later, with the remorseless hands of the clock moving on, taxi after
taxi flew up to the great newspaper office, discharging alert young men
who literally leapt into the building. Later, with waiting operators
sitting tensely before the keyboards of the linotypes, came Charles
Garrett doing notable things with a stump of pencil and a ream of thin
copy paper.
It was the Megaphone that shone splendidly amidst its
journalistic fellows, with pages—I quote the envenomed opinion of the
news editor of the Mercury—that ‘shouted like the checks on a
bookmaker’s waistcoat’.
It was the Megaphone that fed the fires of public interest,
and was mainly responsible for the huge crowds that gathered outside
Greenwich Police Court, and overflowed in dense masses to the foot of
Blackheath Hill, whilst Manfred underwent his preliminary
inquiries.
‘George Manfred, aged 39, of no occupation, residing at Hill Crest
Lodge, St John’s.’ In this prosaic manner he was introduced to the
world.
He made a striking figure in the steel-railed dock. A chair was
placed for him, and he was guarded as few prisoners had been guarded. A
special cell had been prepared for his reception, and departing from
established custom, extra warders were detailed to watch him. Falmouth
took no risks.
The charge that had been framed had to do with no well-known case.
Many years before, one Samuel Lipski, a notorious East End sweater, had
been found dead with the stereotyped announcement that he had fallen to
the justice of the Four. Upon this the Treasury founded its case for
the prosecution—a case which had been very thoroughly and convincingly
prepared, and pigeon-holed against such time as arrest should overtake
one or the other of the Four Just Men.
Reading over the thousands of newspaper cuttings dealing with the
preliminary examination and trial of Manfred, I am struck with the
absence of any startling feature, such as one might expect to find in a
great state trial of this description. Summarizing the evidence that
was given at the police court, one might arrange the ‘parts’ of the
dozen or so commonplace witnesses so that they read:
A policeman: ‘I found the body.’
An inspector: ‘I read the label.’
A doctor: ‘I pronounced him dead.’
An only man with a slight squint and broken English: ‘This man
Lipski, I known him, he were a goot man and make the business wit the
head, ker-vick.’
And the like.
Manfred refused to plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’. He spoke only
once during the police court proceedings, and then only when the formal
question had been put to him.
‘I am prepared to abide by the result of my trial,’ he said clearly,
‘and it cannot matter much one way or the other whether I plead
“guilty” or “not guilty”.’
‘I will enter your plea as “not guilty”,’ said the
magistrate.
Manfred bowed.
‘That is at your worship’s discretion,’ he said.
On the seventh of June he was formally committed for trial. He had a
short interview with Falmouth before he was removed from the
police-court cells.
Falmouth would have found it difficult to analyse his feelings
towards this man. He scarcely knew himself whether he was glad or sorry
that fate had thrown the redoubtable leader into his hands.
His attitude to Manfred was that of a subordinate to a superior, and
that attitude he would have found hardest to explain.
When the cell door was opened to admit the detective, Manfred was
reading. He rose with a cheery smile to greet his visitor.
‘Well, Mr. Falmouth,’ he said lightly, ‘we enter upon the second and
more serious act of the drama.’
‘I don’t know whether I’m glad or sorry,’ said Falmouth bluntly.
‘You ought to be glad,’ said Manfred with his quizzical smile. ‘For
you’ve vindicated—’
‘Yes, I know all about that,’ said Falmouth dryly, ‘but it’s the
other pan I hate.’
‘You mean—?’
Manfred did not complete the question.
‘I do—it’s a hanging job, Mr. Manfred, and that is the hateful
business after the wonderful work you’ve done for the country.’
Manfred threw back his head, and laughed in unrestrained
amusement.
‘Oh, it’s nothing to laugh about,’ said the plain-spoken detective,
‘you are against a bad proposition—the Home Secretary is a cousin of
Ramon’s, and he hates the very name of the Four Just Men.’
‘Yet I may laugh,’ said Manfred calmly, ‘for I shall escape.’
There was no boastfulness in the speech, but a quiet assurance that
had the effect of nettling the other.
‘Oh, you will, will you?’ he said grimly. ‘Well, we shall see.’
There was no escape for Manfred in the dozen yards or so between his
cell door and the prison van. He was manacled to two warders, and a
double line of policemen formed an avenue through which he was marched.
Not from the van itself that moved in a solid phalanx of mounted men
with drawn swords. Nor from the gloomy portals of Wandsworth Gaol where
silent, uniformed men closed round him and took him to the
triple-locked cell.
Once in the night, as he slept, he was awakened by the sound of the
changing guard, and this amused him.
If one had the space to write, one could compile a whole book’
concerning Manfred’s life during the weeks he lay in gaol awaiting
trial. He had his visitors. Unusual laxity was allowed in this respect.
Falmouth hoped to find the other two men. He generously confessed his
hope to Manfred.
‘You may make your mind easy on that point,’ said Manfred; ‘they
will not come.’
Falmouth believed him.
‘If you were an ordinary criminal, Mr. Manfred,’ he said smilingly,
‘I should hint the possibilities of King’s evidence, but I won’t insult
you.’
Manfred’s reply staggered him.
‘Of course not,’ he said with an air of innocence; ‘if they were
arrested, who on earth would arrange my escape?’
The Woman of Gratz did not come to see him, and he was glad.
He had his daily visits from the governor, and found him charmingly
agreeable. They talked of countries known to both, of people whom each
knew equally well, and tacitly avoided forbidden subjects. Only—
‘I hear you are going to escape?’ said the governor, as he concluded
one of these visits. He was a largely built man, sometime Major of
Marine Artillery, and he took life seriously. Therefore he did not
share Falmouth’s view of the projected escape as being an ill-timed
jest.
‘Yes,’ replied Manfred.
‘From here?’
Manfred shook his head solemnly.
‘The details have not yet been arranged,’ he said with admirable
gravity. The governor frowned.
‘I don’t believe you’re trying to pull my leg—it’s too devilishly
serious a matter to joke about—but it would be an awkward thing for me
if you got away.’ He was of the prisoner’s own caste and he had supreme
faith in the word of the man who discussed prison-breaking so
lightheartedly.
‘That I realize,’ said Manfred with a little show of deference, ‘and
I shall accordingly arrange my plans, so that the blame shall be
equally distributed.’
The governor, still frowning thoughtfully, left the cell. He came
back in a few minutes.
‘By the way, Manfred,’ he said, ‘I forgot to tell you that you’ll
get a visit from the chaplain. He’s a very decent young fellow, and I
know I needn’t ask you to let him down lightly.’
With this subtle assumption of mutual paganism, he left finally.
‘That is a worthy gentleman,’ thought Manfred.
The chaplain was nervously anxious to secure an opening, and sought
amidst the trivialities that led out of the conventional exchange of
greetings a fissure for the insertion of a tactful inquiry.
Manfred, seeing his embarrassment, gave him the chance, and listened
respectfully while the young man talked, earnestly, sincerely,
manfully.
‘N—no,’ said the prisoner after a while, ‘I don’t think, Mr.
Summers, that you and I hold very different opinions, if they were all
reduced to questions of faith and appreciation of God’s goodness—but
I have got to a stage where I shrink from labelling my inmost beliefs
with this or that creed, or circumscribing the boundless limits of my
faith with words. I know you will forgive me and believe that I do not
say this from any desire to hurt you, but I have reached, too, a phase
of conviction where I am adamant to outside influence. For good or ill,
I must stand by the conceptions that I have built out of my own life
and its teachings.
‘There is another, and a more practical reason,’ he added, ‘why I
should not do you or any other chaplain the disservice of taking up
your time—I have no intention of dying.’
With this, the young minister was forced to be content. He met
Manfred frequently, talking of books and people and of strange
religions.
To the warders and those about him, Manfred was a source of constant
wonder. He never wearied them with the recital of his coming attempt.
Yet all that he said and did seemed founded on that one basic article
of faith: I shall escape.
The governor took every precaution to guard against rescue. He
applied for and secured reinforcements of warders, and Manfred, one
morning at exercise seeing strange faces amongst his guards, bantered
him with over-nervousness.
‘Yes,’ said the Major, ‘I’ve doubled the staff. I’m taking you at
your word, that is all—one must cling tight to the last lingering
shreds of faith one has in mankind. You say that you’re going to
escape, and I believe you.’ He thought a moment, ‘I’ve studied you,’ he
added.
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