The Complete Four Just Men (59 page)

Manfred gripped his arm and led him upstairs to his bedroom. The blinds were pulled and the only light came from a small table-lamp by the side of the bed.

‘Take off your coat,’ said Manfred.

Mr Lynne obeyed.

‘Now your waistcoat.’

The waistcoat was discarded.

‘Now I fear I shall have to have your shirt,’ said Gonsalez.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked the man hoarsely.

‘I will tell you later.’

The stout man, his face twitching, stood bare to the waist, and offered no resistance when Manfred snapped the handcuffs on him.

They led him to the door where the hat peg was, and deftly Leon slipped the loose end of the rope through the links and pulled his manacled hands tightly upwards.

‘Now we can talk,’ said Gonsalez. ‘Mr Lynne, for some time you have been engaged in abominable traffic. You have been sending women, who sometimes were no more than children, to South America, and the penalties for that crime are, as you know, a term of imprisonment and this.’

He picked the baton from where he had placed it, and shook out the loose cords. Mr Lynne gazed at them over his shoulder, with a fascinated stare.

‘This is colloquially known as the “cat of nine tails”,’ said Gonsalez, and sent the thongs shrilling round his head.

‘I swear to you I never knew – ’ blubbered the man. ‘You can’t prove it – ’

‘I do not intend proving it in public,’ said Leon carefully. ‘I am here merely to furnish proof to you that you cannot break the law and escape punishment.’

And then it was that Manfred started the gramophone revolving, and the blare of trumpets and the thunder of drums filled the room with strident harmony.

The same policeman to whom Manfred and Gonsalez had spoken a few nights previously paced slowly past the house and stopped to listen with a grin. So, too, did a neighbour.

‘What a din that thing makes,’ said the aggrieved householder.

‘Yes it does,’ admitted the policeman. ‘I think he wants a new record. It sounds almost as though somebody was shrieking their head off, doesn’t it?’

‘It always sounds like that to me,’ grumbled the neighbour, and went on.

The policeman smiled and resumed his beat, and from behind the windows of Mr Lynne’s bedroom came the thrilling cadences of the ‘Marseillaise’ and the boom of guns, and a shrill thin sound of fear and pain for which Tschaikovsky was certainly not responsible.

The Man who was Plucked

On Sunday night Martaus Club is always crowded with the smartest of the smart people who remain in Town over the week-end. Martaus Club is a place of shaded lights, of white napery, of glittering silver and glass, of exotic flowers, the tables set about the walls framing a parallelogram of shining floor.

Young men and women, and older folks too, can be very happy in Martaus Club – at a price. It is not the size of the ‘note’ which Louis, the head waiter, initials, nor the amazing cost of wine, nor the half-a-crown strawberries, that breaks a man.

John Eden could have footed the bill for all he ate or drank or smoked in Martaus, and in truth the club was as innocent as it was gay. A pack of cards had never been found within its portals. Louis knew every face and the history behind the face, and could have told within a few pounds just what was the bank balance of every habitué. He did not know John Eden, who was the newest of members, but he guessed shrewdly.

John Eden had danced with a strange girl, which was unusual at Martaus, for you bring your own dancing partner, and never under any circumstances solicit a dance with a stranger.

But Welby was there. Jack knew him slightly, though he had not seen him for years. Welby was the mirror of fashion and apparently a person of some importance. When he came across to him, Jack felt rather like a country cousin. He had been eight years in South Africa, and he felt rather out of it, but Welby was kindness itself, and then and there insisted upon introducing him to Maggie Vane. A beautiful girl, beautifully gowned, magnificently jewelled – her pearl necklace cost £20,000 – she rather took poor Jack’s breath away, and when she suggested that they should go to Bingley’s, he would not have dreamt of refusing.

As he passed out through the lobby Louis, the head waiter, with an apology, brushed a little bit of fluff from his dress-coat, and said in a voice, inaudible save to Jack: ‘Don’t go to Bingley’s’, which was of course a preposterous piece of impertinence, and Jack glared at him.

He was at Bingley’s until six o’clock in the morning, and left behind him cheques which would absorb every penny he had brought back from Africa, and a little more. He had come home dreaming of a little estate with a little shooting and a little fishing, and the writing of that book of his on big-game hunting, and all his dreams went out when the croupier, with a smile on his bearded lips, turned a card with a mechanical: ‘
Le Rouge gagnant et couleur
’.

He had never dreamt Bingley’s was a gambling-house, and it certainly had not that appearance when he went in. It was only when this divine girl introduced him to the inner room, where they played
trente-et-quarante
and he saw how high the stakes were running, that he began to feel nervous. He sat by her side at the table and staked modestly and won. And continued to win – until he increased his stakes.

They were very obliging at Bingley’s. They accepted cheques, and. indeed, had cheque forms ready to be filled in.

Jack Eden came back to the flat he had taken in Jermyn Street, which was immediately above that occupied by Manfred and Leon Gonsalez, and wrote a letter to his brother in India . . .

Manfred heard the shot and woke up. He came out into the sitting-room in his pyjamas to find Leon already there, looking at the ceiling, the whitewash of which was discoloured by a tiny red patch which was growing larger.

Manfred went out on to the landing and found the proprietor of the flats in his shirt and trousers, for he had heard the shot from his basement apartment.

‘I thought it was in your room, sir,’ he said, ‘it must be in Mr Eden’s apartment.’

Going up the stairs he explained that Mr Eden was a new arrival in the country. The door of his flat was locked, but the proprietor produced a key which opened it. The lights were burning in the sitting-room, and one glance told Manfred the story. A huddled figure was lying across the table, from which the blood was dripping and forming a pool on the floor.

Gonsalez handled the man scientifically.

‘He is not dead,’ he said. ‘I doubt if the bullet has touched any vital organ.’

The man had shot himself in the breast; from the direction of the wound Gonsalez was fairly sure that the injuries were minor. He applied a first-aid dressing and together they lifted him on to a sofa. Then when the wound was dressed, Gonsalez looked round and saw the tell-tale letter.

‘Pinner,’ he said, holding the letter up, ‘I take it that you do not want to advertise the fact that somebody attempted to commit suicide in one of your flats?’

‘That is the last thing in the world I want,’ said the flat proprietor, fervently.

‘Then I’m going to put this letter in my pocket. Will you telephone to the hospital and say there has been an accident. Don’t talk about suicide. The gentleman has recently come back from South Africa; he was packing his pistol, and it exploded.’

The man nodded and left the room hurriedly.

Gonsalez went to where Eden was lying and it was at that moment the young man’s eyes opened. He looked from Manfred to Gonsalez with a puzzled frown.

‘My friend,’ said Leon, in a gentle voice as he leant over the wounded man, ‘you have had an accident, you understand? You are not fatally injured; in fact, I think your injury is a very slight one. The ambulance will come for you and you will go to a hospital and I will visit you daily.’

‘Who are you?’ whispered the man.

‘I am a neighbour of yours,’ smiled Leon.

‘The letter!’ Eden gasped the words and Leon nodded.

‘I have it in my pocket,’ he said, ‘and I will restore it to you when you are recovered. You understand that you have had an accident?’

Eden nodded.

A quarter of an hour later the hospital ambulance rolled up to the door, and the would-be suicide was taken away.

‘Now,’ said Leon, when they were back in their own room, ‘we will discover what all this is about,’ and very calmly he slit open the envelope and read.

‘What is it?’ asked Manfred.

‘Our young friend came back from South Africa with £7,000, which he had accumulated in eight years of hard work. He lost it in less than eight hours at a gambling-house which he does not specify. He has not only lost all the money he has but more, and apparently has given cheques to meet his debts.’

Leon scratched his chin.

‘That necessitates a further examination of his room. I wonder if the admirable Mr Pinner will object?’

The admirable Mr Pinner was quite willing that Leon should anticipate the inevitable visit of the police. The search was made, and Leon found a cheque-book for which he had been looking, tucked away in the inside pocket of Jack Eden’s dress-suit, and brought it down to his room.

‘No names,’ he said disappointedly. ‘Just “cash” on every counterfoil. All, I should imagine, to the same person. He banks with the Third National Bank of South Africa, which has an office in Throgmorton Street.’

He carefully copied the numbers of the cheques – there were ten in all.

‘First of all,’ he said, ‘as soon as the post office is open we will send a telegram to the bank stopping the payment of these. Of course he can be sued, but a gambling debt is not recoverable at law, and before that happens we shall see many developments.’

The first development came the next afternoon. Leon had given instructions that anybody who called for Mr Eden was to be shown up to him, and at three o’clock came a very smartly dressed young man who aspirated his h’s with suspicious emphasis.

‘Is this Mr Eden’s flat?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Gonsalez. ‘It is the flat of myself and my friend who are acting for Mr Eden.’

The visitor frowned suspiciously at Leon.

‘Acting for him?’ he said. ‘Well, you can perhaps give me a little information about some cheques that have been stopped. My governor went to get a special clearance this morning, and the bank refused payment. Does Mr Eden know all about this?’

‘Who is your governor?’ asked Leon pleasantly.

‘Mr Mortimer Birn.’

‘And his address?’

The young man gave it. Mr Mortimer Birn was apparently a bill-discounter, and had cashed the cheques for a number of people who did not want to pass them through their banks. The young man was very emphatic as to the cheques being the property of a large number of people.

‘And they all came to Mr Birn. What a singular coincidence,’ agreed Leon.

‘I’d rather see Mr Eden, if you don’t mind,’ said the emissary of Mr Mortimer Birn, and his tone was unpleasant.

‘You cannot see him because he has met with an accident,’ said Leon. ‘But I will see your Mr Birn.’

He found Mr Birn in a very tiny office in Glasshouse Street. The gentleman’s business was not specified either on the door-plate or on the painted window, but Leon smelt ‘money-lender’ the moment he went into his office.

The outer office was unoccupied when he entered. It was a tiny dusty cupboard of a place with just room enough to put a diminutive table, and the space was further curtailed by a wooden partition, head high, which served to exclude the unfortunate person who occupied the room from draughts and immediate observation. A door marked private led to Mr Birn’s holy of holies and from this room came the sound of loud voices.

Gonsalez listened.

‘ . . . come without telephoning, hey? She always comes in the morning, haven’t I told you a hundred times?’ roared one voice.

‘She doesn’t know me,’ grumbled the other.

‘She’s only got to see your hair . . . ’

It was at that moment that the young man who called at Jermyn Street came out of the room. Gonsalez had a momentary glimpse of two men. One was short and stout, the other was tall, but it was his bright red hair that caught Leon’s eye. And then Mr Birn’s clerk went back to the room and the voices ceased. When Gonsalez was ushered into the office, only the proprietor of the establishment was visible.

Birn was a stout bald man, immensely affable. He told Leon the same story as his clerk had told.

‘Now, what is Eden going to do about these cheques?’ asked Birn at last.

‘I don’t think he’s going to meet them,’ said Leon gently. ‘You see, they are gambling debts.’

‘They are cheques,’ interrupted Birn, ‘and a cheque is a cheque whether it’s for a gambling debt or a sack of potatoes.’

‘Is that the law?’ asked Leon, ‘and if it is, will you write me a letter to that effect, in which case you will be paid.’

‘Certainly I will,’ said Mr Birn. ‘If that’s all you want, I’ll write it now.’

‘Proceed,’ said Leon, but Mr Birn did not write the letter. Instead he talked about his lawyers; grew virtuously indignant on the unsportsmanlike character of people who repudiated debts of honour (how he came to be satisfied that the cheques represented gambling losses, he did not explain) and ended the interview a little apoplectically. And all the time Leon was speculating upon the identity of the third man he had seen and who had evidently left the room through one of the three doors which opened from the office.

Leon went down the narrow stairs into the street, and as he stepped on to the pavement, a little car drove up and a girl descended. She did not look at him, but brushing past ran up the stairs. She was alone, and had driven her own luxurious coupé. Gonsalez, who was interested, waited till she came out, which was not for twenty minutes, and she was obviously distressed.

Leon was curious and interested. He went straight on to the hospital where they had taken Eden, and found the young man sufficiently recovered to be able to talk.

His first words betrayed his anxiety and his contrition.

‘I say, what did you do with that letter? I was a fool to – ’

‘Destroyed it,’ said Leon, which was true. ‘Now, my young friend, you’ve got to tell me something. Where was the gambling-house to which you went?’

It took a long time to persuade Mr John Eden that he was not betraying a confidence and then he told him the whole story from beginning to end.

‘So it was a lady who took you there, eh?’ said Leon thoughtfully.

‘She wasn’t in it,’ said John Eden quickly. ‘She was just a visitor like myself. She told me she had lost five hundred pounds.’

‘Naturally, naturally,’ said Leon. ‘Is she a fair lady with very blue eyes, and has she a little car of her own?’

The man looked surprised.

‘Yes, she drove me in her car,’ he said, ‘and she is certainly fair and has blue eyes. In fact, she’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen. You needn’t worry about the lady, sir,’ he said shaking his head. ‘Poor girl, she was victimised, if there was any victimisation.’

‘196 Paul Street, Mayfair, I think you said.’

‘I’m certain it was Paul Street, and almost as sure it was 196,’ said Eden. ‘But I hope you’re not going to take any action against them, because it was my own fault. Aren’t you one of the two gentlemen who live in the flat under me?’ he asked suddenly.

Leon nodded.

‘I suppose the cheques have been presented and some of them have come back.’

‘They have not been presented yet, or at any rate they have not been honoured,’ said Leon. ‘And had you shot yourself, my young friend, they would not have been honoured at all, because your bank would have stopped payment automatically.’

Manfred dined alone that night. Leon had not returned, and there had been no news from him until eight o’clock, when there came a District Messenger with a note asking Manfred to give the bearer his dress clothes and one or two articles which he mentioned.

Manfred was too used to the ways of Leon Gonsalez to be greatly surprised. He packed a small suitcase, sent the messenger boy off with it and he himself spent the evening writing letters.

At half past two he heard a slight scuffle in the street outside, and Leon came in without haste, and in no wise perturbed, although he had just emerged from a rough-and-tumble encounter with a young man who had been watching the house all the evening for his return.

He was not in evening dress, Manfred noticed, but was wearing the clothes he had on when he went out in the morning.

‘You got your suitcase all right?’