(1929) The Three Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  “Early the next morning I was looking round through my glasses, and saw what I thought was a house on the opposite hill. I asked my head-man who lived there, and he told me that it was once the house or the Star Chief; and I remembered that somebody told me, down in Mossamedes, that an astronomer had settled in this neighbourhood and had been murdered by the natives. I thought I would go over and have a look at the place. The day being cloudy and not too hot, I took my gun and a couple of boys and we crossed the river and began climbing the hill. The house was, of course, in ruins; it had only been a wattle hut at the best of times. Part of it was covered with vegetation, but out of curiosity I searched round, hoping to pick up a few things that might be useful to me, more particularly kettles, for my boys had burnt holes in every one I had. I found a kettle, and then, turning over a heap of rubbish which I think must have been his bed, I found a little rusty tin box and broke it open with my stick. There were a few letters which were so faded that I could only read a word here and there, and in a green oilskin, a long letter from the Portuguese Government.”

  (It was at this point, either by coincidence or design, that the narrative continued on the actual paper to which he referred.)

  “I speak Portuguese and can read it as easily as English, and the only thing that worried me about it was that the concession gave Professor Leicester all rights to my cave. My first idea was to burn it, but then I began to realize what a scoundrelly business that would be, and I took the letters out into the sun and tried to find if he had any relations, hoping that I’d be able to fix it up with them to take at any rate 50 per cent. of my find. There was only one letter that helped me. It was written in a child’s hand and was evidently from his daughter. It had no address, but there was the name—‘Mirabelle Leicester.’

  “I put it in my pocket with the concession and went on searching, but found nothing more. I was going down the hill towards the valley when it struck me that perhaps this man had found gold, and the excuse for getting the concession was a bit of artfulness. I sent a boy back to the camp for a pick, a hammer and a spade, and when he returned I began to make a cutting in the side of the hill. There was nothing to guide me—no outcrop, such as you usually find near a true reef—but I hadn’t been digging for an hour before I struck the richest bed of conglomerate I’ve ever seen. I was either dreaming, or my good angel had at last led me to the one place in the hill where gold could be found. I had previously sent the boys back to camp and told them to wait for me, because, if I did strike metal, I did not want the fact advertised all over Angola, where they’ve been looking for gold for years.

  “Understand, it was not a reef in the ordinary sense of the word, it was all conglomerate, and the wider I made my cutting, the wider the bed appeared, I took the pick to another part of the hill and dug again, with the same result—conglomerate. It was as though nature had thrown up a huge golden hump in the earth. I covered both cuttings late that night and went back to camp. (I was stalked by a leopard in the low bush, but managed to get him.)

  “Early next morning, I started off and tried another spot, and with the same result; first three feet of earth, then about six inches of shale, and then conglomerate. I tried to work through the bed, thinking that it might be just a skin, but I was saved much exertion by coming upon a deep rift in the hill about twenty feet wide at the top and tapering down to about fifty feet below the ground level. This gave me a section to work on, and as near as I can judge, the conglomerate bed is something over fifty feet thick and I’m not so sure that it doesn’t occur again after an interval of twenty feet or more, for I dug more shale and had a showing of conglomerate at the very bottom of the ravine.

  “What does this mean, Johnny? It means that we have found a hill of gold; not solid gold, as in the storybooks, but gold that pays ounces and probably pounds to the ton. How the prospectors have missed it all these years I can’t understand, unless it is that they’ve made their cuttings on the north side of the hill, where they have found nothing but slate and sandstone. The little river in the valley must be feet deep in alluvial, for I panned the bed and got eight ounces of pure gold in an hour—and that was by rough-and-ready methods. I had to be careful not to make the boys too curious, and I am breaking camp to-morrow, and I want you to cable or send me PS500 to Mossamedes. The statuette I’m bringing home is worth all that. I would bring more, only I can’t trust these Angola boys; a lot of them arc mission boys and can read Portuguese, and they’re too friendly with a half-breed called Villa, who is an agent of Oberzohn & Smitts; the traders and I know these people to be the most unscrupulous scoundrels on the coast.

  “I shall be at Mossamedes about three weeks after you get this letter, but I don’t want to get back to the coast in a hurry, otherwise people are going to suspect I have made a strike.”

  Leon put the letter down.

  “There is the story in a nutshell, gentlemen,” he said. “I don’t, for one moment, believe that Mr. Barberton showed Villa the letter. It is more likely that one of the educated natives he speaks about saw it and reported it to Oberzohn’s agent. Portuguese is the lingua franca of that part of the coast. Barberton was killed to prevent his meeting the girl and telling her of his find—incidentally, of warning her to apply for a renewal of the concession. It wasn’t even necessary that they should search his belongings to recover the letter, because once they knew of its existence and the date which Barberton had apparently confounded with the date the letter was written, their work was simply to present an application to the Colonial Office at Lisbon. It was quite different after Barberton was killed, when they learnt or guessed that the letter was in Mr. Lee’s possession.”

  Meadows agreed.

  “That was the idea behind Oberzohn’s engagement of Mirabelle Leicester?”

  “Exactly, and it was also behind the attack upon Heavytree Farm. To secure this property they must get her away and keep her hidden either until it is too late for her to apply for a renewal, or until she has been bullied or forced into appointing a nominee.”

  “Or married,” said Leon briskly. “Did that idea occur to you? Our tailor-made friend, Monty Newton, may have had matrimonial intentions. It would have been quite a good stroke of business to secure a wife and a large and auriferous hill at the same time. This, I think, puts a period to the ambitions of Herr Doktor Oberzohn.”

  He got up from the table and handed the papers to the custody of the detective, and turned with a quizzical smile to his friend.

  “George, do you look forward with any pleasure to a two hundred and fifty miles’ drive?”

  “Are you the chauffeur?” asked George.

  “I am the chauffeur,” said Leon cheerfully. “I have driven a car for many years and I have not been killed yet. It is unlikely that I shall risk my precious life and yours to-night. Come with me and I promise never to hit her up above sixty except on the real speedways.”

  Manfred nodded.

  “We will stop at Oxley and try to get a ‘phone call through to Gloucester,” said Leon. “This line is, of course, out of order. They would do nothing so stupid as to neglect the elementary precaution of disconnecting Rath Hall.”

  At Oxley the big Spanz pulled up before the dark and silent exterior of the inn, and Leon, getting down, brought the half-clad landlord to the door and explained his mission, and also learned that two big cars had passed through half an hour before, going in the direction of London.

  “That was the gang. I wonder how they’ll explain to their paymaster their second failure?”

  His first call was to the house in Curzon Street, but there was no reply. “Ring them again,” said Leon. “You left Poiccart there?”

  Manfred nodded.

  They waited for five minutes; still there was no reply.

  “How queer!” said Manfred. “It isn’t like Poiccart to leave the house. Get Gloucester.”

  At this hour of the night the lines are comparatively clear, and in a very short time he heard the Gloucester o
perator’s voice, and a few seconds later the click that told them they were connected with Heavytree Farm. Here there was some delay before the call was answered.

  It was not Mirabelle Leicester nor her aunt who spoke. Nor did he recognize the voice of Digby, who had recovered sufficiently to return to duty.

  “Who is that?” asked the voice sharply. “Is that you, sergeant?”

  “No, it is Mr. Meadows,” said Leon mendaciously.

  “The Scotland Yard gentleman?” It was an eager inquiry.

  “I’m Constable Kirk, of the Gloucester Police. My sergeant’s been trying to get in touch with you, sir.”

  “What is the matter?” asked Leon, a cold feeling at his heart.

  “I don’t know, sir. About half an hour ago, I was riding past here—I’m one of the mounted men—and I saw the door wide open and all the lights on, and when I came in there was nobody up. I woke Miss Goddard and Mr. Digby, but the young lady was not in the house.”

  “Lights everywhere?” asked Leon quickly.

  “Yes, sir—in the parlour at any rate.”

  “No sign of a struggle?”

  “No, sir; but a car passed me three miles from the house and it was going at a tremendous rate. I think she may have been in that. Mr. Digby and Miss Goddard have just gone into Gloucester.”

  “All right, officer. I am sending Mr. Gonsalez down to see you,” said Leon, and hung up the receiver.

  “What is it?” asked George Manfred, who knew that something was wrong by his friend’s face.

  “They’ve got Mirabelle Leicester after all,” said Leon. “I’m afraid I shall have to break my promise to you, George. That machine of mine is going to travel before daybreak!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - AT HEAVYTREE FARM

  IT had been agreed that, having failed in their attack, and their energies for the moment being directed to Rath Hall, an immediate return of the Old Guard to Heavytree Farm was unlikely. This had been Meadows’ view, and Leon and his friend were of the same mind. Only Poiccart, that master strategist, working surely with a queer knowledge of his enemies’ psychology, had demurred from this reasoning; but as he had not insisted upon his point of view, Heavytree Farm and its occupants had been left to the care of the local police and the shaken Digby.

  Aunt Alma offered to give up her room to the wounded man, but he would not hear of this, and took the spare bedroom, an excellent position for a defender, since it separated Mirabelle’s apartment from the pretty little room which Aunt Alma used as a study and sleeping-place.

  The staff of Heavytree Farm consisted of an ancient cowman, a cook and a maid, the latter of whom had already given notice and left on the afternoon of the attack. She had, as she told Mirabelle in all seriousness, a weak heart.

  “And a weak head too!” snapped Alma. “I should not worry about your heart, my girl, if I were you.”

  “I was top of my class at school,” bridled the maid, touched to the raw by this reflection upon her intelligence.

  “It must have been a pretty small class,” retorted Alma.

  A new maid had been found, a girl who had been thrilled by the likelihood that the humdrum of daily labour would be relieved by exciting events out of the ordinary, and before evening the household had settled down to normality. Mirabelle was feeling the reaction and went to bed early that night, waking as the first slant of sunlight poured through her window. She got up, feeling, she told herself, as well as she had felt in her life. Pulling back the chintz curtains, she looked out upon a still world with a sense of happiness and relief beyond measure. There was nobody in sight. Pools of mist lay in the hollows, and from one white farmstead, far away on the slope of the hill, she saw the blue smoke was rising. It was a morning to remember, and, to catch its spirit the better, she dressed hastily and went down into the garden. As she walked along the path she heard a window pulled open and the bandaged head of Mr. Digby appeared.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it, miss?” he said with relief, and she laughed.

  “There is nothing more terrible in sight than a big spider,” she said, and pointed to a big flat fellow, who was already spinning his web between the tall hollyhocks. And the first of the bees was abroad.

  “If anybody had come last night I shouldn’t have heard them,” he confessed. “I slept like a dead man.” He touched his head gingerly. “It smarts, but the ache is gone,” he said, not loth to discuss his infirmities. “The doctor said I had a narrow escape; he thought there was a fracture. Would you like me to make some tea, miss, or shall I call the servant?”

  She shook her head, but he had already disappeared, and came seeking her in the garden ten minutes later, with a cup of tea in his hand. He told her for the second time that he was a police pensioner and had been in the employ of Gonsalez for three years. The Three paid well, and had, she learned to her surprise, considerable private resources.

  “Does it pay them—this private detective business?”

  “Lord bless your heart, no, miss!” He scoffed at the idea. “They are very rich men. I thought everybody knew that. They say Mr. Gonsalez was worth a million even before the war.”

  This was astonishing news.

  “But why do they do this”—she hesitated—“this sort of thing?”

  “It is a hobby, miss,” said the man vaguely. “Some people run race-horses, some own yachts—these gentlemen get a lot of pleasure out of their work and they pay well,” he added.

  Men in the regular employ of the Three Just Men not only received a good wage, but frequently a bonus which could only be described as colossal. Once, after they had rounded up and destroyed a gang of Spanish bank robbers, they had distributed PS1,000 to every man who was actively employed. He hinted rather than stated that this money had formed part of the loot which the Three had recovered, and did not seem to think that there was anything improper in this distribution of illicit gains.

  “After all, miss,” he said philosophically, “when you collect money like that, it’s impossible to give it back to the people it came from. This Diego had been holding up banks for years, and banks are not like people—they don’t feel the loss of money.”

  “That’s a thoroughly immoral view,” said Mirabelle, intent upon her flower-picking.

  “It may be, miss,” agreed Digby, who had evidently been one of the recipients of bounty, and took a complacent and a tolerant view. “But a thousand pounds is a lot of money.”

  The day passed without event. From the early evening papers that came from Gloucester she learned of the fire at Oberzohn’s, and did not connect the disaster with anything but an accident. She was not sorry. The fire had licked out one ugly from the past. Incidentally it had destroyed a crude painting which was to Dr. Oberzohn more precious than any that Leonardo had painted or Raphael conceived, but this she did not know.

  It was just before the dinner hour that there came the first unusual incident of the day. Mirabelle was standing by the garden gate, intent upon the glories of the evening sky, which was piled high with red and slate-coloured cumuli. The glass was falling and a wet night was promised. But the loveliness of that lavish colouring held her. And then she became dimly aware that a man was coming towards the house from the direction of Gloucester. He walked in the middle of the road slowly, as though he, too, were admiring the view and there was no need to hurry. His hands were behind him, his soft felt hat at the back of his head. A stocky-looking man, but his face was curiously familiar. He turned his unsmiling eyes in her direction, and, looking again at his strong features, at the tiny grey-black moustache under his aquiline nose, she was certain she had seen him before. Perhaps she had passed him in the street, and had retained a subconscious mental picture of him.

  He slowed his step until, when he came abreast of her, he stopped.

  “This is Heavytree Lane?” he asked, in a deep musical voice.

  “No—the lane is the first break in the hedge,” she smiled. “I’m afraid it isn’t much of a road—generally it is ankle-deep
in mud.”

  He looked past her to the house; his eyes ranged the windows, dropped for a moment upon a climbing clematis, and came back to her.

  “I don’t know Gloucestershire very well,” he said, and added: “You have a very nice house.”

  “Yes,” she said in surprise.

  “And a garden.” And then, innocently: “Do you grow onions?”

  She stared at him and laughed.

  “I think we do—I am not sure. My aunt looks after the kitchen garden.”

  His sad eyes wandered over the house again.

  “It is a very nice place,” he said, and, lifting his hat, went on.

  Digby was out: he had gone for a gentle walk, and, looking up the road after the stranger, she saw the guard appear round a bend in the road, and saw him stop and speak to the stranger. Apparently they knew one another, for they shook hands at meeting, and after a while Digby pointed down the road to where she was standing, and she saw the man nod. Soon after the stranger went out of view. Who could he be? Was it an additional guard that the three men had put to protect her? When Digby came up to her, she asked him. “That gentleman, miss? He is Mr. Poiccart.”

  “Poiccart?” she said, delighted. “Oh, I wish I had known!”

  “I was surprised to see him,” said the guard. “As a matter of fact, he’s the one of the three gentlemen I’ve met the most. He’s generally in Curzon Street, even when the others are away.”

  Digby had nothing to say about Poiccart except that he was a very quiet gentleman and took no active part in the operations of the Three Just Men.

  “I wonder why he wanted to know about onions?” asked the girl thoughtfully. “That sounded awfully mysterious.”

  It would not have been so mysterious to Leon.

  The house retired to bed soon after ten, Alma going the rounds, and examining the new bolts and locks which had been attached that morning to every door which gave ingress to the house.