The Council of Justice, Edgar Wallace [english novels to read .txt] 📗

>‘Indeed?’

 

‘Not here,’ said the governor, comprehending the prison in a sweep

of his hand, ‘but outside—read about you and thought about you and a

little dimly understood you—that makes me certain that you’ve got

something at the back of your mind when you talk so easily of

escape.’

 

Manfred nodded. He nodded many times thoughtfully, and felt a new

interest in the bluff, brusque man.

 

‘And whilst I’m doubling the guard and that sort of thing, I know in my

heart that that “something” of yours isn’t “something” with dynamite in

it, or “something” with brute force behind it, but it’s “something”

that’s devilishly deep—that’s how I read it.’

 

He jerked his head in farewell, and the cell door closed behind him

with a great jangling and snapping of keys.

 

He might have been tried at the sessions following his committal,

but the Crown applied for a postponement, and being informed and asked

whether he would care to raise any objection to that course, he replied

that so far from objecting, he was grateful, because his arrangements

were not yet completed, and when they asked him, knowing that he had

refused solicitor and counsel, what arrangements he referred to, he

smiled enigmatically and they knew he was thinking of this wonderful

plan of escape. That such persistent assurances of delivery should

eventually reach the public through the public press was only to be

expected, and although ‘Manfred says he will escape from Wandsworth’ in

the Megaphone headline, became ‘A prisoner’s strange statement’

in The Times, the substance of the story was the same, and you

may be sure that it lost nothing in the telling. A Sunday journal, with

a waning circulation, rallied on the discovery that Manfred was mad,

and published a column-long account of this ‘poor lunatic gibbering of

freedom.’

 

Being allowed to read the newspapers, Manfred saw this, and it kept

him amused for a whole day.

 

The warders in personal attendance on him were changed daily, he

never had the same custodian twice till the governor saw a flaw in the

method that allowed a warder with whom he was only slightly acquainted,

and of whose integrity he was ignorant, to come into close contact with

his prisoner. Particularly did this danger threaten from the new

officers who had been drafted to Wandsworth to reinforce the staff, and

the governor went to the other extreme, and two trusted men, who had

grown old in the service, were chosen for permanent watch-dogs.

 

‘You won’t be able to have any more newspapers,’ said the governor

one morning. ‘I’ve had orders from headquarters—there have been some

suspicious-looking “agonies” in the Megaphone this

last day or so.’

 

‘I did not insert them,’ said Manfred, smiling.

 

‘No—but you may have read them,’ said the governor drily.

 

‘So I might have,’ said the thoughtful Manfred.

 

‘Did you?’

 

Manfred made no reply.

 

‘I suppose that isn’t a fair question,’ said the governor

cheerfully; ‘anyhow, no more papers. You can have books—any books you

wish within limits.’

 

So Manfred was denied the pleasure of reading the little paragraphs

that described the movements and doings of the fashionable world. Just

then these interested him more than the rest of the newspaper put

together. Such news as he secured was of a negative kind and through

the governor. ‘Am I still mad?’ he asked. ‘No.’

 

‘Was I born in Brittany—the son of humble parents?’

 

‘No—there’s another theory now.’

 

‘Is my real name still supposed to be Isadore

something-or-other?’

 

‘You are now a member of a noble family, disappointed at an early

age by a reigning princess,’ said the governor impressively.

 

‘How romantic!’ said Manfred in hushed tones. The gravity of his

years, that was beyond his years, fell away from him in that time of

waiting. He became almost boyish again. He had a never-ending fund of

humour that turned even the tremendous issues of his trial into

subject-matter of amusement.

 

Armed with the authority of the Home Secretary came Luigi Fressini,

the youthful director of the Anthropological Institute of Rome.

 

Manfred agreed to see him and made him as welcome as the

circumstances permitted. Fressini was a little impressed with his own

importance, and had the professional manner strongly developed. He had

a perky way of dropping his head on one side when he made observations,

and reminded Manfred of a horse-dealer blessed with a little knowledge,

but anxious to discover at all hazards the ‘points’ that fitted in with

his preconceived theories. ‘I would like to measure your head,’ he

said.

 

‘I’m afraid I cannot oblige you,’ said Manfred coolly; ‘partly

because I object to the annoyance of it, and partly because

head-measuring in anthropology is as much out of date as bloodletting

in surgery.’

 

The director was on his dignity.

 

‘I’m afraid I cannot take lessons in the science—’ he began.

 

‘Oh, yes, you can,’ said Manfred, ‘and you’d be a greater man if you

did. As it is Antonio de Costa and Felix Hedeman are both beating you

on your own ground—that monograph of yours on ‘Cerebral Dynamics’ was

awful nonsense.’

 

Whereupon Fressini went very red and spluttered and left the cell,

afterwards in his indiscretion granting an interview to an evening

newspaper, in the course of which he described Manfred as a typical

homicide with those peculiarities of parietal development, that are

invariably associated with cold-blooded murderers. For publishing what

constituted a gross contempt of court, the newspaper was heavily fined,

and at the instance of the British Government, Fressini was

reprimanded, and eventually superseded by that very De Costa of whom

Manfred spoke.

 

All these happenings formed the comedy of the long wait, and as to

the tragedy, there was none.

 

A week before the trial Manfred, in the course of conversation,

expressed a desire for a further supply of books.

 

‘What do you want?’ asked the governor, and prepared to take a

note.

 

‘Oh, anything,’ said Manfred lazily—‘travel, biography, science,

sport—anything new that’s going.’

 

‘I’ll get you a list,’ said the governor, who was not a booky man.

‘The only travel books I know are those two new things, Three Months

in Morocco and Through the Ituri Forest. One of them’s by a

new man, Theodore Max—do you know him?’

 

Manfred shook his head.

 

‘But I’ll try them,’ he said.

 

‘Isn’t it about time you started to prepare your defence?’ the

governor asked gruffly.

 

‘I have ho defence to offer,’ said Manfred, ‘therefore no defence to

prepare.’

 

The governor seemed vexed.

 

‘Isn’t life sufficiently sweet to you—to urge you to make an effort

to save it?’ he asked roughly, ‘or are you going to give it up without

a struggle?’

 

‘I shall escape,’ said Manfred again; ‘aren’t you tired of hearing

me tell you why I make no effort to save myself?’

 

‘When the newspapers start the “mad” theory again,’ said

the exasperated prison official, ‘I shall feel most inclined to break

the regulations and write a letter in support of the speculation.’

 

‘Do,’ said Manfred cheerfully, ‘and tell them that I run round my

cell on all fours biting visitors’ legs.’

 

The next day the books arrived. The mysteries of the Ituri Forest

remained mysteries, but Three Months in Morocco (big print, wide

margins, 12s. 6d.) he read with avidity from cover to cover,

notwithstanding the fact that the reviewers to a man condemned it as

being the dullest book of the season. Which was an unkindly reflection

upon the literary merits of its author, Leon Gonsalez, who had worked

early and late to prepare the book for the press, writing far into the

night, whilst Poiccart, sitting at the other side of the table,

corrected the damp proofs as they came from the printer.

 

CHAPTER XIII. The ‘Rational Faithers’

 

In the handsomely furnished sitting-room of a West Kensington flat,

Gonsalez and Poiccart sat over their post-prandial cigars, each busy

with his own thoughts. Poiccart tossed his cigar into the fireplace and

pulled out his polished briar and slowly charged it from a gigantic

pouch. Leon watched him under half-closed lids, piecing together the

scraps of information he had collected from his persistent

observation.

 

‘You are getting sentimental, my friend,’ he said.

 

Poiccart looked up inquiringly.

 

‘You were smoking one of George’s cigars without realizing it.

Halfway through the smoke you noticed the band had not been removed, so

you go to tear it off. By the band you are informed that it is one of

George’s favourite cigars, and that starts a train of thought that

makes the cigar distasteful to you, and you toss it away.’

 

Poiccart lit his pipe before replying.

 

‘Spoken like a cheap little magazine detective,’ he said frankly.

‘If you would know I was aware that it was George’s, and from excess of

loyalty I was trying to smoke it; halfway through I reluctantly

concluded that friendship had its limits; it is you who are

sentimental.’

 

Gonsalez closed his eyes and smiled. ‘There’s another review of your

book in the Evening Mirror tonight,’ Poiccart went on maliciously;

‘have you seen it?’

 

The recumbent figure shook its head.

 

‘It says,’ the merciless Poiccart continued, ‘that an author who can

make Morocco as dull as you have done, would make—’

 

‘Spare me,’ murmured Gonsalez half asleep.

 

They sat for ten minutes, the tick-tick of the little clock on the

mantelpiece and the regular puffs from Poiccart’s pipe breaking the

silence.

 

‘It would seem to me,’ said Gonsalez, speaking with closed eyes,

‘that George is in the position of a master who has set his two pupils

a difficult problem to solve, quite confident that, difficult as it is,

they will surmount all obstacles and supply the solution.’

 

‘I thought you were asleep,’ said Poiccart.

 

‘I was never more awake,’ said Gonsalez calmly. ‘I am only

marshalling details. Do you know Mr. Peter Sweeney?’

 

‘No,’ said Poiccart.

 

‘He’s a member of the Borough Council of Chelmsford. A great and a

good man.’

 

Poiccart made no response.

 

‘He is also the head and front of the ‘Rational Faith’ movement, of

which you may have heard.’

 

‘I haven’t,’ admitted Poiccart, stolid but interested.

 

‘The “Rational Faithers”,’ Gonsalez explained sleepily, ‘are

an off shoot of the New Unitarians, and the New Unitarians are a

hotch-potch people with grievances.’

 

Poiccart yawned.

 

‘The “Rational Faithers”,’ Gonsalez went on, ‘have a mission

in life, they have also a brass band, and a collection of drivelling

songs, composed, printed and gratuitously distributed by Mr. Peter

Sweeney, who is a man of substance.’

 

He was silent after this for quite a minute.

 

‘A mission in life, and a nice loud brassy band—the members of

which are paid monthly salaries—by Peter.’

 

Poiccart turned his head and regarded his friend curiously.

 

‘What is all this about?’ he asked.

 

‘The “Rational Faithers”,’ the monotonous Gonsalez continued,

‘are the sort of people who for all time have been in the eternal

minority. They are against things, against public-houses, against

music-halls, against meat eating, and vaccination—and capital

punishment,’ he repeated softly.

 

Poiccart waited.

 

Years ago they were regarded as a nuisance—rowdies broke up their

meetings; the police prosecuted them for obstruction, and some of them

were sent to prison and came out again, being presented with newly

furbished haloes at meat breakfasts—Peter presiding.

 

‘Now they have lived down their persecutions—martyrdom is not to be so

cheaply bought—they are an institution like the mechanical spinning

jenny and fashionable socialism—which proves that if you go on doing

things often enough and persistently, saying with a loud voice,“‘pro

bono publico’”, people will take you at your own