THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN SERIES (6 Detective Thrillers in One Edition). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ direction of Blackfriars, crossed the bridge, chatting on inconsequent subjects, the poor, the weather, the newspapers. On the other side of the bridge is a coffee-stall. I determined to make my next move. I invited him to take a cup of coffee, and when the cups were placed before us, I put down a sovereign. The stall-keeper shook his head, said he could not change it. ‘Hasn’t your friend any small change?’ he asked.

      “It was here that the vanity of the little thief told me what I wanted to know. He drew from his pocket, with a nonchalant air — a sovereign. ‘This is all that I have got,’ he drawled. I found some coppers — I had to think quickly. He had told the police something, something worth paying for — what was it? It could not have been a description of ourselves, for if he had recognised us then, he would have known me when I struck the match and when I stood there, as I did, in the full glare of the light of the coffee-stall. And then a cold fear came to me. Perhaps he had recognised me, and with a thief’s cunning was holding me in conversation until he could get assistance to take me.”

      Poiccart paused for a moment, and drew a small phial from his pocket; this he placed carefully on the table.

      “He was as near to death then as ever he has been in his life,” he said quietly, “but somehow the suspicion wore away. In our walk we had passed three policemen — there was an opportunity if he had wanted it.

      “He drank his coffee and said, ‘I must be going home.’

      “‘Indeed!’ I said. ‘I suppose I really ought to go home too — I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.’ He leered at me. ‘So have I,’ he said with a grin, ‘but whether I can do it or not I don’t know.’

      “We had left the coffee-stall, and now stopped beneath a lamp that stood at the corner of the street.

      “I knew that I had only a few seconds to secure the information I wanted — so I played bold and led directly to the subject. ‘What of these Four Just Men?’ I asked, just as he was about to slouch away. He turned back instantly. ‘What about them?’ he asked quickly. I led him on from that by gentle stages to the identity of the Four. He was eager to talk about them, anxious to know what I thought, but most concerned of all about the reward. He was engrossed in the subject, and then suddenly he leant forward, and, tapping me on the chest, with a grimy forefinger, he commenced to state a hypothetical case.”

      Poiccart stopped to laugh — his laugh ended in a sleepy yawn.

      “You know the sort of questions,” said he, “and you know how very naive the illiterate are when they are seeking to disguise their identities by elaborate hypotheses. Well, that is the story. He — Marks is his name — thinks he may be able to recognise one of us by some extraordinary trick of memory. To enable him to do this, he has been granted freedom — tomorrow he would search London, he said.”

      “A full day’s work,” laughed Manfred.

      “Indeed,” agreed Poiccart soberly, “but hear the sequel. We parted, and I walked westward perfectly satisfied of our security. I made for Covent Garden Market, because this is one of the places in London where a man may be seen at four o’clock in the morning without exciting suspicion.

      “I had strolled through the market, idly watching the busy scene, when, for some cause that I cannot explain, I turned suddenly on my heel and came face to face with Marks! He grinned sheepishly, and recognised me with a nod of his head.

      “He did not wait for me to ask him his business, but started in to explain his presence.

      “I accepted his explanation easily, and for the second time that night invited him to coffee. He hesitated at first, then accepted. When the coffee was brought, he pulled it to him as far from my reach as possible, and then I knew that Mr Marks had placed me at fault, that I had underrated his intelligence, that all the time he had been unburdening himself he had recognised me. He had put me off my guard.”

      “But why —— ?” began Manfred.

      “That is what I thought,” the other answered. “Why did he not have me arrested?” He turned to Leon, who had been a silent listener. “Tell us, Leon, why?”

      “The explanation is simple,” said Gonsalez quietly: “why did not Thery betray us? — cupidity, the second most potent force of civilisation. He has some doubt of the reward. He may fear the honesty of the police — most criminals do so; he may want witnesses.” Leon walked to the wall, where his coat hung. He buttoned it thoughtfully, ran his hand over his smooth chin, then pocketed the little phial that stood on the table.

      “You have slipped him, I suppose?” he asked.

      Poiccart nodded.

      “He lives —— ?”

      “At 700 Red Cross Street, in the Borough — it is a common lodging-house.”

      Leon took a pencil from the table and rapidly sketched a head upon the edge of a newspaper.

      “Like this?” he asked.

      Poiccart examined the portrait.

      “Yes,” he said in surprise; “have you seen him?”

      “No,” said Leon carelessly, “but such a man would have such a head.”

      He paused on the threshold.

      “I think it is necessary.” There was a question in his assertion. It was addressed rather to Manfred, who stood with his folded arms and knit brow staring at the floor.

      For answer Manfred extended his clenched fist. Leon saw the downturned thumb, and left the room.

      Billy Marks was in a quandary. By the most innocent device in the world his prey had managed to slip through his fingers. When Poiccart, stopping at the polished doors of the best hotel in London, whither they had strolled, casually remarked that he would not be a moment and disappeared into the hotel, Billy was nonplussed. This was a contingency for which he was not prepared. He had followed the suspect from Blackfriars; he was almost sure that this was the man he had robbed. He might, had he wished, have called upon the first constable he met to take the man into custody; but the suspicion of the thief, the fear that he might be asked to share the reward with the man who assisted him restrained him. And besides, it might not be the man at all, argued Billy, and yet ——

      Poiccart was a chemist, a man who found joy in unhealthy precipitates, who mixed evilsmelling drugs and distilled, filtered, carbonated, oxydized, and did all manner of things in glass tubes, to the vegetable, animal, and mineral products of the earth.

      Billy had left Scotland Yard to look for a man with a discoloured hand. Here again, he might, had he been less fearful of treachery, have placed in the hands of the police a very valuable mark of identification.

      It seems a very lame excuse to urge on Billy’s behalf that this cupidity alone stayed his hand when he came face to face with the man he was searching for. And yet it was so. Then again there was a sum in simple proportion to be worked out. If one Just Man was worth a thousand pounds, what was the commercial value of four? Billy was a thief with a business head. There were no waste products in his day’s labour. He was not a conservative scoundrel who stuck to one branch of his profession. He would pinch a watch, or snatch a till, or pass snide florins with equal readiness. He was a butterfly of crime, flitting from one illicit flower to another, and nor above figuring as the X of ‘information received’.

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