The Council of Justice, Edgar Wallace [english novels to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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place. On his way thither he had tried in vain to follow the direction
the shuttered motor-car had taken.
By what method the Four would convey their instructions he had no
idea. He was quite satisfied that they would find a way.
He reached his flat with his head swimming from the effects of the I
drug they had given him, and flung himself, dressed as he was, upon his
bed and slept. He slept well into the afternoon, then rose stiff and
irritable. A bath and a change refreshed him, and he walked out to keep
an appointment he had made.
On his way he remembered impatiently that there was a call to the
Council at five o’clock. It reminded him of his old rehearsal days.
Then he recollected that no place had been fixed for the council
meeting. He would find the quiet Francois in Leicester Square, so he
turned his steps in that direction.
Francois, patient, smiling, and as deferential as ever, awaited him.
‘The council was held at two o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I am to tell you
that we have decided on two projects.’ He looked left and right, with
elaborated caution.
‘There is at Gravesend’—he pronounced it ‘Gwayvse-end’—‘a
battleship that has put in for stores. It is the Grondovitch. It
will be fresh in your mind that the captain is the nobleman Svardo—we
have no reason to love him.’
‘And the second?’ asked Bartholomew.
Again Francois went through the pantomime that had so annoyed his
companion before.
‘It is no less than the Bank,’ he said triumphantly.
Bartholomew was aghast.
‘The Bank—the Bank of England! Why, you’re mad—you have taken
leave of your senses!’
Francois shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
‘It is the order,’ he said; then, abruptly, ‘Au revoir,’ he
said, and, with his extravagant little bow, was gone.
If Bartholomew’s need for cutting himself adrift from the Red
Hundred existed before, the necessity was multiplied now a thousand
times. Any lingering doubt he might have had, any remote twinge of
conscience at the part he was playing, these vanished.
He glanced at his watch, and hurried to his destination.
It was the Red Room of the Hotel Larboune that he sought.
He found a table and ordered a drink.
The waiter was unusually talkative.
He stood by the solitary table at which Bartholomew sat, and chatted
pleasantly and respectfully. This much the other patrons of the
establishment noticed idly, and wondered whether it was racing or house
property that the two had in common.
The waiter was talking.
‘…I am inclined to disbelieve the story of the Grondovitch,
but the Embassy and the commander shall know—when do you leave?’
‘Just as soon as I can,’ said Bartholomew.
The waiter nodded and flicked some cigarette ash from the table with
his napkin.
‘And the Woman of Gratz?’ he asked.
Bartholomew made a gesture of doubt.
‘Why not,’ said the waiter, looking thoughtfully out of the window,
‘why not take her with you?’
There had been the germ of such a thought in Bartholomew’s mind, but
he had never given form to it—even to himself.
‘She is very beautiful, and, it occurred to me, not altogether
indifferent to your attractions—that kind of woman has a penchant for
your type, and frankly we would gladly see her out of the way—or
dead.’
M. Menshikoff was by no means vindictive, but there was obvious
sincerity in his voice when he pronounced the last two words. M.
Menshikoff had been right-hand man of the Grand Master of the Secret
Police for too many years to feel any qualms at the project of removing
an enemy to the system.
‘I thought we had her once,’ he said meditatively; ‘they would have
flogged her in the fortress of St Peter and Paul, but I stopped them.
She was grateful I think, and almost human…but it passed off.’
Bartholomew paid for his drink, and ostentatiously tipped the
obsequious man before him. He remembered as he did so that Menshikoff
was reputedly a millionaire.
‘Your change, m’sieur,’ said Menshikoff gravely, and he handed back
a few jingling coppers and two tightly folded banknotes for a hundred
pounds. He was a believer in the principle of ‘pay as you go’
Bartholomew pocketed the money carelessly.
‘Good day,’ he said loudly.
‘Au revoir, m’sieur, et ban voyage’, said the waiter.
CHAPTER VI. Princess Revolutionary
The Woman of Gratz was very human. But to Bartholomew she seemed a
thing of ice, passionless, just a beautiful woman who sat stiffly in a
straight-backed chair, regarding him with calm, questioning eyes. They
were in her flat in Bloomsbury on the evening of the day following his
interview with Menshikoff. Her coolness chilled him, and strangled the
very passion of his speech, and what he said came haltingly, and
sounded lame and unconvincing.
‘But why?’ that was all she asked. Thrice he had paused appealingly,
hoping for encouragement, but her answer had been the same.
He spoke incoherently, wildly. The fear of the Four on the one hand
and the dread of the Reds on the other, were getting on his nerves.
He saw a chance of escape from both, freedom from the four-walled
control of these organizations, and before him the wide expanse of a
trackless wilderness, where the vengeance of neither could follow.
Eden in sight—he pleaded for an Eve.
The very thought of the freedom ahead overcame the depression her
coldness laid upon him.
‘Maria—don’t you see? You are wasting your life doing this man’s
work—this assassin’s work. You were made for love and for me!’ He
caught her hand and she did not withdraw it, but the palm he pressed
was unresponsive and the curious searching eyes did not leave his
face.
‘But why?’ she asked again. ‘And how? I do not love you, I shall
never love any man—and there is the work for you and the work for me.
There is the cause and your oath. Your comrades—’
He started up and flung away her hand. For a moment he stood over
her, glowering down at her upturned face.
‘Work!—Comrades!’ he grated with a laugh. ‘D’ye think I’m going to
risk my precious neck any further?’
He did not hear the door open softly, nor the footfall of the two
men who entered.
‘Are you blind as well as mad?’ he went on brutally. ‘Don’t you see
that the thing is finished? The Four Just Men have us all in the hollow
of their hands! They’ve got us like that!’ He snapped his fingers
contemptuously. ‘They know everything—even to the attempt that is to
be made on the Prince of the Escorials! Ha! that startles you—yet it
is true, every word I say—they know.’
‘If it is true,’ she said slowly, ‘there has been a traitor.’
He waved his hand carelessly, admitting and dismissing the
possibility.
‘There are traitors always—when the pay for treachery is good,’ he
said easily; ‘but traitor or no traitor, London is too hot for you and
me.’
‘For you,’ corrected the girl.
‘And for you,’ he said savagely; he snatched up her hand again.
‘You’ve got to come—do you hear—you beautiful snow woman—you’ve got
to come with me!’
He drew her to him, but a hand grasped his arm, and he turned to
meet the face of Starque, livid and puckered, and creased with silent
anger.
Starque was prepared for the knife or for the pistol, but not for
the blow that caught him full in the face and sent him staggering back
to the wall.
He recovered himself quickly, and motioned to Francois, who turned
and locked the door.
‘Stand away from that door!’
‘Wait!’
Starque, breathing quickly, wiped the blood from his face with the
back of his hand.
Wait, he said in his guttural tone; ‘before you go there is a matter
to be settled.’
At any time, in any place,’ said the Englishman.
‘It is not the blow,’ breathed Starque, ‘that is nothing; it is the
matter of the Inner Council—traitor!’
He thrust out his chin as he hissed the last word.
Bartholomew had very little time to decide upon his course of
action. He was unarmed; but he knew instinctively that there would be
no shooting. It was the knife he had to fear and he grasped the back of
a chair. If he could keep them at a distance he might reach the door
and get safely away. He cursed his folly that he had delayed making the
coup that would have so effectively laid Starque by the heels.
‘You have betrayed us to the Four Just Men—but that we might never
have known, for the Four have no servants to talk. But you sold us to
the Embassy—and that was your undoing.’ He had recovered his calm.
‘We sent you a message telling you of our intention to destroy the
Bank of England. The Bank was warned—by the Four. We told you of the
attempt to be made on the Grondovitch—the captain was warned by
the Embassy—you are doubly convicted. No such attempts were ever
contemplated. They were invented for your particular benefit, and you
fell into the trap.’
Bartholomew took a fresh grip of the chair. He realized vaguely that
he was face to face with death, and for one second he was seized with a
wild panic.
‘Last night,’ Starque went on deliberately, ‘the Council met
secretly, and your name was read from the list.’ The Englishman’s mouth
went dry.
‘And the Council said with one voice…’ Starque paused to look at
the Woman of Gratz. Imperturbable she stood with folded hands, neither
approving nor dissenting. Momentarily Bartholomew’s eyes too sought her
face—but he saw neither pity nor condemnation. It was the face of
Fate, inexorable, unreasoning, inevitable.
‘Death was the sentence,’ said Starque in so soft a voice that the
man facing him could scarcely hear him. ‘Death…’
With a lightning motion he raised his hand and threw the knife…
‘Damn you…’ whimpered the stricken man, and his helpless hands groped
at his chest…then he slid to his knees and Francois struck
precisely…
Again Starque looked at the woman.
‘It is the law,’ he stammered, but she made no reply.
Only her eyes sought the huddled figure on the floor and her lips
twitched.
‘We must get away from here,’ whispered Starque.
He was shaking a little, for this was new work for him. The forces
of jealousy and fear for his personal safety had caused him to take
upon himself the office that on other occasions he left to lesser
men.
‘Who lives in the opposite flat?’
He had peeped through the door.
‘A student—a chemist,’ she replied in her calm, level tone.
Starque flushed, for her voice sounded almost strident coming after
the whispered conference between his companion and himself.
‘Softly, softly,’ he urged.
He stepped gingerly back to where the body was lying, made a circuit
about it, and pulled down the blind. He could not have explained the
instinct that made him do this. Then he came back to the door and
gently turned the handle, beckoning the others. It seemed to him that
the handle turned itself, or that somebody on the other side was
turning at the same time.
That this was so he discovered, for the door suddenly jerked open,
sending him staggering backward, and a man stood on the threshold.
With the drawn blind, the room was in
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