The Council of Justice, Edgar Wallace [english novels to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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It may be observed that ‘Mr. Long’ at the threshold of the house
became ‘Mr. Jessen’ in the intimacy of the inner room.
‘I owe more to you than ever you can owe to me,’ he said earnestly;
‘you put me on the track,’ he waved his hand round the room as though
the refinement of the room was the symbol of that track of which he
spoke. ‘You remember that morning?—if you have forgotten, I
haven’t—when I told you that to forget—I must drink? And you
said—’
‘I haven’t forgotten, Jessen,’ said the correspondent quietly; ‘and
the fact that you have accomplished all that you have is a proof that
there’s good stuff in you.’
The other accepted the praise without comment.
‘Now,’ Charles went on, ‘I want to tell you what I started out to
tell: I’m following a big story. It’s the Four Just Men story; you know
all about it? I see that you do; well, I’ve got to get into touch with
them somehow. I do not for one moment imagine that you can help me, nor
do I expect that these chaps have any accomplices amongst the people
you know.’
‘They have not,’ said Jessen; ‘I haven’t thought it worth while
inquiring. Would you like to go to the Guild?’
Charles pursed his lips in thought.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘that’s an idea; yes, when?’
‘Tonight—if you wish.’
‘Tonight let it be,’ said Charles.
His host rose and left the room.
He reappeared presently, wearing a dark overcoat and about his
throat a black silk muffler that emphasized the pallor of his strong
square face.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said, and unlocked a drawer, from which he took
a revolver.
He turned the magazine carefully, and Charles smiled.
‘Will that be necessary?’ he asked.
Jessen shook his head.
‘No,’ he said with a little embarrassment, ‘but—I have given up all
my follies and fancies, but this one sticks.’
‘The fear of discovery?’
Jessen nodded.
‘It’s the only folly left—this fear. It’s the fly in the
ointment.’
He led the way through the narrow passage, first having extinguished
the lamp.
They stood together in the dark street, whilst Jessen made sure the
fastening of the house.
‘Now,’ he said, and in a few minutes they found themselves amidst
the raucous confusion of a Walworth Road market-night.
They walked on in silence, then turning into East Street, they
threaded a way between loitering shoppers, dodged between stalls
overhung by flaring naphtha lamps, and turned sharply into a narrow
street.
Both men seemed sure of their ground, for they walked quickly and
unhesitatingly, and striking off through a tiny court that connected
one malodorous thoroughfare with the other, they stopped simultaneously
before the door of what appeared to be a disused factory.
A peaky-faced youth who sat by the door and acted as doorkeeper
thrust his hand forward as they entered, but recognizing them drew back
without a word.
They ascended the flight of ill-lighted stairs that confronted them,
and pushing open a door at the head of the stairs, Jessen ushered his
friend into a large hall.
It was a curious scene that met the journalist’s eye. Well
acquainted with ‘The Guild’ as he was, and with its extraordinary
composition, he had never yet put his foot inside its portals. Basing
his conception upon his knowledge of working-men’s clubs and
philanthropic institutions for the regeneration of degraded youth, he
missed the inevitable billiard-table; he missed, too, the table strewn
with month-old literature, but most of all he missed the smell of free
coffee.
The floor was covered with sawdust, and about the fire that crackled
and blazed at one end of the room there was a semicircle of chairs
occupied by men of varying ages. Old-looking young men and
young-looking old men, men in rags, men well dressed, men flashily
attired in loud clothing and resplendent with shoddy jewellery. And
they were drinking.
Two youths at one end of the crescent shared a quart pewter pot; the
flashy man whose voice dominated the conversation held a glass of
whisky in one beringed hand, and the white-haired man with the scarred
face who sat with bowed head listening had a spirit glass half filled
with some colourless fluid.
Nobody rose to greet the newcomers.
The flashy man nodded genially, and one of the circle pushed his
chair back to give place to Jessen.
‘I was just a-saying—’ said the flashy man, then looked at
Charles.
‘All right,’ signalled Jessen.
‘I was just a-sayin’ to these lads,’ continued the flashy one, ‘that
takin’ one thing with the other, there’s worse places than
“stir”.’
Jessen made no reply to this piece of dogmatism, and he of the rings
went on.
‘An’ what’s the good of a man tryin’ to go straight. The police will
pull you all the same: not reportin’ change of address, loitering with
intent; it don’t matter what you do if you’ve been in trouble once,
you’re sure to get in again.’
There was a murmur of assent.
‘Look at me,’ said the speaker with pride. ‘I’ve never tried to go
straight—been in twice an’ it took six policemen to take me last time,
and they had to use the “stick”.’
Jessen looked at him with mild curiosity.
‘What does that prove, except that the policemen were pretty
soft?’
‘Not a bit!’ The man stood up.
Under the veneer of tawdry foppery, Charles detected the animal
strength of the criminal.
‘Why, when I’m fit, as I am now,’ the man went on, ‘there ain’t two
policemen, nor four neither, that could handle me.’
Jessen’s hand shot out and caught him by the forearm.
‘Get away,’ he suggested, and the man swung round like lightning,
but Jessen had his other arm in a grip of iron.
‘Get away,’ he said again; but the man was helpless, and knew it,
and after a pause Jessen released his hold.
‘How was that?’ he asked.
The amused smiles of the men did not embarrass the prisoner.
‘The guv’nor’s different,’ he explained easily; ‘he’s got a knack of
his own that the police haven’t got.’
Jessen drew up a chair, and whatever there was in the action that
had significance, it was sufficient to procure an immediate
silence.
He looked round the attentive faces that were turned toward him.
Charles, an interested spectator, saw the eager faces that bent in his
friend’s direction, and marvelled not a little at the reproductive
qualities of the seed he had sown.
Jessen began to speak slowly, and Charles saw that what he said was
in the nature of an address. That these addresses of Jessen were
nothing unusual, and that they were welcome, was evident from the
attention with which they were received.
‘What Falk has been telling you,’ said Jessen, indicating the man
with the rings, ‘is true—so far as it goes. There are worse places
than “stir”, and it’s true that the police don’t give an old lag
a chance, but that’s because a lag won’t change his job. And a lag
won’t change his job, because he doesn’t know any other trade where he
gets money so quickly. Wally’—he jerked his head toward a
weedy-looking youth—‘Wally there got a stretch for what? For stuff
that fetched thirty pounds from a fence. Twelve months’ hard work for
thirty pounds! It works out at about 10s, 6d. a week. And his
lawyer and the mouthpiece cost him a fiver out of that. Old man
Garth’—he pointed to the white-headed man with the gin—‘did a five
stretch for less than that, and he’s out on brief. His wage works out
at about a shilling a week.’
He checked the impatient motion that Falk made.
‘I know that Falk would say,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that what I’m
saying is outside the bargain; when I fixed up the Guild, I gave my
‘davy that there wouldn’t be any parson talk or Come All-ye-Faithful
singing. Everybody knows that being on the crook’s a mug’s game, and I
don’t want to rub it in. What I’ve always said and done is in the
direction of making you fellows earn bigger money at your own
trade.
‘There’s a man who writes about the army who’s been trying to induce
soldiers to learn trades, and he started right by making the Tommies
dissatisfied with their own trade; and that is what I am trying to do.
What did I do with young Isaacs? I didn’t preach at him, and I didn’t
pray over him. Ike was one of the finest snide merchants in London. He
used to turn out half-crowns made from pewter pots that defied
detection. They rang true and they didn’t bend. Ike got three years,
and when he came out I found him a job. Did I try to make him a
wood-chopper, or a Salvation Army plough-boy? No. He’d have been back
on the crook in a week if I had. I got a firm of medal makers in
Birmingham to take him, and when Ike found himself amongst plaster
moulds and electric baths, and discovered he could work at his own
trade honestly, he stuck to it.’
‘We ain’t snide merchants,’ growled Falk discontentedly.
‘It’s the same with all branches,’ Jessen went on, ‘only you
chaps don’t know it. Take tale-pitching—’
It would not be fair to follow Jessen through the elaborate
disquisition by which he proved to the satisfaction of his audience
that the ‘confidence’ man was a born commercial traveller. Many of his
arguments were as unsound as they could well be; he ignored first
principles, and glossed over what seemed to such a clear-headed hearer
as Charles to be insuperable obstacles in the scheme of regeneration.
But his audience was convinced. The fringe of men round the fire was
reinforced as he continued. Men came into the room singly, and in twos
and threes, and added themselves to the group at the fire. The news had
spread that Jessen was talking—they called him ‘Mr. Long,’ by the
way—and some of the newcomers arrived breathlessly, as though they had
run in order that no part of the address should be missed.
That the advocate of discontent had succeeded in installing into the
minds of his hearers that unrest and dissatisfaction which he held to
be the basis of a new moral code, was certain. For every face bore the
stamp of introspective doubt.
Interesting as it all was, Charles Garrett had not lost sight of the
object of his visit, and he fidgeted a little as the speaker
proceeded.
Immediately on entering the room he had grasped the exact
relationship in which Jessen stood to his pupils. Jessen he knew could
put no direct question as to their knowledge of the Four Just Men
without raising a feeling of suspicion which would have been fatal to
the success of the mission, and indeed would have imperilled the very
existence of the ‘Guild’.
It was when Jessen had finished speaking, and had answered a dozen
questions fired simultaneously from a dozen quarters, and had answered
the questions that had arisen out of these queries, that an opening
came from an unexpected quarter.
For, with the serious business of the meeting disposed of, the
questions took the inevitable facetious turn.
‘What trade would you give the Four Just Men?’ asked Falk
flippantly, and there was a little rumble of laughter.
The journalist’s eyes met the reformer’s for one second, and through
the minds of both men flashed the answer. Jessen’s mouth
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