Title: Again the Three (1928)
Author: Edgar Wallace
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Title: Again the Three (1928)
Author: Edgar Wallace




The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and have no relation
to any living person.

Contents

1 The Rebus
2 The Happy Travellers
3 The Abductor
4 The Third Coincidence
5 The Slane Mystery
6 The Marked Cheque
7 Mr Levingrou's Daughter
8 The Share Pusher
9 The Man Who Sang in Church
10 The Lady from Brazil
11 The Typist Who Saw Things
12 The Mystery of Mr Drake
13 'The Englishman Konnor'



1. The Rebus


As The Megaphone once said, in its most pessimistic and wondering mood,
recording rather than condemning the strangeness of the time:

"Even The Four Just Men have become a respectable institution. Not more
than fifteen years ago we spoke of them as 'a criminal organization';
rewards were offered for their arrest...today you may turn into Curzon
Street and find a silver triangle affixed to the sedate door which marks
their professional headquarters...The hunted and reviled have become a
most exclusive detective agency...We can only hope that their somewhat
drastic methods of other times have been considerably modified."

It is sometimes a dangerous thing to watch a possible watcher.

'What is Mr Lewis Lethersohn afraid of?' asked Manfred, as he cracked an
egg at breakfast. His handsome, clean-shaven face was tanned a
teak-brown, for he was newly back from the sun and snows of Switzerland.

Leon Gonsalez sat opposite, absorbed in The Times; at the end of the
table was Raymond Poiccart, heavy-featured and saturnine. Other pens than
mine have described his qualities and his passion for growing vegetables.

He raised his eyes to Gonsalez.

'Is he the gentleman who has had this house watched for the past month?'
he asked.

A smile quivered on Leon's lips as he folded the newspaper neatly.

'He is the gentleman--I'm interviewing him this morning,' he said. 'In
the meantime, the sleuth hounds have been withdrawn--they were employed
by the Ottis Detective Agency.'

'If he is watching us, he has a bad conscience,' said Poiccart, nodding
slowly. 'I shall be interested to hear all about this.'

Mr Lewis Lethersohn lived in Lower Berkeley Street--a very large and
expensive house. The footman who opened the door to Leon was arrayed in a
uniform common enough in historical films but rather out of the picture
in Lower Berkeley Street. Mulberry and gold and knee breeches...Leon
gazed at him with awe.

'Mr Lethersohn will see you in the library,' said the man--he seemed;
thought Leon, rather conscious of his own magnificence.

A gorgeous house this, with costly furnishings and lavish decorations. As
he mounted the wide stairs he had a glimpse of a beautiful woman passing
across the landing. One disdainful glance she threw in his direction and
passed, leaving behind her the faint fragrance of some exotic perfume.

The room into which he was shown might have been mistaken for a bedroom,
with its bric-a-brac and its beauty of appointments.

Mr Lethersohn rose from behind the Empire writing table and offered a
white hand. He was thin, rather bald, and there was a suggestion of the
scholar in his lined face.

'Mr Gonsalez?' His voice was thin and not particularly pleasant. 'Won't
you sit down? I had your inquiry--there seems to be some mistake.'

He had resumed his own seat. Though he might endeavour, to cover up his
uneasiness by this cold attitude of his, he could not quite hide his
perturbation.

'I know you, of course--but it is ridiculous that I should set men to
watch your house. Why?'

Gonsalez was watching him intently.

'That is what I have come to learn,' he said, 'and I think it would be
fairest to tell you that there is no doubt that you are watching us. We
know the agency you employed--we know the fees you have paid and the
instructions you have given. The only question is, why?'

Mr Lethersohn moved uncomfortably and smiled. 'Really...I suppose there
is no wisdom in denying that I did employ detectives. The truth is, the
Four Just Men is rather a formidable organization--and--er--Well, I am a
rich man....'

He was at a loss how to go on.

The interview ended lamely with polite assurances on either side. Leon
Gonsalez went back to Curzon Street a very thoughtful man.

'He's afraid of somebody consulting us, and the detective people have
been employed to head off that somebody. Now who?'

The next evening brought the answer.

It was a grey April night, chill and moist. The woman who walked slowly
down Curzon Street, examining the numbers on the doors, was an object of
suspicion to the policeman standing on Claridge's corner. She was in the
region of thirty, rather slim, under the worn and soddened coat. Her face
was faded and a little pinched. 'Pretty once,' mused Leon Gonsalez,
observing her from behind the net curtain that covered the window. 'A
working woman without a thought beyond keeping her body and soul
together.'

He had time enough to observe her, since she stood for a long time by the
kerb, looking up and down the street hopelessly.

'Notice the absence of any kind of luring finery--and this is the hour
when even the poorest find a scarf or a pair of gloves.'

Manfred rose from the table where he had been taking his frugal meal and
joined the keen-faced observer.

'Provincial, I think,' said Leon thoughtfully. 'Obviously a stranger to
the West End--she's coming here!'

As he was speaking, the woman had turned, made a brief scrutiny of the
front door...They heard the bell ring.

'I was mistaken--she hadn't lost her way; she was plucking up courage to
ring--and if she isn't Lethersohn's bete noire I'm a Dutchman!'

He heard Poiccart's heavy tread in the passage--Poiccart played butler
quite naturally. Presently he came in and closed the door behind him.

'You will be surprised,' he said in his grave way. That was peculiarly
Poiccart--to say mysterious things gravely.

'About the lady? I refuse to be surprised.' Leon was vehement. 'She has
lost something--a husband, a watch, something. She has the "lost"
look--an atmosphere of vague helplessness surrounds her. The symptoms are
unmistakable!'

'Ask her to come in,' said Manfred, and Poiccart retired.

A second later Alma Stamford was ushered into the room.

That was her name. She came from Edgware and she was a widow...Long
before she came to the end of preliminaries Poiccart's promised surprise
had been sprung, for this woman, wearing clothes that a charwoman would
have despised, had a voice which was soft and educated. Her vocabulary
was extensive and she spoke of conditions which could only be familiar to
one who had lived in surroundings of wealth.

She was the widow of a man who--they gathered--had not been in his
lifetime the best of husbands. Rich beyond the ordinary meaning of the
term, with estates in Yorkshire and Somerset, a fearless rider to hounds,
he had met his death in the hunting field.

'My husband had a peculiar upbringing,' she said. 'His parents died at an
early age and he was brought up by his uncle. He was a terrible old man
who drank heavily, was coarse to the last degree, and was jealous of
outside interference. Mark saw practically nobody until, in the last year
or the old man's life, he brought in a Mr Lethersohn, a young man a
little older than Mark, to act as tutor--for Mark's education was
terribly backward. My husband was twenty-one when his uncle died, but he
retained a gentleman to act for him as companion and secretary.'

'Mr Lewis Lethersohn,' said Leon promptly, and she gasped.

'I can't guess how you know, but that is the name. Although we weren't
particularly happy,' she went on, 'my husband's death was a terrible
shock. But almost as great a shock was his will. In this he left one half
of his fortune to Lethersohn, the other half to me at the expiration of
five years from his death, provided that I carried out the conditions of
the will. I was not to marry during that period, I was to live at a house
in Harlow and never to leave the Harlow district. Mr Lethersohn was given
absolute power as sole executor to dispose of property for my benefit. I
have lived in Harlow until this morning.'

'Mr Lethersohn is of course married?' said Leon, his bright eyes fixed on
the lady.

'Yes--you know him?'

Leon shook his head.

'I only know that he is married and very much in love with his wife.'

She was astounded at this.

'You must know him. Yes, he married just before Mark was killed. A very
beautiful Hungarian girl--he is half Hungarian and I believe he adores
her. I heard that she was very extravagant--I only saw her once.'

'What has happened at Harlow?' It was the silent, watchful Poiccart who
asked the question.

He saw the woman's lips tremble.

'It has been a nightmare,' she said with a break in her voice. 'The house
was a beautiful little place--miles from Harlow really, and off the main
road. There I have been for two years practically a prisoner. My letters
have been opened, I have been locked in my room every night by one of the
two women Mr Lethersohn sent to look after me, and men have been
patrolling the grounds day and night.'

'The suggestion is that you are not quite right in your head?' asked
Manfred.

She looked startled at this.

'You don't think so?' she asked quickly, and, when he shook his head:
'Thank God for that! Yes, that was the story they told. I wasn't supposed
to see newspapers, though I had all the books I wanted. One day I found a
scrap of paper with the account of a bank fraud which you gentlemen had
detected, and there was a brief account of your past. I treasured that
because it had your address in the paragraph. To escape seemed
impossible--I had no money, it was impossible to leave the grounds. But
they had a woman who came to do the rough work twice a week. I think she
came from the village. I managed to enlist her sympathy, and yesterday
she brought me these clothes. Early this morning I changed, dropped out
of my bedroom window and passed the guard. Now I come to my real
mystery.'

She put her hand into the pocket of her wet coat and took out a small
package. This she unwrapped.

'My husband was taken to the cottage hospital after his accident; he died
early the next morning. He must have recovered consciousness unknown to
the nurses, for the top of the sheet was covered with little drawings. He
had made them with an indelible pencil attached to his temperature chart
and hanging above his head--he must have reached up for it and broken it
off.'

She spread out the square of soiled linen on the table.

[The book here includes a drawing: three irregular shapes at the left
with a car and a motorbike below them, a three-storey building in the
centre, and to the right of it twenty small circles, a line, the shape of
a pear with a long stem, and a flower with four short strokes above it.]

'Poor Mark was very fond of drawing the figures that children and idle
people who have no real knowledge of art love to scribble.'

'How did you get this?' asked Leon.

'The matron cut it off for me.'

Manfred frowned. 'The sort of things a man might draw in his delirium,'
he said.

'On the contrary,' said Leon coolly, 'it is as clear as daylight to me.
Where were you married?'

'At the Westminster Registry Office.'

Leon nodded.

'Take your mind back: was there anything remarkable about the
marriage--did your husband have a private interview with the registrar?'

She opened her big blue eyes at this.

'Yes--Mr Lethersohn and my husband interviewed him in his private
office.'

Leon chuckled, but was serious again instantly.

'One more question. Who drew up the will? A lawyer?'

She shook her head.

'My husband--it was written in his own hand from start to finish. He
wrote rather a nice hand, very easily distinguishable from any other.'

'Were there any other conditions imposed upon you in your husband's
will?'

She hesitated, and the watchers saw a dark flush pass over her face.

'Yes...it was so insulting that I did not tell you. It was this--and this
was the main condition--that I should not at any time attempt to
establish the fact that I was legally married to Mark. That was to me
inexplicable--I can't believe that he was ever married before, but his
early life was so remarkable that anything may have happened.'

Leon was smiling delightedly. In such moments he was as a child who had
received a new and entrancing toy.

'I can relieve your mind,' he said, to her amazement. 'Your husband was
never married before!'

Poiccart was studying the drawings.

'Can you get the plans of your husband's estates?' he asked, and Leon
chuckled again.

'That man knows everything, George!' he exclaimed. 'Poiccart, mon vieux,
you are superb!' He turned quickly to Mrs Stamford. 'Madam, you need
rest, a change of clothing, and--protection. The first and the last are
in this house, if you dare be our guest. The second I will procure for
you in an hour--together with a temporary maid.'

She looked at him, a little bewildered...Five minutes later, an
embarrassed Poiccart was showing her to her room, and a nurse of Leon's
acquaintance was hurrying to Curzon Street with a bulging suitcase--Leon
had a weakness for nurses, and knew at least a hundred by name.

Late as was the hour, he made several calls--one as far as Strawberry
Hill, where a certain assistant registrar of marriages lived.

It was eleven o'clock that night when he rang the bell at the handsome
house in Upper Berkeley Street. Another footman admitted him.

'Are you Mr Gonsalez? Mr Lethersohn has not returned from the theatre,
but he telephoned asking you to wait in the library.'

'Thank you,' said Leon gratefully, though there was no need for
gratitude, for he it was who had telephoned.

He was bowed into the ornate sanctum and left alone.

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.'



2. 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 senorita--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 attaches
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 attache. 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, or 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 £ &c. 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. B A R G E R.

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.

Tunny 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, Emilo,' 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?' Emilo 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 Heir 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 Emilo
Cassini of Turin!'

Emilo shifted uncomfortably, but Isola was amused.

'This man is omniscient! Dance with me, Senor 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.

'May I drop you, gracious lady?' Leon's smile was most entrancing. 'I
have a poor car but it is at your disposition.'

Isola hesitated.

'Thank you,' she said.

Leon, ever the soul of politeness, insisted on taking one of the seats
that put his back to the driver. It was not his own car. Usually he was
very nervous about other drivers, but tonight he did not mind.

They crossed Trafalgar Square.

'The man is taking the wrong turning,' said Isola with quick vehemence.

'This is the right road to Scotland Yard,' said Leon. 'We call this the
Way of the Happy Traveller--keep your hand away from your pocket, Emilo.
I have killed men on less provocation, and I have been covering you ever
since we left the club!'

In the early hours of the morning telegrams were despatched to police
headquarters at Folkestone and Dover:

'Arrest and detain Theophilus Barger, Joseph Lokely, Harry Rigson'--here
followed five other names--'travelling to the Continent by boat either
today or tomorrow.'

There was no need to give instructions about Isola. For a perfect lady,
her behaviour was indefensible.

'She blotted her copybook,' said Leon sadly. 'I've never seen a Happy
Traveller less happy when we got her to Scotland Yard.'

Considering the matter at the morning conference which was part of the
daily routine in Curzon Street, Manfred was inclined to regard the plot
as elementary.

'If you speak disparagingly of my genius and power of deduction I shall
burst into tears,' said Leon. 'Raymond thinks I was clever--I will not
have that verdict challenged. George, you're getting old and grouchy.'

'The detection was clever,' Manfred hastened to placate his smiling
friend.

'And the scheme was clever,' insisted Leon, 'and terribly like Isola. One
of these days she'll do something awfully original and be shot.
Obviously, what she set out to do was to collect seven men who bore some
resemblance to the members of her murder gang. When she had found them,
she made them get passports--that of course is why she asked if they knew
a clergyman, for a padre's signature on the photograph and application
form is as good as a lawyer's. Seven poor innocent men with passports
which she handed over to her friends while the happy travellers were sent
into out-of-the-way places. She was heading the gang into Italy--all the
passports were visaed for that country.'

'Tell me,' said Manfred, 'did they arrest the spurious T. Barger at
Dover?'

Leon shook his head.

'The man who was to have travelled with T. Barger's passport was one
Emilo Casbini--I spotted the likeness immediately. Isola was very
abusive--but I quietened her by suggesting that her husband might like to
know something about her friendship with Emilo...I have been watching
Isola for a long time and I have seen things.'



3. The Abductor


IT WAS A year since Lord Geydrew invoked the aid of the Just Men who
lived at the sign of the Triangle in Curzon Street. He was a
narrow-headed man; the first time they met with him, Poiccart hazarded
the opinion that he was constitutionally mean. The last time they met it
was not so much an opinion as stark knowledge, for his lordship had most
boldly repudiated the bill of expenses that Poiccart had rendered--even
though Manfred and Gonsalez had risked their lives to recover the lost
Geydrew diamond.

The Three did not take him to court. Not one of them had need of money.
Manfred was satisfied with the experience; Poiccart was cock-a-hoop
because a theory of his had worked home; Gonsalez found his consolation
in the shape of the client's head.

'The most interesting recession of the parietal and malformation of the
occiput I have ever seen,' he said enthusiastically.

The Just Men shared one extraordinary gift--a prodigious memory for faces
and an extraordinary facility for attaching those faces to disreputable
names. There was, however, no credit due for remembering the head of his
lordship.

Manfred was sitting in his small room overlooking Curzon Street one night
in spring, and he was in his most thoughtful mood when Poiccart--who
invariably undertook the job of butler--came hobbling in to announce Lord
Geydrew.

'Not the Geydrew of Gallat Towers?' Manfred could be massively ironical.
'Has he come to pay his bill?'

'God knows,' said Poiccart piously. 'Do peers of the realm pay their
bills? For the moment I am less concerned about the peerage than I am
about my ankle--really, Leon is a careless devil. I had to take a
taxi....'

Manfred chuckled. 'He will be penitent and interesting,' he said, 'as for
his lordship. Show him up.'

Lord Geydrew came in a little nervously, blinking at the bright light
that burnt on Manfred's table. Evidently he was unusually agitated. The
weak mouth was tremulous, he opened and closed his eyes with a rapidity
for which the bright light was not wholly responsible. His long, lined
face was twitching spasmodically; from time to time he thrust his fingers
through the scanty, reddish-grey hair.

'I hope, Mr Manfred, there is no--um--er--'

He fumbled in his pocket, produced an oblong slip of paper and pushed it
across the desk. Manfred looked and wondered. Poiccart, forgetful of his
role as butler, watched interestedly. Besides, there was no need to
pretend that he was anything but what he was.

Lord Geydrew looked from one to the other.

'I was hoping your friend--um--'

'Mr Gonsalez is out: he will be back later in the evening,' said Manfred,
wondering what was coming.

Then his lordship collapsed with a groan, and let his head fall upon the
arms that lay on the desk.

'Oh, my God!' he wailed...'The most terrible thing...It doesn't bear
thinking about.'

Manfred waited patiently. Presently the older man looked up.

'I must tell you the story from the beginning, Mr Manfred,' he said. 'My
daughter Angela--you may have met her?'

Manfred shook his head.

'She was married this morning. To Mr Guntheimer, a very wealthy
Australian banker and an immensely nice fellow.' He shook his head and
dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.

Light was beginning to dawn on Manfred.

'Mr Guntheimer is considerably older than my daughter,' his lordship went
on, 'and I will not conceal from you the fact that Angela has certain
objections to the match. In fact, she had very stupidly arrived at some
sort of understanding with young Sidworth--good family and all that, but
not a penny in the world...It would have been madness.'

Manfred now understood quite clearly.

'We had to hurry the marriage, since Guntheimer is leaving for Australia
much earlier than he expected. Happily my daughter gave way to my
legitimate wishes and they were married this morning at a registrar's
office and were due to leave for the Isle of Wight by the three o'clock
train.

'We did not go to see her off, and the only account I have of the
occurrence was from the mouth of my son-in-law. He said that he was
walking up to his reserved compartment, when suddenly he missed my
daughter from his side. He looked round, retraced his steps, but could
see nothing of her. Thinking that she might have gone ahead, he returned
to the compartment, but it was empty. He then went back beyond the
barrier: she was not in sight, but a porter whom he had engaged to carry
his luggage and who followed him, said that he had seen her in earnest
conversation with an elderly man and that they walked into the booking
hall together and disappeared. Another porter on duty in the courtyard of
the station saw them get into a car and drive off.'

Manfred was jotting down his notes on his blotting-pad. Poiccart never
lifted his eyes from the visitor.

'The story the porter tells--the outside porter, I mean, went on his
lordship, 'is that my daughter seemed reluctant to go, and that she was
almost thrust into the car, which had to pass him. As the car came
abreast, the man was pulling down the blinds, and the porter says that he
has no doubt that my daughter was struggling with him.'

'With the elderly man?' said Manfred.

Lord Geydrew nodded.

'Mr Manfred'--his voice was a wail--'I am not a rich man, and perhaps I
would be wise to leave this matter in the hands of the police. But I have
such extraordinary faith in your intelligence and acumen--I think you
will find that cheque right--and in spite of your exorbitant charges I
wish to engage you. She is my only daughter....' His voice broke.

'Did the porter take the number of the car?'

Lord Geydrew shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'Naturally I wish to keep
this out of the press--'

'I'm afraid you've failed,' said Manfred, and took a paper from a basket
that was at his side, pointing out a paragraph in the stop press.

"REPORTED ABDUCTION OF BRIDE

"It is reported that a bride, just before leaving Waterloo on her
honeymoon trip, was forcibly abducted by an elderly man. Scotland Yard
have been notified."

'Porters will talk,' said Manfred, leaning back in his chair. 'Have the
police a theory?'

'None,' snapped his lordship.

'Has Mr Sidworth been interviewed?'

Lord Geydrew shook his head vigorously.

'Naturally that was the first thought I had. Sidworth, I thought, has
persuaded this unfortunate girl--'

'Is he an elderly man?' asked Manfred, with a twinkle in his eye which
only Poiccart understood.

'Of course he isn't,' snapped his lordship. 'I told you he was young. At
the present moment he's staying with some very dear friends of mine at
Newbury--I think he took the marriage rather badly. At any rate, my
friend says that he has not left Kingshott Manor all day, and that he has
not once used the telephone.'

Manfred rubbed his shapely nose thoughtfully.

'And Mr Guntheimer--?'

'Naturally he's distracted. I have never known a man so upset. He's
almost mad with grief. Can you gentlemen give me any hope?'

He looked from one to the other, and his lean face brightened at
Manfred's nod.

'Where is Mr Guntheimer staying?' asked Poiccart, breaking his silence.

'At the Gayborough Hotel,' said Lord Geydrew.

'Another point--what was his present to the bride?' asked Manfred.

His visitor looked surprised, and then: 'A hundred thousand pounds,' he
said impressively. 'Mr Guntheimer doesn't believe in our old method of
settlement. I may say that his cheque for that amount is in my pocket
now.'

'And your present to the bride?' asked Manfred.

Lord Geydrew showed some signs of impatience.

'My dear fellow, you're on the wrong track. Angela was not spirited away
for purposes of property. The jewel case containing her diamonds was
carried by Guntheimer. She had nothing of value in her possession except
for a few odd pounds in her handbag.'

Manfred rose.

'I think that is all I want to ask you, Lord Geydrew. Unless I'm greatly
mistaken, your daughter will come back to you in twenty-four hours.'

Poiccart showed the comforted man to his car, and returned to find
Manfred reading the sporting column in an evening newspaper.

'Well?' asked Poiccart.

'A curious case and one in which my soul revels.' He put down the paper
and stretched himself. 'If Leon comes in, will you ask him to wait my
return unless there is something urgent takes him elsewhere?' He lifted
his head. 'I think that is him,' he said, at the sound of squealing
brakes.

Poiccart shook his head.

'Leon is more noiseless,' he said, and went down to admit an agitated
young man.

Mr Harry Sidworth was that type of youth for which Manfred had a very
soft spot. Lank of body, healthy of face, he had all the incoherence of
his age.

'I say, are you Mr Manfred?' he began, almost before he got into the
room. 'I've been to that old devil's house and his secretary told me to
come here, though for the Lord's sake don't tell anybody he said so!'

'You're Mr Sidworth, of course?'

The young man nodded vigorously. His face was anxious, his air wild; he
was too young to hide his evident distress.

'Isn't it too terrible for words--' he began.

'Mr Sidworth'--Manfred fixed him with a kindly eye--'you've come to ask
me about your Angela, and I'm telling you, as I told Lord Geydrew, that
I'm perfectly certain that she will come back to you unharmed. There's
one thing I might ask--how long has she known her husband?'

The young man made a wry face.

'That's a hateful word to me,' he groaned. 'Guntheimer? About three
months. He isn't a bad fellow. I've nothing against him, except that he
got Angela. Old Geydrew thought I'd taken her away. He rang up the people
I was staying with, and that was the first news I had that she'd
disappeared. It's the most ghastly thing that's ever happened to me.'

'Have you heard from her lately?' asked Manfred.

Sidworth nodded.

'Yes, this morning,' he said dolefully. 'Just a little note thanking me
for my wedding present. I gave her a jewel case--'

'A what?' asked Manfred sharply, and the young man, surprised at his
vehemence, stared at him.

'A jewel case--my sister bought one about a month ago, and Angela was so
taken with it that I had an exact copy made.'

Manfred was looking at him absently.

'Your sister?' he said slowly. 'Where does your sister live?'

'Why, she's at Maidenhead,' said the young man, surprised.

Manfred looked at his watch.

'Eight o'clock,' he said. 'This is going to be rather an amusing
evening.'

The clocks were striking the half-hour after ten when the telephone in Mr
Guntheimer's private suite buzzed softly. Guntheimer ceased his restless
pacing and went to the instrument.

'I can't see anybody,' he said. 'Who?' He frowned. 'All right, I'll see
him.'

It had been raining heavily and Manfred apologized for his wet raincoat
and waited for an invitation to remove it. But apparently Mr Guntheimer
was too preoccupied with his unhappy thoughts to be greatly concerned
about his duties as host.

He was a tall, good-looking man, rather haggard of face now, and the hand
that stroked the iron-grey moustache trembled a little.

'Geydrew told me he was going to see you--what is your explanation of
this extraordinary happening, Mr Manfred?'

Manfred smiled.

'The solution is a very simple one, Mr Guntheimer,' he said. 'It is to be
found in the pink diamond.'

'In the what?' asked the other, startled.

'Your wife has a rather nice diamond brooch,' said Manfred. 'Unless I am
misinformed, the third from the end of the bar is of a distinctly pinkish
hue. It is, or was, the property of the Rajah of Komitar, and on its
topmost facet you will find an Arabic word, meaning "Happiness."'

Guntheimer was gazing at him open-mouthed.

'What has that to do with it?'

Again Manfred smiled.

'If there is a pink diamond and it is inscribed as I say, I can find your
wife, not in twenty-four but in six hours.'

Guntheimer fingered his chin thoughtfully.

'That matter's easily settled,' he said. 'My wife's jewels are in the
hotel safe. Just wait.'

He was gone five minutes and returned carrying a small scarlet box. He
put this on the table and opened it with a key which he took from his
pocket. Lifting the lid, he took out a pad of wash-leather and revealed a
trayful of glittering jewels.

'There's no brooch there,' he said after a search; he pulled out the tray
and examined the padded bottom of the box.

There were brooches and bars of all kinds. Manfred pointed to one, and
this was inspected--but there was no pink diamond; nor was there in any
other brooch.

'Is that the best you can do in the way of detective work?' demanded Mr
Guntheimer as he closed and locked the box. 'I thought that tale was a
little fantastic...'

Crash! A stone came hurtling through the window, smashing the glass, and
fell on the carpet. With an oath Guntheimer spun round.

'What was that?'

He grabbed the jewel box that was on the table and ran to the window.
Outside the window was a small balcony which ran the length of the
building.

'Somebody standing on the balcony must have thrown that,' said
Guntheimer.

The sound of smashing glass had been heard in the Corridor, and two hotel
servants came in and examined the damage without, however, offering a
solution to the mystery.

Manfred waited until the distracted bridegroom had locked away the jewel
box in a strong trunk, and by this time Guntheimer was in a better
humour.

'I've heard about you fellows,' he said, 'and I know you're pretty
clever; otherwise, I should have thought that story of the pink diamond
was all bunkum. Perhaps you will tell me what the Rajah of Who-was-it has
to do with Angela's disappearance?'

Manfred was biting his lip thoughtfully.

'I don't wish to alarm you,' he said slowly. 'But has it occurred to you,
Mr Guntheimer, that you may share her fate?'

Again that quick turn and look of apprehension.

'I don't quite understand you.'

'I wondered if you would,' said Manfred and, holding out his hand, he
left his astonished host staring after him.

When he got to Curzon Street he found Gonsalez, his head in one deep
armchair, his feet on another. Apparently Poiccart, who had reached home
first, had told him of the callers, for he was holding forth on women.

'They are wilful, they are unreasonable,' he said bitterly. 'You
remember, George, that woman at Cordova, how we saved her life from her
lover and how we barely saved our own at her infuriated hands--there
should be a law prohibiting women from possessing firearms. Here is a
case in point. Tomorrow the newspapers will tell you the harrowing story
of a bride torn from the arms of her handsome bridegroom. The old ladies
of Bayswater will shed tears over the tragedy, knowing nothing of the
aching heart of Mr Harry Sidworth or the great inconvenience to which
this strange and tragic happening has put George Manfred, Raymond
Poiccart, and Leon Gonsalez.'

Manfred opened the safe in a corner of the room and put into it something
he had taken from his pocket. Characteristically, Gonsalez asked no
questions, and it was remarkable and significant that nobody discussed
the pink diamond.

The following morning passed uneventfully, save that Leon had much to say
about the hardness of the drawing-room sofa, where he had spent the
night, and the three men had finished lunch and were sitting smoking over
their coffee, when a ring of the bell took Poiccart into the hall.

'Geydrew, full of bad tidings,' said George Manfred, as the sound of a
voice came to them.

Lord Geydrew it was, shrill with his tremendous information.

'Have you heard the news?...Guntheimer has disappeared! The waiter went
to his room this morning, could get no answer, opened the door with his
key and walked in. The bed had not been slept in...all his luggage was
there, and on the floor--'

'Let me guess,' said Manfred, and held his forehead. 'The jewel case was
smashed to smithereens, without a single jewel in it! Or was it--'

But Lord Geydrew's face told him that his first guess was accurate.

'How did you know?' he gasped. 'It wasn't in the papers--my God, this is
awful!'

In his agitation, he did not notice that Leon Gonsalez had slipped from
the room, and only missed him when he turned to find the one man in whom,
for some extraordinary reason, he had faith.

('Geydrew never did trust you or me,' said George afterwards.)

'I'm ashamed to confess it,' smiled Manfred. 'That was sheer guesswork.
The jewel case had the appearance of being jumped on--I don't wonder!'

'But--but--' stammered the nobleman, and at that minute the door opened
and he stood amazed.

A smiling girl was there, and in another instant was in his arms.

'Here's your Angela,' said Leon, with great coolness, 'and with all due
respect to everybody, I shan't be sorry to sleep in my own bed tonight.
George, that sofa must be sent back to the brigands who supplied it.'

But George was at the safe, lifting out a red leather jewel case.



It was a long time before Geydrew was calm enough to hear the story.

'My friend Leon Gonsalez,' said Manfred, 'has a wonderful memory for
faces--so have we all, for the matter of that. But Leon is specially
gifted. He was waiting at Waterloo to drive friend Poiccart home. Raymond
had been to Winchester to see a surgeon friend of ours over a matter of a
sprained leg. Whilst Leon was waiting he saw Guntheimer and your daughter
and instantly recognized Guntheimer whose other name is Lanstry, or
Smith, or Malikin. Guntheimer's graft is bigamy, and Leon happens to know
him rather well. A few inquiries made of the porter, and he discovered,
not the identity of your daughter, but that this man had married that
day. He approached Angela with a cock and bull story that some mysterious
body was waiting to see her outside the station. I will not say that she
imagined that mysterious body was Harry Sidworth, but at any rate she
went very willingly. She showed some little fight when friend Leon pushed
her into the car and drove away with her--'

'Anybody who has tried to drive a car and control an infuriated and
terrified lady will sympathize with me,' broke in Leon.

'By the time Miss Angela Geydrew reached Curzon Street she was in full
possession of the facts as Leon knew them,' Manfred went on. 'Leon's one
object was to postpone the honeymoon until he could get somebody to
identify Guntheimer. The young lady told us nothing about her jewel case,
but we all guessed the hundred-thousand-pound cheque, presented too late
to be banked; before it could be cleared, Guntheimer would be well out of
the country with any loot he was able to gather--in this case the family
diamonds--and of course it would have been pretty easy to arrest him last
night. When your lordship called yesterday Leon was out finishing his
investigations. Before he returned, I learnt where I could get a
duplicate jewel box, and with Poiccart made a call on friend bigamist.
Poiccart was on the balcony, listening, and at an agreed word signal he
smashed the window, which gave me just the opportunity I wanted to change
the jewel boxes. Later, I presume, Mr Guntheimer opened the box, found it
was empty, realized the game was up and fled.'

'But how did you induce him to show you the jewel box?' asked Lord
Geydrew.

Manfred smiled cryptically. The tale of the pink diamond was too crude to
be repeated.



4 The Third Coincidence


LEON GONSALEZ, like the famous scientist, had an unholy knack of
collecting coincidences. He had, too, strange faiths, and believed that
if a man saw a pink cow with one horn in the morning, he must, by the
common workings of a certain esoteric law, meet another pink cow with one
horn later in the day.

'Coincidences, my dear George,' he said, 'are inevitabilities--not
accidents.'

Manfred murmured something in reply--he was studying the dossier of one
William Yape, of whom something may be told at a later period.

'Now here is a coincidence.' Leon was in no sense abashed, for it was
after dinner, the hour of the day when he was most confident. 'This
morning I took the car for a run to Windsor--she was a trifle sticky
yesterday--and at Langley what did I find? A gentleman sitting before an
inn, very drunk. He was, I imagined, an agricultural labourer in his best
Sunday suit, and it was remarkable that he wore a diamond ring worth five
hundred pounds. He had, he told me, been to Canada, and had stayed at
the Chateau Fronteuse--which is an expensive hotel.'

Poiccart was interested.

'And the coincidence?'

'If George will listen.' Manfred looked up with a groan. 'Thank you.
Hardly had I begun questioning this inebriated son of the soil when a
Rolls drove up, and there stepped down a rather nice-looking gentleman
who also wore a diamond ring on his little finger.'

'Sensation,' said George Manfred, and went back to his dossier.

'I shall be offended if you do not listen. Imagine the agriculturist
suddenly jumping to his feet as if he had seen a ghost. "Ambrose!" he
gasped. I tell you his face was the colour of milk. Ambrose--if he will
pardon the liberty--could not have heard him, and passed into the inn.
The labourer went stumbling away--it is remarkable that one's head sobers
so much more quickly than one's legs--as though the devil was after him.

'I went into the inn and found Ambrose drinking tea--a man who drinks tea
at eleven o'clock in the morning has lived either in South Africa or
Australia. It proved to be South Africa. An alluvial diamond digger, an
ex-soldier and a most gentlemanly person, though not very communicative.
After he had gone I went in search of the labourer--overtook him as he
entered a most flamboyant villa.'

'Which, with your peculiar disregard for the sacredness of the
Englishman's home, you entered.'

Leon nodded.

'Truth is in you,' he said. 'Imagine, my dear George, a suburban villa so
filled with useless furniture that you could hardly find a place to sit.
Satin-covered settees, pseudo-Chinese cabinets, whatnots and wherefores
crowding space. Ridiculous oil paintings, painted by the yard, in heavy
gold frames, simpering enlargements of photographs covering hideous
wallpaper--and two ladies, expensively dressed, bediamonded but without
an "h" between them; common as the dirt on my shoes, shrill, ugly,
coarse.

'As I entered the hall on the trail of the labourer I heard him say: "He
wasn't killed--he's back," and a woman say:

"Oh, my God!" And then the second woman said: "He must be killed--it was
in the list on New Year's Day!"--after which I was so busy explaining my
presence that further enlightenment was out of the question.'

George Manfred had tied his dossier neatly with a strip of red tape, and
now he leaned back in his chair.

'You took the number of the Ambrose car, of course?'

Leon nodded.

'And he wore a diamond ring?'

'A lady's--it was on his little finger. A not very magnificent affair. It
was the sort of dress ring that a girl would wear.'

Poiccart chuckled.

'Now we sit down and wait for the third coincidence,' he said. 'It is
inevitable.'

A few minutes later Leon was on his way to Fleet Street, for he was a man
whose curiosity was insatiable. For two hours, in the office of a
friendly newspaper, he pored over the casualty lists that were published
on four New Year's Days, looking for a soldier whose first name was
'Ambrose'.



'The Three Just Men,' said the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully, 'are
now so eminently respectable that we give them police protection.'

You must allow for the fact that this was after dinner, when even an
Assistant Commissioner grows a little expansive, especially when he is
host in his nice house in Belgravia. You must also allow for the more
interesting fact that one of the famous organization had been seen
outside Colonel Yenford's house that very night.

'They are strange devils--why they should be watching this place beats
me; if I'd known I should have asked the fellow in!'

Lady Irene Belvinne looked at one of the portraits on the wall: she
seemed scarcely interested in the Three Just Men. Yet every word Colonel
Yenford spoke was eagerly stored in her memory.

A beautiful woman of thirty-five, the widow of a man who had held Cabinet
rank, she might claim to be especially favoured. She had been the wife of
a many-times millionaire who had left her his entire fortune; she had the
lineless face and serene poise of one who had never known care....

'I don't exactly know what they do?' Her voice was a soft drawl. 'Are
they detectives? Of course, I know what they were.'

Who did not know what that ruthless trio were in the days when every hand
was against them? When swift death followed their threat, when a whole
world of secret lawbreakers trembled at their names.

'They're tame enough now,' said somebody. 'They wouldn't have played
their monkey tricks today, eh, Yenford?'

Colonel Yenford was not so confident.

'It's strange,' mused Irene. 'I didn't think of them.'

She was so wholly absorbed in her thoughts that she did not realize she
was speaking aloud.

'Why on earth should you think about them?' demanded Yenford, a little
astonished.

She started at this and changed the subject.

It was past midnight when she reached her beautiful flat in Piccadilly,
and all the staff except her maid had gone to bed. At the sound of a key
turning in the lock the maid came flying into the hall, and with a
sinking of heart Irene Belvinne knew that something was wrong.

'She's been waiting since nine, m'lady,' said the girl in a low voice.

Irene nodded.

'Where is she?' she asked.

'I put her in the study, madam.'

Handing her coat to the maid, the woman walked up the broad passage,
opened a door and entered the library. The woman who had been sitting on
the hide-covered settee rose awkwardly at the sight of the radiant woman
who entered. The visitor was poorly dressed, had a long, not too clean
face, and a mouth that drooped pathetically. She looked up slyly from
under her lowered lids, and though her tone was humble it also held a
suggestion of menace.

'He's terribly bad again tonight, m'lady,' she said. 'We had all our work
cut out to keep him in bed. He wanted to come here, he said, him being
delirious. The doctor says that we ought to get him away to--' her eyes
rose quickly and fell again '--South Africa.'

'It was Canada last time,' said Irene steadily. 'That was rather an
expensive trip, Mrs Dennis.'

The woman mumbled something, rubbing her hands still more nervously.

'I'm sure I'm worried to death about the whole business, me being his
aunt, and I'm sure I can't afford no five thousand pounds to take him to
South Africa--'

Five thousand pounds! Irene was aghast at the demand. The Canadian trip
had cost three thousand, but the original request was for one.

'I should like to see him myself,' she said with sudden determination.

Again that swift, sly look.

'I wouldn't let you come and see him, me lady, unless you brought a
gentleman. I'd say your 'usband, but I know he's no more. I wouldn't take
the responsibility, I wouldn't indeed. That's why I never tell you where
we're living, in case you was tempted, me lady. He'd think no more of
cutting your throat than he would of looking at you!'

A smile of contempt hardened the beautiful face.

'I am not so sure that really terrifies me,' said Irene quietly. 'You
want five thousand pounds--when do you sail?'

'Next Saturday, me lady,' said the woman eagerly. 'And Jim say you was to
pay the money in notes.'

Irene nodded.

'Very well,' she said. 'But you mustn't come here again unless I send for
you.'

'Where shall I get the money, me lady?'

'Here at twelve o'clock tomorrow. And won't you please make yourself a
little more presentable when you call?'

The woman grinned.

'I ain't got your looks or your clothes, me lady,' she sneered. 'Every
penny piece I earn goes on poor Jim, a-trying to save his life, when if
he had his rights he'd have millions.'

Irene walked to the door and opened it, waited in the passage until the
maid had shut out the unprepossessing visitor.

'Open the windows and air the room,' said Irene.

She went upstairs and sat down before her dressing table, eyeing her
reflection thoughtfully.

Then, of a sudden, she got up and crossed the room to the telephone. She
lifted the receiver and then realized that she did not know the number. A
search of the book gave her the information she wanted. The Triangle
Detective Agency had their headquarters in Curzon Street. But they would
be in bed by now, she thought; and even if the members of this
extraordinary confederation were not, would they be likely to interest
themselves at this late hour?

She had hardly given the number before she was through. She heard the
rattle of the receiver as it was raised, and the distinctive tinkle of a
guitar; then an eager voice asked her who she was.

'Lady Irene Belvinne,' she said. 'You don't know me, but--'

'I know you very well. Lady Irene.' She could almost detect the unknown
smiling as he answered. 'You dined at Colonel Yenford's tonight and left
the house at twelve minutes to twelve. You told your chauffeur to go back
by way of Hyde Park....'

The guitar had ceased. She heard a distant voice say: 'Listen to Leon:
he's being all Sherlock Holmes.' And then a laugh. She smiled in
sympathy.

'Do you want to see me?' This was Leon Gonsalez speaking, then.

'When can I?' she asked.

'Now. I'll come right away, if you're in any serious trouble--I have an
idea that you are.'

She hesitated. An immediate decision was called for and she set her
teeth.

'Very well. Will you come? I'll wait up for you.'

In her nervousness she dropped the receiver down while he was answering
her.

Five minutes later the maid admitted a slim, good-looking man. He wore a
dark suit, and was strangely like a Chancery barrister she knew. On her
part the greeting was awkward, for the interval had been too short for
her to make up her mind what she should tell him, and how she should
begin.

It was in the library tainted, to her sensitive nostrils, with her late
frowsy visitor, that she made her confession, and he listened with an
expressionless face.

'...I was very young--that is my only excuse; and he was a very handsome,
very attractive young man...and a chauffeur isn't a servant...I mean, one
can be quite good friends with him, as one couldn't be with--well, with
other servants.'

He nodded.

'It was an act of lunacy, and nasty, and everything you can say. When my
father sent him away I thought my heart would break.'

'Your father knew?' asked Gonsalez gravely.

She shook her head.

'No. Father was rather quick-tempered, and he bullied Jim for some fault
that was not his--that was the end of it. I had one letter and then I
heard no more until two or three years after I was married, when I got a
letter from this woman, saying that her nephew was consumptive and she
knew what--good friends we'd been.'

To her surprise her visitor was smiling, and at first she was hurt.

'You have told me only what I've guessed,' he said to her amazement.

'You guessed...but you didn't know--'

He interrupted her brusquely.

'Was your second marriage happy, Lady Irene? I am not being impertinent.'

She hesitated.

'It was quite happy. My husband was nearly thirty years older than I--why
do you ask?'

Leon smiled again.

'I am a sentimentalist--which is a shocking confession for one who boasts
of his scientific mind. I am a devourer of love stories, both in fiction
and in life. This Jim was not unpleasant?'

She shook her head.

'No,' she said, and then added simply: I loved him--I love him still.
That is the ghastly part of it. It is dreadful to think of him lying ill
with this dreadful aunt looking after him--'

'Landlady,' broke in Leon calmly. 'He had no relations.'

She was on her feet now, staring at him.

'What do you know?'

He had a gesture which was almost mesmeric in its calming effect.

'I went to Colonel Yenford's house tonight--I happened to learn that you
were his guest and I wanted to see your mouth. I'm sorry if I am being
mysterious, but I judge women by their mouths--the test is infallible.
That is why I knew the hour you left.'

Irene Belvinne was frowning at him.

'I don't understand, Mr Gonzalez,' she began. 'What has my mouth to do
with the matter?'

He nodded slowly.

'If you had a certain type of mouth I should not have been interested--as
it is...'

She waited, and presently he spoke.

'You will find James Ambrose Clynes in his suite at the Piccadilly Hotel.
The dress ring you gave him is on his little finger, and your photograph
is the only one in his room.'

He put out his hand and steadied her as, white and shaking, she sank into
a chair.

'He's a very rich man and a very nice man...and a very stupid man, or he
would have come to see you.'

A car drew up before an ornate villa in the village of Langley and a
poorly-dressed woman got down. The door was opened by a thickset man and
the two passed into the over-furnished parlour. On the face of Mrs Dennis
was a smile of satisfaction.

'It's all right--she'll part,' she said, throwing off her old coat.

The coarse-looking man with the diamond ring turned to his other sister.

'As soon as we get the money it's Canada for us,' he said ominously. 'I
won't have another fright like I had on Tuesday--why were you so late,
Maria?'

'A tyre burst on the Great West Road,' she said, rubbing her hands at the
fire. 'What are you worrying about, Saul? We've done nothing. It ain't as
though we ever threatened her. That'd be crime. Just askin' her to help a
poor feller who's ill, that ain't crime.'

They discussed the pros and cons of this for nearly an hour. Then came
the knock at the door.

It was the man who went out to interview the visitor....

'If I don't come in,' said Leon Gonsalez pleasantly, 'the police will.
There will be a warrant issued tomorrow morning and you will be held on a
charge of conspiring to defraud.'

A few seconds later he was questioning a trembling audience....

Poiccart and George Manfred were waiting up for him when he returned in
the early hours of the morning.

'Rather a unique case,' said Leon, glancing through his notes. 'Our
Ambrose, a well-educated man, had a love affair with the Earl of
Carslake's daughter. He loses his job--because he loves the girl he
decides not to communicate with her. He goes into the Army and, before he
is sent overseas, he writes to his landlady, asks her to take out a
sealed envelope, full of letters from Irene and burn them. By the time
she gets these instructions, Ambrose is reported killed. The landlady,
Mrs Dennis, with the inquisitiveness of her class, opens the envelope and
learns enough to be able to blackmail this unfortunate girl. But Ambrose
isn't dead--he is discharged from the army on account of wounds and,
accepting the invitation of a South African soldier, goes to the Cape,
where he makes good.

'In the meantime the Dennises wax rich. They pretend that "Jim", as they
called him, is desperately ill, trusting that Irene has not heard of his
death. By this means, and on the threat of telling her husband, they
extract nearly twenty thousand pounds.'

'What shall we do to them?' asked Poiccart.

Leon took something from his pocket--a glittering diamond ring. 'I took
this as payment for my advice,' he said.

George smiled.

'And your advice, Leon?'

'Was to get out of the country before Ambrose found them,' said Leon.



5. The Slane Mystery


THE KILLING OF Bernard Slane was one of those mysteries which delight the
Press and worry the police. Mr Slane was a rich stockbroker, a bachelor
and a good fellow. He had dined at a Pall Mall club and, his car being in
the garage for repairs, he took a taxi and ordered the driver to take him
to his flat in Albert Palace Mansions. The porter of the mansions had
taken the elevator to the fifth floor at the time Mr Slane arrived.

The first intimation that there was anything wrong was when the porter
came down to find the taxi-driver standing in the hall, and asked him
what he wanted.

'I've just brought a gentleman here--Mr Slane, who lives at Number
Seven,' said the driver. 'He hadn't got any change so he's gone in to get
it.'

This was quite likely, because Slane lived on the first floor and
invariably used the stairs. They chatted together, the porter and the
driver, for some five minutes, and then the porter undertook to go up and
collect the money for the fare.

Albert Palace Mansions differed from every other apartment-house of its
kind in that, on the first and the most expensive floor, there was one
small flat consisting of four rooms, which was occupied by Slane.

A light showed through the transom, but then it had been burning all the
evening. The porter rang the bell and waited, rang it again,
knocked--without, however, getting an answer. He returned to the driver.

'He must have gone to sleep--how was he?' he asked.

By his question he meant to inquire whether the stockbroker was quite
sober. It is a fact that Slane drank rather heavily, and had come home
more than once in a condition which necessitated the help of the night
porter to get him to bed.

The driver, whose name was Reynolds, admitted his passenger had had as
much as, and probably more than, was good for him. Again the porter
attempted to get a reply from the flat and, when this failed, he paid the
driver out of his own pocket, four shillings and sixpence.

The porter was on duty all night, and made several journeys up and down
his shaft. Through the open grille on the first floor he commanded a view
of No 7. His statement was that he saw nothing of Mr Slane that night,
that it was impossible for the stockbroker to have left the building
without his seeing him.

At half past five the next morning a policeman patrolling Green Park saw
a man sitting huddled up on a garden chair. He wore a dinner jacket and,
his attitude was so suspicious that the policeman stepped over the rails
and crossed the stretch of grass which intervened between the pathway and
the chair which was placed near a clump of rhododendrons. He came up to
the man, to find his fears justified. The man was dead; he had been
terribly battered with some blunt instrument, and a search of the pockets
revealed his identity as Bernard Slane.

Near the spot was an iron gateway set in the rails leading to the Mall,
and the lock of this was discovered to be smashed. Detectives from
Scotland Yard were at once on the spot; the porter of Albert Palace
Mansions was questioned; and a call was sent round, asking the driver
Reynolds to call at the Yard. He was there by twelve o'clock, but could
throw no light on the mystery.

Reynolds was a respectable man without any record against him, and was a
widower who lived over a garage near Dorset Square, Baker Street.


'A most amusing crime,' said Leon Gonsalez, his elbows on the breakfast
table, his head between his hands.

'Why amusing?' asked George.

Leon read on, his lips moving, a trick of his, as he devoured every
printed line. After a while he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his
eyes.

'It is amusing,' he said, 'because of the hotel bill that was found in
the dead man's pocket.'

He put his finger on a paragraph and Manfred drew the paper towards him
and read:

'The police discovered in the right hand pocket of the murdered man's
overcoat a bloodstained paper which proved to be an hotel bill, issued by
the Plage Hotel, Ostend, five years ago. The bill was made out in the
name of Mr and Mrs Wilbraham and was for 7,500 francs.'

Manfred pushed the paper back.

'Isn't the mystery why this half-drunken man left his flat and went back
to Green Park, some considerable distance from Albert Palace Mansions?'
he asked.

Leon, who was staring blankly at the farther wall, shook his head slowly;
and then, in his characteristic way, went off at a tangent:

'There's a lot to be said for the law which prohibited the publication of
certain details in divorce cases,' he said, 'but I believe that the
circumstances which surrounded the visit of Mr and Mrs Wilbraham to the
Plage would have been given the fullest publicity if the case had come
into court.'

'Do you suspect a murder of revenge?' Leon shrugged his shoulders and
changed the subject. George Manfred used to say that Leon had the most
amazing pigeon-hole of a mind that it had been his fortune to meet with.
Very seldom indeed did he have to consult the voluminous notes and data
he had collected during his life, and which made one room in that little
house uninhabitable.

There was a man at Scotland Yard, Inspector Meadows, who was on the
friendliest terms with the Three. It was his practice to smoke a pipe,
indeed many pipes, of evenings in the little Curzon Street house. He came
that night, rather full of the Slane mystery.

'Slane was a pretty rapid sort,' he said. 'From the evidence that was
found in his house, it is clear that he was the one man in London who
ought not to be a bachelor if about two dozen women had their rights! By
the way, we've traced Mr and Mrs Wilbraham. Wilbraham was of course
Slane. The lady isn't so easy to find; one of his pick-ups, I suppose--'

'And yet the only girl he was willing to marry,' said Gonsalez.

'How did you know that?' asked the startled detective.

Leon chuckled.

'The bill was obviously sent to give the husband evidence. The husband,
either because he was willing to give his wife another chance or because
he was a Roman Catholic, did not divorce her. Now tell me'--he leaned
forward over the table and beamed on the detective--'when the taxi drew
up before the door of Albert Palace Mansions, did Slane immediately
alight?--I can tell you he didn't.'

'You've been making inquiries,' said the other suspiciously. 'No, he
waited there. The driver, being a tactful individual, thought it best to
keep him inside until the people who were in the hall had gone up in the
lift--which is visible from the door.'

'Exactly. Was it the driver's idea or Slane's'?

'The driver's,' said Meadows. 'Slane was half asleep when the man pulled
him out.'

'One more question: when the elevator man took this party to the fifth
floor, did he come down immediately?'

The Inspector shook his head.

'No, he stayed up there talking to the tenants. He heard Slane's door
slam, and that was the first intimation he had that somebody had come
in.'

Leon jerked back into his chair, a delighted smile on his face.

'What do you think, Raymond?' He addressed the saturnine Poiccart.

'What do you think?' said the other.

Meadows looked from Poiccart to Gonsalez.

'Have you any theory as to why Slane went out again?'

'He didn't go out again,' said the two men in unison.

Meadows caught George Manfred's smiling eyes.

'They're trying to mystify you. Meadows, but what they say is true.
Obviously he didn't go out again.'

He rose and stretched himself.

'I'm going to bed; and I'd like to bet you fifty pounds that Leon finds
the murderer tomorrow, though I won't swear that he will hand him over to
Scotland Yard.'

At eight o'clock next morning, when, with a cigarette in his mouth,
Reynolds, the taxi-driver, was making a final inspection of his cab
before taking it out for the day, Leon Gonsalez walked into the mews.

Reynolds was a man of forty, a quiet, good-looking fellow. He had a soft
voice and was courteous in a particularly pleasing way.

'You're not another detective, are you?' he asked, smiling ruefully.
'I've answered as many foolish questions as I care to answer.'

'Is this your own cab?' Leon nodded to the shining vehicle.

'Yes, that's mine,' said the driver. 'Cab-owning is not the gold mine
some people think it is. And if you happen to get mixed up in a case like
this, your takings fall fifty per cent.'

Very briefly Leon explained his position.

'The Triangle Agency--oh, yes, I remember: you're the Four Just Men,
aren't you? Good Lord! Scotland Yard haven't put you on the job?'

'I'm on the job for my own amusement,' said Leon, giving smile for smile.
'There are one or two matters which weren't quite clear to me, and I
wondered if you would mind telling me something that the police don't
seem to know.'

The man hesitated, and then: 'Come up to my room,' he said, and led the
way up the narrow stairs.

The room was surprisingly well furnished. There were one or two old
pieces, Leon noticed, which must have been worth a lot of money. On a
gate-legged table in the centre of the room was a suitcase and near the
table a trunk. The driver must have noticed his eyes rest on these, for
he said quickly: 'They belong to a customer of mine. I'm taking them to
the station.'

From where he stood, Leon could see they were addressed to the Tetley
cloak room to be called for; he made no comment on this, but his
observation evidently disconcerted his host for his manner changed.

'Now, Mr Gonsalez, I'm a working man, so I'm afraid I can't give you very
much time. What is it you want to know?'

'I particularly wish to know,' said Leon, 'whether the day you brought
Slane to his house had been a very busy one for you?'

'It was fairly profitable,' said the other. 'I've already given the
police an account of my fares, including the hospital case--but I suppose
you know that.'

'Which hospital case was this?'

The man hesitated.

'I don't want you to think I'm boasting about doing a thing like that--it
was just humanity. A woman was knocked down by a bus in Baker Street: I
picked her up and took her to the hospital.'

'Was she badly hurt?'

'She died.' His voice was curt.

Leon looked at him thoughtfully. Again his eyes roved to the trunk.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Will you come to Curzon Street tonight at nine
o'clock? Here's my address.' He took a card from his pocket.

'Why?' There was a note of defiance in the voice.

'Because I want to ask you something that I think you'll be glad to
answer,' said Leon.

His big car was waiting at the end of the mews, and he set it flying in
the direction of the Walmer Street hospital. He learnt there no more than
he expected, and returned to Curzon Street, a very silent and
uninformative man.

At nine o'clock that night came Reynolds, and for an hour he and Leon
Gonsalez were closeted together in the little room downstairs. Happily,
Meadows did not consider it necessary to call. It was not until a week
afterwards that he came with a piece of information that surprised only
himself.

'It was rather a rum thing--that driver who took Slane back to his flat
has disappeared--sold his taxi and cleared out. There's nothing to
associate him with the murder or I should get a warrant for him. He has
been straightforward from the very first.'

Manfred politely agreed. Poiccart was staringly vacant. Leon Gonsalez
yawned and was frankly bored with all mysteries.



'It's very curious,' said Gonsalez, when he condescended to tell the full
story, 'that the police never troubled to investigate Slane's life at
Tetley. He had a big house there for some years. If they had, they
couldn't have failed to hear the story of young Doctor Grain and his
beautiful wife, who ran away from him. She and Slane disappeared
together; and of course he was passionately fond of her and was ready to
marry her. But then, Slane was the type who was passionately fond of
people for about three months, and unless the marriage could be arranged
instantly the unfortunate girl had very little chance of becoming his
wife.

'The doctor offered to take his wife back, but she refused, and
disappeared out of his life. He gave up the practice of medicine, came to
London, invested his savings in a small garage, went broke, as all garage
proprietors do unless they're backed with good capital, and having to
decide whether he'd go back to the practice of medicine and pick up all
that he'd lost in the years he'd been trying to forget his wife, he chose
what to him was the less strenuous profession of cab-driver. I know
another man who did exactly the same thing: I will tell you about him one
of these days.

'He never saw his wife again, though he frequently saw Slane. Reynolds,
or Grain, as I will call him, had shaved off his moustache and generally
altered his appearance, and Slane never recognized him. It became an
obsession of Grain's to follow his enemy about, to learn of his
movements, his habits. The one habit he did discover, and which proved to
be Slane's undoing, was his practice of dining at the Real Club in Pall
Mall every Wednesday evening and of leaving the club at eleven-thirty on
those occasions.

'He put his discovery to no use, nor did he expect he would, until the
night of the murder. He was driving somewhere in the north-west district
when he saw a woman knocked down by a bus and he himself nearly ran over
the prostrate figure. Stopping his cab, he jumped down and, to his
horror, as he picked her up, he found himself gazing into the emaciated
face of his wife. He lifted her into the cab, drove full pelt to the
nearest hospital. It was while they were in the waiting-room, before the
house surgeon's arrival, that the dying woman told him, in a few broken,
half-delirious words, the story of her downward progress...She was dead
before they got her on to the operating table--mercifully, as it proved.

'I knew all this before I went to the hospital and found that some
unknown person had decided that she should be buried at Tetley and had
made the most lavish arrangements for her removal. I guessed it before I
saw Grain's suitcase packed ready for that tragedy. He left the hospital,
a man mad with hate. It was raining heavily. He crawled down Pall Mall,
and luck was with him, for just as the porter came out to find an empty
taxi, Grain pulled up before the door.

'On the pretext of a tyre burst he stopped in the Mall, forced open one
of the gates that led to the park, and waited until no pedestrian was in
sight before he dragged the half-drunken man into the gardens...He was
sober enough before Grain finished his story. Grain swears that he gave
him the chance of his life, but Slane pulled a gun on him, and he had to
kill him in self-defence. That may or may not be true.

'He never lost his nerve. Reaching his cab without observation, he drove
to Albert Palace Mansions, waited until the lift had risen, and then ran
up the stairs. He had taken Slane's bunch of keys, and on the way had
selected that which he knew would open the door. His first intention was
to search the flat for everything that betrayed the man's association
with his wife; but he heard the porter up above saying good night and,
slamming the door, raced downstairs in time to be there when the man
reached the ground floor.'

'We're not telling the police of this, of course?' said Manfred gravely.

Poiccart at the other end of the table burst into a loud guffaw.

'It's so good a story that the police would never believe it,' he said.



6. The Marked Cheque


THE MAN WHO called at the little house in Curzon Street was in a rage,
and anxious to say something that would hurt his late employer.

He had also a personal grievance against Mr Jens, the butler.

'Mr Storn took me on as a second footman, and it looked like being a good
job, but I couldn't hit it off with the rest of the staff. But was it
fair to chuck me out without a minute's warning because I happened to let
drop a word in Arabic--?'

'Arabic?' asked Leon Gonsalez in surprise. 'Do you speak Arabic?'

Tenley, the dismissed footman, grinned.

'About a dozen words: I was with the Army in Egypt after the war, and I
picked up a few phrases. I was polishing the silver salver in the hall,
and I happened to say "That's good" in Arabic; and I heard Mr Storn's
voice behind me.

'"You clear out," he said, and before I knew what had happened, I was
walking away from the house with a month's salary.'

Gonsalez nodded.

'Very interesting,' he said, 'but why have you come to us?'

He had asked the same question many times of inconsequential people who
had come to the House of the Silver Triangle, with their trifling
grievances.

'Because there's a mystery there,' said the man vaguely. Perhaps he had
cooled down a little by now, and was feeling rather uncomfortable. 'Why
was I fired for my Arabic? What's the meaning of the picture in Storn's
private room--the men being hung?'

Leon sat upright. 'Men being hanged? What is that?'

'It's a photograph. You can't get it, because it's in the panelling and
you have to open one of the panels. But I went in one day and he'd left
the panel ajar...Three men hanging from a sort of gibbet an' a lot of
Turks looking on. That's a funny thing for a gentleman to have in his
house.'

Leon was silent for a while.

'I don't know that that is an offence. It is certainly odd. Is there
anything I can do for you?'

Apparently nothing. The man left a little sheepishly, and Leon carried
the news to his partner. He remembered afterwards that he had heard
nothing of the grievance against the butler.

'The only thing I learnt about Storn is that he is extraordinarily mean,
that he runs his house in Park Lane with a minimum number of staff, that
he pays those the smallest wages possible. He is of Armenian origin and
made his money out of oilfields which he acquired by very dubious means.

'As to the three hanged men, that is rather gruesome, but it might be
worse. I have seen photographs in the house of the idle rich that would
make your hair stand on end, my dear Poiccart. At any rate, the morbid
interest of a millionaire in a Turkish execution is not extraordinary.'

'If I were an Armenian,' said Manfred, 'they would be my chief hobby; I
should have a whole gallery of 'em!'

And there ended the matter of the morbid millionaire who lived meanly and
underpaid his servants.

Early in April, Leon read in the newspaper that Mr Storn had gone to
Egypt for a short holiday.

By every test, Ferdinand Storn was a desirable acquaintance. He was
immensely rich; he was personally attractive in a dark, long-nosed way;
and to such people as met him intimately--and they were few--he could
talk Art and Finance with equal facility. So far as was known, he had no
enemies. He lived at Burson House, Park Lane, a small, handsome residence
which he had purchased from the owner, Lord Burson, for £150,000. He
spent most of his time either there or at Felfry Park, his beautiful
country house in Sussex. The Persian and Oriental Oil Trust, of which he
was the head, had its offices in a magnificent building in Moorgate
Street, and here he was usually to be found between ten o'clock in the
morning and three o'clock in the afternoon.

This Trust, despite its titled board, was a one-man affair, and
conducted, amongst other things, the business of bankers. Storn held most
of the shares, and was popularly supposed to derive an income of
something like a quarter of a million a year. He had few personal
friends, and was a bachelor.

It was just short of a month after Leon had read the news that a big car
drew up at the door of the Triangle, and a stout, prosperous-looking man
got out and rang the bell. He was a stranger to Leon, who interviewed
him, and was apparently loth to state his business, for he hummed and
hawed and questioned until Leon, a little impatiently, asked him
point-blank who he was and what was his object.

'Well, I'll tell you, Mr Gonsalez,' said the stout man. 'I am the General
Manager of the Persian and Oriental Oil--'

'Storn's company?' asked Leon, his interest awakened.

'Storn's company. I suppose I really ought to go to the police with my
suspicions, but a friend of mine has such faith in you and what he calls
the Three Just Men, that I thought I had better see you first.'

'Is it about Mr Storn?' asked Leon.

The gentleman, who proved to be Mr Hubert Grey, the Managing Director of
the Trust, nodded.

'You see, Mr Gonsalez, I am in rather a peculiar position. Mr Storn is a
very difficult man, and I should lose my job if I made him look
ridiculous.'

'He's abroad, isn't he?' asked Leon.

'He's abroad,' agreed the other soberly. 'He went abroad, as a matter of
fact, quite unexpectedly; that is to say, it was unexpected by the
office. In fact he had an important Board meeting the day he left, which
he should have attended, but on that morning I got a letter from him
saying that he had to go to Egypt on a matter which affected his personal
honour. He asked me not to communicate with him, or even to announce the
fact that he had left London. Unfortunately, one of my clerks very
foolishly told a reporter who had called that day that Mr Storn had left,

'A week after he had gone, he sent us a letter from an hotel in Rome,
enclosing a cheque for eighty-three thousand pounds, and arranging that
this cheque should be honoured when a gentleman called, which he did the
next day.'

'An Englishman?' asked Leon.

Mr Grey shook his head. 'No, he was a foreigner of some kind; a rather
dark-looking man. The money was paid over to him.

'A few days later we had another letter from Mr Storn, written from the
Hotel de Russie, Rome. This letter told us that a further cheque had been
sent to Mr Kraman, which was to be honoured. This was for one hundred and
seven thousand pounds and a few odd shillings. He gave us instructions as
to how the money was to be paid, and asked us to telegraph to him at an
hotel in Alexandria the moment the cheque was honoured. This I did. The
very next day there came a second letter written from the Hotel
Mediterraneo in Naples--I will let you have copies of all these--telling
us that a third cheque was to be paid without fail, but to a different
man, a Mr Rezzio, who would call at the office. This was for one hundred
and twelve thousand pounds, which very nearly exhausted Mr Storn's cash
balance, although of course he has large reserves at the bank. I might
say that Mr Storn is a man who is rather eccentric in the matter of large
deposit reserves. Very little of his money is locked up in shares. Look
here'--he took a note-case from his pocket and produced a cheque
form--'this money has been paid, but I've brought you along the cheque to
see.'

Leon took it in his hand. It was written in characteristic writing, and
he examined the signature.

'There is no question of this being a forgery?'

'None whatever,' said Grey emphatically. 'The letter, too, was in his
own handwriting. But what puzzled me about the cheque were the queer
marks on the back.'

They were indistinguishable to Leon until he took them to the window, and
then saw a line of faint pencil marks which ran along the bottom of the
cheque.

'I suppose I can't keep this cheque for a day or two?' asked Leon.

'Certainly. The signature, as you see, has been cancelled out, and the
money has been paid.'

Leon examined the cheque again. It was drawn on the Ottoman Oil Bank,
which was apparently a private concern of Storn's.

'What do you imagine has happened?' he asked.

'I don't know, but I'm worried.'

Grey's troubled frown showed the extent of that worry.

'I don't know why I should be, but I've got an uncomfortable feeling at
the back of my mind that there is a swindle somewhere.'

'Have you cabled to Alexandria?'

Mr Grey smiled. 'Naturally; and I have had a reply. It struck me that you
might have agents in Egypt, in which case it might be a simple matter for
you to discover whether there is anything wrong. The main point is that I
don't wish Mr Storn to know that I've been making inquiries. I'll pay any
reasonable expenditure you incur, and I'm quite sure that Mr Storn will
agree that I have done the right thing.'

After the departure of his visitor, Leon interviewed Manfred.

'It may, of course, be a case of blackmail,' said George softly. 'But you
will have to start at Storn's beginnings if you want to get under
whatever mystery there is.'

'So I think,' said Gonsalez; and a few minutes afterwards went out of the
house.

He did not return till midnight. He brought back an amazing amount of
information about Mr Storn.

'About twelve years ago he was an operator in the service of the Turco
Telegraph Company. He speaks eight Oriental languages, and was well-known
in Istanbul. Does that tell you anything, George?'

Manfred shook his head.

'It tells me nothing yet, but I am waiting to be thrilled.'

'He was mixed up with the revolutionary crowd, the under-strappers who
pulled the strings in the days of Abdul Ahmid, and there is no doubt that
he got his Concession through these fellows.'

'What Concession?' asked Manfred.

'Oil land, large tracts of it. When the new Government came into power,
the Concession was formed, though I suspect our friend paid heavily for
the privilege. His five partners, however, were less fortunate. Three of
them were accused of treason against the Government, and were hanged.'

'The photograph,' nodded Manfred. 'What happened to the other two?'

'The other two were Italians, and they were sent to prison in Asia Minor
for the rest of their lives. When Storn came to London, it was as sole
proprietor of the Concession, which he floated with a profit of three
million pounds.'

The next morning Leon left the house early, and at ten o'clock was
ringing the bell at Burson House.

The heavy-jowled butler who opened the door regarded him with suspicion,
but was otherwise deferential.

'Mr Storn is abroad, and won't be back for some weeks, sir.'

'May I see Mr Stem's secretary?' asked Leon in his blandest manner.

'Mr Storn never has a secretary at his house; you will find the young
lady at the offices of the Persian Oil Trust.'

Leon felt in his pocket and produced a card.

'I am one of the Bursons,' he said, 'and as a matter of fact my father
was born here. Some months ago when I was in London I asked Mr Storn if
he would give me permission to look over the house.'

The card contained a scribbled line, signed 'Ferdinand Storn,' giving
permission to the bearer to see the house at any hour 'when I am out of
town.' It had taken Leon the greater part of an hour to forge that
permit.

'I am afraid I cannot let you in, sir,' said the butler, barring the
passage. 'Mr Storn told me before he went that I was to admit no
strangers.'

'What is today?' asked Leon suddenly.

'Thursday, sir,' said the man.

Leon nodded. 'Cheese day,' he said.

Only for the fraction of a second was the man confused.

'I don't know what you mean, sir,' he said gruffly, and almost shut the
door in the face of the caller.

Gonsalez made a circuit of the house. It stood with another upon an
island site.

When he had finished, he went home, an amused and almost excited man, to
give instructions to Raymond Poiccart who, amongst his other
qualifications, had a very wide circle of criminal friends. There was not
a big gangster in London that he did not know. He was acquainted with the
public house in London where the confidence men and the safe smashers
met: he could at any moment gather the gossip of the prisons, and was
probably better acquainted with the secret news of the underworld than
any man at Scotland Yard. Him Leon sent on a news-gathering mission, and
in a small public house off Lambeth Walk, Poiccart learned of the dark
philanthropist who had found employment for at least three ex-convicts.

Leon was sitting alone when he returned, examining with a powerful lens
the odd marks on the back of the cheque.

Before Poiccart could retail his news, Leon reached for a telephone
directory.

'Grey, of course, has left his office, but unless I am mistaken this is
his private address,' he said, as his fingers stopped on one of the
pages. A maid answered his call. Yes, Mr Grey was at home. Presently the
Managing Director's voice came through.

'Mr Grey--who would handle the cheques which you have received from
Storn; I mean who is the official?'

'The accountant,' was the reply.

'Who gave the accountant his job--you?'

A pause.

'No--Mr Storn. He used to be in the Eastern Telegraph Company--Mr Storn
met him abroad.'

'And where is the accountant to be found?' asked Leon eagerly.

'He's on his holidays. He left before the last cheque came. But I can get
him.'

Leon's laugh was one of sheer delight.

'You needn't worry--I knew he wasn't at the office,' he said, and hung up
on the astonished manager.

'Now, my dear Poiccart, what did you find?'

He listened intently till his friend had finished, and then: 'Let us go
to Park Lane--and bring a gun with you,' he said. 'We will call at
Scotland Yard en route.'

It was ten o'clock when the butler opened the door. Before he could frame
a question, a big detective gripped him and pulled him into the street.

The four plain-clothes officers who accompanied Leon flocked into the
hall. A surly-faced footman was arrested before he could shout a warning.
At the very top of the house, in a small windowless apartment that had
once been used as a box-room, they found an emaciated man whom even his
Managing Director, hastily summoned to the scene, failed to identify as
the millionaire. The two Italians who kept guard on him and watched him
through a hole broken through the wall from an adjoining room gave no
trouble.

One of them, he who had carefully planted Burson House full of ex-convict
servants, was very explicit.

'This man betrayed us, and we should have hanged like Hatim Effendi and
Al Shiri and Maropulos the Greek, only we bribed witnesses,' he said. 'We
were partners in the oilfields, and to rob us he manufactured evidence
that we were conspiring against the Government. My friend and I broke
prison and came back to London. I was determined he should pay us the
money he owed us, and I knew that we could never get it from a Court of
Law.'

'It was a very simple matter, and I really am ashamed of myself that I
did not understand those marks at the back of the cheque at first
glance,' explained Leon over the supper-table that night. 'Our Italian
friend was one of the crowd that got the Concession: he had lived for
years in London, and possibly it will be proved that he had criminal
associates. At any rate, he had no difficulty in collecting a houseful of
servants, playing as he did on his knowledge of Storn's character. All
these men offered to serve Storn for sums at which the average servant
would have turned up his nose. It has taken the better part of a year to
fill our friend's establishment with these ex-convicts. You remember that
the footman who came to us a few months ago said that he had been
employed, not by the butler but by Storn himself. They would have taken
the first opportunity of getting rid of him, only inadvertently he used
an Arabic expression, and Storn, who was suspicious of spies and probably
expected the men whom he had betrayed to return, sent him packing.

'On the day Storn was supposed to leave for Egypt, he was seized by the
two Italians, locked up in a room and compelled to write such letters and
sign such cheques as they dictated. But he remembered, rather late in the
day, that the accountant was an old telegraphist, and so he put on the
back of the cheque, in pencil marks, a Morse message in the old symbols
which were employed when the needle machine was most commonly used.'

He produced the cheque and laid it on the table, running his finger along
the pencil mark:

SOSPRSNRPRKLN

'In other words, "Prisoner in Park Lane." The accountant was on his
holiday, so he did not read the message.'

Manfred took up the cheque, turned it and examined it.

'What handsome fee will this millionaire send you?' he asked ironically.

The answer did not come till a few days after the Old Bailey trial. It
took the form of a cheque--for five guineas.

'Game to the last!' murmured Leon admiringly.



7. Mr Levingrou's Daughter


MR LEVINGROU took his long cigar from his mouth and shook his head
sorrowfully. He was a fat man, thick-necked and heavy-cheeked, and he
could not afford to spoil a good cigar.

'That is awful...that is brutal! Tch! It makes me seek...poor Jose!'

His companion snorted in sympathy.

For Jose Silva had fallen. An unemotional judge, who spoke rather
precociously, had told Jose that certain crimes were very heinous in the
eyes of the law. For example, women were held in special esteem, and to
trade on their follies was regarded as being so dreadful that nothing but
a very long term of imprisonment could vindicate the law's outraged
majesty.

And Jose had offended beyond forgiveness. He ran the Latin-American
Artists Agency to give young and pretty aspirants to the stage a quick
and profitable engagement on South American stages. They went away full
of joy and they never came back. Letters came from them to their
relations, very correctly worded, nicely spelt. They were, they said,
happy. They all wrote the same in almost identical language. You might
imagine that they wrote to dictation, as indeed they did.

But the vice squad had got on Jose's tail. A pretty girl applied for a
job and went to Buenos Aires, accompanied by her father and brother--they
were both Scotland Yard men, and when they learnt all that they had to
learn they came back with the girl, a rather shrewd detective herself,
and Jose was arrested. And then they learnt more things about him, and
the prison sentence was inevitable.

Nobody arrested Jules Levingrou and haled him from his beautiful little
bijou house in Knightsbridge and sent him to a cold bleak prison. And
nobody arrested Heinrich Luss, who was his partner. They had financed
Jose and many other Joses, but they were clever.

'Jose was careless,' sighed Jules as he sucked at his cigar.

Heinrich sighed, too. He was as fat as, but looked fatter than, his
companion, because he was a shorter man.

Jules looked round the pretty saloon with its cream and gold decorations,
and presently his eyes stopped roving and fixed on a framed photograph
that was on the mantelpiece. His big face creased in a smile as he rose
with a grunt and, waddling across to the fireplace, took the frame in his
hand. The picture was of an extremely pretty girl.

'You see?'

Heinrich took the picture and mumbled ecstatic praise.

'Not goot enough,' he said.

Mr Levingrou agreed. He had never yet seen a picture that quite did
justice to the delicate beauty of this only daughter of his. He was a
widower; his wife had died when Valerie was a baby. She would never know
how many hearts were broken, how many souls destroyed, that she might be
brought up in the luxury which surrounded her. This aspect of her
upbringing never occurred to Mr Levingrou. He prided himself that he had
no sentiment.

He was part proprietor of twenty-three cabarets and dance halls scattered
up and down the Argentine and Brazil, and drew large profits from what he
regarded as a perfectly legitimate business.

He put down the photograph and came back to the deep arm-chair.

'It is unfortunate about Jose; but these men come and go. This new man
may or may not be good.'

'What is his name?' asked Heinrich.

Jules searched breathlessly in his pockets, found a letter and opened it,
his thick fingers glittering in the light from the crystal chandelier,
for he was a lover of rings.

'Leon Gonsalez--herr Gott!'

Heinrich was sitting upright in his chair, white as a sheet.

'Name of a pipe! What is the matter with you, Heinrich?'

'Leon Gonsalez!' repeated the other huskily. 'You think he is an
applicant for the post...you do not know him?'

Jules shook his huge head.

'Why in God's name should I know him--he is a Spaniard, that is good
enough for me. This is always the way, Heinrich. No sooner does one of
our men make a fool of himself and get caught than another arises.
Tomorrow I shall have twenty, thirty, fifty applicants--not to me but
through the usual channel.'

Heinrich was looking at him hollow-eyed, and now in his agitation he
spoke in German--that brand of German which is heard more frequently in
Poland.

'Let me see the letter.' He took it in his hand and read it carefully.

'He asks for an appointment, that is all.'

'Have you ever heard of the Four Just Men?'

Jules frowned.

'They are dead, eh? I read something years ago.'

'They are alive,' said the other grimly; 'pardoned by the English
Government. They have a bureau in Curzon Street.'

Rapidly he sketched the history of that strange organization which for
years had terrorized the evil-doers who by their natural cunning had
evaded the just processes of the law; and, as he spoke, the face of Jules
Levingrou lengthened.

'But that--is preposterous!' he spluttered at last. 'How could these men
know of me and of you...Besides, they dare not.'

Before Heinrich could reply there was a gentle knock at the door and a
footman came in. There was a card on the salver he carried in his hand.
Jules took it, adjusted his glasses and read, meditated a second, and
then:

'Show him up,' he said.

'Leon Gonsalez,' almost whispered Heinrich as the door closed on the
servant. 'Do you see a little silver triangle at the corner of the card?
That is on the door of their house. It is he!'

'Pshaw!' scoffed his companion. 'He has come--why? To offer his services.
You shall see!'

Leon Gonsalez, grey-haired and dapper, swung into the room, his keen,
ascetic face tense, his fine eyes alive. A ready smiler was Leon. He was
smiling now as he looked from one man to the other.

'You!' he said, and pointed to Jules.

Monsieur Levingrou started. There was almost an accusation in that finger
thrust.

'You wish to see me?' He tried to recover some of his lost dignity.

'I did,' said Leon calmly. 'It is my misfortune that I have never seen
you before. My friend Manfred, of whom you have heard, knows you very
well by sight, and my very dear comrade Poiccart is so well acquainted
with you that he could draw you feature by feature--and indeed did upon
the table-cloth at dinner last night, much to the annoyance of our
thrifty housekeeper!'

Levingrou was on his guard; there was something of the cold devil in
those smiling eyes.

'To what am I indebted--' he began.

'I come in a perfectly friendly spirit,' Leon's smile broadened, his eyes
were twinkling, as with suppressed laughter. 'You will forgive that lie.
Monsieur Levingrou, for lie it is. I have come to warn you that your
wicked little business must be destroyed, or you will be made very
unhappy. The police do not know of the Cafe Espagnol and its peculiar
attractions.'

He dived into his overcoat pocket and, with the quick, jerky motion which
was characteristic of him, produced a sheet of notepaper and unfolded it.

'I have here a list of thirty-two girls who have gone to one or another
of your establishments during the past two years,' he said. 'You may read
it'--and thrust the paper into Jules' hand--'for I have a copy. You will
be interested to know that that sheet of paper represents six months'
inquiries.'

Jules did not so much as read a name. Instead, he shrugged, pushed the
paper back to his visitor and, when Leon did not take it, dropped it on
the floor.

'I am entirely in the dark,' he said. 'If you have no business with me
you had better go--goodnight.'

'My friend'--Leon's voice was a little lower, and those eyes of his were
piercing the very soul of the man who squatted like an ill-shaped toad in
the luxurious deeps of silk and down--'you will send cables to your
managers, ordering the release of those girls, the payment of adequate
compensation, and first-class return ticket to London.'

Levingrou shrugged.

'I really don't know what you mean, my friend. It seems to me you've come
upon a cock and bull story, that you have been deceived.'

M. Jules Levingrou reached out deliberately and pressed an ivory
bell-push.

'I think you are mad, therefore I will take a very charitable view of
what you say. Now, my friend, we have no more time to give to you.'

But Leon Gonsalez was unperturbed.

'I can only imagine that you have no imagination. Monsieur Levingrou,' he
said, a little curtly. 'That you do not realize the torture, the sorrow,
the ghastly degradation into which you throw these sisters of ours.'

A gentle tap at the door and the footman entered. Mr Levingrou indicated
his visitor with a wave of his hand.

'Show this gentleman to the door.'

If he expected an outburst he was pleasantly disappointed. Leon looked
from one man to the other, that mocking smile of his still playing about
the corners of his sensitive mouth then, without a word, turned, and the
door closed on him.

'You heard--you heard?' Heinrich's voice was quivering with terror, his
face the colour of dirty chalk. 'Herr Gott! you don't understand, Jules!
I know of these men. A friend of mine...'

He told a story that would have impressed most men; but Levingrou smiled.

'You are scared, my poor friend. You have not my experience of threats.
Let him prove what he can and go to the police.'

'You fool!' Heinrich almost howled the words. 'The police! Do I not tell
you they want no proof? They punished--'

'Hush!' growled Jules.

He had heard the girl's step in the hall. She was going to the theatre,
she said--her explanation stopped short at the sight of Heinrich's white
face.

'Daddy,' she said reproachfully, 'you've been quarrelling with Uncle
Heinrich.'

She stooped and kissed the forehead of her father and pulled his ear
gently. The stout man imprisoned her in both his arms and chuckled.

'No quarrel, my darling. Heinrich is scared of a business deal. You
wouldn't imagine he could be such a baby.'

A minute later she stood in front of the fireplace, using a lipstick
skilfully. She paused in the operation to tell him an item of news.

'I met such a nice man today, Daddy, at Lady Athery's, a Mr Gordon--do
you know him?'

'I know many Mr Gordons,' smiled Jules. And then, in sudden alarm: 'He
didn't make love to you, did he?'

She laughed at this.

'My dear, he's almost as old as you. And he's a great artist and very
amusing.'

Jules walked with her to the door and saw her go down the steps, cross
the little flagged garden, and stood there until her Rolls had passed out
of sight. Then he came back to his pretty saloon to argue out this matter
of the Four Just Men.

It was a gay party of young people about her own age that Valerie joined.
The box was crowded, and was hot and thick, for the theatre was one where
smoking was allowed. She was relieved when an attendant tapped her on the
shoulder and beckoned her out.

'A gentleman to see you, miss.'

'To see me?' she said in wonder, and came into the vestibule to find a
handsome, middle-aged man in evening dress.

'Mr Gordon!' she exclaimed. 'I had no idea you were here!'

He seemed unusually grave.

'I have some rather bad news for you, Miss Levingrou,' he said, and she
went pale.

'Not about Father?'

'In a sense it is. I am afraid that he is in rather bad trouble.'

She frowned at this.

'Trouble? What kind of trouble?'

'I can't explain here. Will you come with me to the police station?'

She stared at him incredulously, her mouth open.

'The police station?'

Gordon summoned a waiting attendant.

'Get Miss Levingrou's coat from the box,' he said authoritatively.

A few minutes later they passed out of the theatre together and into a
waiting car.

Twelve o'clock was striking when Mr Levingrou rose from his chair stiffly
and stretched himself. Heinrich had been gone nearly three hours. He had,
indeed, left the house in time to catch the last train for the Continent,
whither he fled without even packing so much as a pocket-handkerchief.
Unaware of this desertion, Mr Levingrou was on the point of mounting the
stairs to bed when a thundering rat-tat shook the house. He turned to the
footman.

'See who that is,' he growled, and waited curiously.

When the door was opened he saw the stocky figure of a police inspector.

'Levingrou?' asked the visitor.

Mr Levingrou came forward.

'That is my name,' he said.

The inspector strolled into the hall.

'I want you to come with me to the police station.' His manner was
brusque, indeed rude, and Levingrou felt for the first time in his life a
qualm of fear.

'The police station? Why?'

'I'll explain that to you when you get there.

'But this is monstrous!' exploded the stout man. I will telephone to my
lawyers--'

'Are you going quietly?'

There was such a threat in the tone that Jules became instantly
tractable.

'Very good, inspector, I will come. I think you have made a very great
mistake and...'

He was hustled out of the hall, down the steps and into the waiting car.

It was not an ordinary taxi. The blinds were pulled down. Moreover, he
discovered as soon as he entered the interior that it was well occupied.
Two men sat on seats facing him, the inspector took his place by the
prisoner's side.

He could not see where the car was going. Five minutes, ten minutes
passed...there should be a police station somewhere nearer than that. He
put a question.

'I can relieve your mind,' said a calm voice. 'You're not going to a
police station.'

'Then where am I being taken?'

'That you will discover,' was the unsatisfactory answer.

Nearly an hour passed before the car drew up before a dark house and the
authoritative 'inspector' ordered him curtly to alight. The house had the
appearance of being untenanted; the hall was littered with refuse and
dust. They led him down a flight of stone stairs to the cellar, unlocked
a steel door and pushed him inside.

He had hardly entered before an electric light in the wall glowed dimly,
and he saw that he was in what looked to be a concrete chamber, furnished
with a bed. At the farther end was a small open doorway, innocent of
door, which he was informed led to a washing place. But the revelation
which came to Mr Levingrou, and which struck terror to his soul, was the
fact that the two men who had brought him were heavily masked--the
inspector had disappeared and, try as he did, Jules could not remember
what he looked like.

'You will stay here and keep quiet, and you need not be afraid that
anybody will be alarmed by your disappearance.'

'But...my daughter!' stammered Levingrou in terror.

'Your daughter? Your daughter leaves for the Argentine with a Mr Gordon
tomorrow morning--as other men's daughters have left.'

Levingrou stared, took one step forward and fell fainting to the floor.

Sixteen days passed; sixteen days of unadulterated hell for the
shrieking, half-demented man who paced the length of his cell for hours
on end till, exhausted, he dropped almost lifeless on his bed. And every
morning came a masked man to tell him of plans that had been made, to
describe in detail the establishment in Antofagasta which was to be the
destination of Valerie Levingrou; of a certain piestro...they showed him
his photograph...who was the master of that hell broth.

'You devils! You devils!' shrieked Levingrou, striking wildly out, but
the other caught him and flung him back on the bed.

'You mustn't blame Gordon,' he mocked. 'He has his living to earn...he is
merely the agent of the man who owns the cabaret.'

Then one morning, the eighteenth, they came and told him, three masked
men, that Valerie had arrived and was being initiated into her duties as
a dancing girl....

Jules Levingrou spent the night shivering in a corner of his cell. They
came to him at three in the morning and pricked him with a hypodermic
needle. When he woke, he thought he was dreaming, for he was sitting in
his own saloon, where these masked men had carried him in the dead of
night.

A footman came in, and dropped the tray at the sight of him.

'Good God, sir!' he gasped. 'Where did you come from?'

Levingrou could not speak: he could only shake his head.

'We thought you was in Germany, sir.'

And then, clearing his dry throat, Jules asked harshly:

'Is there any news...Miss Valerie...?'

'Miss Valerie, sir?' The footman was astonished. 'Why, yes sir, she's
upstairs asleep. She was a bit worried the night she came back and found
you weren't here, and then of course she got your letter saying you'd
been called abroad.'

The footman was staring at him, an uncomfortable wonder in his gaze.
Something peculiar had happened. Jules rose unsteadily to his feet and
caught a glance of his face in the mirror. His hair and his beard were
white.

He staggered rather than walked to his writing-table, jerked open a
drawer and took out an overseas cable form. 'Ring for a messenger.' His
voice was hoarse and quavering. 'I want to send fourteen cablegrams to
South America.'



8. The Share Pusher


THE MAN WHOM Raymond Poiccart ushered into the presence of Manfred was to
all appearances a smart, military looking gentleman approaching the
sixties. He was faultlessly dressed and had the carriage and presence of
a soldier. A retired general, thought Manfred; but he saw something more
than the outward personation of manner revealed. This man was broken.
There was a certain imponderable expression in his face, a tense anguish
which this, the shrewdest of the Three Just Men, instantly interpreted.

'My name is Pole--Major-General Sir Charles Pole,' said the visitor, as
Poiccart placed a chair for him and discreetly withdrew.

'And you have come to see me about Mr Bonsor True,' said Manfred
instantly, and when the other started nervously he laughed. 'No, I am not
being very clever,' said Manfred gently. 'So many people have seen me
about Mr Bonsor True. And I think I can anticipate your story. You have
been investing in one of his oil concerns and you have lost a
considerable sum of money. Was it oil?'

'Tin,' said the other. 'Inter-Nigerian Tin. You have heard about my
misfortune?'

Manfred shook his head.

'I have heard about the misfortunes of so many people who have trusted Mr
True. How much have you lost?'

The old man drew a long breath.

'Twenty-five thousand pounds,' he said, 'every penny I possess. I have
consulted the police, but they say there is nothing they can do. The tin
mine actually existed, and no misrepresentation was made by True in any
letter he sent to me.'

Manfred nodded.

Yours is a typical case, General,' he said. 'True never brings himself
within the reach of the law. All his misrepresentations are made over a
luncheon table, when there is no other witness, and I presume that in his
letters to you he pointed out the speculative nature of your investment
and warned you that you were not putting your money into gilt-edged
securities.'

'It was at dinner,' said the General. 'I had some doubt on the matter and
he asked me to dine with him at the Walkley Hotel. He told me that
immense quantities of tin were in sight, and that while he could not, in
justice to his partners, broadcast the exact amount of profit the company
would make, he assured me that my money would be doubled in six months. I
wouldn't mind so much,' the old man went on, as he raised his trembling
hand to his lips, 'but, Mr Manfred, I have a daughter, a brilliant young
girl who has, in my opinion, a wonderful future. If she had been a man
she would have been a strategist. I hoped to have left her amply provided
for, but this means ruin--ruin! Can nothing be done to bring this
criminal to justice?'

Manfred did not reply immediately.

'I wonder if you realize. General, that you are the twelfth person who
has come to us in the past three months. Mr True is so well protected by
the law and by his letters that it is almost impossible to catch him.
There was a time'--he smiled faintly--'when my friends and I would have
taken the most dramatic steps to deal with the gentleman, and I think our
method would have been effective; but now'--he shrugged his
shoulders--'we are a little restricted. Who introduced you to this
gentleman?'

'Mrs Calford Creen. I met the lady at a dinner of a mutual friend, and
she asked me to dine with her at her flat in Hanover Mansions.'

Manfred nodded again. He was not at all surprised by this intelligence.

'I am afraid I can promise you very little,' he said. 'The only thing I
would ask is that you should keep in touch with me. Where are you
living?'

His visitor was at the moment living in a little house near Truro.
Manfred noted the address, and a few minutes later was standing by the
window watching the weary old man walking slowly down Curzon Street.

Poiccart came in.

'I know nothing of this gentleman's business,' he said, 'but I have a
feeling that it concerns our friend True. George, we ought to be able to
catch that man. Leon was saying at breakfast this morning that there is a
deep pond in the New Forest, where a man suitably anchored by chains and
weights might lie without discovery for a hundred years. Personally, I am
never in favour of drowning--'

George Manfred laughed.

''Ware the law, my good friend,' he said. 'There will be no killing,
though a man who has systematically robbed the new poor deserves
something with boiling lead in it.'

Nor could Leon Gonsalez offer any solution when he was consulted that
afternoon.

'The curious thing is that True has no monies in this country. He runs
two bank accounts and is generally overdrawn on both. I should not be
surprised if he had a cache somewhere, in which case the matter would be
simple--I've been watching him for the greater part of a year, and he
never goes abroad, and I have searched his modest Westminster flat so
often that I could go blindfolded to the place where he keeps his dress
ties.'

All this had occurred in the previous year and no further complaints came
about this fraudulent share pusher. The Three were no nearer to a
solution of their problem when came the rather remarkable disappearance
of Margaret Lein.

Margaret Lein was not a very important person: she was by all social
standards as unimportant a person as one would be likely to meet in a
stroll through the West End of London. She occupied the position of maid
to the Hon Mrs Calford Creen, and she had gone out one evening to the
chemist to buy a bottle of smelling salts for her mistress, and had never
come back.

She was pretty; her age was nineteen; she had no friends in London,
being--so she said--an orphan; and, so far as was known, she had no
attachments in the accepted sense of the word. But, as the police pointed
out, it was extremely unlikely that a rather pretty maid, well spoken and
with charming manners, in addition to her physical perfections, could
spend a year in London without having acquired something in the shape of
a 'follower.'

Mrs Calford Creen, not satisfied with the police inquiries, had called
the Three Just Men to her aid. It was a week after the disappearance of
Margaret Lein that a well-known lawyer crossed the polished dancing floor
of the Leiter Club to greet the man who sat aloof and alone at a very
small table near the floor's edge.

'Why, Mr Gonsalez!' he beamed. 'This is the last place in the world I
should have expected to find you! In Limehouse, yes, prowling in the
haunts of the underworld, yes, but at Letter's Club...Really, I have
mistaken your character.'

Leon smiled faintly, poured a little more Rhine wine into his
long-stemmed glass and sipped it.

'My dear Mr Thurles,' he drawled, 'this is my underworld. That fat
gentleman puffing gallantly with that stout lady is Bill Sikes. It is
true he does not break into houses nor carry a life-preserver, but he
sells dud shares to thrifty and gullible widows, and has grown fat on the
proceeds. Some day I shall take that gentleman and break his heart.'

The red-faced Thurles chuckled as he sat down by the other's side.

'That will be difficult. Mr Bonsor True is too rich a man to pull down,
however much a blackguard he may be.'

Leon fixed a cigarette in a long amber tube and se